Unrest

[Catwalk]

I like the fundamentals of the unrest system, but I don't like how it plays out for a few reasons:
- Sticking 8 spearmen in all but a few of your cities is not interesting.
- The value of a shrine is always the same, assuming there is a rebel to quell. This helps promote the trend of boring building plans for new cities.
- The jumps in the tax system are so big that you almost always use either 1.5gc or 2gc for most of your game.
- You're encouraged to micromanage your cities so there aren't rebels anywhere, rather than having rebels be a common part of the game. It shouldn't always be worthwhile appeasing rebels. A related problem is that once you've micro managed your cities carefully to ensure good rebel control, you have absolutely no incentive to change tax rates.

I propose the following changes:
1) No police effect from any units
2) Religious buildings lower the unrest% rather than simply calming one rebel. Example: You're using a tax rate of 1.5gc, leading to a 30% unrest rate. A shrine reduces unrest by 10%, lowering the unrest level for that city to 20%.
3) Revised tax/unrest table

Tax table

Code:

gold  new  old
0.0gc  -    0%
0.5gc  -   10%
1.0gc  5%  20%
1.5gc 10%  30%
2.0gc 20%  45%
2.5gc 30%  60%
3.0gc 45%  75%
4.5gc 60%   -
5.0gc 80%   -

Building effects:
Shrine 10%
Temple 10%
Parthenon 10%
Cathedral 10%
Animist's Guild 5%
Oracle 15%

Spell effects:
Just Cause 5%
Stream of Life 20%
Gaia's Blessing 10%
Dark Rituals -10%

[Catwalk]

I put in some numbers to get a discussion going, please comment.

[Vagabond]

Some things not addressed for unrest:

Building: Animist guild
Building: Oracle
Race: Klackon base unrest reduction
Race: Conquering other races (dwarves hate trolls, everyone loves halflings, etc.)
Spell: Just Cause
Spell: Dark Rituals
Spell: Stream of Life
Wizard Pick: Divine/Infernal Power

Wasn't sure if you wanted a to do a straight conversion, for example animist guild gives -5%. Heck for some of these I don't even know the mechanics. For race relations I just have vague ideas like klackons and trolls don't get along with others, halflings and humans generally do.

Edit: I've forgotten some spells, so just take this list as examples.

[Catwalk]

Some things not addressed for unrest:

Building: Animist guild
Building: Oracle
Race: Klackon base unrest reduction
Race: Conquering other races (dwarves hate trolls, everyone loves halflings, etc.)
Spell: Just Cause
Spell: Dark Rituals
Spell: Stream of Life
Wizard Pick: Divine/Infernal Power

Wasn't sure if you wanted a to do a straight conversion, for example animist guild gives -5%. Heck for some of these I don't even know the mechanics. For race relations I just have vague ideas like klackons and trolls don't get along with others, halflings and humans generally do.

Edit: I've forgotten some spells, so just take this list as examples.

I'd do a straight conversion, yeah. I'd want to change Stream of Life to be -10% or even -20%, full unrest removal is over the top IMO.

Anyone else have any comments on this?

[kyrub]

I have checked the code and the multi-change is possible. It is quite a lot of routine work, but the unrest thing seems to be centralized into one subroutine.
Lucky you, I thought it would be impossible.

[Catwalk]

How about the following unrest reduction values:
Shrine 5%
Animists Guild/Temple 10%
Parthenon 15%
Cathedral 20%
Oracle 25%
For a total reduction of 85% with all buildings

Production costs would match these numbers of course. Thinking about the following values for the tax table:
1.0gc 10% unrest
1.5gc 20% unrest
2.0gc 30% unrest
2.5gc 45% unrest
3.0gc 60% unrest
4.5gc 75% unrest
5.0gc 90% unrest

This all assumes no police units, as I plan to disable that. If anyone wants to run some numbers on this, please feel free.

[Catwalk]

I'm revising this thread to include other topics and changing the tax table again.

[Catwalk]

Code:

inc | unr1 | unr2
inc | unr1 | unr2
0.0gc  0%    N/A
0.5gc 10%    N/A
1.0gc 20%    10%
1.5gc 30%    25%
2.0gc 45%    40%
2.5gc 60%    50%
3.0gc 75%    60%
3.5gc N/A    70%
4.0gc N/A    80%

This new table turns the MoM table upside down, basically. Instead of rising sharply at high taxation levels, it rises sharply early on. I'm doing this in order to make the lowest tax levels appealing, you never want to use a really low tax level if the next one only gives a tiny little bit more unrest. Anything below 1.5 is never really used in MoM, and it's very easy to run 2.0 profitably.

Additionally, I want to completely replace the lowest two levels with 3.5gc and 4.0gc. The new unrest system makes it difficult to remove all rebels, but you may well profit occasionally from tolerating a moderate amount of unrest in exchange for a higher cashflow.

These numbers all assume the building effects listed above and no police units. Examples:
Size: 11 (2 farmers, rest of food needs covered by buildings)
Buildings: Shrine, Temple, Animists Guild (total unrest reduction of 25%)

NEW VALUES

Code:

tax rebels production income
1    0    20    11
1,5    0    20    16
2    0    20    22
2,5    1    18    25
3    2    16    27
3,5    3    14    28
4    4    12    28

OLD VALUES

Code:

tax rebels production income
0    0    20    0
0,5    0    20    5
1    0    20    11
1,5    0    20    16
2    2    16    18
2,5    4    12    17
3    5    10    18

With the old values the rise in rebels is much sharper and leads to a much more rapid decline in your economy once you reach the rebel threshold. With the new values you're still better off having no rebels when considering only a single city, but minor unrest in some cities may well be worthwhile if your other cities are fine. With the old values you're strongly encouraged to micro manage all cities to reach exactly 0 unrest, and you're given easy means with which to do so (police units).

[Vagabond]

What about racial animosity? Is that currently a flat x% based on a racial relations table? If so, that should be easy to combine with these mechanics. But it's still something to consider.

Also, you mention a max -85% unrest reduction, but that's not completely accurate. It varies wildly by race.

Klackons: -5% (plus racial mod)
Dwarves: -15%
Lizardmen: -15%
High Elves: -25%
Barbarians: -40%
Halflings: -60%
High Men: -85%

It's not the end of the world, unique races are a hallmark of MoM and we certainly want to keep them. But some of the lower unrest reduction races already struggle to be competitive. So you'd need to compensate them elsewhere, be it troop power, hammer/food production, whatever.

[Catwalk]

Yes, racial animosity currently works like my proposed system for religious buildings.

How about -10% per religious building regardless of type? That way the less civilized races don't suffer quite as much. On the other hand, parthenons and up are really expensive. Regardless, there'll definitely be compensation for these changes as needed. My goal is for the player to feel that all arcane races are roughly equally viable in a typical game. Some better for some strategies and others better for other strategies, but all close to same strength. I also want all to be interesting to conquer. Or most, klackons and dark elves are supposed to be a pain in the ass