Building upkeep costs

[Squid]

OK, I was reading a moding question and someone asked if they could implement a building upkeep cost, and were told no.

Then I started thinking, and this always gets me into trouble, but we can give negative bonuses to population growth, hapiness, law, whatever, right, and some of the possible building bonuses including increasing trade and/or income right, so what if we give buildings negative bonuses to trade and/or income. Since decreasing your income by $x is the same as increasing your expenses $x this is essentially a building upkeep. Yes in practice its actually a percentage not a fixed amount (like with units) but the principle is the same, and if you think about it the bigger your city the more it should cost you to maintain the buildings anyways.

Any thoughts?

[dvk901]

You may not remember, but I tried implementing a system a while back where trade bonuses actually went down as the buildings got improved. My rational was that the greatest benefit was gained by the FIRST building...like building a grocery store. Making the store BIGGER shouldn't offer a benefit as large as building the store in the first place...and so on. But it was a disaster. The game engine sees ONLY trade bonuses, apparently as 'consecutive' bonuses. Therefore, a trade bonus of '1' doesn't just apply universally and stay at a set percentage. If you make the next building '1', it's still just '1'. If you make it '2', then it's '2'. If you start at '4', and then make it '3', then it's '3' and you income goes down.....a LOT! I've never been able to figure out what the formula is, but it's got to be really screwy, and not intended to be used backwords. The game theory, apparently, is as your Empire grows, your income needs to be more to support a larger empire, more buildings, more troops. But trying to play with trade bonuses was a nightmare, so I gave up.
Also, a trade bonus applies to a region based on the amount of resources it has...some have nothing, others are packed. Thus, a nightmare trying to balance the campaign based on a formula I don't think anyone understands.

What I did instead was implement a 'taxable income bonus'...which is what you'll see after each of the core buildings. Using this method, I was able to give a faction a decent income whether their regions had any resources or not. RTR did it this way. Also, they seem to work with an AOR statement...well, I'm sure they do.....so if I say that a governor's palace will offer a taxable income for faction 'A' ONLY in AOR 'B' then that's the only place it applies. So all factions have a 'HOME' AOR of their own where this income applies, and all 'capitols'....which are the 'military zones'.

This allowed me to give Pergamum, for instance, a big 'taxable income' bonus so they can compete with other factions. Seleucid, on the otherhand, has a huge regional 'home', so they get a far smaller taxable income.

Ok, that doesn't answer your question maybe, but it's the base right now.
You've probably noticed that a LOT of temples give a + bonus to the factions that can build it, but a negative to those who take the region who can't build it. The system I used, I think, is better than the one LT used in SPQR, because the building faction gets a happiness bonus, but the capturing faction get a negative 'law' bonus. My theory is that people are still happy with their temple and gods (maybe), but rather lawless in their behavior with their conquerers. Sabotage, stealing, murder, etc. directed at their new masters. The reason I say this works better is because it doesn't totally throw a region into rebellion, as often happened in SPQR, and you HAD to destroy the temple to get rid of the bad bonuses. Fine for the player, but the AI NEVER destroys buildings, so it didn't know what to do with this, and I think it hurt the AI considerably....forcing it to spend more money garrisoning cities, etc. Sure, more troops in cities maybe...(but SPQR has a garrison script, so that's doubtful)....but certainly a lot less armies to keep you from getting to them.
The added benefit to this, in my tests\observations so far, is that cities you capture will have a happiness around 120-130%, and you'll struggle to keep it there....but because of the unlawfulness...a negative and often very BAD income....like in the negative by the thousands.
So be careful with those temple bonuses + or -, they're there for a reason.

The problem I have with attaching a negative bonus to a building is that in some buildings, you can't ever get rid of it. Certain buildings are 'indestructible'....core buildings, ports, etc.

I think what I would rather see is a sytem where a negative taxable bonus is applied to buildings built in a 'sphere' around where you start as a faction. So for instance, Syracuse, as a central faction, has + bonuses on all islands and Sicliy. But a substantial '-' bonus could be applied to any core building built or captured in say, the 'arab' AOR, or 'steppes', or 'germ' in german territory. The larger the sphere, the greater the negative 'taxable bonus'. So in Italy it would be say -5.....but in the steppes, -20. Thus, a realistic economic penalty for expanding. For Rome, a big negative penalty for taking a region in Brition, the far east, the steppes. Use common sense, perhaps, and history to be a guide. It wouldn't make sense to give them a negative for capturing Alexandria, because Rome benfited a great deal from that. But any 'historical' pain in the ass would make sense....and for other factions you'd just have to guess or theorize what it might be.

[Squid]

Something like that but I was thinking of doing it on a per building basis (though you could still do a general one for the core_buildings as well).

So for temples the shrine level would get taxable_income_bonus bonus -1 while at the pantheon level it would get taxable_income_bonus bonus -5 to represent that it costs more money to maintain the higher level of a building. If I understand how the taxable_income_bonus works this would also make each building level cost more the higher the population of a city, which also makes sense since if you have 100 people visiting your shrine its cheap to maintain it, but 10,000 people going through your shrine will take a lot more money to maintain.

[rory o'kane]

they'll also be boosting the economy by buying food etc, and staying in places though, i think that shouldnt mean that temples should just be a huge drain on the economy - i mean they're built to last, how much upkeep did the pantheon in Rome really need apart from an occaisional lick of paint? not a lot.

[Squid]

There was obviously some, as you said a minimum of a yearly paint cost, fixing the floors, paying the priests, tithes, various sacrifices required each year, more I'm sure. I was also just using a temple structure as an example.

[dvk901]

IMHO, I think you have to leave a Nation's 'Home Base' alone....and not incurr negative's unless they just naturally occur. The problem with a 'universal negative' attached to any building normally built as a 'service' to the people is that you build it everywhere. A temple with a negative in ONE region is one thing, but 50 temples all over your empire is another. And the lowest numeral you can use is '1'. If Trade Bonus and Taxable Income bonus are like population...then the value '1' represents '1/2' of a percent. (I don't know that this is true for these, I'm just posing the issue, I know it's true of population) That 1/2% could amount to a considerable drain on your economy, based largely on the greatest income in your own homelands.

Right now, I have changed all unit costs and maintenance to a ratio of mostly 3 to 1. If the cost is 300 denarii, the unit costs NO LESS than 150 denarii a turn to maintain. If it's 600, the maintenance is 200. If it's 1000...333.
The result in my campaign has been rather interesting. I'm trying to emulate what I wanted as the ideal for a Roman player....no more than 28-35 armies to control your Empire. These new settings put my 23 army military into the red.....and nose diving as we go. I've basically been surviving by extermination and looting.
I've also started several campaigns as Bosporan, Pergamum, Syracuse....good luck doing anything with them. I think Pergamum got 656 denarii the first turn!! I'm sorry, too me this is a useless way to play.
I think I'm going to have to reduce it to 1/4...or 4 to 1.

[Squid]

IMHO, I think you have to leave a Nation's 'Home Base' alone....and not incurr negative's unless they just naturally occur. The problem with a 'universal negative' attached to any building normally built as a 'service' to the people is that you build it everywhere. A temple with a negative in ONE region is one thing, but 50 temples all over your empire is another. And the lowest numeral you can use is '1'. If Trade Bonus and Taxable Income bonus are like population...then the value '1' represents '1/2' of a percent. (I don't know that this is true for these, I'm just posing the issue, I know it's true of population) That 1/2% could amount to a considerable drain on your economy, based largely on the greatest income in your own homelands.

Right now, I have changed all unit costs and maintenance to a ratio of mostly 3 to 1. If the cost is 300 denarii, the unit costs NO LESS than 150 denarii a turn to maintain. If it's 600, the maintenance is 200. If it's 1000...333.
The result in my campaign has been rather interesting. I'm trying to emulate what I wanted as the ideal for a Roman player....no more than 28-35 armies to control your Empire. These new settings put my 23 army military into the red.....and nose diving as we go. I've basically been surviving by extermination and looting.
I've also started several campaigns as Bosporan, Pergamum, Syracuse....good luck doing anything with them. I think Pergamum got 656 denarii the first turn!! I'm sorry, too me this is a useless way to play.
I think I'm going to have to reduce it to 1/4...or 4 to 1.

That bold part is exactly my point, if you have 50 temples around your empire, it should be a drain on your resources. The same with every other building. I think we could combine it with your idea of the core_buildings providing bonuses based on distance from the center of a factions sphere of influence so that they get economic bonuses for controlling areas near them, but if they want to make better buildings it comes at a cost of lost income per turn. You might have to increase the bonus provided by the core_buildings and if asked that bonus already has the maintenance cost removed from it.

This would have two benefits if it works, one its more realistic having to pay upkeep on buildings, two it makes the economy much tighter because you have (significantly?) less income to play with. The bigger your cities the more they cost to run so you shouldn't have as much problem with 40 full stacks per faction running around.

[dvk901]

Well, let me be clear on one thing....I have LESS problem with 40 stacks running around than I do with NOTHING running around. I've got to reverse everything I've done so far and start over, because right now the economy wouldn't even support the Legions I've added, so there's no point even having them. And only a very few people have complained about the economy, so I think with the original settings of Patch10, and these ideas, it would be better. So let's think about this some more.

Also, we have a lot of beta testers on this team who aren't 'beta-ing'. I've had no economic reports on MOST factions to say whether it's been good, bad, or neutral. I get a lot of advice on what to do, but little real input on numbers, factions, etc. That doesn't help much.

[cherryfunk]

I mostly play smaller factions, and found the economy as the Bosporans, Pontus and the Getai to be perfect through about 50 years of play. Pergamum seemed too rich, but I didn't play it that long.

I think the problem may be in longer campaigns, once you've played a hundred years or more and have a large empire up and running. This is why I would increase unit upkeep, especially on elite units. The only possible downside is if it prevents the AI from building elite units at all, which would of course suck...

[Squid]

Just remember dvk, that the biggest cities in the empire were a huge drain to maintain. I don't see a problem with an imperial city being a huge money losing settlement.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

If we do this, we must raise the population needed to upgrade a city, by far.

[cherryfunk]

Just remember dvk, that the biggest cities in the empire were a huge drain to maintain. I don't see a problem with an imperial city being a huge money losing settlement.

Big cities are both a huge drain AND the creators of vast wealth. I'm not sure where the fiscal balance netted out in ancient Rome, but I imagine taxes on Romans generated huge sums. You couldn't afford to have huge cities if they didn't contribute anything to the economy.

[Squid]

From what I remember of reading history, Rome (the city) was in fact one of the main reasons for discontent in the empire, because vast amount of goods/food/etc were sent to Rome because it could no where near support itself. This was true to a lessor extent for the rest of the heart of the empire.

Yes the city created wealth, but no where near enough to feed itself.

[dvk901]

It is true, from what I've read, that Rome (the city) was a money HOG, not a producer. This was a city with a montrous population for it's day..in the millions I believe...which was more people than many countries had. If you consider an estimated 40 million population for the whole Empire, a million of them in one city was astounding! But that's history...

What I begin wondering about, as I relegate the mod nearly unplayable with maintenance costs, is HOW players are playing to have millions in their coffers after 70 turns. I have found this impossible....but that's because I clear out every rebel, I don't blitz, I play methodically and careful...with lots of defense. But what if you took advantage of the High happiness in RS and skipped building a lot of buildings. Ex[erience and such are no issue, so why build a blacksmith? Cities are happy, so why build sewers and aqueducts?
Or even temples if you don't have to?

Maybe people just skip building things and just build a military...in which case, of course you will have a lot of money. Maybe the solution is to spread the bonuses throught the buildings better so you HAVE to build certain ones to keep people happy. No skipping a sewer here, because your people are mad, etc.

Does that not match the idea that cities have an inherent 'money drain'..as you HAVE to keep improving them, or they'll riot or go rebel on you?
Also, the concept that higher buildings cost a lot more...a lot more, is probably valid. The larger the Empire and it's cities, the more it should cost to improve and maintain it (thru law, happiness, health).

[Squid]

Well I suppose you could simulate by adding a whole tonne of conditional negative bonuses to happiness and law for various buildings. For example if they only have a shrine in a huge city (as determined by the core_building present) the shrine give a negative bonus to happiness.

Something like:

happiness_bonus bonus -10 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_house and not building_present_min_level core_building governors_villa
happiness_bonus bonus -20 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_villa and not building_present_min_level core_building governors_palace

etc.

You can also add negative bonuses to the core_buildings if certain building aren't built as well I suppose. So if they don't have a building from the market line the citizens are unhappy and if they have a market but not the best one for the level of city the citizens are also unhappy

I'm still not sure if negative bonuses are fully functional or not thought.

EDIT: The devils post

[dvk901]

Well I suppose you could simulate by adding a whole tonne of conditional negative bonuses to happiness and law for various buildings. For example if they only have a shrine in a huge city (as determined by the core_building present) the shrine give a negative bonus to happiness.

Something like:

happiness_bonus bonus -10 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_house and not building_present_min_level core_building governors_villa
happiness_bonus bonus -20 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_villa and not building_present_min_level core_building governors_palace

etc.

You can also add negative bonuses to the core_buildings if certain building aren't built as well I suppose. So if they don't have a building from the market line the citizens are unhappy and if they have a market but not the best one for the level of city the citizens are also unhappy

I'm still not sure if negative bonuses are fully functional or not thought.

EDIT: The devils post

D@mn, you're a coding monster Squid!! But that, in tandem with what I've already done, would really force the issue. However, you're negative bonus is a bit high. A -1 law bonus is -10%.....-20 would be -200% !! I think that would be a problem! LOL

I also see an issue with having this in MANY buildings, as the cumlative negative bonuses would be considerable. But let's just say we could put this in 'health' buildings, which would force people to build sewers, baths, aqueducts and plumbing BEFORE anything else, because as soon as a city goes to the next level and you build the core building, it's really going to be pissed. If a sewer is -10%, then plumbing will be -40%!! We could also...now that I think of it, have this 'activate' the bonus in another building by having:

happiness_bonus bonus (1-4) requires building_present_min_level health sewers

Say you put that in an academy, just for the heck of it. It already gave you a bonus of '1', but there is another bonus of '1' that isn't given yet until you build the sewer. The net result being '2'.

Also, you could daisy-chain these so that as soon as you build an upper level 'aqueduct', it not only removes a negative from the core statement, and GIVES a bonus on it's own, but then INCURs a negative somewhere else because you don't have say, better farms.

Sounds like a nightmare to figure out. LOL

[cherryfunk]

What I begin wondering about, as I relegate the mod nearly unplayable with maintenance costs, is HOW players are playing to have millions in their coffers after 70 turns. I have found this impossible....but that's because I clear out every rebel, I don't blitz, I play methodically and careful...with lots of defense. But what if you took advantage of the High happiness in RS and skipped building a lot of buildings. Ex[erience and such are no issue, so why build a blacksmith? Cities are happy, so why build sewers and aqueducts?
Or even temples if you don't have to?

So why not reduce happiness across the board? Why IS it so high in RS, when clearly that's not historical? What was the Social War but a mass rebellion by Roman provinces? Why did Italian cities desert Rome and join Carthage if they weren't unhappy? Keeping disparate populations satisfied was a huge problem for Rome and every other major power, so why aren't we recreating that?

[Squid]

Its a balance we want to make them have to care about managing their population, but not force them to micromanage everything.

[cherryfunk]

Sure, but when you can set all your cities to very high taxes without any happiness problems anywhere, how is that a balance? Seems pretty unbalanced to me...

[Squid]

Which is why alternatives are being discussed, if we can make it balanced and realistic instead of just balanced why not discuss it to see if it's feasible?