Two new MODs from me

[apoger]

>That's an excellent point that I did not account for. I'll do some testing with that.

That was an easy test.
Doesn't work, as the population loss easily overcomes the gains. Patrolling to supress unrest is really harsh!

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by apoger:
>That's an excellent point that I did not account for. I'll do some testing with that.

That was an easy test.
Doesn't work, as the population loss easily overcomes the gains. Patrolling to supress unrest is really harsh!

If it was that quick, I assume you checked only with 200% taxation?

I've heard (didn't checked it myself) that population losses are exponentially related to the tax rate (like, taxing at 150% you lose X pop/turn, and 4 times as much when taxing at 200%). So high taxes might still be an issue, if the 'sweet spot' isn't too low.

[Edit: typo]

[ January 15, 2004, 18:42: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

[apoger]

>So high taxes might still be an issue, if the 'sweet spot' isn't too low.


Easy enough to test for.
The sweet spot is 160% for not losing population.

Keep in mind:
This requires Growth+3, which you are negating with this strategy.
The bonus income looks to be about 110 gold per turn (with maxish exconmics).
However you must keep 40ish troops on patrol to supress the unrest, which cost approximately 400 gold and have an upkeep of about 60.
Thus the income bonus is about 50 gold.
Next account for the fact that sometimes the patrols miss and you take a hit from unrest, which intrudes heavily on tax income.

So for 120 nation points you'd squeeze out a few extra coins here and there. Not worthwhile compared to just allowing the growth scale to pump the popuation normally.

It's entirely possible that my scales may have issues, but I don't think growth/patrolling is one of them.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by apoger:
>So high taxes might still be an issue, if the 'sweet spot' isn't too low.


Easy enough to test for.
The sweet spot is 160% for not losing population.

Keep in mind:
This requires Growth+3, which you are negating with this strategy.
The bonus income looks to be about 110 gold per turn (with maxish exconmics).
However you must keep 40ish troops on patrol to supress the unrest, which cost approximately 400 gold and have an upkeep of about 60.
Thus the income bonus is about 50 gold.
Next account for the fact that sometimes the patrols miss and you take a hit from unrest, which intrudes heavily on tax income.

So for 120 nation points you'd squeeze out a few extra coins here and there. Not worthwhile compared to just allowing the growth scale to pump the popuation normally.

It's entirely possible that my scales may have issues, but I don't think growth/patrolling is one of them.

I think your calculations are sligthly off, with a maxish economy the home province would be something like = 150*1.45*1.25= appr 270, 270*1.6 appr 430 resulting in a income boost of 160 from taxes, 40 patrollers cost more like 30 than 60 gold resulting in a net income gain of 130. I did the calculations in my head so they might be slightly off but I think they are more or less correct. Even with accounting for upkeep the 60% income boost from taxes will dominate the 45% income boost from order. You alo recieve the supply benefit. I think this will lead to people patrolling home provinces and other rich provinces, if the mod is used.

[General Tacticus]

Just read the post, and I have two comments :

1) you made the scales in general have much more effect than they did. This, of course, increases their desirability compared to castles and magic. Why take a fortified city (drains 50% resources from adjacent provinces), for example, if for the same price you have +60% resources in all provinces ? Who cares about high defense fortifications, when you can now afford much larger armies that will break the walls in two or three turns max ? And of course, why bother giving magic skills to your pretender ? Balancing the scales between themselves is not quite enough...

2) Regarding sloth : you do realize that sloth -3 means you get 10% of normal ? that means that even the best province/fortress will be around 20 resources. Only a nation that relies exclusively on summons can afford to do that, and it'll be tricky. A Ashen player might do it, and make it work. A dumb AI might do it without realizing, and commit suicide at creation. I think you went a little overboard here.


I'll have to try your mod someday when I have the time. But I fear the AI won't know how tu use it, and I fear any sane player would jump at the scales, and use a vanilla oracle as pretender...

[edit : I just tried to create a few games on the world war scenario, which I know well. Caelum starts with a neutral temperature scale. And takes the income hit to prove it, poor AI. Looking at all the nations, despite using impossible AI's, I did much better, relatively speaking, in income, that I usually do (I took order 3). Which means, I guess, that the AI just doesn't know how to use your scales, and is at a further disadvantage...]

[ January 15, 2004, 19:48: Message edited by: General Tacticus ]

[apoger]

>I did the calculations in my head so they might be slightly off but I think they are more or less correct.


I used +3 order, prod, and growth in all tests.
The only modifier that I didn't use is forts, I used the default one. Forts choice isn't a scale and players seem to have wildly different ideas on their values, so I felt fine leaving that out.

Assuming the max fort admin value your numbers are right.


>60% income boost from taxes will dominate the 45% income boost from order

130 gold (with start-up cost, unrest bursts, and loss of population growth) versus 80 gold.

I'd say that's not such a bad comparison. Keep in mind this is an absolute maximization and that I'm looking to make the scales comparable.

As for everyone going for such a strategy, I'm not so certain. The maximum nonsense generated by all of this combined is a gold income of 430, which is about 400 after upkeep. Also keep in mind that it's a bit less, due to bursts of unrest. The maximum punch possible from Dom1 was 594. So when all is said and done we are still falling far short of the days of Dom1. Most players still used plenty of magic on their gods back then even with the potent economics and without the useful bless effects. Why would that change with less money and better effects?

I don't understand the panic that this mod seems to produce. Even when pushed to extremes we aren't coming close to Dom1 levels of economy, and the current game has given us stronger gods by virture of their blessings.


My goal is to make both the gods and the scales seem like critical options, so there are no obvious choices. In Dom1 the game was a bit scale heavy. In Dom2 I feel it's a bit god heavy. Hence this patch which is an attempt to bridge the gap.

The potential for patrolling doen't bother me. I'll keep an eye on it, and if it seems to become an issue I'll gladly make adjustments.

[apoger]

>Regarding sloth : you do realize that sloth -3 means you get 10% of normal ? that means that even the best province/fortress will be around 20 resources. Only a nation that relies exclusively on summons can afford to do that,

Absolutely. That is my intent.
A nation with Sloth-3 is a wasteland that is devoid of resource. It's the worst production a nation can have, it should be frightningly low.

I do not like the current system where the difference between the best producer in the world and a nation of absolute sloth is about two heavy infantry per turn. As far as I'm concerned that's not enough consdiering that these are maximum opposites of production.


>I'll have to try your mod someday when I have the time. But I fear the AI won't know how tu use it, and I fear any sane player would jump at the scales, and use a vanilla oracle as pretender...

The AI makes poor choices now. Not much I can do about that.


> Caelum starts with a neutral temperature scale. And takes the income hit to prove it, poor AI.

And in what way is that my failing?
Hassle Ilwinter for making an AI that took no cold scale for Caelum.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by apoger:
...
My goal is to make both the gods and the scales seem like critical options, so there are no obvious choices. In Dom1 the game was a bit scale heavy. In Dom2 I feel it's a bit god heavy. Hence this patch which is an attempt to bridge the gap.
...

To each his won. I do not think the game is too God heavy, but I used to pour more points into Gods than was competetive in dom1, probably still do.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by apoger:
Absolutely. That is my intent.
A nation with Sloth-3 is a wasteland that is devoid of resource. It's the worst production a nation can have, it should be frightningly low.

Sloth 3 is utter suicide in your mod. To take it is to limit yourself to a single light infantry, or four militia per turn. In the first turn, with a 30 admin castle, sloth 3 has a resource production of 8. Prod 3 on the other hand has a resource production of 152 at the same time. The prod 3 nation has twenty times the troop recruitment capability of the sloth 3 nation. TO say that there is any way to overcome this kind of handicap through pretender design is ridiculous, as the complete lack of troop production in every province means that you have no useful combat potential to speak of.

A quick run through of all 7 sloth scales shows that the resources available on the start to each will be around:152, 128, 104, 80, 56, 32, 8. Looks like my "conjecture", as you called it, was accurate after all. It's not like it's that difficult to apply percentage modifiers to a standard resource total, is it.

I do not like the current system where the difference between the best producer in the world and a nation of absolute sloth is about two heavy infantry per turn.

That's because the resource costs for heavy infantry are such that you can't build many per turn. Using the standard scales it is at least possible to play a nation with a sloth scale. A fully developed province can only hope to build around a maximum of 8, 28 resource troops per turn if they get very lucky with their surroundings. In the same circumstances sloth 3 has half of the resources available and can therefore only put out half as many troops.

As for the order scale, +3 gives an income of 227, -3 gives 80-100. How, exactly, you make Pangaea work when they can only afford a single centaur warrior a turn, or one Pan every five turns?

Quite frankly, it's pretty clear that your mod is designed to prevent people from being able to effectively play a nation with negative scales. You might like that kind of game, but I certainly doubt that many other people would.