non linear construction site effectiveness

llaar

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Jun 21st 2010, 17:20:52

here's a country of mine (no CS % diff from gov't):

Except for Construction Sites, you can build 267 buildings per turn.

Construction Site 1,050

Turns Taken 1947

more than half my turns on that one, have been to make CS

should CS be linear even when you have so many? the additional benefit of spending more turns is less and less worth it as you make more CS

something like after every 200 CS, you get an additional BPT for every additional 4CS, so like 200 is 50 BPT + starting 5 = 55. 204 would be 57. 208 would be 59, so 400 CS would be 155 BPT, 600 CS would be 305 BPT, 800 CS would be 505 BPT and 1000 CS would be 755 BPT

it feels if you spent like 1000 turns making CS, something like 700-1000 BPT would be expected.. since its a huge cost turnwise to make that many.

it could be an even shorter than 200 CS until each addition CS starts doing more for you, in my opinion

we all spend like 1/3rd of our turns the first week or two building only CS. and really now... isn't that rather boring? wouldn't it be more fun to get those BPT goals faster and then be able to do other things with your turns?

Forgotten1

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Jun 21st 2010, 17:41:23

Non game breaking, nothing exactly to gain by warmongers, probably a very extreme case of TMBR maybe able to gain a little more benefit, but that might require a really high BPT.

It's interesting indeed. Maybe have CSes also lower building costs per acre?

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llaar

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Jun 21st 2010, 17:54:11

the cost of making the 1 CS isnt really significant as compared to the cost of making a full turn of buildings of what you can build per turn

RaTS FYA

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Jun 23rd 2010, 23:30:42

I say they make this change the second they take out ghost acres. Keeping the 2 together would just be a retarded waste of time for everyone.

<~qzjul> it gives you a good introduction to orbital mechanics and a good appreciation for how central delta-V is and thrust to weight ratio
<RaTSFYA>The only thrust to weight ratio I'm worried about involves the women I pick up at bars

qzjul

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Jun 24th 2010, 15:20:49

ghost acres are the only way to sustain grabbing in alliance when we've made it much more difficult to run a landfarm; alliances can actually attack each other for land now, though it's still not done so much

Finally did the signature thing.

qzjul

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Jun 24th 2010, 15:21:04

oh, and i think this is an interesting idea for sure

Finally did the signature thing.

Detmer

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Jun 24th 2010, 16:28:43

I definitely like CS lowering building cost.

Maybe change BPT formula to (CS/4+5)*(1+CS/land)*GovtMod

Basically your percentage of CS as land helps determine their effectiveness. If you had zero CS your BPT would be 5 and if your land was entirely CS your BPT would be doubled. Of course that isn't as helpful for large CS numbers as llaar's piecewise linear suggestion since as you get a lot of land, a lot of CS is again a lower percntage, but it would still increase BPT. I do think that we spend a lot of turns building CS, particularly at the beginning of the game which is in some ways good as a means of raising cash and pondering what is efficient turn usage, but also harmful in that the better you are the more you realize the value of CS relative to a new player.

Edited By: Detmer on Jun 24th 2010, 16:29:33

Detmer

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Jun 24th 2010, 16:28:58

Something needs to be done help me stop quoting myself

Edited By: Detmer on Jun 24th 2010, 16:29:19

Forgotten1

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Jun 24th 2010, 17:06:51

adding a bit here that can be related.

a production % in buildings just like readiness.

% effects everything. it lowers when you get attacked, but lowers even more if you declare war, and attacks repeatedly with SS/PS.

moo

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BobbyATA

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Jun 24th 2010, 20:27:10

just b/c you spent half your turns doing something doesn't mean you should see a benefit from it if what you spent your turns doing was stupid (for example building 1000 CS). Is the purpose of this change to maek it so that in any situation in the game any potential action with a turn is equally beneficial to your country. If so...well thats incredibly dumb. If not, what am I missing?

Detmer

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Jun 24th 2010, 21:31:27

Originally posted by BobbyATA:

I think his 1000 CS example is for FFA. In alliance the current BPT structure may not be as great as it could, however it is very functional.

llaar

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Jun 24th 2010, 21:33:55

just a way to limit spending like sooo many of your turns every single reset on BPT

so you could get to BPT goals faster and focus on other things

making CS isn't really all that exciting lol

BobbyATA

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Jun 24th 2010, 22:37:20

You have spent 1000 turns building CS and are sad that it hasn't benefited you more. So you want CS to be more effective so that you can build 1000 CS and it'll be more beneficial. And then at the same time you say that building CS is boring and so we should make it so that you dont' have to build lots of CS. Uhm?

ICe Man

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Jun 25th 2010, 14:32:59

He has some massive countries in FFA, bobby.

It means somethign there.

Thank God, for I'm a blessed man.

BobbyATA

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Jun 25th 2010, 15:04:06

ohhhhh I finally understand what he's saying. Sorry!

llaar

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Jun 25th 2010, 15:22:50

i made so many CS there cause i land traded with myself, and couldnt afford to do anything else, so i made CS while waiting for enough production to have money to make buildings. it was taking 4-5 turns (while making CS) for enough money to make 1 turn of buildings for a while. since i wasnt half built, i couldnt even explore, and CS > cashing turns ;) so theres that explanation... lol

glad you see what i was saying though. the point isnt that im sad about my 1000 CS not doing more, just it got me thinking about how many CS i build every set in every server.

qzjul

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Jun 25th 2010, 15:33:04

mhmm

definitely something to consider here

Finally did the signature thing.

enshula

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Jun 25th 2010, 16:10:00

im not sure

having csites so expensive really forces you to choose a landgoal at the beginning of the set

so in the countries llaars talking about hes doing circle self farming at something like 50k acres

building csites with extra turns early on to keep down building costs or when dr kicks in and its not worth hitting more

there wouldnt really be a lot of gain doing something else with the turns since there is nothing else really to do

in express for example, an 1800 turn set a all explorer could do something like 70bpt for max land but dropper the bpt can increase max production, thats about 15% of turns

llaars at about 25% because his landgoal is so high

i remember i used to get up to 200bpt when playing 40k farmers in alliance because the cashing income boost wasnt a big deal so increasing it incase of being AB'd wasnt a bad idea

i think it would be ok to have bpt effectiveness scale a bit at higher acreages though, and perhaps simpler conceptually

bpt = (csite/4+5)*(1+land/20000)*govmod

for example would make it so there was less need to pick a land goal before playing

llaar

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Jun 25th 2010, 16:59:34

oh nifty little formula there, i kinda like that

Detmer

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:00:26

Originally posted by llaar:

oh nifty little formula there, i kinda like that

The problem with it is that it arbitrarily makes CS more effective just because you have more land.... doesn't make a lot of sense to me =P

llaar

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:03:41

also true... lol

enshula

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:16:02

you dont need as much bpt with lower land though

unless your talking about rebuilding a lot, via gov switches, ab/br damage or land trading

and one of the big factors with bpt is if you dont get as much land you waste turns, if you get too much land you waste turns, this could minimise both of those factors

the other way i would go though is:

=(csites/4+5)^power*govmod

potentially even combining both ideas

anyway depending on what you wanted to achieve id suggest 1.1 to 1.2 for the power

perhaps 1.1 with a 40k land mod as well

Edited By: enshula on Jun 25th 2010, 17:17:30
See Original Post

qzjul

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:16:47

contruction tech

Finally did the signature thing.

enshula

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:21:58

would construction tech do something else as well like reduce building costs or reduce buildings that get destroyed by AB BR and chems?

anyway why not combine all 3, a small ^ added to the formula, a land mod, and a construction tech

Detmer

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:25:09

qz, people have suggested it before, I think a lot of people feel like there is a lot of tech already. I'd personally rather fix other things with new techs than BPT which I feel we can come up with alternatives to.

And in your formula enshula, I want to clarify you intend to apply the exponent before the multiplication with govmod?

I don't think that it is a huge deal if people aren't maximally efficient building CS... like part of what makes this a game is that it is in someways unpredictable. Clearly people need to build a lot of CS if they want to build a lot of land, however maybe having to build a lot of CS is good for the game? It might temper landgrabbing from those who want astronomical land totals and achieve it by farming. I guess that is something we have to live with since building in a boring speed bump to potentailly protect some newbs doesn't seem worth it

Forgotten1

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:27:24

Techers are so strong right now in the game, maybe introducing a few new techs would help curb it.

Construction Tech
Oil Tech (LONG OVER DUE)
Fix Medical Tech

Forgotten
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Detmer

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:32:26

Originally posted by Forgotten:

Techers are so strong right now in the game, maybe introducing a few new techs would help curb it.

Construction Tech
Oil Tech (LONG OVER DUE)
Fix Medical Tech

I feel like adding more techs will just potentially add to late game power by keeping people buying tech longer. This is of course market driven and techer is so strong because not enough people play it relative to the demand, so prices stay high. I feel that if more techs were added that would require increasing tech production. Flooding the market with tech is the way to knock prices down.

enshula

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:33:57

the advantage of having the gov mod last is it keeps the govs relative bpt's the same

so theo is 40% more and dict is 40% or whatever it is less

otherwise those gaps would get larger, which is ok but i think would be a little counterintuitive

but keep in mind the natural consquence of less turns needed to build csites is making techers stronger/faster and able to go for higher acreages

since currently losing 260 or 380 turns from the reset hurts techer more than it hurts other strats

im not sure of the effect it would have on tech starts, perhaps increase the optimal acreage

Detmer

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:37:07

order is not as important as parentheses in figuring out what is going on there =P I figured out what you mean though.

I think randomly throwing an exponential in doesn't really do anything other than abjectly increase BPT... we could make the formula BPT=CS/3+8 if we wanted to just make things bigger faster.

enshula

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:41:02

oil tech can make oiler a bit better by forcing fascisms to specialise but would increase volatility and decrease general oil use costs

since it turns a strat which doesnt need tech into one which does it definately wont drive down tech prices

the only ways i can think of to force a decrease in tech prices is increase tech effectiveness or decrease the maximum tech can be sold for

or of course just generally make tech useless

Forgotten1

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:41:13

introducing construction tech means lowering theo bonus (which then scales as they get construction tech)

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qzjul

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:43:50

yea more tech is probably not a good idea; just throwing it out there ;)

Finally did the signature thing.

enshula

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:45:36

what it does is make the bpt scale like llaar said he wanted, without having to worry about bonus bpt at certain csite counts

and allows late game bpt to be high while keeping interisting early game decisions of how much to increase production and income early against using the minimum turns similar to how it is currently

Detmer

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Jun 25th 2010, 17:54:13

So maybe the problem to all this isn't as much the BPT issue as it is the cost of a building issue? It seems like llaar has to build so many CS to afford one BPT

Maybe

BPT = (CS/4+5)*(1+CS/land)*GovtMod
Building_Cost = (1500+3*acres)*MAX(.2,(1-10*CS/land))

This would have a huge impact on start ups and would make buildings more affordable as you got to large acres.

llaar

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Jun 25th 2010, 19:02:06

not really sure why buildings would cost more when you have more land really...

http://img375.imageshack.us/.../8267/6millacresbuild.jpg

one building on a restart costs $1,800 right... whereas on that country in the screenshot, one single building, costs $18,014,400 and it doesn't do anything different than one built for $1,800

Detmer

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Jun 25th 2010, 19:06:13

Originally posted by llaar:

You actually just inspired me llaar!

The reason buildings would cost more is because property values have gone up! In a wide-expansive waste, I bet property values are pretty low... so...

1500+3*buildings

Screw CS altogether.

qzjul

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Jun 25th 2010, 19:08:37

hm maybe we should make it

Building_Cost = (1500+3*EMPTY_LAND)*MAX(.2,(1-10*CS/EMPTY_LAND))

Edited By: qzjul on Jun 25th 2010, 19:09:25
See Original Post

Finally did the signature thing.

llaar

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Jun 25th 2010, 19:15:45

ah, so the more built your land is, the lower your costs?

interesting idea

RaTS FYA

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Jun 26th 2010, 3:48:18

if cs's become stronger the more that are built, then their expenses should be raised to meet that. So instead of it costing 1 building, it should cost 10x that, or have the same cost as building one turn worth of buildings.

I don't see how changing something that really only helps self farmers is a positive change to the game at all.

enshula

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Jun 26th 2010, 4:10:03

i think conceptually if you make building cost scale up as more land gets built rather than down it makes more sense, space runs out, and it becomes cheaper to rebuild from damage

the opposite way just means you will want to stop to build constantly, and smaller grabs may be better than larger ones

the one thing it would do is stop people land trading as much with unbuilt countries, particularly when its ladder farming with no rebuilding:

d gets farmed by c gets farmed by b gets farmed by a then a builds

enshula

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Jun 26th 2010, 4:19:00

it would also make full country rebuilds extremely cheap if you tore down 1 turns bpt each turn then rebuilt it, and extremely expensive if you tore down everything at once

anyway to put it in a spreadsheet:

=MAX(.2;(1-10*CS/EMPTY_LAND))

change the comma to a semi colon

then what you get is a formula where for every 1k acres you have unbuilt, your building cost is reduced by 80% if you have 80 csites

400 csites needed if you have 5k unbuilt and so on

=(1500+3*EMPTY_LAND)

And for the first part your building cost would be 4500 if you had 1k acres unbuilt

1k = 4500
2k = 7500
3k = 10500

and so on

So at the right csites count 1k acres would only ever cost 900 each to build or 900k cash. Which just doesn't sound great to me.

Edited By: enshula on Jun 26th 2010, 4:21:26. Reason: rebuilding 1 turn
See Original Post

enshula

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Jun 26th 2010, 4:25:33

then if you got AB'd not only would your unbuilt go up but your csites would go down, a 50% ab'd 20k theo techer that had 268 csites

would wind up with 10k unbuilt and 138 csites

31500 * 0.862 = 27153 * 10000 = 271m

which is still a lot less than 615m which it would cost now, and would be roughly what it would cost if you got ab'd to 0 acres built (less since you would build some csites first)

Detmer

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Jun 26th 2010, 14:26:54

Originally posted by Detmer:

Originally posted by llaar:

I haven't seen any direct responses to this and I feel like it is the best solution thus far. Anything that others dislike about it?

enshula

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Jun 26th 2010, 18:20:49

its similar to a formula where costs decrease as unbuilt land decreases

but the advantage is if you are flattened into a parking lot rebuilding is cheaper, more inline with your income

that does make a strange situation where depending on building types it may be better to demolish all your buildings then rebuild

or for a ttr converting to tmbr perhaps you would demolish all land then rebuild only say 30%

also if you build 120 turns at once do you get building cost at the minimum?

so 120 turns at 200 bpt could be 24k acres built for about 100m cash?

this could create a suggestion where very high bpts give very cheap full acre rebuilds

perhaps allowing for more quick late set tech phases?

also would be easy to switch from strat to strat as prices change

Detmer

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Jun 27th 2010, 16:23:57

true, it certainly seems very useable... is that exploitation or using a viable mechanic, I guess it depends on if people think that is reasonable. I don't really have a problem with any of the ideas you suggested

llaar

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Jun 30th 2010, 17:47:57

FFA server, heres some numbers from a decent acre size, completely unbuilt country

Each farm produces 5.3 bushels per turn, which at 200% tech is 10.6 bushels/turn.

21 days left in the set * 78 turns/day * 10.6 bushels/turn = 17362 bushels rest of set from 1 farm * $32 = $555,584

Each building consumes one acre of free land and costs $660,000 to build. (rounded so no ingame actual data)

Net Change 64,000 bushels (rounded so no ingame actual data)

so i can afford to build 4 buildings a turn, but each building costs more than it will produce for the rest of the entire set (21 days)

lol...

qzjul

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Jun 30th 2010, 18:37:03

heh

'that is pretty bad yea

Finally did the signature thing.

enshula

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Jul 1st 2010, 17:01:02

well that puts a natural cap on the amount of land you want to gain

which when it means you stop farming other players can be a good thing

of course in your situation your basically just using the networth disparity in 2 unbuilt countries to create bonus acres so your goal doesnt really appear to be networth

llaar

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Jul 1st 2010, 17:09:23

my goal is fun, i always succeed ;)

enshula

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Jul 1st 2010, 17:26:46

anyway if you were running casher it would be ok to be building if you were 320k acres or less perhaps at this point

farmers always going to be a bit worse especially since your selling food at 32, rather than not buying food at 45

also you should use 9.8 bushels per acre, because of unbuilt food production, but you can always just change agri tech % anyway

most people probably dont want extreme landtrading rebuilding to become a lot cheaper