Population growth

[NerZhulen]

I have Issued this allready year ago when playing the 2.0. I hope this time It'll get more attention.

Main income in RTW and especially in RS are taxes. To raise an empire you need two things 1. money and 2. growth.
RTW has a system where you can choose either to have high taxes or high population growth. Raising taxes gives you more money now but causes less money and technology later because of lower population. On the other hand lowering taxes and investing in crop and health makes you poor now but your empire grow for future.
I think remooving this system (as it is in RS) is very bad and makes the game very easy.

In RS the system is remooved by the population growth building. Why?
As rome you start with your cities growth about -0,5 to +0,5%, that is absolutely allright. But instead of lowering taxes, investing to crop production, trade and keeping your citizens healthy, all you need to do is build one extremely cheap and fast made building to solve the whole issue.

First turn you raise taxes to maximum, second turn you build rural controll (500 gold, 1 turn) in all cities, third turn you build pop. growth level one (4000 gold, 1 turn), and 4th turn you have 110 000 tax income with population growth 3%+ in all cities.(Bye Bye any challenge).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

All you need to do after this is ammas army and rape enemy. (with lots of money anything is possible). It is not only my opinion, most hardcore players inhouse rule was no pop. growth buildings.

I suggest that the level 1 growth costs at least 15 000 and takes at least 5 turns to build. I could imagine 25 000 and 7 turns. Level 2 proportionally to level 1 than..
I dont see a reason why the most important building ingame (except barracks) is so cheap and fast.

This building makes land clearance etc. look hillarious.

[Ybbon]

I'm not sure it is possible modify that easily, and no matter how you try to balance, experienced players can always exploit the AI's weaknesses if they really want to. It goes to the old adage that just because you can do something, it doesn't follow that you must do it.

[NerZhulen]

I don't think you are exploiting anything here. And it has nothing to do with the AI. Or you mean the building is there at such cost because of the AI needs it to play the way it does?

[dvk901]

I'm not sure it is possible modify that easily, and no matter how you try to balance, experienced players can always exploit the AI's weaknesses if they really want to. It goes to the old adage that just because you can do something, it doesn't follow that you must do it.

I don't think you are exploiting anything here. And it has nothing to do with the AI. Or you mean the building is there at such cost because of the AI needs it to play the way it does?

Making the game a challenge in RTW has always been a chore, because, as was said, there are so many things you can do to circumvent anything you put in place to make it hard. Afterall, all you have to do is use 'add_money', and you can get around anything we tried to do to make money harder to get. And that requires no turns, and no money. So the system in RS2 was written with a plan in mind based on helping the AI be a better enemy, and the player WANTING a better challenge and behaving like it.

Yes, a number of people have shown the flaws in RS2 by explaining just how they can get around most any problem. But the game isn't meant to be a lesson in how we can exploit the dumb AI or the developers. It is, in essence, playing a fair and
balanced campaign at a level that provides one with a challenge. And truly, only the player as an individual knows what level is a challenge for themselves. RTW is just too easy in general for us to 'program it' into the game.

The taxation and population growth buildings, actually have a dual purpose. First, they offer the player a way to raise taxes at the expense of happines, and they allow the player to increase population growth where it is necessary to do that. In either case, for the player, these buildings were meant to be used out of necessity, not to exploit the system. Secondly, these buildings are for the AI where it struggles with a few 'built-in' problems. The AI tends to 'strip' cities of population, and is too dumb to quit doing it until there's no one left to recruit. This prevents settlement advancement, and tends to hand-cuff the AI. The tax buildings allow the AI to raise taxes without the pop. growth penalty built into the RTW system, and the AI loves the population growth buildings because it can ramp up growth to whatever it can afford. Now, making them very expensive here, is an issue just like the situation with Cavalry......if you make it too expensive, the AI won't build it, and then it becomes useless. It becomes an even greater problem when people play on Huge settings, as unit size doubles but population growth never goes up proportionally.

I'm not saying there isn't a weakness here, it's just that AI concerns and player concerns have to be balanced or there is little challenge at all. I would be willing, however, to increase the amount of time it takes to build the growth buildings.

[NerZhulen]

I see than, well its better to leave it as it is than and simply not buy it...

[tone]

Is it possible to make them slower or more expensive just for the player?

[rory o'kane]

Surely that can be done with faction specific campaigns?

[dvk901]

Unfortunately, no. Even a trait to increase building costs would be too comprehensive in scope. Buildings are very limited as far as what you can do with them.

However, I could increase the number of, or nature of, the buildings that are necessary for the player to build them? I'll give this some thought as to what to do.

[rory o'kane]

surely the ones that curb population growth would then be affected too?

[dvk901]

THAT is the problem. Because the tree is 'integrated', it's sometimes not possible to place restrictions on one side of the tree without messing up the other.