1.2 Buildings and Income Overhaul
Overview
- Divide et Impera's building system has always been a hybrid of the basic vanilla structure with our own ideas woven in. With this overhaul, we look to further modify the effects and add our own unique underlying structures to the system that have not been seen before.
- One of the primary reasons for this overhaul started as a simple desire to move income from a hidden bonus for all factions to in-game effects. This move allows for various ways to interact/interfere with that income and no longer has it as a phantom bonus simply added every turn. As we started working on this idea, it became apparent that we wanted to alter various other effects to make certain buildings more useful and the effects more rational.
- Along with the basic changes to many building effects, we have also developed some very unique ideas for buildings. These include special capitals/ports and regional building chains that are restricted to certain regions on the map. These ideas add immersion, variety and a sense of place for the otherwise generic building system of vanilla.
Building Income Changes
- One of the main purposes of beginning to look at our building system was our concerns over the way income operates in DeI. Currently in vanilla and DeI 1.1, there is a phantom income bonus to all factions that exists outside of in-game systems like buildings and region production. This bonus is applied no matter the circumstances for every faction and is not impacted by sieging, raiding or any other in-game action.
- Instead of having that huge invisible bonus in 1.2, we have moved most income to buildings and small bonuses at very low imperium levels. Overall building income has been increased and there is now a small bonus at the lowest imperium levels to help very small factions. With this change, you can directly impact the economy of a faction using raiding and/or sieging - especially at critical economic regions and capitals.- Since income is now lower in general, specifically in the early game, we have altered all starting treasuries to be significantly higher. This basically means the player can choose to focus on a certain path but those choices have consequences. Do you risk building up only your economy with a small defensive force while working the diplomacy angle? Or do you go all in on a full stack and try to secure yourself with early war? Perhaps you choose to have a mix of lower tier troops and some select elites to guard your borders while you develop your infrastructure. These various options provide choice and consequence in the early game, rather than just building up an elite stack as fast as possible and flinging them at the nearest small AI.
- Speaking of the AI, they are also impacted by these changes. Since they have more money to work with at the beginning, they develop their barracks and economic infrastructure in a much better way. Also, it should be more apparent when you defeat a large force from a single region faction in the early game, since their resources have been spent on that force. Difficulty levels will still impact their bonuses, so higher difficulties will still have a more severe AI presence. Also, major historical AI factions have retained their bonuses - so Rome is still a very serious threat!
Building Effects Changes
- Another one of the main aspects of this overhaul is a large number of changes to various building effects. From temples to barracks and industry, many effects have been altered or removed with a few ideas in mind. First, we wanted to make various options have a purpose since many do not currently seem worth building. Second, various effects did not make sense when tied to some buildings, such as food usage for some temples or lack of effects for various industrial options. Lastly, we wanted to balance these effects to fit in with the overall gameplay of a campaign and remove some that were negatively impacting battle balance over the long haul.
- There are quite a few changes, ranging from large to small, but I will overview a few of them.
- As listed above, building income in general has been increased. Also, as I will detail later in the preview, resources and income from resources have been shifted a bit.
- Temples have been modified to better reflect the god they represent. Food usage has been removed from many of these temples as it did not make much sense on them.
- Building upkeep has been added for many buildings. We felt we needed something other than public order and food to have as negatives, so buildings that would normally require maintenance now have an upkeep effect associated with them.
- Industrial buildings have been improved as a more viable option and farms have been rebalanced.
- In general, we have removed many on recruitment bonuses for units like morale. These were negatively impacting battle balance over the course of a campaign (since there are so many campaign effects already that impact balance). To replace these, we have added small on recruitment experience bonuses to upper tier barracks for certain unit types.
Special Capitals and Ports
- In 1.2, we have developed special regional capital and port buildings for various factions. These allow us to assign special effects for these buildings and add regional flair for the various important spots in the ancient world. These special effects can include basic effects (income, etc), recruitment entries, garrison entries, and other flavor.
- These special capitals also retain only foreign garrisons for other cultures that take them over. That means they are harder to hold as an occupying force and easier to retake as the original owner. They also retain some of their looks in terms of the internal structure of the city on the campaign map.
- The special capitals include Rome, Carthage, Syracuse, Athens, Alexandria, Pergamon, Antioch, Massilia, Sparta and Rhodes. The special ports include Carthage, Massilia, Alexandria and Rhodes.
- Here are various tiers for some of the new buildings:
Regional Resource Chains/New Resource
- One of the most unique additions to 1.2 will be special regional building chains that can only be built in certain areas. Currently, this concept is tied to the presence of specific resources for those building chains. This concept could later be expanded, however, for other building concepts.- In general, resource production has been lowered from the primary chains of minor resource towns. All resource regions will now have a special building chain that gives the player the option of further exploiting that local resource. That exploitation may come in the form of increased income, more of the resource, or other options. These other options include iron/copper equipment workshops and lead processing.
- Speaking of lead processing, we have added a new resource altogether - silver. Since lead is actually a byproduct of other mining operations, we have changed the primary resource on those locations to be silver. However, silver regions also produce a small amount of lead. Alongside that production, both gold and silver specialized region chains also have the option of building a lead processing building that will further exploit that resource.
- Here are various examples of the new resource chains:
Other Changes
- In DeI, we have streamlined recruitment for some cultures already. Now, in 1.2, we have further streamlined these buildings. The woodworker building for the Barbarian factions has been combined into the basic infantry barracks. Also, the Eastern factions now have 2 stables rather than 3 - a basic and an exotic option.
- We also have various other new buildings and changes, including a new temple system for our new culture being added - Caucasian. We felt that we needed something to accurately reflect that region since Persian and Nomadic didn't really fit. Now, that area has their own culture.
[PREVIEW] 1.2 Buildings and Income Overhaul
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Re: [PREVIEW] 1.2 Buildings and Income Overhaul
Originally Posted by Dresden
) which basically at lower imperium level you train troops at lower cost, but their upkeep is higher, and at higher imperium, the other way round?
