So are the sources of output going to be tweaked? I like how pop happiness affects it, it makes sense, but as of now, the numbers are ridiculous. As long as your pop happiness is reasonable, your output is already 100% or more.
I suppose you mean the numbers are ridiculous in 1.5 ? if not, lets elaborate on this together and throw some numbers around and see what sticks..
From what is known of output in 2.0, the pop output% before mitigation by city-infrastructure will be fluctuating more and have lower resting-points:
A territory will ‘break even’ at 30 civilization value, assuming no other modifiers are present. The output of territories where the dominant culture is not integrated will be subject to a further penalty, as will settlements:
looking at these modifiers, many territories will struggle to reach a positive number of %output. Compared to 1.5, this vastly increases the relevance of modifiers to the output of particular pop types or localities and modifiers from province policy and governor or govt office etc. I imagine, for tribes, the "tribesmen output" modifier will be several magnitudes more valued than it is in 1.5, simply as a consequence of how the math on all this works out - the average pop output of a tribe might be something like 10% given that their land has low civ value and is mostly settlements. Then a bump of 5% from a modifier is in relative terms an increase of x1.5
in fact, the base -30 combined with the -15 for settlements could make pop output for tribes in particular extremely volatile. It can be tweaked in some interesting ways though, like adding additional sources of tribesmen output to some output offices.
I'd like there to be less passive sources of output. I'd like the idea of output as production efficiency, and I like the idea of giving the player more capacity to influence it, with buildings like the ones coming in 2.0. If I want to take a path where I micromanage and make my society more productive than a militaristic one, I should be able to, and it should show. But if almost all of the pops are just as productive as long as they are happy, its difficult to differenciate societies.
To the extent that I agree, it does seem like cities that push close to their population capacity and fill their building slots will be significantly more productive than others - the same will go for the pops within them. This due to the civilization value.
as for becoming more productive if you are not militaristic, I would point out, this isn't an industrialized era, so I think its reasonable to expect some limitations of how much-focused economies can be scaled up, as compared to games set in later eras.... Though it does seem like 2.0 will convey the opportunity cost of war, because pops raised as levies cant be taxed for output until they are released, and some may die. frequent or long wars will be costly. wars kept brief or lean in other ways will have lower opportunity costs and may yield resources that can be reinvested to scale up more over time, especially considering the presumed increased value the new buildings can give, by pushing up civ-value and pop-output (Parameters that are not perpetually at 100% regardless the way they often are in 1.5)
... I expect we will differentiate through our choice of invention-paths, where to build and what (likely you still cant consistently use up every building slot as it opens up - or you may not always want to), we will differentiate through our choice of governors and important ministers, what families and factions we favour. and as always - in Where we choose to war and not war,
Edit: see reiteration with some more distinctions and numbers in my post below.
