With Happiness playing a more integral role in our calculations thanks to the current Trade rework and Cultural Happiness, I think it is time to retire the idea of stackable Output bonuses for Pops. Though the current system tying Trade Routes to Pops has definitely moved things away from excessive Centralisation, I still think a slight shift in how Pop Outputs can be adjusted would bring us to a better place to settle on.
TLDR: Don't let Output modifiers stack, instead have an upper bound of efficiency, and the ratio of Buildings:Relevant Pops define how much of that maximum bonus you get.
Settlement Buildings are generally fine, because they're capped at a single building. City buildings currently can be more or less grouped into 4 groups: Class Buildings, Output Buildings, Identity Buildings and Infrastructure.
There have been some great proposals on dealing with this issue, especially looking at mechanics like Squalor that could push down the efficiency of highly populated territories. I'd like to suggest, either instead of, or in conjunction with this, to change the way City Buildings can modify output, so that they are never stackable to begin with.
Instead of providing a % boost to all relevant Pops, additional Output buildings should provide a boost to more Pops.
Tax Office goes from "Local Tax +20%" to "Tax x Pops at +y%".
Training Camp goes from "Local Manpower +10%" to "Gain +y% Manpower from x Pops". And so on.
y% would therefore become the upper bound for the Output bonus you can have from Buildings, providing you have enough of them to cover the # of Pops that generate your resource. x would be the number you can increase with extra buildings, and would provide value up until x goes over the number of relevant Pops you have.
On the Output Efficiency tooltip, you can just show this as:
"Tax Office: 15 out of 30 Taxable Pops covered gives an Output bonus of (0.5*y)%". Probably would be calculated like this too.
You could then let the x or y values vary with bonuses, as long as y bonuses never stack. So you could let Civilisation influence the upper bound of Output efficiencies, or Governor skills, because these values are themselves bounded. x on the other hand can be increased by whatever (so could be a candidate for Provincial Investments and the like) because the worst case scenario is that x becomes so large that a single building can give full efficiency to every Pop in a territory.
This still leaves the Mill and the Foundry as issues. I still think there is a missing building for Trade Good creation, and the Mill's Output bonus could be transformed into that - ideally Trade Good production efficiency also having a bounded output increase in the same manner as the other Outputs, where you'd aim to have enough Mills for every Slave to be in a Mill, but not benefit from any more. The Foundry is still in a tough place, and would be really helped by any military reworks so that the Output bonus can just be removed entirely for something more military focused again.
Will repost to the other forum on Monday in shorter form, but any thoughts before then would be welcomed
TLDR: Don't let Output modifiers stack, instead have an upper bound of efficiency, and the ratio of Buildings:Relevant Pops define how much of that maximum bonus you get.
Settlement Buildings are generally fine, because they're capped at a single building. City buildings currently can be more or less grouped into 4 groups: Class Buildings, Output Buildings, Identity Buildings and Infrastructure.
- Class Buildings are the Library, Court of Law, Forum and Mill: each giving a a Happiness and Ratio increase to their respective class. This works really nicely in the main, and is capped by Happiness having an upper bound of 100%. The exception of course is the Mill, as Slave Happiness is not relevant to output, thus they're currently compensated for that with an Output Bonus.
- Output Buildings are the Tax Office, Training Camp, Marketplace and Academy: each providing a stackable Output bonus to their respective resources. The more you have of each of these, the more efficient every Pop that generates their resource is, and the more it becomes efficient to always have a Pop of the right Class in the single city rather than spread out.
- I'd also throw the Foundry in here now, as the Starting Experience bonus isn't really an issue with standing armies, so the meat of its power comes from the Stackable Output bonus it gives to everything.
- Identity Buildings are the Temple and Theatre; these provide State Identity Happiness bonuses, and Conversion rates towards these. These are good. FWIW I would also like buildings dealing with Class changes (Promotion/Demotion Speed) and Territory changes (Migration Speed/Attraction) in here just to round out the set, but that's another issue.
- Infrastructure are the Fortress, Granary and Aqueduct. Fortress and Granary do their job well. Aqueducts generally take the heat here, as they're the direct route (with Provincial Investments) to exploiting higher efficiency territories.
There have been some great proposals on dealing with this issue, especially looking at mechanics like Squalor that could push down the efficiency of highly populated territories. I'd like to suggest, either instead of, or in conjunction with this, to change the way City Buildings can modify output, so that they are never stackable to begin with.
Instead of providing a % boost to all relevant Pops, additional Output buildings should provide a boost to more Pops.
Tax Office goes from "Local Tax +20%" to "Tax x Pops at +y%".
Training Camp goes from "Local Manpower +10%" to "Gain +y% Manpower from x Pops". And so on.
y% would therefore become the upper bound for the Output bonus you can have from Buildings, providing you have enough of them to cover the # of Pops that generate your resource. x would be the number you can increase with extra buildings, and would provide value up until x goes over the number of relevant Pops you have.
On the Output Efficiency tooltip, you can just show this as:
"Tax Office: 15 out of 30 Taxable Pops covered gives an Output bonus of (0.5*y)%". Probably would be calculated like this too.
You could then let the x or y values vary with bonuses, as long as y bonuses never stack. So you could let Civilisation influence the upper bound of Output efficiencies, or Governor skills, because these values are themselves bounded. x on the other hand can be increased by whatever (so could be a candidate for Provincial Investments and the like) because the worst case scenario is that x becomes so large that a single building can give full efficiency to every Pop in a territory.
This still leaves the Mill and the Foundry as issues. I still think there is a missing building for Trade Good creation, and the Mill's Output bonus could be transformed into that - ideally Trade Good production efficiency also having a bounded output increase in the same manner as the other Outputs, where you'd aim to have enough Mills for every Slave to be in a Mill, but not benefit from any more. The Foundry is still in a tough place, and would be really helped by any military reworks so that the Output bonus can just be removed entirely for something more military focused again.
Will repost to the other forum on Monday in shorter form, but any thoughts before then would be welcomed
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