Understanding and modifying/rebalancing park tile stats

[Walter Raleigh]

I have been beavering away and have created a table with which the Entertainment Accumulation and Entertainment Radius can be read for any given park tile size up to 156 (so far).

I have been able to use the auto-calculating features of the spread sheet, which has made things easier. The Entertainment Power value in the graph is therefore an auto-calculation of Entertainment Accumulation multiplied by Entertainment Radius. I still have to do a bit more work to factor in the cost modifier.

From this data, I have created a chart, upon which the data from the table above has been plotted automatically by the spreadsheet program (LibreOffice).

 

[Walter Raleigh]

Six screenshots showing the radii of a few park tiles calibrated to the mod, from the smallest - 1x1 - to the largest that is affected by radius modifiers - 156.

Spoiler

 

[JPCosta]

I'm actually very impressed by the way you have approached one of the issues that I find most unnerving about CSL (and some other games): unbalancing.

The stats of the vanilla assets are way off, as you have pointed, but there is also the fact that they are surprisingly mysterious. What does the entertainment stat do? How does it influence land value? What is attractiveness? What is wealth accumulation?

Anyway, I'm really happy to see someone facing the problem in such a persistent and methodic fashion. I tried to go around the problem by creating my own assets with a simple and set formula for entertainment values, based on tile number. However, this does not help face the huge unbalance created by vanilla assets, as well as by many others found on the Workshop.

Maybe one day, someone will take your calculations and create a mod for overcoming this. Or - maybe even better, CO would include a Realistic Mode in a future update...

In short, great work! Cheers!

P.S.: Have you posted any pics in your last post? I can't see any, the spoiler button shows blank space.

 

[metacritical]

P.S.: Have you posted any pics in your last post? I can't see any, the spoiler button shows blank space.

there are pictures included

 

[JPCosta]

there are pictures included

Thanks. Just found out that my ad blocker was, well... blocking them.
Moving on...

 

[Walter Raleigh]

Thanks for the interest.

A lot of the Workshop user-made tiles have extremely unbalanced stats. What I think would be a good system is to have pre-defined stats charts for all types of tile and so any user-made tile could have its stats automatically calibrated to fit into a single system. The tile would then have some stamp or indicator showing that it conformed to this set of standards.

I'm currently selecting several dozen Workshop park tiles, and creating some of my own, with which I will create a tile pack with all tiles calibrated to the same system. If releasing to the public, I will contact the tile designers for permission.

I've been thinking more about tourism. There is a consequence that I am concerned about. Say, for example, that playgrounds have no tourism output and so produce only entertainment. What would then be the point of building parks in residential areas? Surely, that would make it more efficient to only build playgrounds in residential areas (and I am assuming that tourism has no effect on residential and only boosts commercial zones).

 

[Walter Raleigh]

So what I am thinking currently is to have three park tile levels:

1) Regular, using stats from the charts.
2) Basic, which will be mostly very small sizes (such as 1x1), of basic undecorated plaza or grass. It will have reduced stats and costs and is mostly for filling in blank spaces on the map.
3) Enhanced, which will be more powerful (higher entertainment output per square) park tiles. This would include playgrounds and more impressive park tiles like Botanical Gardens or Japanese Garden. I haven't worked out the exact mechanics of this yet, but something like 2.5 times more powerful - or 2.5 times smaller footprint. This would obviously come at increased tile cost.