[MOD] Improved Buildings

[Symbra]

Happy to finally bring you the first installment of what I announced just before 2.0!

Download here:
Steam


This mod is a part of the Improved Imperator Project
Join the Improved Imperator Discord if you want to give feedback, suggestions or just hang out.

Improved Buildings is a complete building overhaul that adds 8 new city buildings, 4 new settlement buildings and reworks every single building effect to be more impactful, interesting and enjoyable, there is also a new standard building cap of 3, with some unique buildings.

Building your civilisation and developing your provinces is one of the most enjoyable aspects of Imperator and one thing that makes it stand out among Paradox games, but in vanilla the buildings are a bit flat and ‘arcadey’ and often will never return your investment. This mod intends to correct that and add a new level of depth and enjoyment from developing your provinces and you will notice the positive impact this has on your nation.

Additionally, MattAlexi has contributed a number of gorgeous in game models and Great Wonders to the mod!

Macedonian, Mycenean (Cretan) and Nuragic fort models
Punic and Nuragic city sets
An Athenian Port model
An indian Stupa for the great wonder builder (Requires HoA DLC)
As well as 3 new starting wonders on the map:
The Great Cothon of Carthage
The Platonic Academy of Athens
The Palace of Knossos

Macedonian fort

Now let's get to the buildings!

Shipyard, Workshop, Temple, Theater, Forum and Court of Law are unique.
The rest have a standard building cap of 3 per city.
Shipyard requires a port level of at least 1, and ships now require a port level of 1 (light), 2 (medium), 3 (heavy) from 1,3,5. We tried to make the Shipyard a requirement for some ships but this was unfortunately not possible.

Fort, Temple, Theater and Earthworks (pop cap penalty from -10% to -5%) are unchanged from vanilla.

A lot of effort has also been spent on AI weights and budgeting, the AI will no longer hoard massive amounts of gold and instead spend it on buildings according to new finely tuned AI weights for all buildings.


City Buildings

Settlement Buildings

Sanctuary requires a holy site
Hunting camps requires Furs or Game trade goods
Logging Camps requires Wood trade goods

The pop capacity of 25% from most settlement buildings has been re-added (for some reason PDX removed them).

The other settlement buildings have not received substantial enough changes to warrant making this description any longer, so I will just quickly mention them here!

Barracks now also give 15% starting XP.
Slave Estate no longer gives any food but gives 10% more slave output and 0.1% pop growth.
Mine now also gives 10% slave output.
Farming settlement now also has 0.15% pop growth.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to AtomicFission for doing a lot of the technical groundwork and helping me out with technical know-how and scripting, without him this mod would never have come this far.

Huge thanks to Pureon for making absolutely beautiful building icons and thumbnails, and to MattAlexi for letting me use his gorgeous 3d models.

Big thanks to Agamidae for making the building view GUI and implementing it to Better UI as well.

And thanks to all the above, Samitte, Sobisonator, Ben4Peters and others from the Imperator mod coop for helping me with testing, giving feedback and providing lots of insightful discussions!

Thanks also to the Bronze Age mod team for allowing me to use their old Imperator icons, and to Balage from https://archaeologyillustrated.com/ for giving me permission to use his beautiful artworks for the thumbnails.

And thanks to you all for playing my mods!


Download here:
Steam

 

[sresk]

I really like the idea behind this mod, but I'm getting some random crashes, I haven't messed with this enough to suspect what could be causing the crashes. I'll try to give better feedback but I wanted to know if you'd had anything similar

 

[EpirusAethos]

Great Mod. Thank you for your contribution.

I usually play Field of Glory Empires and would really like to see in I:R the different buildings they have and bonuses since this is a mod.
Is any plan to add further buildings to the game mod?
Keep up the good work, best regards Epirus Aethos.

 

[Maria Theresa]

Here are my balance suggestions for the buildings:
Before i get to individual buildings, i would like to say that most buildings need a small cost increase. It is far too easy to stack cost reductions to a point where you can build stuff for 50 gold or less, before even un-pausing the game for the first time. However we also need to consider the dumb AI so the cost increase shouldn't be "too" much but i'd say 20% cost increase across the board would be a good place to start.
I'm not a fan of the 3 buildings maximum limit, it works fine for some buildings but feels unnecessary and forced on many others.

City buildings:

Port- I don't like that it has only 3 levels now, doesn't seem necessary at all. Plus it is way too OP. My suggestion is to make max level to be 5, with each level giving +2 population capacity, +2% civilization, 0.10 migration attraction, 0.10 migration speed.0.35 base trade routes is too much even if the cap is 3 so i'd change that to 0.15 per level. I would also add 0.2 base food production (local_monthly_food) because i feel like it makes sense for there to be fishing at the port. And 0.2 isn't a lot, even at max port level it only adds up to a 1/3 of a single fish trade.

Shipyard - Ship starting experience is something you are not supposed to have much of at all based on how rare it is in the game compared to land unit experience so getting +40% from a single building is too much. Also i feel like 50% ship build speed from just 1 level of building that has no invention requirements is too much. I would change it to 40% ship build speed and 25% experience. The AI in I:R is already abysmally bad with everything navy related and giving players another advantage by getting massive XP boost on their ships is unnecessary.

Workshop - +1 flat trade good produced is extremely strong and very rare in the game for a reason. This building is just a infinite money printing machine. That being said, i wouldn't want the +1 trade good to be removed. Instead i would revert the name back to Foundry and make it so that this building can only be built in cities that produce metals (Iron, Base metals, Precious Metals). Alternatively (And i like this idea even more) you could name it "Military Workshop" and also include Horses, Steppe Horses, Wood, Elephants and Leather. I would then remove Precious metals from the potential locations. When it comes to other resources i would simply make a similar building for some of those, i will talk about that later in the post.
When it comes to other bonuses i would just decrease the starting experience from 40% to 35% so it matches nicely with manpower building for total of 50%.

Conscription Camp - If anything i would consider limiting this to only 2 buildings and maybe increase the per building manpower to 20%. Reason being that manpower is already a non-issue in the game at the moment and i don't want AI to use up building slots on these relatively useless buildings.

Commercial District - Probably the worst and most useless building of the whole set. Compete waste of a building slot and i would just get rid of it and replace it with something else. But if you want to keep it i would add flat base trade routes to it and shift some more of that from port as well. Something like 0.2 base trade routes per Commercial district and 0.1 per Port.

Tax Office - I hate this building with passion in the base game. And i feel like increasing the tax % is the wrong way of approaching it. The problem why this building sucks is that local tax in any particular city is already negligible as is unless the city is rather large and full of slaves. In most cities and in early game this building often increases your total income by 0.03 gold a month or some other laughable amount. In the case of big cities full of slaves 20% increased local tax per building becomes too strong. I would reduce the tax % to 15% and add a small flat tax income to it (tax_income), something like 0.05 gold a month would be sufficient to provide at least some little income in the early game and help the building actually pay back the investment in less than 5 billion years.

Production District - I think this building should have a cap of 2. -6 slaves needed is too much but 3 wouldn't be enough. So max 2 buildings with -2 slaves needed and 15% slave output per building would be a better solution. Honestly, with Workshop being so strong i would rather just get rid of this building and merge it with Slave Trader. Also i don't really like the name "Production District" it just doesn't sound good.

Tavern - 10% Assimilation speed is too much. I would reduce it to 8%, also slave happiness is hard to come by as is and with no other building providing it you end up with even less than in the base game. So i would increase the slave happiness bonus to also 8%.

Forum - This is probably the second worst building in here. I feel like it does little bit of too many things without providing any real worthwhile bonuses and costs way too much. Since all these bonuses are available elsewhere i would get rid of this building and replace it with something else. This building is so bad that i honestly have no recommendations as how to save it, complete re-work is the only option here.

Court of Law - I haven't played enough with the mod yet to have too good of a understanding how this building affects the overall balance but i feel like it might be too OP at reducing province disloyalty.

Farmer's Market - pop_food_consumption is a very strange modifier to use because it just doesn't "sound right", on the tooltip it says Monthly Food Consumption: +0.40 which sounds like a bad thing but is in green? It works just fine but i feel like it might confuse some people so i'd recommend local_monthly_food instead. This does get affected by % increases to local food so might need to be balance accordingly. Other than that i like this building even if it is very limited in it's usefulness.

Granary - I don't like that it is limited to only 3. I like building tall and having lots of food in the granaries to get pop growth bonuses. I would get rid of the maximum limit of granaries or at the very least increase the max granaries to 5. Also i would reduce the food storage per granary to 250 (if max is 5) or 200 (If there is no max) and supply limit bonus to 5%.

Sanitation Works - I like that you also think these buildings should provide local population growth but 0.10% per one is way too much. I don't also like the 4% increase to max pop being the only pop increase. I would get rid of the max limit for this building. Out of all the buildings this one should not have any max limit.
I would reduce the population growth per Sanitation Works to somewhere between 0.02% and 0.04%, i would put back the 4 flat population increase and i would reduce the % population increase to 2% or 3%.

Noble District, Citizen District, Freemen District, Slave Trader - Honestly, i'm not really a fan of these buildings. I do believe that Sanitation Works should be the main source of flat population cap. Reducing the flat population these buildings provide would be good but then the buildings would only really provide desired pop ratio and not much else and that would make them quite sad. Maybe add some other bonuses to them and reduce the flat pop to 2 or 3 per district. Noble districts should provide less housing as they want to have lots of room for themselves. Maybe 2 population per noble district. Citizens want little less so 3 per citizen district. Freemen don't have as much money and can't afford big houses so maybe keep 5 per their district and add 5% manpower bonus. Slave trader shouldn't increase available housing (Which is what Population Capacity represents) because that doesn't really make any sense.
You could add the population output bonus from the Forum building to Slave trader, like 3% per building. Also merging it with Production District would be good. Add -2 slaves needed for local surplus per building and slave output (Instead of the population output suggested above)

To go with the changes proposed for the Workshop i would add couple more similar buildings (All unlocked with the same invention as Workshop).

Textile Works - Can be built in cities that produce Cloth, Dyes, Silk, Hemp, Furs, Leather(unless Workshop already works with it) or Livestock (if for whatever reason you end up with a city that produces livestock still). +1 Base Resource Production. 10% Local Freeman Output. Doesn't give any Starting Experience bonuses but is slightly cheaper to build.

Jewellery Workshop - Can be built in cities that produce Amber, Precious Metals, Gemstones or Glass. +1 Base Resource Production, +5% Noble and Citizen happiness.

Scribe's Workshop - (Not a good name but i'm not sure what to call it) Requires Papyrus (And maybe Earthenware (Clay tablets), but this one is so-so ). +1 Base Resource Production. +20% Local Research Points.



Territory buildings:

Territory buildings are pretty good as is and i don't really have any comments to make about most of them.

Villa Estate - I don't understand why it would provide Local Base Trade Routes. I would get rid of that bonus.

Colonia - I understand the idea of this building but i don't really like it. Would i really bother spending money on building this to get a very small increase to conversion/assimilation/promotion? No. Would i spend money to get a reduction to unrest? Considering that most of the unrest usually comes from cities and not territories then the answer is no as well. I guess this building would be useful if i were to go with the Rural Planning invention but even then it is hard to justify spending money on it. Perhaps double all of the bonuses (apart from unrest reduction) but make it require Rural Planning invention.

I really like the addition of Hunting Camps and Logging camps so here are my recommendations for couple more.

Vineyards - Requires Wine. I feel like Vineyards are cool enough to justify their own farming settlement type of building.
Olive Groves - Requires Olives. Olive oil was super important in the Mediterranean back in the day and i feel like they also deserve their own building.
Caravansary - Requires Camels. Bonuses to local trade routes.

Sorry about the long text but your mod really inspired me and i couldn't help myself. Thank you for reading.

 

[Symbra]

I really like the idea behind this mod, but I'm getting some random crashes, I haven't messed with this enough to suspect what could be causing the crashes. I'll try to give better feedback but I wanted to know if you'd had anything similar

Thank you. There were some random crashing but they should be resolved since the latest update, please reach out if you are still getting crashes!

Great Mod. Thank you for your contribution.

I usually play Field of Glory Empires and would really like to see in I:R the different buildings they have and bonuses since this is a mod.
Is any plan to add further buildings to the game mod?
Keep up the good work, best regards Epirus Aethos.

Thanks! I haven't personally played FoG Empires yet, so I can't comment on the buildings they have, but there are currently no plans to add additional buildings for a few reasons. 24 is a good number to me, any more and it becomes a bit bloated, and the building GUI window can't really support any more buildings, that's not to say it will never happen though!

 

[Symbra]

Here are my balance suggestions for the buildings:
Before i get to individual buildings, i would like to say that most buildings need a small cost increase. It is far too easy to stack cost reductions to a point where you can build stuff for 50 gold or less, before even un-pausing the game for the first time. However we also need to consider the dumb AI so the cost increase shouldn't be "too" much but i'd say 20% cost increase across the board would be a good place to start.
I'm not a fan of the 3 buildings maximum limit, it works fine for some buildings but feels unnecessary and forced on many others.
...

Thank you for the very thorough suggestion, you clearly put a lot of effort and thoughts into this. You bring up a lot of good points and I will take all of your suggestions into consideration and reflect on them.

That said, a few points
- I have no intentions of abandoning the standard 3 cap, it's one of the initial staples I've designed everything else around. Having all buildings have random arbitrary caps that fits that particular building would imo make things unnecessarily convoluted
- For the forseeable future, I want to strictly stick to having 24 city buildings in total, any more and I think it would become bloated and we have to completely redesign the GUI to fit them. That's not to say it won't happen or that new buildings couldn't be added to replace old buildings and so forth

Port
I think a 3 cap fits it fine and I don't think it's OP. In the pre-2.0 version I had a trading harbor building with 1 cap that just straight up gave 1 trade route. Spending 3 slots to get 1 route and some other bonuses is fine I think, could maybe be tuned down a little bit though.

Shipyard
Why should you not have any ship starting XP when you can stack army starting XP to almost 100%? This building is supposed to be sort of a naval version of the workshop. I've been wanting to put this behind one of the naval techs though to get some incentive to go down that path, but I haven't touched inventions yet so that'll probably be in a future update. It could probably be tuned down a little though, I've been leaning toward rather making buildings too impactful than a little lackluster so not surprised if several effects will get tuned down after enough games are played with it. In regards to the AI, they do build this building and recruit ships there, not to say that they do it competently, but that applies to all aspects of the game so I wouldn't count that as an argument against this building.

Workshop
I was also a bit torn on the +1 goods part, but I had to give it something that wasn't a downgrade from the vanilla version, and since it's 1 capped and behind tech I think +1 goods is not too insane, as you also say yourself. Regarding splitting this up and making it trade good conditional, It's an interesting idea but I don't think it's feasible. With the current universality of the building system, conditional buildings don't work that well for city buildings (especially considering the 24 building rule). If they were to redesign the building system itself and add a lot more functionalities for having more conditional buildings then that'd be awesome.

Conscription Camp
I think it's fine as it is, manpower being a non-factor is more of an issue with the game than this building, the AI only generally builds this building in cities with a lot of freemen and manpower output.

Commercial District
Highly disagree, I've actually considered nerfing this on several occasions. As soon as you get a certain amount of nobles+citizens, and especially if having ports, this building becomes a monster at generating trade routes, already at 3.5 trade routes in a city this outperforms the port, which is like with 60+ population. That said I have wanted to add additional effects to this since trade route modifier alone is a bit boring, but haven't found a good way to do so yet.

Tax office
I don't really disagree with you on this one, the big thing with this building is mainly demotion speed for building industrial cities based on slaves and having synergy with the production district, and if that makes this building high value then that's working as intended. Your suggestion is interesting though.

Production district
I don't think this building is that OP, slaves generally have a pretty low ratio in cities and you would really have to stack them to make this building have a lot of value, which again is working as intended.

Tavern+Shrine
10% Assimilation speed is 0.06 speed without any other modifiers, with a temple it's 0.26 speed. Not that drastic, but stacking base assimilation and having 3 could make it a bit too much maybe, so 8% might be better. This gives the same amount of slave happiness as the vanilla building that also has 3 cap, slave happiness doesn't really do anything since it's not a modifier on output and slaves barely produce any unrest anyway.

Forum
This is supposed to do a lot of things. It's supposed to be the town square, the hub of the social life of the residents, conducting enterprise and mingling with each other, so increasing social mobility, assimilation and output is good to me. You're supposed to generally want one of this in most cities. I've also potentially wanted to put this behind some tech.

Court of Law
This only works as a mitigation for unrest, it won't be able to solve unrest issues unless there is already very little of it. Keep in mind the 0.5 loyalty is not province loyalty but territory loyalty, so it's divided by the fraction of the territory against the province.

Farmer's Market
I agree that it looks a bit weird on the tooltip, but it's very intentional so it doesn't stack with itself, and it's not supposed to actually produce food but rather effectivize its distribution, I don't see too big of an issue with it.

Granary
Don't really disagree with you here but I do think the current 3 cap is fine too, 3 granaries is currently 4.5 of the old one (+supply limit) and I don't really know any time I've wanted to build more than 4 granaries even when building tall. Granaries and food supply is kind of in a weird state anyway and only really good in provinces with low population. You can still get more of these in a province by having more cities.

Sanitation Works
Removing the cap on this would probably bring back megacities so no way. This is supposed to be a building that you only want in large metropoli, since the % cap is only effective at like 120+ pop cities. Having 0.3 growth when the city is already that large isn't too ludicrous, and building this in smaller cities makes you lose the effectiveness of the % cap. But it may need some tuning for sure.

Housing Districts
These building being what gives pop cap is also one of the initial staples of the mod, and I'm very happy with their current state. Nobles etc. wanting more room is reflected in the ratio rather than the pop cap.

Settlement

Villa
This mainly gives trade routes because that's what nobles and citizens produce other than RP, and this is supposed to act as the noble/citizen version of slave estate and barracks. Removing that bonus would make the building useless, see it as investment and enterprise coming into the region from the rich nobles.

Colonia
You say this gives a very small increase to assimilation/conversion while saying the 10% from Tavern/Shrine is too much despite this giving almost 1000% more and also to both simultaneously? This also has half the cost of other settlement buildings and is meant to be a temporary building in newly conquered territories, which I think it is very effective at, especially in territories with large amounts of tribesmen with the promo/demo speed.

I do have ideas to add more settlement resource buildings in the future, though I will probably make them a bit more general and encompass several similar goods.

Thanks again for the thorough feedback and hope I could give you some insights into how I think in regards to the design.