[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

hey TAD/williams, do you happen to recall what updates whether or not a district is discounted? i seem to recall that, in PBEM20, I placed a "discounted" campus in Hieratic to "lock in the cost", then when i returned to actually build the thing it was no longer getting the discount?? does that sound like something that might plausibly happen to you?

edit: thrawn provided an explanation here but i confess i'm not sure i fully understand it...

[williams482]

Looks like the "locked" cost in that instance was a purely visual bug, because the game only partially updated some parts of the UI when you placed another discounted district earlier.

The district discount is updated fully after a tech or civic is completed, and updated partially when a new district is placed (if the current formula only allows for one discounted district, it will discount the first district placed and charge the others at full price. With occasional visual glitches like the one you encountered). Important to note here that because research is processed prior to builds, if a district that would trigger the discount is completed on the same turn as a tech/civic, the discount won't actually be in play until the next tech/civic is completed.

And no, there's really no good reason they couldn't have made it update the formula whenever a district was completed.

[ljubljana]

OH so by that do you mean, when I originally placed the Runic campus, the UI displayed it as getting the discount BUT actually I "locked in" building the district at full price?

I have been operating on the assumption that once a district is placed, its cost will never change, ever, for any reason, and was worried that this experience challenges that notion. But unless I'm wrong it sounds like you're saying that it doesn't?

[williams482]

Yup. Or at the very least that's what Thrawn is saying, I have no grounds to suggest any other explanation.

With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if the district acted as if it were discounted for the remainder of the turn though, if perhaps you chopped enough into it on that turn to cover the discounted price immediately. Would be cool to find out, but that particular glitch is random enough that I don't know how to reproduce it.

[ljubljana]

ok, sounds great, thank you!!

yeah i'm not sure i have a way to abuse this either. just need to make sure it doesn't mess with our japan-ing

[Cornflakes]

OH so by that do you mean, when I originally placed the Runic campus, the UI displayed it as getting the discount BUT actually I "locked in" building the district at full price?

I have been operating on the assumption that once a district is placed, its cost will never change, ever, for any reason, and was worried that this experience challenges that notion. But unless I'm wrong it sounds like you're saying that it doesn't?

Your understanding and assumption are correct. Once locked in the cost will not change. However the UI bug does not correctly update the cost if the discount conditions no longer apply due to placing other districts on that turn and thus the "locked in" cost is full price even though the UI shows it as discounted. This is a bug that has persisted since before the expansions. As long as you manually track the discount conditions you should be able to avoid getting tricked by the UI.

You should also be able to reproduce the bug in a test game. Just build one type of district exclusively until the discount applies. Then on the turn the discount activates place districts of another type until the discount should no longer be applicable. The UI should show you getting the discount but it will actually be locked in at full cost. Even if you chop it the turn its placed I still think it will resolve the production at full cost.

[williams482]

What's interesting is that I have definitely seen the UI resolve correctly in single player games: place a district, and now all subsequent districts are the regular price.

[ljubljana]

Interesting! That's a wild bug, thanks so much for this explanation, Cornflakes and williams!!

I'd like to thank thrawn in the tech thread for pointing out that "number of feitoria spots" is actually a pretty significant consideration we should take into account when picking city sites . I think for the first few cities having only one tile of coastal access trumps this (two longships can and will easily end our game by razing the second city) but definitely worth thinking about later on. In particular, if the CS locations are similar to in PBEM20, I bet there exists one that can go campus-harbor from turn 1 and then stack a ton of feitorias for a super-TR destination. In particular...



I count SEVEN Feitoria spots at PBEM20's Geneva, which will easily trump something like 4 Feitoria + 3 districts at the capital in terms of gold generation, and the city also had enough production capacity to make a harbor + campus too if we wanted, AND sending TRs to offshore CS islands is probably the best we can hope for in terms of defensibility. Note that the Loki-Geneva and Thor-Geneva routes are short, effectively coast-only, and can be defended by a single group of galleys. Each TR to a city with 7 Feitoria will be worth 42 gold + 10.5 hammers JUST from the Feitoria, which is absurd and clearly trumps sending to a city with more districts but fewer Feitoria spots IMO...

[ljubljana]

Actually, if we're looking at the PBEM20 map it gets even worse than that - look at freaking Runic island:



A city settled on the marble (NOT where I put Runic in the actual game) would have eight feitoria if i'm understanding the placement rules correctly, AND it has what would be a +4 campus site for Japan with the reef + harbor + city center... Compare that to Cuneiform which has just 4, and even that requires giving up a +6 harbor spot. Yeah, I definitely think these slightly-offshore islands will be the way to go once TAD hits Cartography, especially if I can settle/conquer a few of them relatively close to TAD so the TRs are more defensible.

I also think you could probably harvest one of the fish at Geneva for an 8th spot there as well, though I'm too lazy to pinmap it...

[ljubljana]

i mean, i guess picking who starts where is a good deal for our team, right? not because of feitorias but because i looked at the PBEM20 starts and there is a VAST disparity in their suitability for Japan.

things i am looking for in the japan start:
- space for a holy site + campus cluster WITHOUT paving over hammer tiles, and ideally without too many early districts on the coast
- relatively food-POOR setup, like my PBEM20 start, to better leverage feed the world
- perhaps i should get the start that is LESS closely-attuned to a specific pantheon? eg if we have a god of the hunt or OLORAM start, it's probably safe to assume we will be the only ones w such a start (this was true in PBEM20) so you can pick them up relatively safely. whereas with a God of the Sea or God of the Open Sky start we will need Japan to race for the pantheon. although, it is also true that with a really strong oloram start, maybe japan will do better there just because oloram comes into play 10t earlier for them than portugal? actually idk about this one man
- more central location so you are less likely to be next to Vikings