Cutting in half the building cost reduction for having stone surplus was exactly the wrong call.

[Ben1612]

As the title says, this was the wrong call. If there is a perceived issue with building costs, this was the wrong way to solve it, there were plenty of other approaches available.

If the issue was the perceived value of having a stone surplus, then again, this was the wrong way to solve it. Reduce the local happiness bonus for slaves (are slaves really going to be happier hauling around solid blocks of stone than lighter wood?), Or reduce the trade value of stone as a trade good (stone is heavy and moving a sufficient quantity for building is hard work, which will eat into any profit).

Meanwhile, having good quality stone available for building was essential for any 'civilized' nation. Additionally, the benefit of building in stone in terms of maintenance costs, structural endurance etc was far in excess of the 10% benefit it was previously given.

I understand there may have been a game balance concern, but given the historical importance of stone, in a historical game, taking the simple easy approach to solve that issue was the wrong call. I hope the dev team will take a moment to reconsider this decision and reverse it/ find a more suitable solution.

 

[Battlex]

As the title says, this was the wrong call. If there is a perceived issue with building costs, this was the wrong way to solve it, there were plenty of other approaches available.

If the issue was the perceived value of having a stone surplus, then again, this was the wrong way to solve it. Reduce the local happiness bonus for slaves (are slaves really going to be happier hauling around solid blocks of stone than lighter wood?), Or reduce the trade value of stone as a trade good (stone is heavy and moving a sufficient quantity for building is hard work, which will eat into any profit).

Meanwhile, having good quality stone available for building was essential for any 'civilized' nation. Additionally, the benefit of building in stone in terms of maintenance costs, structural endurance etc was far in excess of the 10% benefit it was previously given.

I understand there may have been a game balance concern, but given the historical importance of stone, in a historical game, taking the simple easy approach to solve that issue was the wrong call. I hope the dev team will take a moment to reconsider this decision and reverse it/ find a more suitable solution.

There's so many build cost modifiers now, - 10 was just op

 

[Lord Lambert]

You have provided precicely 0 reason to change it back.

 

[Ben1612]

No, a secure surplus of stone is far more important than any other build cost modifier. An argument could be made for 'advanced mechanics' being on equal footing because you kind of need to know how to use stone to get the benefit, but what use advanced mechanics if you're working with inferior materials that can't bear the load anyway? Truthfully stone is more important than most of the build cost modifiers added together.

 

[Ben1612]

You have provided precicely 0 reason to change it back.

Did you read my post? Your response doesn't sound like it. I explained why the change was wrong in the first place, and gave suggestions of other changes that could have been made to address the same problem.

 

[Ben1612]

There's so many build cost modifiers now, - 10 was just op

In addition to my response above (sorry, forgot to post it as a reply), your reasoning is more of an attack on the system of buffs than any single one.

Having a secure supply of stone on it's own, would provide a huge benefit to construction regardless of any additional technology that had been discovered. The technological bonuses could legitimately be phrased as incremental benefits, but having or not having a supply of stone is in no way in the same category. The supply of stone, as a physical resource is not in the same category as theoretical understanding of different ways stone can be used.

The error you are making is seeing all the bonuses as purely game mechanics. In a historical game such as this, weight should be given to the historical impact of stone as a construction material.

 

[svalan_i_dalen]

A lot of improvements were made during the timespan of the game with regards to brick and conrete manufacturing. Wikipedia has interesting reads on roman brick and conrete.

Not sure there is a historical basis for a big bonus from stone during the entire period. Would be interesting if trade goods could change in value and bonus strength during the game.

 

[Jiben]

The bonuses would basically have to become multiplicative if we want to bring their pre nerf ratios back as it was possible to stack way too many bonuses.

 

[Todie]

The error you are making is seeing all the bonuses as purely game mechanics. In a historical game such as this, weight should be given to the historical impact of stone as a construction material.

Forumites often point to history in order to justify their suggestions. However, asking for a number to change or abstactly saying something should be gicen more wieght isnt much of a suggestion in and of itself.

In gameplay terms, acess to stone is still valuable - it relatively speaking has the same high value xompared to other modifiers to build cost as in earlier patches.

The main differance is that combining many modifiers does not compund their benefit nearly as rapidly before, so the extreme cases of modifier value is lower than before - for stone and for most other build cost modifiers. (ie its diffixult to reduce costs by 80% + like you could before)

 

[turokhalo]

I guess it is simply a way of balancing the effects of capital surplus between the different trade goods. And if the devs think the surplus effect of stone is too strong, it is either a nerf to stone or a buff to something (or even everything) else is needed. And I guess with the increase to building cost in the recent patch, a lot of players tried to get stone surplus effect really fast, which is a hint there may be a balancing issue. And you have to balance the surplus effects to one another, a change to the base trade value would change to little.
And even though I agree with everything you said about the importance of stone, I prefer the devs choosing a simple solution and spending their time on other stuff.

I would also not argue for stronger bonusses for certain trade goods because of historical arguments, as most of the surplus modifiers are kind of arbitrary, stone only has one of the more fitting ones. Take all the strategic ressources (except wood) for example. They increase discipline as a surplus effect. From a historical standpoint one would argue, that they should decrease foremost the building and maintenance costs of that unit but not increase the discipline. Or only to a rather small extent.
Actually it would even be more historical if wood decreases buildings costs for certain countries (actually most of them at game start), but it has already a ship building modifier. And in this case stone could instead give a modifier to fort maintenance cost or fort defense.

 

[Battlex]

No, a secure surplus of stone is far more important than any other build cost modifier. An argument could be made for 'advanced mechanics' being on equal footing because you kind of need to know how to use stone to get the benefit, but what use advanced mechanics if you're working with inferior materials that can't bear the load anyway? Truthfully stone is more important than most of the build cost modifiers added together.

In addition to my response above (sorry, forgot to post it as a reply), your reasoning is more of an attack on the system of buffs than any single one.

Having a secure supply of stone on it's own, would provide a huge benefit to construction regardless of any additional technology that had been discovered. The technological bonuses could legitimately be phrased as incremental benefits, but having or not having a supply of stone is in no way in the same category. The supply of stone, as a physical resource is not in the same category as theoretical understanding of different ways stone can be used.

The error you are making is seeing all the bonuses as purely game mechanics. In a historical game such as this, weight should be given to the historical impact of stone as a construction material.

Stone is a common building material, but its not the only building material, you've got wood and metal as well, maintenance costs only exist for granaries via event and forts.
Yes stone is a durable building material, but Pottery and brick is only present in the game as earthenware, there's no lead, just base and precious metals. Wood gives a bonus to tax for some reason rather than build cost even though most structures at this time are made of wood. Stone giving slave happiness is another modifier that was just slapped on. Having an overhaul of trade goods when we get diplo overhauled would be best

 

[Ben1612]

Forumites often point to history in order to justify their suggestions. However, asking for a number to change or abstactly saying something should be gicen more wieght isnt much of a suggestion in and of itself.

In gameplay terms, acess to stone is still valuable - it relatively speaking has the same high value xompared to other modifiers to build cost as in earlier patches.

The main differance is that combining many modifiers does not compund their benefit nearly as rapidly before, so the extreme cases of modifier value is lower than before - for stone and for most other build cost modifiers. (ie its diffixult to reduce costs by 80% + like you could before)

You are mistaking my point, I'll try to clarify.

My reference to history is was not looking for any specific bonus, rather it was pointing out the relative value of stone as opposed to the other bonuses. What other basis is there to use to apply buffs etc, in a computer game based on history than the relative values of those things in history?

No, access to stone has been relatively nerfed by the generic early access to 'advance mechanics' retaining its own already OP buff of 10% untouched. Which is now a ridiculous bonus, as we are now looking at build cost reduction closer to the region of 40-50% but 20-25% of that all comes from one early tech? Which everyone can easily get, whether they are a civilization living in mud huts or heirs to the pyramids.

The combining multipliers issue is a more difficult one, because of the way the tech tree works and different countries access and progression on it. 'Barbarian' nations are almost always forgotten in these discussions, which isn't surprising as PDX has pretty much forgotten them since launch too. So I'm trying to stay away from it.

I was initially focussed on the issue of stone, and its importance to building even if a culture didn't have access to further technological developments. You point about cumulative modifiers being fixed by this change is up for debate. It will require further evidence to determine, though one potential problem I see is that the relative increase in build costs set against no change in income etc has the potential to skew the economy.

 

[Ben1612]

I guess it is simply a way of balancing the effects of capital surplus between the different trade goods. And if the devs think the surplus effect of stone is too strong, it is either a nerf to stone or a buff to something (or even everything) else is needed. And I guess with the increase to building cost in the recent patch, a lot of players tried to get stone surplus effect really fast, which is a hint there may be a balancing issue. And you have to balance the surplus effects to one another, a change to the base trade value would change to little.
And even though I agree with everything you said about the importance of stone, I prefer the devs choosing a simple solution and spending their time on other stuff.

I would also not argue for stronger bonusses for certain trade goods because of historical arguments, as most of the surplus modifiers are kind of arbitrary, stone only has one of the more fitting ones. Take all the strategic ressources (except wood) for example. They increase discipline as a surplus effect. From a historical standpoint one would argue, that they should decrease foremost the building and maintenance costs of that unit but not increase the discipline. Or only to a rather small extent.
Actually it would even be more historical if wood decreases buildings costs for certain countries (actually most of them at game start), but it has already a ship building modifier. And in this case stone could instead give a modifier to fort maintenance cost or fort defense.

Stone is a common building material, but its not the only building material, you've got wood and metal as well, maintenance costs only exist for granaries via event and forts.
Yes stone is a durable building material, but Pottery and brick is only present in the game as earthenware, there's no lead, just base and precious metals. Wood gives a bonus to tax for some reason rather than build cost even though most structures at this time are made of wood. Stone giving slave happiness is another modifier that was just slapped on. Having an overhaul of trade goods when we get diplo overhauled would be best

Yeah, ok. I'll agree that plenty of other trade goods are arbitrary and an overhaul of the entire trade system would make sense.

I still don't see this change to stone as particularly making sense at this time (particularly with advanced mechanics being left unchanged), rather than as part of a reform of the trade system though. A reform of the trade system will by necessity involve a rebalance of the entire economy.

 

[maxk94]

Paradox way of "less is more" in Imperator is good path and they should not leave it.

 

[Ben1612]

Paradox way of "less is more" in Imperator is good path and they should not leave it.

Sorry, not sure what you mean here.

 

[maxk94]

Sorry, not sure what you mean here.

nerfing modifiers is a good thing - like -5% instead of -10%, to balance the game

 

[Roy1012]

To be honest 10% off was pretty OP and I'm surprised they didn't change it sooner.

 

[Ben1612]

nerfing modifiers is a good thing - like -5% instead of -10%, to balance the game

Ah, I see. Well that depends on the other modifiers that remain and the balance across them all. In this example nerfing all but the biggest of the early tech modifiers and nerfing the one big non-tech modifier is a rather questionable decision. Quite apart from my issue with stone and its historical importance.

To clarify, it's not nerfing the modifiers that I'm questioning, but the choice of which modifiers they nerfed and which they left alone.

Additionally, this change has potentially quite a significant impact on the game economy, but appears to have been done outside of a general look at balancing the game economy. Which has the potential to cause further imbalance.

 

[Akbar The Great]

I'm not really sure what the problem is here, it was nerfed because of the portential to crazily stack bonuses, and that's a good thing. It really doesn't matter how important stone was in the Ancient World in contrast to other materials either, what we have is an system in a game to represent building tech. It's an abstracted system, in a game. As long as it has some Historical relevance and accuracy and is balanced, that's really all that matters.

Now here's a system that is crazily unbalanced and makes no sense - seeking treatment at 200 Gold a pop...in what universe is that realistic or balanced? that's almost the cost of of TWO FORTS in my current play-through....

 

[We Who Are About 2 Die]

You have provided precicely 0 reason to change it back.

I would like the defensiveness modifier back. But even more crazy, I want provincial bonuses back. I really don't know why it was removed.