You could make the bonus only apply to the Miner's Guild, so you don't get a bonus until you build that structure, which would reduce the front loading...
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Races, Units, Buildings
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Same here, Miner's Guild is cheap enough to get it first, and usually more worth it than the Sawmill if playing Dwarves and having at least 2-3 ores on the city.
I don't think the Dwarf problem with minerals exist - even on Rich maps, the AI also gets additional minerals, and while they don't double them through their race, they do gain some bonus through the AI difficulty modifiers, plus they spread faster, can build cities on otherwise unusable terrain, and discover good spots faster so ultimately, the advantage to the player isn't that great. What makes a difference is whether the "double resources for everyone" favors the human or the AI more - for experienced players it's the human, otherwise it's the AI. But even with that said, I think the current amount of Myrran Rich minerals is excessive and unreasonable - when you can get twice a city's midgame resource output on turn 1 even on an average spot on the map, that's broken. We definitely need to come up with a new algorithm that's more scaleable and then calculate how much minerals we actually want in each area. How about this? Use the current algorithm with X=5 (So 10x10 regions on the map). However for each, instead of placing one ore, place Y ores, specified by the difficulty and plane. Furthermore, if Y is fractional, then roll a D100 to decide to round up, or down on each region separately. For example if the map specifies 2.73 ores per region, then each region has a 73% chance to contain 3, and a 27% chance to contain 2. Do note that while these regions are 100 tiles, they overlap so in practice the specified ore count would be the average amount on each 5x5 area instead (except for map edges that don't have much relevant land tiles anyway). To implement such a system, we would "only" need to insert an additional roll and loop inside the existing one and come up with the correct number of ores/25 tiles for each map type. Unfortunately this still doesn't guarantee that there are no map spots that end up having up to 4 times the planned ores but the chance for that would be very low.
Hmm. I assume then that the idea of putting in a modifier based on tiles adjacent can't work? I like high ore maps, and I'd like to try to keep the current density, and just take out the clumps. That would give roughly the difference between the 2 planes I was interested in.
To do that, the algorithm/logic would have to be run by tile, and be able to look at adjacent tiles though. So if it can't do that, then yes, we may need to look at something akin to what you've suggested. However, I'd want to use a smaller size area, like x = 3, to avoid the clumping problem with bad distribution.
I can't change the mineral bonus to anything more detailed than "multiply by constant". Each type of mineral has its own procedure and as far as I remember they are in a segment with no free space. Not that I want to, anyway. Dwarves are the early race of Myrror, they don't need even more bonus to the late game.
To begin with, minerals aren't that great to matter in the late game when you're getting 200+ gold from taxes per city.
I would consider just removing the reduction of 1 to X on Myrror. It would help not only this rather niche issue (dwarves on rich with the big difference between x=2 and x=3), but could help Myrran vs Arcanus balance in general.
Less minerals on Myrror would slow the Myrran wizard from snowballing when player is on Arcanus. But it would not noticeably affect the strength the Myrran can eventually grow into. As it is, Myrran start is the game on easy mode for the player. You already get a stronger race, and more importantly a lot easier AI wizard distribution. You don't need extra minerals to further help against the 2 Arcanus wizards. Is it just how it feels, or does Myrror also have a better chance of getting the better minerals (gold, adamantium etc) as opposed to the weaker (silver, mithril etc)?
June 4th, 2018, 06:35
(This post was last modified: June 4th, 2018, 06:39 by teelaurila.)
 (June 4th, 2018, 05:21)Bahgtru Wrote: Myrran starts would be less easy mode if the arcanus AIs actually warred and one conquered the other, obtaining the cities of both. That's happened exactly 0 times to me. I've come in from Myrran to Arcanus wars. Easiest games ever. There is enough empty space that quick conquests won't happen, and a war will burn both. To make matters a bit worse, the Arcanus wizard with the rushest race will end up with most land, and the one with the better late-game race will end up with less. And if there is an early war, the worst end-game race will likely come on top. So Arcanus alliances sure seem to be the harder ones, and there doesn't seem to be an easy "fix" for it. Apart from having just 1 Arcanus AI. (Which, if I recall right, happens with 3 enemies and myrran?) |