Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Dev Diary #54: The Tyrannosaurus: Update Economy

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My main concern is that the society tech tree is going to feel a bit barren now, even with the few new techs.
 
Because the real improvement in going from 3 to 5 is not the raw sector income, but in what you get from the specialization buildings.

That progression also became only about 50%. e.g. From turn 10 to turn 50, you used to go from 10% prod dicount to 30% + 3 armor. Now you go from 20% + 1 armor as soon as you build it, to 30% + 2 armor in the endgame.

I mean, this seems like your're arguing against your own point. If putting pops on food is barely enough to grow, wouldn't that imply that food sectors have become vitally important to give you access to more sectors in a reasonable amount of time?

In the paragraph previous to that, I argue that food sectors are also useless (actually, negative value) since you waste a sector on non-yields and your reward is one sector, but later. So the point as a whole is that food sectors = useless, food workers = almost useless, therefore investing into food as a whole is useless, as both main methods of doing so yield little to no benefit.

Now I do actually invest into food (workers), but in minmaxed play that should stop the moment I unlock the sectors that base income can support. (3, unless I get aquatic.) There's no benefit to forcing more sectors than without investment, but if I just want to make the sectors appear earlier and then switch workers away, it works ok.

Additionally, when the chance comes up to make a double-food city, I can use that city to make all my stalled 3-sector cities grow to 4, without sacrificing a sector in those cities. That works mathematically because you can combo both food specializations together to achieve decent efficiency.
 
How long does it take a fresh colony to get its third exploitation without any additional food infrastructure, vs if the first sector is a food sector?
 
Am I the only person who has tried to have OLB as fast as possible? Using a food sector can get you to 12 pop as early as turn 10(barring multiple shelter pickups). I wonder if the new food sectors are even faster.
 
I wonder if the new food sectors are even faster.
I would expect so, as even if its just a level 1 food sector, you now get +10 free food instead of just +5 for having it. If you've matched the Terrain and started your sector at level 3, its +20 food per turn even without using the 3 slots.
 
WARNING: This image is WRONG. I had some minor errors in the cell formulas that nevertheless were significant enough to tip the results. The updated post is on the next forum page. Leaving this post unedited so the thread history makes sense.

How long does it take a fresh colony to get its third exploitation without any additional food infrastructure, vs if the first sector is a food sector?



(Tyrannosaurus patch)

So, it turns out, the best way to get the most juice (non-food/happiness yields) out of a new city is to not give a damn about food. Or rather, to assign a single worker into food and put the rest elsewhere. But that'd be a PITA because of manual assign, every new worker would spawn in food or production and you'd have to switch them out.

DISCLAIMERS:
  • This is a theoretical completely food-starved city with no resource nodes, no food sharing, no aquatic sectors, no doctrines, no pickups, absolutely nothing. Obviously this won't happen exactly in a normal game.
  • All sectors are assumed to spawn at level 3 and never upgrade. They also build instantly.
  • Cities are assumed to spawn at 1 pop with 0 food stores, which isn't true most of the time.
  • Yields calculated here are non-food, non-happiness. Happiness events are not counted. Only yields from workers and sectors are counted, since everything else should be the same.
  • The graphs stop at turn 80. In extremely long games (much more than 150 turns), of course the winners would be the ones that reach 4 sectors.
Opinions:
  • Note that the number of turns are much longer than you would expect (given that it's a total starvation city location, with no help). To me, this indicates that you should place high priority on finding extra food for your new cities...
  • Food, that is, that doesn't sacrifice any other yields in any way, otherwise it's worse than not caring at all.
  • Good examples of this include the Vanguard food doctrine, aquatic sectors, and food sharing from a double-exploited-double-specialized food city.
  • Bad (counterproductive) examples include food workers/food sectors, central biofarm, and food resource nodes like biodomes, assuming you chose it over another node.
  • Including food specialization buildings might change the result, but since all the other strategies don't get to upgrade or specialize, it would be an unfair comparison.
  • I couldn't include every possible strategy and every possible extra factor. Notable alternatives left out: food sector + food workers, aquatic sectors.
In particular, I think aquatic would be a good option to maximize yields without giving up on food, as it provides 30 yields with no levelups (more than the 10 of land sectors at lv3), 10 of which is food.
 
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(Tyrannosaurus patch)

So, it turns out, the best way to get the most juice (non-food/happiness yields) out of a new city is to not give a damn about food. Or rather, to assign a single worker into food and put the rest elsewhere. But that'd be a PITA because of manual assign, every new worker would spawn in food or production and you'd have to switch them out.

DISCLAIMERS:
  • This is a theoretical completely food-starved city with no resource nodes, no food sharing, no aquatic sectors, no doctrines, no pickups, absolutely nothing. Obviously this won't happen exactly in a normal game.
  • All sectors are assumed to spawn at level 3 and never upgrade. They also build instantly.
  • Cities are assumed to spawn at 1 pop with 0 food stores, which isn't true most of the time.
  • Yields calculated here are non-food, non-happiness. Happiness events are not counted. Only yields from workers and sectors are counted, since everything else should be the same.
  • The graphs stop at turn 80. In extremely long games (much more than 150 turns), of course the winners would be the ones that reach 4 sectors.
Opinions:
  • Note that the number of turns are much longer than you would expect (given that it's a total starvation city location, with no help). To me, this indicates that you should place high priority on finding extra food for your new cities...
  • Food, that is, that doesn't sacrifice any other yields in any way, otherwise it's worse than not caring at all.
  • Good examples of this include the Vanguard food doctrine, aquatic sectors, and food sharing from a double-exploited-double-specialized food city.
  • Bad (counterproductive) examples include food workers/food sectors, central biofarm, and food resource nodes like biodomes, assuming you chose it over another node.
  • Including food specialization buildings might change the result, but since all the other strategies don't get to upgrade or specialize, it would be an unfair comparison.
  • I couldn't include every possible strategy and every possible extra factor. Notable alternatives left out: food sector + food workers, aquatic sectors.
In particular, I think aquatic would be a good option to maximize yields without giving up on food, as it provides 30 yields with no levelups (more than the 10 of land sectors at lv3), 10 of which is food.
This seems totally off as it has no accounting for upkeep values or how much population the city has at any given point. It's a nice try though.


Okay I think I understand better what this graph is trying to do. But I think it's missing a lot of data. Turns when new workers are added, when new sectors are gained, and more.
 
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It's very difficult to work out what's going on in that chart.
  • Why does Full Workers go up to 12 when you need food sectors to get that many slots? Also it seems to start producing non-food at turn 9, which is a surprisingly fast second sector.
  • 1 worker on food has its income increase suddenly at turn 10, and then never again. Why?
  • No effort also suddenly spikes at turn 13, and then again at turn ~58. Why?
  • Actually there's a fair number of increases which would need to be explained. I think most of them are probably a new non-food sector coming online, but I'd like to know how you got the turns required for that.
I ran some growth rate math a while ago, and have some old spreadsheets lying around. They were specifically designed to work out how fast one could hit a target population given a starting population and the population growth thresholds.

This was related to sins' above Orbital rush strategy, where we had concluded that IF you could hit 12 pop fast enough, the ROI from orbital relays would be high enough to not only pay off investment, but pay it off before any but the fastest of rushes could possibly hit you. New economy may have changed that, but baseline sector income is now comparable to orbital relay income + base sector income prior to this patch, so... it might not have.

If someone wants to go find out what those new growth thresholds are, it could be updated pretty easily.

To be clear, the threshold is: At pop X, how much food is required to hit pop X+1. That would be the denominator in the growth progress fraction when you hover over the food indicator. Get me that up to pop, say, X=15, and I can update the charts.
 
Am I the only person who has tried to have OLB as fast as possible? Using a food sector can get you to 12 pop as early as turn 10(barring multiple shelter pickups). I wonder if the new food sectors are even faster.

In my first game as Amazons I tried investing heavy in food, and I went really fast to 12 pop. I can't put a finger on it, but it does feel a lot faster to grow cities with the new economy...
 
Yeah the big question is what's the turn differential in hitting sector #3 between no food and food investment? In my limited experience ignoring food structures results in pop growth stalling out pretty hard around 7 pop
 
Did not label graph axes.
PyrX Strike Incoming...

Y - total non-food yields since the city was founded
X - turn number (city founded on turn 1)

What are you, my elementary school teacher?

Well considering the confusion in all the other posts you are probably right and I should be purified. One by one then:

This seems totally off as it has no accounting for upkeep values or how much population the city has at any given point. It's a nice try though.

This does account for upkeep. Number of turns to the next pop is (threshold - rollover) / (income - upkeep).

Why does Full Workers go up to 12 when you need food sectors to get that many slots? Also it seems to start producing non-food at turn 9, which is a surprisingly fast second sector.

'Full workers' means all available workers are placed in food slots (i.e. 4 workers) so with a income of 40 food pre-upkeep it's quite possible to hit 12 workers. It starts producing non-food at turn 9 because it gets its fifth worker at turn 9 and has no more food slots to put them into.

there's a fair number of increases which would need to be explained. I think most of them are probably a new non-food sector coming online

Correct, the graphs spike every times a new pop is added and spike more when a new sector is added, but only if that pop/sector is not food. Pops are assumed to give 5 yields/turn and sectors 20 yields/turn. 'No effort' spikes at turn 13 and turn 59 because those are the turns it gets the 4th worker and the 8th worker.

If someone wants to go find out what those new growth thresholds are, it could be updated pretty easily.

Not sure if that's what you're referring to but I sat through a game tapping Ctrl-Alt-C-freepop to record all the food thresholds from 1 to 47 pop.

Yeah the big question is what's the turn differential in hitting sector #3 between no food and food investment?

Full food workers: 62
1 worker: 175
Food sector: 66 (155 for 3 non-food sectors)
Full workers (stop at 12): 62
No effort: (does not reach)

But since the graphs make many simplifying assumptions, which might not be accurate (especially the zero food from other sources thing), you might prefer to test in a real game.
 
I think the biggest flaw with this analysis is the assumption that you never remove workers assigned to Food.
I also don't think that never getting sector #3 so you are "getting the most juice", is desirable since you aren't going to be able to build absurdly powerful units with stacked Specialisation bonuses.
 
'Full workers' means all available workers are placed in food slots (i.e. 4 workers) so with a income of 40 food pre-upkeep it's quite possible to hit 12 workers. It starts producing non-food at turn 9 because it gets its fifth worker at turn 9 and has no more food slots to put them into.
So why are we distinguishing up-to-12 and no-limit?
Not sure if that's what you're referring to but I sat through a game tapping Ctrl-Alt-C-freepop to record all the food thresholds from 1 to 47 pop.
It would be useful to have that, if you could just copy-paste here. Would save me some time.

Full food workers: 62
1 worker: 175
Food sector: 66 (155 for 3 non-food sectors)
Full workers (stop at 12): 62
No effort: (does not reach)
I know I've hit 12 pop cities a hell of a lot faster than that, so something's off. I'm looking into it.
 
I think the biggest flaw with this analysis is the assumption that you never remove workers assigned to Food.

That is exactly what I did (I have no idea why you're saying I didn't). That's why 'full workers (stop at 12)' exists, you switch all workers except 1 (to prevent starvation) once you hit 12 pop. And that's why it spikes at turn 62 compared to the otherwise-similar 'full workers without stopping'.

I also don't think that never getting sector #3 so you are "getting the most juice", is desirable since you aren't going to be able to build absurdly powerful units with stacked Specialisation bonuses.

Yes, I don't count specialization effects and landmark bonuses. This analysis is for the bulk of your cities whose role is to provide more raw yields, mostly energy and research, then dump their free production into core units for the meat grinder. Of course for your main production cities you want to feed food into them (from elsewhere) to get 4 sectors so you can have both prod specializations, energy efficient, and free medals from a research center.

So why are we distinguishing up-to-12 and no-limit?

See first paragraph of this post.

It would be useful to have that, if you could just copy-paste here. Would save me some time.

Here you go
43
50
58
68
79
92
107
124
143
165
190
219
250
285
324
367
413
462
515
570
628
687
747
807
866
923
979
1032
1082
1129
1171
1211
1246
1278
1307
1332
1355
1374
1391
1407
1420
1431
1441
1449
1457
1463
1468

It's actually really weird, looks like a sigmoid or tanh curve (not polynomial), the first derivative peaks at 24 pop and after that the increases start slowing down.

I know I've hit 12 pop cities a hell of a lot faster than that, so something's off. I'm looking into it.

Well I'm ignoring literally every other source of food that's definitely going to exist in a real game so...
 
It's actually really weird, looks like a sigmoid or tanh curve (not polynomial), the first derivative peaks at 24 pop and after that the increases start slowing down.
It's labeled as an "S-Curve" in the config files iirc; I tried to reverse engineer it once and gave up, though finding functions from points is hardly my area of expertise.

Thank you for the values. I've plugged them into my old spreadsheet and come up with slightly different turn numbers for the spikes in income (i.e. turns when new sectors could come online - I'm not actually simulating resource outputs), though they're correct within ~4 turns so I'm not particularly concerned by it.

You don't include a case for food sector + all pop on food - I'd been assuming that's what "food sector" was, which was part of my incredulity at the numbers, but I seem to be mistaken. I'd be interested in how resource outputs for it scaled. With that setup I can nigh-guarantee 8 pop by turn 10, and 12 pop by turn 18, requiring only that a level 3 food sector be available.

I think it's worthwhile to include baseline city income for food as part of all of the equations, as early jumpstarts dramatically speed up growth rates - for example, simply adding the food core on turn 3 causes you to hit 8 pop 5 turns earlier - which means 5 more turns of income on whatever sector you make from it.

It's been a while since I shared this with anyone, but I think you should be able to make a copy and play with it:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MX-c8sDx3KDtWKJGSdYxS4nZJITzbv2uTnl1nabBNPk/edit?usp=sharing

I can explain any formulas if needed - I think the most complicated part is just understanding the functions though, and drive has very nice hints for that.
 
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It's labeled as an "S-Curve" in the config files iirc

Hmm, S-curve might be another name for sigmoid?

You don't include a case for food sector + all pop on food - I'd been assuming that's what "food sector" was

Yes, this is correct. I think I mentioned it somewhere before but it's probably buried in a wall of text.

I think it's worthwhile to include baseline city income for food as part of all of the equations

Unfortunately, that is already included in all cases. It's the only thing keeping 'no effort' afloat after all.

OTOH, I made an conscious decision not to put in central farm, as it directly sacrifices other yields in a 1-1 ratio.

It's very possible that doubling down on two of the options (workers, sector or central farm) might produce better results, or even putting all 3. Such an approach would also benefit disproportionately from a food specialization. However, that's too many combinations to try, I'm not sure if I want to put in that much effort for a theorycraft.

With that setup I can nigh-guarantee 8 pop by turn 10, and 12 pop by turn 18

Thing is, although you get pop and sectors earlier, this also wastes many early pops and the first sector on non-yields. Your second sector is earlier than if you didn't invest in food, but your second useful/non-food sector is actually later, and similarly for pop/non-food pop. And, along the way you are making food instead of energy/research, you've lost 18 turns of useful yields to have a slightly faster gain later.

That's the reason that my food strategies lose out in total yields to '1 worker', all the way until turn 73. And even after that, it's possible that by having the higher performance in the turns prior, the city has generated more benefit towards victory, through speeding the empire's snowball instead of delaying it.
 
ok but has the math been run on this guy yet:

upload_2020-2-19_23-17-45.png


this seems like a bit of a gamechanger. this guy being in play would make the food sector level 4 as well