Capping City Age Bonus

[Alex]

For those of you that are unaware, there is a city age bonus to population that is equivalent to (DaysOld/3000)%

This bonus was added when the game was first made because I didn't want every city to have the exact same population (I just thought that would look lame.) Like a lot of things, there wasn't much foresight for how it would play out years later.

Nowadays, the oldest cities are nearing 4 years old (1460 days) and that is equivalent to an almost 50% increase in population. It has a huge effect on gameplay, when in reality, it was not intended to have any real effect at all.

My proposal is here is not to even cut the income of any current nation, or reduce the bonus, but to simply cap it at some arbitrary number that is above whatever the maximum bonus currently is (oldest city in the game's bonus.) That means that they will not continue to have an increasing population in that city (or any city subsequently that reaches the maximum age for the bonus), but they will still retain all of the bonus that they have received thus far, and newer nations will experience growing bonuses to the same point.

Given that there have been many calls to either severely reduce the effect of city age on population, and to just plain remove it as well, I think this is a very fair proposal. Just looking for some feedback here and to see if everyone else thinks this is as reasonable of a solution as I think that it is. Let me know with either Likes/Dislikes or comments.

[Buorhann]

I wish there was a "Indifferent" 'Like/Dislike', lol.

I can't really support or go against this, I can see arguments for both sides.

 

Instead of capping it, why don't you correlate the population growth to the amount of Land?  (Basically capping the Pop Density instead of the Pop itself, if that makes sense?)  If a city doesn't have enough land to expand the population, it doesn't grow anymore.

Could also tweak the effect of Nukes to slow down or reset the return growth after a city gets nuked.

Edited May 10, 2018 by Buorhann

[Ukunaka]

9 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

...Instead of capping it, why don't you correlate the population growth to the amount of Land?  (Basically capping the Pop Density instead of the Pop itself, if that makes sense?)  If a city doesn't have enough land to expand the population, it doesn't grow anymore...

...Could also tweak the effect of Nukes to slow down or reset the return growth after a city gets nuked...

I agree with both of these, definitely the nuke aspect

[WISD0MTREE]

3 hours ago, Alex said:

Nowadays, the oldest cities are nearing 4 years old (1460 days) and that is equivalent to an almost 50% increase in population. It has a huge effect on gameplay, when in reality, it was not intended to have any real effect at all.

In other words, Sheepy didn't think losers would play some random text-based browser game for so long. 

[Sir Scarfalot]

Well, I was actually discussing this with someone, and I gotta admit I hadn't liked what I'd learned. The mechanic is flawed in some of the worst ways possible for balance.

6 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Instead of capping it, why don't you correlate the population growth to the amount of Land?  (Basically capping the Pop Density instead of the Pop itself, if that makes sense?)  If a city doesn't have enough land to expand the population, it doesn't grow anymore.

I sort of agree with this solution. The mechanics would therefore be something like: infrastructure provides a flat population baseline to which modifiers from disease, malnutrition (run outta food, population size suffers), recent nuclear attack (radiation, population size suffers), crime, and city-age bonus are applied, while land area provides a hard cap to population growth beyond which population cannot exceed by any means, right?

That said, I definitely do NOT like the idea of nukes being able to destroy 1500 days worth of gathered bonus. I mean, what the actual heck, people that have stuck around that hard really shouldn't have all their work bumped off that easily. If game balance requires their inflated bonus to be cut down, then let's just tweak the formula and cut it right on down; it's not like Alex hasn't implemented nerfs that hit active player demographics before.

Personally I think 25% extra population at a maximum would be more than enough, and a good compromise between 'status quo' and 'eliminate the mechanic', and only cut the current oldest cities' bonus in half.

[Theodosius]

On 5/11/2018 at 1:00 AM, Buorhann said:

I wish there was a "Indifferent" 'Like/Dislike', lol.

I can't really support or go against this, I can see arguments for both sides.

 

Instead of capping it, why don't you correlate the population growth to the amount of Land?  (Basically capping the Pop Density instead of the Pop itself, if that makes sense?)  If a city doesn't have enough land to expand the population, it doesn't grow anymore.

Could also tweak the effect of Nukes to slow down or reset the return growth after a city gets nuked.

This is a pretty good suggestion. Land becomes useful for things other than spamming farms.

It would also be a good idea to *cap* the effect of land increasing population at some point, so land doesn't get too OP. Like, if land is over 5000, it does no longer increase pop in city X/or a max % cap on the bonus land gives to pop.

Edited May 13, 2018 by Theodosius

[Sir Scarfalot]

1 hour ago, Theodosius said:

This is a pretty good suggestion. Land becomes useful for things other than spamming farms.

It would also be a good idea to *cap* the effect of land increasing population at some point, so land doesn't get too OP. Like, if land is over 5000, it does no longer increase pop in city X/or a max % cap on the bonus land gives to pop.

I think I agree, though there being a softcap to land just like there is a softcap to cities might be better.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

Their is a soft cap on land, its the exorbitant price of land when you start getting into 4k+ land.  Buying 4.5k to 5k land is 20 million.

[Spaceman Thrax]

I think the original suggestion is more sensible than capping based on land. Land isn't capped, and there's no way to destroy it, so it's just a way for richer/older players to mitigate the effects of the change. If you're trying to mitigate the effects of the change past capping it, just don't cap it in the first place.

Cap it at 1500 days? 150% pop? A little high, but anyone could get there, and it looks nice and round at least?

I think from a psychological retention perspective it makes sense to have some passive bonus for having an older nation that no one can take away. Accumulated age on cities, even capped, accomplishes this well enough. That would be the main reason I wouldn't say to remove the effect entirely.

From a political perspective, I'm sort of curious who's been suggesting this change... while it is sensible enough, it's in line with the other way worse suggestion about city costs in terms of who it will benefit.

[Micchan]

What about improvements?

Age city bonus from 0% to 20% free for everyone

Add one improvement to go from 20% to 30%

Add another one to go from 30% to 40%

Add a third improvement to reach 50% that is the max

But to be honest the land idea is already perfect

[Sir Scarfalot]

8 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Their is a soft cap on land, its the exorbitant price of land when you start getting into 4k+ land.  Buying 4.5k to 5k land is 20 million.

Are you kidding? 20 million is within my spending ability, let alone yours, especially once you're seriously considering or actually spending over a billion on a city.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Sir Scarfalot

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

Always trying to hurt the OG members.

We were here long before the scrubs and we'll be here long after.

[AwesomeNova]

On 5/10/2018 at 6:00 PM, Buorhann said:

Instead of capping it, why don't you correlate the population growth to the amount of Land?  (Basically capping the Pop Density instead of the Pop itself, if that makes sense?)  If a city doesn't have enough land to expand the population, it doesn't grow anymore.

 

 

 

I agree with the land cap more than what Alex proposed.

Edited May 16, 2018 by AwesomeNova
the letter 'I' wasn't capitalized and another grammatical error