Outpost growth

[Seravy]

I've been thinking about this for a while and I think a new system that follows these rules might be better :

-Growth is not random : A set amount is added each turn based on terrain, race, etc, the same factors that decide growth now.
-Shrinking is limited to medicore or bad terrain : Shrinking can happen if the max pop of the area is 0-13, or the city is cursed ONLY. Pop 14+ spots don't shrink.
-Shrinking chance is based on terrain : A pop 15 place has minimal chance to shrink, while a pop 5 has high.
-Shrinking is random : If shrinking happens X houses worth of population is lost. (X should be around 2)

The main question is, what numbers we want, if we go with the above system?

-How many turns should it take to complete the city for an average race and place (20 pop and Klackons/etc)?
-How many turns slower the worst, and faster the best race should be? (Lizardmen, Dwarves)
-How many turns faster it should be if the spot is 25, or slower if 15?
-At which max pop should the breaking point (where shrinking is equal to growth) be for the slowest, and fastest growing races?

[GermanJoey]

Well that sure sounds like a hell of a lot better than the way it is now.

Can we also say that shrinking will never take an outpost below 1 house?

IMHO: Average outpost->hamlet time should be 9 turns. A very fast outpost shouldn't be faster than 5 turns (2 houses per turn), while a very slow one, with a slow race and bad terrain, shouldn't go lower than 29 (one house every 3 turns). This is for the player; these numbers could be faster for an Extreme/Impossible AI or whatever.

[Nelphine]

Ugh. I like the chance for hamlets to disappear. I'm OK with it being ludicrously rare, but it adds variery to the game. Sure, I can lose a game from it, but it's not like I'm going to lose 10 games from it - it will be unique and ill remember the time i gambled on my first city being adamantium coal coal ohmilicron gold gold crystals and failed. However, if its kept, it should also have a chance to happen to all AI, even if the chance is lower. So if it can only happen on pop 3 or less with dwarves, and even then only 1% of the time, I'd like to keep that. But, impossible AI dwarves on pop 3 should also have a chance, even if its 0.1%.

[Seravy]

Can we also say that shrinking will never take an outpost below 1 house?

No, that's the whole point of shrinking.

[Seravy]

Let's start doing this!

New scale will be 1000. Starts at 300 (3 houses), completed if reaching 1000.


Growth per turn = ((Max Pop+10)*2*(100+RaceModifier)/100))
Race Modifier will be 0 for average races, -33 for the slowest and +50 for the fastest. Race specific numbers are not decided yet.

Chance to shrink will be (12-Max Pop) %, amount of shrinking will be -240.
This puts the equilibrium point at 2 pop for average and 5 for the worst race : areas with this max pop will have an equal rate of growing and shrinking.
The AI will receive a +10 to their race modifier for each difficulty level.
Modifiers for enchantments has not been decided yet.

[Nelphine]

So a pop 15 square with an average race will: 25*2*((100+0)/100) have a 50% chance to grow. It will have a 0% chance to shrink. Or will it grow by 50 per turn, therefore take 14 turns to grow into a hamlet with no variance?

[Seravy]

Or will it grow by 50 per turn, therefore take 14 turns to grow into a hamlet with no variance?

This.

[Nelphine]

So a pop 2 city, regardless of whether its dwarf or lizardman will have a 1% of being abandoned in 2 turns? This I like.

So. A pop 10 outpost, of a lizardman, would take 12 turns to grow. And would have a 2% chance per turn to shrink by 240 (each shrink would require 4 more turns to reach hamlet), so about 22% chance of shrinking at least once. Chance of shrinking within those 4 turns would be: ~7%

On the other hand a dwarf pop 10 outpost would require 28 turns to grow into a hamlet. Still a 2% chance to shrink per turn, but about a 50% chance to shrink at least once, and if it shrinks, it takes 11 turns to make up the loss. And there would be ~20% chance to shrink again within those 11 turns.



I think the modifiers are too disparate. The fastest growth would be almost 3 times as fast as the slowest. I'd suggest -20 to +25 instead. Settling is too important to give that much variance. (Especially since lizardnen already settle potentially twice as fast as other races due to settler movement.) I'd actually consider -10 to +25.

[Seravy]

Other effects :

Stream of Life - double the growth rate
Gaia's Blessing - +40 growth, on top of what is gained for the increased max pop
Ores - +7 for Coal and Iron, +3 for all others
Chaos Rift - Chance to shrink +12%
Evil Presence - Chance to shrink +7%
Famine - Chance to shrink +15%
Pestilence - Chance to shrink +25%

[Nelphine]

For similar variance problems, I suggest outpost max pop +20 instead of +10. Maybe +15. The difference between a high pop spot and a low pop spot (say 10 vs 20) is enormous, which I don't think is as intuitive as I expected. Yes, a low pop spot should take longer, but not years longer.

Or max pop +25 and drop the *2.