Outpost growth

[Seravy]

http://seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/Outpost.zip
Overwrite your 3.04 files with this to test the new outpost growth system.

For the time being, AI has a minimal growth of 30/turn set.
Iron and Coal now adds 12 growth, other ores add 5.

[Nelphine]

30/turn? So if its a dark elf on pop 10, the growth increases? That seems awfully high for a minimum. I would think 15/turn minimum.

[Seravy]

30/turn? So if its a dark elf on pop 10, the growth increases? That seems awfully high for a minimum. I would think 15/turn minimum.

Don't forget shrinking. At 5 pop, it's -16.8/turn (randomly). So the effective growth is only +14, meaning it takes 50 turns to complete the city on average. That's more than slow enough. (and at pop 2 shrinking is -24/turn and so on so it can be even worse, 100+ turns)

Dark Elf on pop 10 is 40*.67=26.8 so yes, in this case the AI has...+3.2 advantage on Easy. On Normal though the AI has +12 to their modifier, so it's 40*.79=31.6 so the 30 does not apply. On any actually relevant difficulty level, the AI won't get anything out of this unless the max pop is like 5 or less.

[Nelphine]

Ah, true. All right. I'll let you know how my experiment with lizardmen expansion works out.

[Tlaloc]

Slow outpost growth is frustrating since I'm used to Civ where you get the city immediately on building. The game has been sped up elsewhere with increased unit speed. Why not here? I'm probably in the minority, but it shouldn't take longer than a year for an outpost to turn into a hamlet, regardless of terrain and race, assuming it survives that long. I'd like to see settler "value" of different races determined more by the cost of the settler than by outpost growth rate. Slow growth races are already penalized enough imo through their city growth rates.

I also don't like the idea of having building spots being AI only. On harder levels it's already difficult beat the AI to spots and develop your own cities. This would make it even harder.

[Seravy]

Slow growth races are already penalized enough imo through their city growth rates.

While there is some correlation, outpost growth and normal growth are unrelated parameters. The most notable exceptions are :
Halflings - very fast outpost growth but normal growth otherwise
Dwarves - very slow normal growth but normal outpost growth
High Men - Average growth but outpost growth is slightly faster
Klackon - Outpost Growth is Average but population growth is high
Troll - Outpost Growth is very slow but population growth is average.

If a race is too slow, I rather fix that by raising the numbers specific to that race in one or both growth parameters, than by eliminating the entire outpost system.
I believe outpost growth should either take a relevant amount of time, or the entire thing should disappear and settlers should build 1 pop cities, if it's too fast there is no meaning to it. However the feature is already there and I see no real reason not to have it aside from "X other game doesn't have it".
There is a major difference between outpost growth and normal growth. The latter decides how much taxes and production you can gain over time - population ultimately only does that, nothing else. The former decides which and how many spots you can safely use - so it affects how many of each building you can have - amplifying towers, military production centers, buildings that make power, etc. and how long it is vulnerable to destruction. By "safely" I both mean the chance for it to disappear, and the chance that shrinking rolls slow it down so much it "misses the timing" when you still have any use for it.

Btw, if anyone has some suggestions on outpost growth racial modifiers other than what I posted, let me know.

[Tlaloc]

Ok, I understand your approach. I guess my vote would be to remove the outpost growth feature entirely, or to add an option to game settings or game setup for this if possible (which it likely isn't). If the feature is kept, perhaps settler costs could be reduced for some races to reflect the very long expected wait times for return on investment.

[Domon]

Maybe you can devise a system that takes, i dunno, excess empire food and total number of outposts into the calculation? This way you add an interesting decision (max production or extra food) to the game.

[Seravy]

Maybe you can devise a system that takes, i dunno, excess empire food and total number of outposts into the calculation? This way you add an interesting decision (max production or extra food) to the game.

Interesting idea but considering towns don't trade food between each other in this game, it would feel weird.

[Domon]

well, now, let's just change the name of trade goods into trade foods, can't we?