Sawmills

[Seravy]

Based on these last two games, I'm having some doubts about sawmills.

Facts :

-They pay for themselves through production in 17 turns.
-It will always take more than 17 turns to build one, usually 34+x or 25+x turns, where x is how long it takes the city to reach pop 2. In other words, not buying it will always make you lose resources compared to buying it.
-They produce a significant amount of resources. (You get 12 gold value in hammers, after maintenance, per turn!)
-It's always the first thing you want to build in any city.

The net overall effect is, sawmills don't really have any meaningful gameplay to them - you always want it first and you always want to pay to buy it - but they contribute super massively to snowballing instead.
Assuming you lose about 15 turns on average by not buying, that means you are behind by 12*15 = 180 gold value. 
In other words, being able to buy a sawmill for 200 earns you an additional 180 value, on top of earning back the investment, meaning each early 200 gold you have doubles its value. That's prior to any other snowballing effect that gold would have, just for being able to spend it on a sawmill instead of anything else. Basically, the presence of sawmills doubles the value of any gold you find, as long as you still have a city where you can buy a sawmill.
This is without having to worry about the time it takes to earn back the investment - the city would remain unproductive during all of that time anyway, as it would be busy building the sawmill you haven't bought. So you aren't missing out on any possible other investment either, at least there. Globally, the gold cannot possibly have a better place than a sawmill, unless you are spending it on military, and even then, most military units you can afford from such small amount of gold won't be able to do much, you'd need to sacrifice several sawmill's worth to get a decent army capable of clearing at least a weak node out. Settlers aren't an exception either - while being able to build a new city earlier is a big deal, if the price is 45 turns worth of delay due to missing sawmill production in 1.5 cities, then it's not that great.

Long story short, are we really happy with this as is? I feel they escalate the luck factor of the early game way more than anything else in the game, which is not good (while also making it harder for military and settler production to work, as you are effectively starting your game in a debt of 400 gold - two settlers that will need a sawmill before anything else is done. One part of the reason why it's so hard to balance these two against each other.)

Do note sawmills also produce a huge "hidden" benefit for the AI - they can both build them earlier (in fact a lot earlier, the AI has plenty of starting gold so on higher difficulties they can get those two sawmills instantly) and also get more hammers out of them for less maintenance. So any modification on this would have a large impact on overall game difficulty. (This is the main reason why I didn't want to change this so far, but nowadays the AI is way stronger, maybe they don't need this extra? Even if they do, we can calculate the difference and compensate them in starting gold.)

A few possible ideas :
-Have cities produce a few hammers naturally, so building the sawmill without gold is faster
-Have cheaper sawmills
-Have cities produce hammers naturally, and sawmills produce fewer of them
-Give players 400 starting gold extra
-Have outposts start with a sawmill already built
-Have sawmills automatically built when population reaches X (makes housing a decent alternative, as well as builder's halls)


Of course we can also say "doesn't matter, anyone should be able to find 400 gold worth of treasure before turn 30", at least by using summoned creatures. Wizards who cannot summon are in trouble though...

(Sawmills are most definitely one of the things that make the early summon vs early normal unit problem worse, as they eat up your gold and hammers but not your mana.)

[Nelphine]

So, this goes back to 'why do sawmills exist in the first place'. The whole point was to have a bunch of hammers quickly so you didn't say 'next turn' a billion times before the game started. However, this was seen as needing a cost. Having, for example, 8 free hammers in a city, is just really good, isn't it? So the argument has always, literally, been: build a sawmill first. No matter what. Nothing else is SUPPOSED to matter (and even then.. I don't build sawmills first later in the game :P they can't give you casting skill if you're already maxing skill production).

So, to me, part of this conversation is going exactly against what your own arguments and reasoning (that you've shared with us) have always been.

So, to me, the only part of the entire post that makes any sense is 'the AI starts with a ton of gold, and can therefore get sawmills faster and therefore snowball faster'. Particularly on the higher difficulties, this is HUGE, and easily leads the AI to having multiple cities building halberdiers before I can get my 4th building done in my capital.

For the moment though, I'm going to disregard the AI, and particularly, the difference between the AI and the human. Let us assume for these next few paragraphs, that only human players exist. Given that, are sawmills performing their role? Do we want a building that must be built first, every time? Do we want it to cost a noticeable amount?

What we are really doing, in effect, is saying that settlers cost an extra 200 gold. However, instead of making the settler cost an extra 200 gold, we only have to pay 200-400g of the settler cost (depending on race) up front; then we can send the settlers out to get to the location; and we can save up the final 200g for our settler during that time.

In this sense, I think sawmills are perfect. 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the settler is paid up front; the rest, we pay when we actually get our outpost. And, crazy oddballs like me, can even delay the rest of our settler cost if we think there is something better than sawmills to build.


So, for me, the sawmill IS playing it's role perfectly. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, for the human.
That means the following options, for me, are no good: have cities produce a few hammers naturall; have cheaper sawmills; have cities produce hammers and sawmills produce less; have outposts start with a sawmill; have sawmills automatically built.


Now we consider the difference between AI and human. The AI snowballs twice; because it gets more hammers per hammer than the human, so the sawmill is even more important for the AI. However, since the AI often builds useless things, this isn't terrible, and realistically, is necessary. So the actual production of the sawmill seems reasonable to me in comparison to human players. Therefore, once it is finished being built, I believe the sawmill under the control of the AI is fine (whether the cheating bonuses of the AI are fine, is not specific to sawmills; so for this conversation, I assume we have the perfect cheating bonuses, and therefore, sawmill is fine.) That leaves cost of the sawmill. The AI gets bonus gold (strictly NOT bonus gold from treasures - which in early game is HUGE - however, the AI can conquer lairs much easier, so it gets MORE treasure, so this ends up being a de facto cheating bonus for treasure gold) so it can afford sawmills easier; and the AI pays less maintenance.. so it gets more gold. Really, it just gets more gold.

I think in general, the price of sawmills is already correct (as per my section above when looking at humans only). Therefore, the question is twofold: one, does the AI get too much more gold? And two, does the AI start with too much more gold?

I would say... I think the AI gets too much cheating resources. However, the later in the game we go, the more this is necessary to prevent the human from mana starving the AI. I still think we should have a scaled-by-turn resource bonus for the AI. Having the amount of bonus gold that the AI does right now, DOES let them expand at a phenomanal rate. However, given the speed at which they get MULTIPLE fighters guilds, I don't think we can really change this at ALL and have it impact their ability to get sawmills.

So I do not think looking at cheating bonuses will help with the sawmill question (even if the cheating bonus may be too high, we will never move it so low so as to prevent sawmills from being purchased by the AI. I do think it is too high.)


Therefore, we are left with starting gold.

As I look at the game mechanics thread, I see the table on cheating bonuses has been removed - So I don't know how much the cheating bonuses is, nor do I know how much the AI starts with anymore.

however, I would say the AI should start with a lot less gold than they do. I would say, if the gold production bonus is 250% on Lunatic, even though there are half a dozen cheating bonuses (including maintenance particularly) that affect the gold income of the AI, that their gold should start only with an amount greater than the human equal to the flat gold production bonus. For Lunatic in this example, if the human starts with 100g, then the Ai would start with 250g.

I would also actually consider REDUCING this amount, because the AI starts with a pile of swordsmen. Yes, those swordsmen are there for a COMPLETELY different reason, but the biggest thing the AI swordsmen do, is reduce how many units have to be built/summoned to fully garrison the fortress, and THEREFORE, increase how fast the AI can start treasure hunting.

I would go so far as to suggest that the AI should start with exactly the same gold as the human (whether the human starts at 100g or 40g or 400g).

[Bahgtru]

Do note sawmills also produce a huge "hidden" benefit for the AI - they can both build them earlier (in fact a lot earlier, the AI has plenty of starting gold so on higher difficulties they can get those two sawmills instantly) and also get more hammers out of them for less maintenance.

The counterpoint is that some resources for the human matter a lot more - the human is better off going 1 vs 5 than 0 vs 4.

I always assumed that the city centre doesn't build any resource to simply make the game different from civ. I would like to have the city centres build create some resources - it would reduce the luck factor - but it would also make it even more important to smallpox - stack as many cities as possible in the smallest radius. But, given the recent addition of the incredibly powerful magic market, this probably already is true anyway, so maybe it's intended?

The sawmill cost less and split its output between now - some basic hammer income - and later, some per capita income, like MoO's auto-factories. Example: 2 (city centre), 4 (sawmill), +1/worker, per farmer (or less, or more).

[zitro1987]

The gameplay works well in theory with the notion of 'sawmills first' due to early 10+ production, but honestly, it does give the perception of playing around a building.


I think I would instead prefer:

*outposts start with sawmills (higher settler cost or slower outpost growth or cities with 2 starting upkeep may be needed to balance the added speed and less gold needs)
or
*cities have a starting production of +5 (plus terrain), but sawmills nerfed to also give +5 (plus terrain) with just 2 upkeep, possibly lower cost too.
or
*cities have a starting production of +5 (plus terrain), but sawmills are now +4 (plus terrain) and +10%.

[Seravy]

So the argument has always, literally, been: build a sawmill first. No matter what.

Exactly. That's not ideal but I'm ok with it. If we can improve it, even better of course...
The problem is the multiplying effect it has on gold you find. It amplifies the effect of luck way too much.

What we are really doing, in effect, is saying that settlers cost an extra 200 gold. However, instead of making the settler cost an extra 200 gold, we only have to pay 200-400g of the settler cost (depending on race) up front; then we can send the settlers out to get to the location; and we can save up the final 200g for our settler during that time.

Exactly. The problem comes in when building the settlers were not your decision. You get two at the start, plus any neutral cities you find. That's effectively a 400g debt, and unless you manage to find any treasure, you won't be having 400g that early. (you probably have enough for one sawmill, not both, but only if you haven't used the money on your capital, for example by buying a marketplace)

Of course this can be solved without changing the settler - I wish we could add a 3rd lair type "super easy" which contains things like 2-3 hell hounds for 200g, and have every map generate like 8 of those. Current easy lairs go up to 1000 budget and they are definitely needed to be that way, but those super easy lairs could help. Problem is more lairs end up with more map generation failures so we can't really just add 8 more to every map. Also it'd still be an RNG based thing, you either have one of those or not...

...what if, instead of going through the normal way to generate lairs, we add, to the very end of the map generation, a "for each wizard, pick a random tile in a range of 4 from their capital, and generate a lair there with a budget of 180-250."? At that point the lair cannot possibly prevent the capital from being placed anymore, so no map interference.

Therefore, we are left with starting gold.

It's something like 100 to 900 as difficulty goes up. We added to the amount once or twice when we made other chances and wanted to compensate the AI for it. (Particularly the starting settlers, since the AI does not have a resource bonus for producing those, and used to before the change, we added the difference in gold. I believe we also did the same for at least one more other feature.)

stack as many cities as possible in the smallest radius. But, given the recent addition of the incredibly powerful magic market, this probably already is true anyway, so maybe it's intended?

Not directly intended, more like inevitable. You always want to have as much Amplifying Towers as possible. (though I would rather have the pop 20 spot than two pop 9 spots but if the difference isn't that extreme, or it's not the early game, then 2 cities are always better than 1)
Granaries also contribute to this effect - no matter how bad a location is, you get a flat +5 max pop added to it. Unless you are playing Nomads.


I think cities producing 2 hammers for free (not sure how to justify that, is my greatest problem, I mean where does that production come from if neither people nor buildings...terrain does not produce +X hammers in this game, it produces +X% only), and sawmills producing 6 (maybe at a maintenance of 3) might be an ideal solution. With 2 extra hammers, you can have the Sawmill build itself in 20 turns if the city is pop 2 with 1 worker. However it takes 22 turns for it to pay for itself. So buying it for gold will stop being strictly necessary. However I'm not overly enthusiastic about this solution, maybe adding the guaranteed easy lairs would be better.

[Seravy]

Oh and in fact the situation is worse than calculated.
To build the sawmill you are using 1-3 hammers - terrain bonus on that will almost always round down to zero.
But once the sawmill is done, the terrain bonus adds more hammers, so the output of sawmills is even higher than calculated. (Basically instead of 380, you get 380*terrain production bonus back for every 200 invested gold)

The other basic buildings generally have around 20 turns of ROI, so they aren't all that much worse than the sawmill (which is like 14-17), but there is a major difference, and that's build time for the building itself. You build everything after sawmill, so they are done in about 5 turns. So by buying you save 5 turns, in other words, 5 out of the 20 turns of ROI are essentially "free", covered by produced resources you'd miss out on by not buying the building. In case of sawmill the ROI is less than half of the turns saved by buying it, which is the problem. Buying the building effectively pays for its own cost plus more in saved turns.

For the additional weak lairs, there is exactly 1 free lair slot on Huge maps, but we can of course make more by reducing other weak lairs. However, I think there is a catch. The AI does not need the weak lairs near their fortress. Why? Well, simply put, they can have the gold instead. While for the human the lair is better than the gold because it poses a challenge they need to overcome through skill and planning, the AI doesn't care about that - higher strategic = win. So their first 2 war bears would clear it anyway. Which means we can drastically reduce the number of slots needed - we only need to add these lairs for the human. We probably don't need more than 3, likely even 2 would be enough but I rather err towards the higher number as lairs are fun and more of them means less influence of luck. These lairs would also reward scouting - another concept the AI has no use for.

To summarize...
-I think the ideal solution would be to have 3 additional ultra weak lairs near the human start (each containing about 100-250 gold in treasure), probably in a growing radius for each (so one in a range of 4, one in 6 and one in 8).  I see no possible reasons against this right now.
-The AI would likely need a starting gold compensation equal to the value in those lairs. However as they already start with probably too much gold, and there is a different viewpoint, we actually don't. This different viewpoint is, those extra easy lairs are there to eliminate the luck dependency and realm dependency for the human. In other words, to ensure they always get at least an average start. The AI never had this sort of problem, so they don't need a compensation for it either. There are no AI bad starts (aside from islands ofc).
-Cities should produce some resources immediately (the "center tile" concept as someone called it), while sawmills should be pretty much unchanged, except offering about 2 fewer hammers. However doing this would mean we no longer have the "mandatory sawmill" and "delayed settler cost" mechanics, and while I don't see the former as value, the latter is most definitely a great thing. So we need to further think about this one. Implementing the easy lairs already ensures every player can afford their sawmills (at least on the first two cities), so it stops being a necessity - yes, sawmills will still double the impact of that gold but it's gold everyone has so it's not giving anyone an advantage. The current system was bad because it was gold the human player sometimes couldn't get.

[Nelphine]

Ok, I like the idea of 3 ultra weak lairs. I've always enjoyed the idea that the farther from your capital, the stronger the lairs, so that dungeon crawling remains a major feature of the game.

Looking at my suggestion, this ends up about the same, the human gets the good through lairs, the AI just gets the gold.

So in principle I think this is great.


I disagree with making cities build hammers naturally, as described previously.


However, I think there are four MAJOR concerns with the ultra easy lairs:

One, new players have no idea that these exist. So they may very well not go out to get them until it's late enough that they no longer perform their function.

Two, zombies can have night stalkers. Phantom warriors can have air elementals. So the human (without earth lore) cannot tell the difference between an ultra weak lair, and a mid range lair that happens to be nearby, preventing experienced players from going after these lairs early enough for them to perform their role.

Three, these lairs may not be on the same continent as the human.

Four, even if the human does go after these lairs quickly, there will be some maps (particularly in case three above) where the ai (especially on higher difficulties, but also ones where wizards had to be generated very close to each other) will actually get these lairs before the human. So they end up being a boost for the AI not the human, and instead compound the problem.


Without at least mostly solving all 4 of these problems (particularly number 4 - I figure a lunatic ai with lizardmen would clear them out by what, turn 10? Maybe less?), I don't think we can use this idea, even if I like it a lot.

[Seravy]

On settlers and sawmills themselves, thinking time.

So, as is, a new city effectively costs 500 gold, however you only pay 300 of that on the settler and 200 on the sawmill. 

The AI needs cheap settlers. They don't know in advance where they'll be sent, so they are required to produce them, regardless of needing any or not. The AI is also expected to lose a significant amount of settlers to enemy attacks, albeit the "no war until turn 40" rule at least keeps them safe until this time. The AI also cannot prioritize anything over settlers - they must produce settlers if they don't have "enough". Finally the AI cannot rush-buy the settler, they need to wait for it to get produced in most cases - and we don't want them to, because that would accelerate population loss through produced settlers the AI didn't need.

All of this together means, the settler needs to be cheap (but not overly cheap as then we are back to the AI producing too many) - basically settler cost needs to stay as is. 

Meaning that if we add "basic production" to new outposts, we can't raise settler prices to compensate. So new cities would become more profitable investments. However, this is only in gold, not time. Ultimately, you'd pay 200 less for each new city, but they'd turn productive in the same (pretty long) amount of time.

Would that be acceptable? Probably yes. For 500 gold you can buy a fairly decent sized army (by "game just started" standards, anyway.), which could conquer you another city immediately (or even clear out an semi-easy lair. Something better than those ultra easy ones.), while if you build a settler, you get the same city (or even smaller) but need to wait much longer for it.

However, this would most definitely favor the human in a one-sided way. The AI was already able to always afford the 200 cost sawmills, and knew to buy them instantly. The human wasn't. On the other hand, even if the city does turn productive faster, it's still a new pop 1 city. So it's not a direct threat to the AI. (gold spend on the capital to produce high end troops is) Meaning it's a type of advantage we can get away having, and it would even improve the game - the human will be more capable of competing with the AI in settler spam. We've already determined settler spam is inevitable from the AI, so that's an improvement.

This change would also raise the value of the starting settlers. Maybe reducing them to only one instead of two could be a smart move - less early city spam, and if we implement the "ultra easy lairs" mechanic, the player will be guaranteed to be able to afford a second one from that money if needed.

Let's try to summarize...

Current system
-AI gets an inherent advantage in building up their non-capital settlements, which fits their strategy. (they can always afford sawmills and wouldn't spend the money elsewhere anyway. )
-Building troops is usually better than building settlers - you get to conquer the AI's pop 1 hamlets cheaper than it costs to build them yourself. This promotes aggressive gameplay.
-Housing is worth it while you cannot afford a sawmill, as well as builder's hall to increase housing rate
-Easy to justify - production cannot appear from thin air.

"Basic production" system
-The human will be better at competing with the AI in settler spam strategies
-Settler vs military decision becomes more balanced, so less incentive for early human aggression
-Spreading your home race will be an easier and more likely strategy, making the race choice matter even more
-Sawmill will stop being mandatory first build and will instead compete with the other 4 basic buildings (marketplace, library, magic market)
-Housing will be worth less, might need to be redesigned to work on hammers instead of the existing system
-Despite the additional hammers, the human can't build up to high tier units faster.
-Starting settlers will no longer be an annoying burden of "must save 400 gold".
-We might need to rethink the number of starting settlers
-We might need to rethink AI starting gold.
-Harder to justify but not entirely impossible : housing also produces houses out of "nowhere", so by making it work through hammers we at least make that visible.

...overall I think the "basic production" has way more advantages, unless I missed something?

[Seravy]

One, new players have no idea that these exist. So they may very well not go out to get them until it's late enough that they no longer perform their function.

You need to scout for your starting settler anyway. I guess it's possible they won't, but hey, that's why low difficulties exist.
By this logic, new player also have no idea they need to buy the sawmill, so they don't need the money. (also this is a great argument for the "basic production" system. Mandatory first builds are NOT newbie friendly.

Two, zombies can have night stalkers. Phantom warriors can have air elementals. So the human (without earth lore) cannot tell the difference between an ultra weak lair, and a mid range lair that happens to be nearby, preventing experienced players from going after these lairs early enough for them to perform their role.

That's what Spearmen are for. Yes, it does cost you 10 hammers = 20 gold but once people realize they are finding easy lairs, they'll be willing to pay that.
Alternately people are already sending their magic spirits in if they see an easy looking lair nearby. They have ~50% chance it even survives the mission.

Three, these lairs may not be on the same continent as the human.

Considering the range limitations planned, they usually will be, but yes, this is a valid risk.
However, magic spirits don't care, and these will be weak enough that you can clear them out using a spirit + a few shots of combat spells. (Alternately, use water walking, floating island, or buy a ship. Ok don't buy a ship, that spends about all the money you would gain from one such lair. But if all 3 of them are on another continent, definitely buy a ship, it's worth it.)

Four, even if the human does go after these lairs quickly, there will be some maps (particularly in case three above) where the ai (especially on higher difficulties, but also ones where wizards had to be generated very close to each other) will actually get these lairs before the human.

I can see that happen to lair 3, maybe. Lair 1 and 2 would be too close to the human. Note the AI's capital needs to fill up with units before they can leave and start attacking things, so the lairs are likely safe up to turn 10-15. If this is too much of a worry, we can reduce the radius and say all three must be in a range of 6.

I don't think any of these 4 issues are severe enough to make the idea not work.

[Nelphine]

It only matters for your first 2 or 3 cities. After that, you always have enough good for a sawmill. So, it won't help expand your race any faster than currently. Similarly for military vs settler - it only improves things until you could have bought the settler anyway, which means only for the first 2 or 3 cities, which means it doesn't actually help. That is literally the only time housing matters. Changing this makes housing useless, unless you significantly change it to the point that housing is better than some other building, or better than trade goods.

With those points, I do not believe the change is justified. 

The only thing left is changing number of starting settlers (which honestly, should probably under consideration even with no change) and dealing with starting gold, which we are already trying to address, although as per my last post, I don't think ultra weak lairs works as it stands.