Mid-Late game money : "Empire upkeep"

[Anonter]

In pretty much every campaign money is not a problem, come mid-late game I've been making way over 30,000+ a turn and the campaign instantly becomes boring so I've been thinking of a few ways to counteract this problem.

I thought an "Empire upkeep" could solve this problem if it is at all possible, would be similar in the respect to corruption as it grows with your empire but should be separate.
It makes sense that you would have pay to keep your empire from crumbling, for example paying your workers and paying for the materials to keep buildings maintained ect.

This tied with unit upkeep costs being raised or if that is frowned upon then maybe making units cost more to train initially,
this would make early game more challenging but hopefully would add some much needed depth later in the game.

Any thoughts guys?

[Butan]

Isnt corruption sufficiently high in end-game? Why not add a 2nd individual parameter (if possible) but what would you say if corruption was simply increased or modified to take different parameters into account?
But you're right that we should never have a case where we are winning that much money per turn.

Check this mod out: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=275391114
It increases upkeep of armies in enemy territories and besieging. It could partially solve your problem.

[Dresden]

We increased corruption fairly high in a recent update. Some people found it to be too high for their tastes. We are also looking at altering trade income and some other ideas to make the mid-late game more challenging.

Unfortunately, the only easy mechanic to use for this is corruption. Other changes would have to be at a fundamental level of building gdp bonuses, etc.

[Anonter]

@Butan: I haven't noticed corruption at all really, but I'd be happy for it to be changed or increased as long as I'm not sitting on half a million at 200bc haha. That mod looks like a step in the right direction I'll give it a try cheers mate!

@Dresden: I saw that update it did reduce income quite a bit but I am still making too much, there is literally nothing to spend the money on at this stage of the game so it just keeps piling up. I'm not sure what can and can't be done tbh just trying to throw some ideas around. Buffing trade income could be a good change as that would make trade more important tied with the resources. What other ideas are being considered to combat the mid-late game?

[Ano2]

There really isn't that much the mod can do. Civil wars are supposed to be the mid-late game challenge but CA messed them up. In all honesty I think that the mid-late game is always going to be a walkover as there are no 'borg' style off-map invasions.

[Dresden]

We do want to eventually have scripted events that add some challenges with the mid-late game also.

For now, in 1.0 I will be adjusting various income values to provide more of a challenge in that area. However, a good and experience player will always be able to eventually build up a good economic base and there isn't much I can do about that part.

[Cope]

I actually like the Empire upkeep idea: I made a thread proposing the same thing a few weeks ago.

As Dresden says though, a good player will always be able to find money.

[mephhhh]

uhhh what? corruption is over 100% for me and the only money i make is from trade income. i only make 10k per turn even tho i own a quarter of the map, and i spend it all every turn on buildings and recruitment. my financial situation is kinda tight man, your experiences are much different from mine

[Cope]

uhhh what? corruption is over 100% for me and the only money i make is from trade income. i only make 10k per turn even tho i own a quarter of the map, and i spend it all every turn on buildings and recruitment. my financial situation is kinda tight man, your experiences are much different from mine

A decent tactic is to loot. That'll get you lots of dollar

[spirroouu]

Well a good question to ask would be on what difficulty he plays and what version he runs. I had over 50K income but that was only because I managed to take corruption down to 30% with all techs and a few buffer generals whom I gave corruption reduction. If you play on a lower difficulty it will not be hard to find income as it is not hard to beat enemies, which gives more income ultimately.
You will findd your income to be rather poor once you make an army town, I made one and it takes around 25K to upgrade all my units to level 3 weapons, shields and armor.
Then again I piled up 1.6 million coinzies so that helped.

[zonks40]

I remember a method RS2 used to deal with player treasury blowing out was to cap it, once it hit a certain threshold it would stop building up.
Another method to use could be inflation, the more money in your treasury, the more things cost, for example, for every 10,000 gold in your treasury, there is a 5% increase to the cost of buildings and troops, including upkeep.
You could also have some events that effect the treasury, theft, fire, an act of the gods, we need to remember that all that gold is piled up in a locked room, no banks or credit cards back then.

[Anonter]

I'm using the latest version of the mod, I just don't find corruption limits you properly. As Spirroouu said corruption is counteracted rather easily, the empire upkeep idea would be something that can't be countered with techs, obviously if this idea would be taken forward it would need to be balanced with corruption.

[Cope]

Empire upkeep/inflation are good ideas but the problem is that it's not really something that can be easily modded.

[Butan]

I think the cap idea of zonks is fairly easy to implement.

[scivian]

Two thoughts on Money and Resources for middle-late game which is typically less interesting and fun.

Money: As a general principle for the sake of realism and sustained interest, a player should rarely have enough money to do what they want to do (as opposed to what they need to do).

Resources: The main point of this post is that regardless, money can play little role in building and recruiting if there is not enough resources to do the building and recruiting with. Perhaps adding more limits to resources based on faction size, tech level, faction reach and trade, local supplies and geography, seasons, etc... so that resources such as stone, bronze, people and horses, etc... cannot be produced in such quantities. Essentially put more controls on any resources that can be controlled, through current modding capability.

[Litharion]

I like the idea of a script based empire upkeep

[Cavalier]

I tend to reduce my taxation levels once I hit around 7000-8000 denarii per turn. The taxes will usually drop to 2000-4000.

[GatoVolador]

One of the reasons of this happening could be the time it takes to build things in DeI. In vanilla only really advanced buildings needed 10 turns or more, in DeI 10 turns is needed even for a lvl 3 temple. Now this is not a critique! But I think the natural outcome of this (and I see it fairly early on my campaigns) is that you often cannot build because buildings are upgrading. So you sit like 5 or 6 turns on your gold while it stockpiles, having "only" your army depleting it. I often find myself on turn 20-40 with +30.000 gold, which is huge at this stage, with an income of 2.500-3.000 per turn, which is pretty low.
I remember a vanilla caimpaign with parthia where I was seriously counting every bit of money to build what I needed most, waaaay up to my 120th turn or so.
Again, no critique to DeI (best mod ever... tied with stainless steel xD), I just think this is part of what generates the high treasury issue.

[Butan]

A few days after I read that thread, in my 100+ turn campaign I hit +6000 denarii per turn on below average taxe and only 4 settlements (1 capital provice + 1 full region on bread & games (2 villages+1 city)) with only one tax general and +40% slave bonus and 2 dignitaries lvl4 and lvl5.
Thats with 2 full stack too!

Corruption/upkeep could pack a harder punch indeed! Or maybe nerf a bit all the little tax bonus from technologies/agents/generals etc?

[Cope]

A few days after I read that thread, in my 100+ turn campaign I hit +6000 denarii per turn on below average taxe and only 4 settlements (1 capital provice + 1 full region on bread & games (2 villages+1 city)) with only one tax general and +40% slave bonus and 2 dignitaries lvl4 and lvl5.
Thats with 2 full stack too!

Corruption/upkeep could pack a harder punch indeed! Or maybe nerf a bit all the little tax bonus from technologies/agents/generals etc?

Nerfing tech bonuses would help in the late game.