Balancing the economy

[The Sloth]

Since the changes that come with RS2 also affect building rosters, traits and other gameplay elements associated with income, infrastructure etc, we will have to see how all these changes can be included without hurting the game. So I'll open this thread, since we'll need it sooner rather than later anyway. Everything about money, population growth, public order and related topics goes here.

I'll just go ahead and start with some things I noticed:

- The AI seems a bit too fond of the new taxation buildings. I see this as a sign that it's a bit too powerful as it is. Maybe a slight reduction of benefits, increase of happiness penalty, and addition of a population growth penalty for the lower levels would be in order?

- The same is true for the population growth initiatives. These buildings are a bit of a no-brainer, especially now that natural pop. growth has been severely reduced. I'd suggest to give these buildings a penalty in taxable income, since people are usually convinced to settle somewhere with a variety of benefits, like free land or lower taxes.

- There have been questions about bonuses that aren't properly shown, especially concerning the law enforcement buildings, where the description of the highest levels only show a 5% law bonus (basicaly the same as the lowest level), although in fact, the bonuses correctly increase. Is there any way to fix that, because when RS2 is released, we're likely to get hundreds of threads pointing that out.

- We have had a bit of inflation going on, due to factions getting more money (+250% on taxable income through the right 'economical and cultural base', I believe?), and unit costs being raised to counteract this. While the idea is good, since it will provide for a huge dent in your finances when you expand outside of your ECB (new unofficial abrevation for 'economical and cultural base' ), it only works for cultures with a small ECB, like Egypt, Carthage, or eastern factions. Cultures with lots of ECBs, namely the greek and barbarian factions, can expand very far and become stupidly rich, resulting in the problem with superfactions we've had in earlier versions of the beta, especially Macedon and the Belgae.
What I'd suggest to counter this is to expand the use of the treasury buildings. I mean, face it: the 5-20k money you get by conquering a treasury are nothing. Instead, how about giving a really huge tax bonus to the treasury, significantly reduce the bonuses from ECBs, and maybe reducing unit costs. That way, factions with a difficult start, like Sparta or the Boii, would have it easier, while the bonuses you get from having a huge empire are further reduced, even with the correct ECBs. It will also mean more trouble for factions that loose their treasury.

- Another thing about ECBs: Did it happen to anyone else that you conquer some insignificant village in Spain with, like, 400 inhabitants, and it was near impossible to hold on to that village, because these 400 villagers kept rebelling against the 3000 soldiers you have stationed in it? I don't really think this makes any sense, and the penalties to public order you get through an ECB of another culture have made things considerably worse. So how about this: ECBs give different bonuses, according to the level of core building (governor's villa/palace...) present in the settlement. If the core building is lvl 1, it's reasonable to assume that nobody is there to rebel against you, resulting in no order penalties, maybe even a small bonus. Instead, you'd have huge penalties on income and population growth. Reversely, in huge cities, you might even get income bonuses, since you're taxing the heck out of your vassals, but the people will think: 'Now wait a sec, we're quite wealthy and powerful ourselves, so why are we playing along with those f**ing foreigners?', resulting in unrest and low public order.
Firstly, this means that you will have a problem with unrest, but since it only occurs in bigger cities, you can actually deal with it, because you can build all the nice stuff to keep the populace happy.
It also means you will have a problem with money, since you'll be busy building expensive stuff with +law, health and happiness, instead with +trade or tax, or your cities will rebel. In fact, it might even mean that people may voluntarily choose not to upgrade some cities, in order to avoid the huge unrest issues. I think it could be interesting to force players to think about whether they can max out every city and turn it into a copy of their capital... and whether they should.

[chaney]

Wow, I must say those are some nice ideas , I also found at times it was also quite difficult to hold onto a low populated settlement (The Gallacei trying to hold onto Baikor after driving the Carthaginians out) So I agree with the last point about implementing various bonuses and/or penalties

[dvk901]

Since the changes that come with RS2 also affect building rosters, traits and other gameplay elements associated with income, infrastructure etc, we will have to see how all these changes can be included without hurting the game. So I'll open this thread, since we'll need it sooner rather than later anyway. Everything about money, population growth, public order and related topics goes here.

I'll just go ahead and start with some things I noticed:

- The AI seems a bit too fond of the new taxation buildings. I see this as a sign that it's a bit too powerful as it is. Maybe a slight reduction of benefits, increase of happiness penalty, and addition of a population growth penalty for the lower levels would be in order?

EDIT- DVK: I have done so....lowered the benefits slightly, increased the happiness penalty, and placed a population growth penalty in the lower levels.

- The same is true for the population growth initiatives. These buildings are a bit of a no-brainer, especially now that natural pop. growth has been severely reduced. I'd suggest to give these buildings a penalty in taxable income, since people are usually convinced to settle somewhere with a variety of benefits, like free land or lower taxes.

EDIT - DVK: Again...good thoughts. I have implemented a taxable income penalty that increases as you try to increase population growth, and in the inverse, a small tax income bonus for reducing population.

- There have been questions about bonuses that aren't properly shown, especially concerning the law enforcement buildings, where the description of the highest levels only show a 5% law bonus (basicaly the same as the lowest level), although in fact, the bonuses correctly increase. Is there any way to fix that, because when RS2 is released, we're likely to get hundreds of threads pointing that out.

EDIT: DVK: Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing I can do about this. A LOT of stuff shows (and will show) in buildings regarding bonuses and penalties that were really never intentded to be used in RTW the way I'm using them. There will be bonuses linked to the presence (or lack thereof) of buildings and resources, bonuses that will ONLY apply if a resource is present, but another bonus will apply regardless, and a number of combinations of bonuses and penalties that RTW stupidly reports even though they don't apply to the city they are in. I am, however, trying to keep the brunt of these in buildings that are 'static' (present at game start), and wherever possible trying to minimize their implact on misunderstanding. But, we'll probably have to be better at documentation for RS2 than we were for RS1.5 in terms of explaining some of this.

- We have had a bit of inflation going on, due to factions getting more money (+250% on taxable income through the right 'economical and cultural base', I believe?), and unit costs being raised to counteract this. While the idea is good, since it will provide for a huge dent in your finances when you expand outside of your ECB (new unofficial abrevation for 'economical and cultural base' ), it only works for cultures with a small ECB, like Egypt, Carthage, or eastern factions. Cultures with lots of ECBs, namely the greek and barbarian factions, can expand very far and become stupidly rich, resulting in the problem with superfactions we've had in earlier versions of the beta, especially Macedon and the Belgae.
What I'd suggest to counter this is to expand the use of the treasury buildings. I mean, face it: the 5-20k money you get by conquering a treasury are nothing. Instead, how about giving a really huge tax bonus to the treasury, significantly reduce the bonuses from ECBs, and maybe reducing unit costs. That way, factions with a difficult start, like Sparta or the Boii, would have it easier, while the bonuses you get from having a huge empire are further reduced, even with the correct ECBs. It will also mean more trouble for factions that loose their treasury.

EDIT - DVK: Apparently, great minds think alike. I became keenly aware of this issue after watching several AI campaigns progress....factions with a very large culturual 'base' were doing very well....those with a small one were doing NOT so well. It led to a decided imbalance in income and faction performance. So I have made a ton of changes to this already, and moved most or all of the income bonuses to, believe it or not..the Treasuries! A factional treasury now takes on a critical importance, as that capital city will provide a goodly part of the faction's income. It was, I think, a much better way to make factional homelands very strong and 'regional'...and will ultimately make expansion more difficult because there will be far fewer big benefits to expanding. My intention is to make it harder...and make the player work harder for money as his\her territory grows. So for example, in building a 'market', you still get the standard trade income bonuses in you homelands....but in all other areas you get only a small tax income bonus. The difference being that of a 10% trade BASE income bonus as opposed to a 5% taxable income bonus. The trade base bonus is decidedly larger because it expands the overall base economy of land and sea by 10%....the taxable income bonus is much less because it just gives you 5% of what is already there. So I'm working on refining this.....

- Another thing about ECBs: Did it happen to anyone else that you conquer some insignificant village in Spain with, like, 400 inhabitants, and it was near impossible to hold on to that village, because these 400 villagers kept rebelling against the 3000 soldiers you have stationed in it? I don't really think this makes any sense, and the penalties to public order you get through an ECB of another culture have made things considerably worse. So how about this: ECBs give different bonuses, according to the level of core building (governor's villa/palace...) present in the settlement. If the core building is lvl 1, it's reasonable to assume that nobody is there to rebel against you, resulting in no order penalties, maybe even a small bonus. Instead, you'd have huge penalties on income and population growth. Reversely, in huge cities, you might even get income bonuses, since you're taxing the heck out of your vassals, but the people will think: 'Now wait a sec, we're quite wealthy and powerful ourselves, so why are we playing along with those f**ing foreigners?', resulting in unrest and low public order.
Firstly, this means that you will have a problem with unrest, but since it only occurs in bigger cities, you can actually deal with it, because you can build all the nice stuff to keep the populace happy.
It also means you will have a problem with money, since you'll be busy building expensive stuff with +law, health and happiness, instead with +trade or tax, or your cities will rebel. In fact, it might even mean that people may voluntarily choose not to upgrade some cities, in order to avoid the huge unrest issues. I think it could be interesting to force players to think about whether they can max out every city and turn it into a copy of their capital... and whether they should.

This last issue is a very good point as well.....I had never thought about it in exactly the way you present it. And, it is a doable change.....it'll take a bunch of coding, but it shouldn't be a problem. It certainly makes sense that a 'city' would have the means and\or 'will' to be rebellious far quicker than a small town with a handful of people. And I agree that a recently captured city or above should much harder to control than a 'town'. Thanks for the input, and keep it up.

[The Sloth]

Alright, glad you like these suggestions, dvk. Here are some more thoughts:

- Just as the population growth initiatives needed a nerf, I think the suburbs need a buff, and a huge one. In RS 1,5, population growth wasn't an issue, since there was no population growth, but rather +farming, +health etc. In RS2, now that 'natural' growth has been cut down significantly and that we pay attention to integrate more +pop. growth bonuses, the suburbs have a real drawback. Therefore, they need to have bonuses that more than outweigh this, or there is no point in building them.

- I've been thinking whether it might be a good idea to have all settlements on the map start with at least a governor's villa (lvl 2 core building), or in other words, as large towns. This might help a bit with the current depopulation issue, when the AI recruits troops until there are no more inhabitants. Large towns can build far more buildings that increase pop. growth, so that the population will recover sooner, and other buildings to build until the town grows again. Although this will hardly eliminate depopulation, only slightly reduce its effects.

- Now that we/dvk have decided to make treasuries more important, I realized this could mean some trouble for Rome, as Hannibal loves to take Rome early on. Right now, the romans ultimately kick him out again, but when a factions income in the early game largely depends on the treasury, and Hannibal is sitting on the roman one, we'll have to see whether they can recover from that.

- Dvk, once you include the new medical buildings, please change all health bonuses of the water supply buildings into +pop. growth bonuses, maybe with a small additional health bonus for the top levels. The medial buildings are intended to be the main health-bringers, and the ensuing pop. growth increase will further help the porpose of the suburbs.

- This one is not directly related to economy, but I'll post it here anyway. How about we take away the Free Greek's ships? That way, they might behave more the way they are supposed to, namely stay where they are and stubbornly defending their cities. This will, however, mean a couple of things: Right now, the FG ship all troops they can find to Greece, in order to protect their holdings there. So they delay Macedon's ambintions to become a superfaction (good thing), and prevent the smallest faction on the game,Sparta, from expanding (bad thing). Without ships, they are likely to succumb much earlier to the combined efforts of Macedon and Sparta. And without ships, the free greeks of Syracuse are likely to attack the roman settlements on Sicily much earlier. That would probably be more historical, but the AI might not be able to handle it, because right now, by the time Syracuse attacks, Rome has already taken care of Hannibal. Facing both at once might be challenging for the player, but a bit much for the AI.

- Back to my favourite subject, the ECBs (economical and cultural base). For some reason, I went and counted the different ECBs, as they are currently in the game. Here's the result, from biggest to smallest:

Greek ECB 58 settlements
Barbarian ECB 54 settlements
Eastern ECB 21 settlements
Nomadic ECB 16 settlements
Carthaginian ECB 12 settlements
Egyptian ECB 10 settlements
Germanic ECB 10 settlements
Armenian ECB 9 settlements
Roman ECB 8 settlements

Not that I don't love to see the romans at the bottom of that list, but it still makes me think a little. Even though we have tried to make a more 'neutral' mod, as opposed to RS 1,5, many players will still play the mod in order to recreate the roman empire. So we'll have to ensure this will be hard, but at least possible, despite the small economical base they have.

[dvk901]

Based on your previous thoughts, a lot of reading about the meanings of various bonuses, and on-going testing....a lot has changed in the upcoming update. The 'ECB's', as you call them, now deal mostly with a nominal happiness bonus FOR factions of a similiar culture, but more specifically with penalties for NOT having various buildings (in the form of a tax penalty), and some unhappiness based on the various levels of the settlement. The higher the level, the more likely the unhappy feeling of the people. As you suggested (which made perfect sense), a small town\large_town with no one in it should hardly be a revolt threat. So there is no longer a penalty unless it's a city or above.

The ECB's no longer provide any income benefit. Instead, with the sole exception of the Romans (and for the very reason you mentioned above) factional capitals play a big part in economic matters. They provide a hefty income bonus based on taxes, and capitals will now be the cities that make most of your money. The Belgae, for reasons of their precarious spanning of the continent and the British Isles, have a 'treasury' both in Belgica and on the island region they own....with their bonus split between them. I figure this way, if they lose their mainland holdings, they can still prosper on the Isles. The Seleucids, likewise, have two treasuries, Syria and Susiana between which their bonus is split. It makes the 'heartland' of the Seleucid Empire very important as it was historically.

Because, as you mentioned, the Romans often seem to lose Rome, I didn't do this with them. Their 'economic health' is spread over the regions of Italy proper and Sicily.

From this base, I have drastically altered some things which I hope will make more sense than the old RTW way...and work better than it did in RS1.5. For one thing, I learned\realised that 'trade_bonuses' involve a flat percentage of increase of either land or sea or both overall 'bases'. Therefore, a trade_base_income_bonus bonus of '1' is a 10 percent increase of the overall level or base of all trade. A bonus of '5' is a 50% increase. This a phenominal amount of increase which, piled on top of tax bonuses, can result in a ton of money flowing in. I think this is the culprit in late campaign 'money-glut', and negatives in this trade bonus don't appear to work. So I have used them only sparingly, and more specifically for a faction's 'homelands' (and not necessarily their ECB).

Instead, I've used a 'taxable_income_bonus bonus' far more widely...the reason being it is much more 'controllable'. A bonus of '1' here is 1%...a bonus of 50 is 50%.....and this is a tax on the existing economic base rather than an increase of the economic base itself. So if I build a 'trader' or 'market' in my homelands, I get a trade base bonus and expansion of the economic base. But if I build one outside my homelands, I get a 5% tax bonus, or 10% tax on 'what exists' economically. The logic here is that as you conquer new areas, you're not going to be expanding the economic base of everything exponentially...rather, just taking control of it and taxing it.

As far as the levels of settlements. I tend to agree with you. Since each settlement in any given region really represents the 'major' settlement in that region, it's far more likely it would be a bigger settlement. But I know there are people on the team who would object because of the 'I like to build my empire' thing...which is valid. I'm thinking, however, I have the population growth bonuses the wrong way in the 'settlements' part of that tree. The largest bonus is in the last building...it should be the other way around...I just changed it. The largest bonus is now in the FIRST building, the smallest in the last.

I have to say, however, that the 'suburbs\settlement' combo building tree was put into RS1.5 for a couple reasons. First, to give the AI a way to increase population (it's the only one of the buildings it ever builds). Secondly, to give the PLAYER a wat to reduce population growth. Most often, pop. growth is the driving force behind rebellion and unhappy cities....but in RTW there was no way to deal with this other than exterminate them all. So I wanted a building tree that would give the player a way to reduce pop. It didn't work very well in RS1.5 because the bonuses were wrong (a happiness bonus increases population, so coupling it with a pop. reduction bonus is counterproductive), AND, because the farming level in all settlements was ridiculously high in most regions, and ludicrously high in others. I could never figure out why Bosporan was reproducing like rabbits in RS1.5.....until I realized they had a farming level of 14 or something. With the farming level set that high, there is no way to reduce pop. growth at all except to that level. So it remained high no matter what.

Cutting the farming levels down in RS2 now gives us the opportunity to reduce pop. growth 'if the player wants to'. Maybe he\she never will, but the building is there to provide a means to do this if necessary. And you can (as the player) destroy the building and reverse your choice if you want. I don't care about the AI...I want them to grow.

I don't have the 'medical' tree in yet....but I'll work on that.

[The Sloth]

I don't think I understood everything of what you wrote, but as long as you do, it'll be fine.

Just some points: I'm confident that negative trade works as intended. I remember when playing RS 1,5, I read the description of the grain import building, and thought '+20 health and an increase in tradeable goods? Now that's imba!'. Then I opened the settlement details, and added the grain import to the construction queue, to see how many trade would be added. But instead, some trade disappeared. So it looks like another RTW glitch we get when we're using things in a way they're not meant to: trade penalties are listed as bonuses in the building description scroll.

As for the settlement size and 'I want to build my empire up'. I didn't mean to improve the infrastructure of all settlements, only the core building. Building a governor's villa takes how long? 3 turns? When you consider the amount of new buildings, that's nothing, really.

About the suburbs, the idea behind them was great in RS 1,5, because population growth was an issue, like you said. But it's not in RS2 anymore. RS2 was the first time I was happy to have that annoying grain resource in one of my cities. Population growth in RS2 is lower than ever, and thus more important than ever. So a building that only reduces population growth is basically a building with nothing but disadvantages, and noone will build it (as you said, we don't even need to talk about the AI here). That's why there need to be other bonuses to make up for it, and lots of them.

[Empedocles]

After applying update 5 in a game with the romans I found that it was a money fest for me. On turn 541 AUC I found myself with 61000 denarii to spend! isn't this too much?

regards

[apple]

RS 2 is made so that you have allot money as long as you stay at your home regions. As soon as you go out and conquer the surrounding regions your economy will be strained.

[tone]

Also if you're playing as Rome you need to use the Rome mod foldered version. Read this thread for an explanation: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=278225

Basically this make things harder if you play as Rome. In order to do his simply, just create an extra shortcut icon with this added to the target line: -mod:play_rome

Basically what this does is to use some unit stat and economy files that are tailored to playing as Rome and increases the challenge. Certainly playing using this myself I found that I was getting about 15-19000 per turn and needing to use it all. Furthermore, as you expand you should see your economy slow down considerably.

[Calvin]

I'm only getting 6-7000 per turn after taking two settlements and fielding one and a half legions. I'm not finding it anywhere near enough to fund building projects as well as re-equipping legions after large battles.

Very tough. Very great. Managed to defend Dyrrachium (sp?) but then the miserable inhabitants rebelled due to the massively reduced garrison. The 2nd legion landed and took Apollonia, but the razing of Dyrrachium must wait until a garrison arrives to relieve the 2nd. The 1st is still re-equipping after being badly mauled by Hannibal. I think ALL of my cities populations reached the next level within 5 turns making it nigh impossible to keep up with the building while also funding the wars against Carthage and Macedon.

[Legionary Titus Pullo]

so what have you done , made the upkeep increase in enemy territory? or is it based on distance from rome?

[dvk901]

The economy is based on 'homeland' or cultural areas of influence. You make a good deal of money where you start. Your capital cities are very profitable. But as you expand beyond your starting territories, or what would be considered your cultural 'home', money tends to trickle in much slower.

[tone]

I noticed that the income isn't that good in the Belgae capital - at least not when the AI is playing them.

[dvk901]

The Belgae income is split between their capital on the mainland and the city in Briton....in the event they lose the mainland holdings.

[tone]

Oh, OK, that makes sense.

I have a feeling that the Gallaeci economy is somewhat overpowered which is probably why they're frequently dominating Western Europe....at 564AUC with 2/3 of the Iberian peninsula conquered their cash is at 482,810 denarii.

[dvk901]

Ok. They do have a lot of mine income, so I nerfed them a bit.

[tone]

575AUC and the Gallaeci own most of Spain and have 706,509 denarii, so nerfing will be good!

[swhunter]

Did you guys see the economy on the Free peoples ( Greek)
and also Mace? They are low. Not many stack troops as before.

[Legionary Titus Pullo]

i found the belgea treasury buildings one with a 750% bonus and one with a 650% bonus to economy, if i conquer these settlements will i then get the same bonus or is it a faction specific bonus ?

sorry . something wrong with this work pc

[apple]

Yes it's intentional. The Belgae have a splitt economic center so that they could survie if there main land settlements are being conquered.