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Increased Costs to Build New Cities


Alex
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24 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

Pin the cost of infrastructure, land and cities, to the total cash income of the entire playerbase, use the current income as a baseline so you don't screw things up retroactively.

Pin the cost of military units (make all units besides soldiers cost alum AND steel) to the total resource income of the entire playerbase, use the current income as a baseline. 

You're wasting your time, he's not going to listen. Probably because your idea is better than his....if he implements this change which he probably will,weehave to make what's left of the game...very sad...

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50 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

We had this same problem 2 years ago,

Or don't, and hopefully I'll have quit in 2 years so I don't need to say I told you so again lmfao. 

Holy shit, it's been two years already?

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23 hours ago, The Mad Titan said:

I think what is "fair" in this case would be all retroactive fixed costs being added to my next city.

Agreed; everyone's retroactive costs should indeed be added to Leo's next city :P

17 hours ago, ShadyAssassin said:

no
just in-case you are not aware, we can still trade under embargoes.
Trades like that are done by Personal Trades or you can jut use bank to nation or bank to bank transfers to avoid the embargo

Personal trades getting through the alliance embargo is an entirely separate problem, and one that would need to be fixed in implementation, but bank transfers are handled by the officers that have control over the embargoes anyway so I don't see an issue with the latter.

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1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Sheeps, you misunderstand me, I need to buy 375k resources, not cash.  So say each resource averages out to 1500 ppu, that's an additional 550+ million on top of the 1.6 billion.  does it break the bank? no, but it still an additional 3+ weeks of savings on top of the 2+ months of savings to buy another city.

You're right, I did misunderstand you there. It's more like a one-time 33% cost increase. City 35, however, would be more like 75,000 resources, which would be valued at $112,500,000 at your 1500 PPU figure, compared to the total cost of City 35 being $1,802,025,000, or about a 6% cost increase.

6% is not insignificant, but nations with 34 cities average $23m per day in net daily revenue (+/- 3.6m standard error) so it's only about 5 extra days of income for a nation at that size.

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7 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Just out of curiosity, how long does it take a nation to go from 10 to 11, or 18 to 19 (i dont know how little nations work anymore)  I know it takes me a little over 2 months of pure savings to go from 33 to 34.  Isn't that where the catch up is? you guys can buy 2-4 cities in the time it takes me to buy 1?

Honestly once you get past the first retroactive costs, its not really a big deal,  Those retroactive costs are going to sting a bit tho,

Just produced this for you (and everyone):

image.png

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I have a better idea, Alex. Since you seem to like very stupid ideas. 
Make cities cost credits, that way you force people to pay to get bigger. You'll get rich like this. 

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4 hours ago, Sketchy said:

Lmfao this is hilarious. We had this same problem 2 years ago, and I recall saying "Sheepy you should increase the demand side of resources" and you were like "nah ima decrease the supply side".

Then you overshot the mark by about 1500%, made prices skyrocket, re-increased the supply side and cut infra costs in order to balance it, overshot the mark again, and now here we are.

2 years late on the uptake I guess.

FYI: This is the worst way to increase demand side of resources.

Pin the cost of infrastructure, land and cities, to the total cash income of the entire playerbase, use the current income as a baseline so you don't screw things up retroactively.

Pin the cost of military units (make all units besides soldiers cost alum AND steel) to the total resource income of the entire playerbase, use the current income as a baseline.

Costs will reduce slightly during times of destruction, and increase slightly during long periods of peace, and will slowly grow over time at a reasonable rate in accordance to the wealth in the game.

Or don't, and hopefully I'll have quit in 2 years so I don't need to say I told you so again lmfao.

 

^ This.

Also, looking at your graph here, the short term buyback costs would be around 2.5mil resources, which I hate saying but, is basically jack shit in the grand scheme of things lol.

If anything, I'm also really for the infra idea over cities.

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@Alex, I think that the entire idea of being fixated on using cities to take care of what seems to be a material glut is kind of, well, pointless. Perhaps a better fix would be to reduce the amount of raw materials available. For example, maybe delete the 50% production bonus for having max mines, wells, and/or farms. This would have the effect of increasing the price of the 6 raw materials by around a third over time (after players use up the excess materials), since production of each would be 1/3 less efficient on all of Orbis. Processed materials would have to increase in price also, since the raw materials needed to manufacture the 4 processed ones increased in price, or takes more cities to mine/drill/grow. I'd predict market prices wouldn't be affected immediately, but it would increase slowly over time; nothing radical. Basic supply and demand. Maybe an easy fix to the program/game? Even the dead hand of Keynes would approve!

Something like changing productivity at the beginning of the supply chain (raw mat'ls) might be a permanent economic fix for all of Orbis. Just don't over-correct the food! No starvation!?

@Prefontaine, What do you think?

N.B. - I'm still kind of a n00b, but the Orbis materials market does seem to function on supply and demand.

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Just now, Gudea said:

@Alex, I think that the entire idea of being fixated on using cities to take care of what seems to be a material glut is kind of, well, pointless. Perhaps a better fix would be to reduce the amount of raw materials available. For example, maybe delete the 50% production bonus for having max mines, wells, and/or farms. This would have the effect of increasing the price of the 6 raw materials by around a third over time (after players use up the excess materials), since production of each would be 1/3 less efficient on all of Orbis. Processed materials would have to increase in price also, since the raw materials needed to manufacture the 4 processed ones increased in price, or takes more cities to mine/drill/grow. I'd predict market prices wouldn't be affected immediately, but it would increase slowly over time; nothing radical. Basic supply and demand. Maybe an easy fix to the program/game? Even the dead hand of Keynes would approve!

Something like changing productivity at the beginning of the supply chain (raw mat'ls) might be a permanent economic fix for all of Orbis. Just don't over-correct the food! No starvation!?

@Prefontaine, What do you think?

N.B. - I'm still kind of a n00b, but the Orbis materials market does seem to function on supply and demand.

While your solution does address the problem, I would rather see resources have more uses, more things to do in the game. Also if it's easier to produce resources, and the market has a steady enough demand, it's easier for newer nations to make money and grow faster.

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On 4/30/2019 at 6:05 AM, Prefontaine said:

I also want there to be a project that lowers the money-cost of cities rolled out with this, the project would cost resources to fund.

I think this idea itself should suffice. Instead of programming two aspects of the game and changing the city building code, just create a new project to reduce city building cost. So all resources that would go into buying a city will also go into buying money cost reduction of new cities.

You can reduce the impact percentage. In other words, if you implemented both suggestions and made every million resource reduce 1% of the city cost, now make it reduce only 0.9%, in lieu of resources not being spent on buying new cities.

This suggestion would be much simpler and faster to roll out.

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@Prefontaine Ah, I get it. How 'bout new projects that cost a crap-ton of materials, and some that would be be obtainable if only if a previous project is built first. Example: If ya bought the Nuclear Research Facility project, then make an improvement available, ie. A MIRV Nuke Project! Multiple city targets for the price of one shot with a limit of, say, 4-6 MIRVs per shot (mat'ls price will be the highest for the 6-pack, of course!). The upgrade will also eliminate the original project from the players list. And make the six-shooter so pricey in materials, even the banksters would be scared! Maybe the same with the rest, except the manufacturing projects. A tech tree kind of thing.

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1 minute ago, Gudea said:

@Prefontaine Ah, I get it. How 'bout new projects that cost a crap-ton of materials, and some that would be be obtainable if only if a previous project is built first. Example: If ya bought the Nuclear Research Facility project, then make an improvement available, ie. A MIRV Nuke Project! Multiple city targets for the price of one shot with a limit of, say, 4-6 MIRVs per shot (mat'ls price will be the highest for the 6-pack, of course!). The upgrade will also eliminate the original project from the players list. And make the six-shooter so pricey in materials, even the banksters would be scared! Maybe the same with the rest, except the manufacturing projects. A tech tree kind of thing.

One step ahead of ya. First Multi tiered project with only resource costs. 

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Guest Frawley

Okay, have now had time to have a proper read through the thread, I think the underlying idea is great, but I don't think this specific implementation is ideal.

Use of Raws: Raw resources already have an incredibly reliable sink, manufacturing.  Presently in game due to this, there are at least 5 manufactured resources for every raw resource in existence (Oil: 24m tonnes, Gas: 130m tonnes). The price that we pay for raw resources on the open market is structurally linked to the price of manufactured resources, and I think this dynamic is one of the selling points of the game. Cities need Steel and Aluminium, Gas for Yellow Goods, and Munitions for large earthworks for an ingame justification.

Starting City: As suggested in other ideas I have posted, setting additional hard numbers where costs come into play is not ideal for a game that is presumably intended to grow far larger than present.  I would use the average number of cities in the game for all players over 10 cities (as the point where the timer comes into play).

Banking: Honestly, whales became whales in this game because they were good at managing income and expenses, the math in turning off the lending taps makes no sense, and the first major to pull their funds will be the biggest loser as the remaining whales will all of a sudden see an increase in rates because of the reduced supply of cash (supply and demand et al).

Retroactivity: Regardless, this can easily be addressed instead of charging resources at the point of the next city, charge for them now, and allow nations to turn on the cities gradually.  I would implement this the same way that powered cities are implemented, for each city over the cap on the day of the change, an investment indicator that is linked to a city investment page, the city investment page has the number of resources required to turn it on, those numbers can be reduced to zero in order to turn on the city.  This might allow for future expansion of the city building mechanics as well.

Pricing: I'd double the costs personally, as well as start them earlier (see above).

Infra: Also a great idea, perhaps 0.25 of each manufactured for each level of infra beyond 1000 infra, there would be no need to make this retroactive, as infra is cycled through on a regular basis.

Band Aid Fix: People buy cities all the time, and if it was lowered from 20 cities the the average, then it would be regular enough to actually sink resources into.

 

TL;DR
This should come it at the average of cities over 10, not city 20.
It should use all four manufactured resources, not raws, double costs, 1000 infra is too little.  
It should be retroactive., with cities turned off until the required investments are made.
Do Infra too.

Edited by Frawley
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There is an easier and (I think) more interesting way to pump demand for resources.  The main problem is that resources are currently only used for war.  We need a way to use them for peace.  A consistent use, not a one-time or rare occurrence that gives the economy a shot in the arm and then fades.  

I support adding resource costs for infra.  That would help a lot. 

I would support adding resource costs for cities, though the amounts proposed here are too small to have much impact, I think, and it certainly wouldn't work on its own.

But I believe the simplest and strongest way to increase demand appropriately would be to add actual resource consumption to a nation's existence.  Even without growth, a nation should be consuming more than just Uranium and Food.  The way I see this being most easily implemented would be to add a tertiary resource: consumer goods.  Perhaps even multiple flavors of consumer goods if you want, but I think it's best to keep things simple with a single abstracted resource.  It would be a tertiary resource, meaning it is manufactured using manufactured resources as inputs.  It would be consumed by running a nation with a commerce economy.  Consumer goods would be a stand in for civilian economies, whereas current resources are 99% military applications.

You could, for example, have each % of commerce in each city cost 1 consumer good per day.  You'd only have as much commerce plumping your revenue as you had consumer goods to supply it.  What good is a store without things to buy?  What good is a bank without mortgages or cars to finance?  ALTERNATIVELY, you could create a new improvement specifically to consume consumer goods and output tax revenue.  Either way, you have just given resources a peacetime use, which will actually climb as nations become richer.  Larger nations will need/want more consumer goods to consume, so as the whales grow, the lower tiers can get rich off of increased demand.  Making this a tertiary resource would ensure that all the other resources get buffed as well - Steel sees demand increase because it is used for consumer goods, Iron and Coal increase because they're used for Steel.

This requires no bandaid.  It requires no extra behavioral shifts from whales, or lower tiers.  It doesn't penalize anyone, if it's implemented sanely (that is, if incentives and costs are mostly in balance).  It doesn't make growth more expensive for anyone except maybe the very most upper tier whales who will find themselves spending a ton on consumer resources, perhaps.  And it makes the game a bit more interesting having those logistics to juggle and another tool to evaluate and invest in.

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I'm lackluster on but not opposed to doing it for cities but very strongly support adding a resource cost to infra and/or a resource upkeep cost to commerce

If you're trying to increase overall demand for resources assigning a resource cost to things that are generally one time purchases like projects, wonders, or commerce improvements doesn't work very well.  It doesn't scale with the game very well because the average nation age goes up so the significance of each one time purchase goes down.  And the impact it can have is limited by the fact that if it is very expensive people can choose not to buy it.

A resource cost that increases exponentially with infra level, and resource upkeep for commerce improvements, would more organically grow in impact as average nation age and size increases.   The more people grow, and the more profitable commerce and more infra become, the more demand there is for those resources.  This will put upward pressure on resource prices over time as the average city has more infra and creates extra demand for resources.  It would also create more balance between demand for resources during peace and demand for resources during war.

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3 hours ago, Azaghul said:

 

A resource cost that increases exponentially with infra level, and resource upkeep for commerce improvements, would more organically grow in impact as average nation age and size increases.   The more people grow, and the more profitable commerce and more infra become, the more demand there is for those resources.  

 

^^^ 

Sheepy:

if you want to make it fair to the people who haven't already built these city levels versus those who have you can require the next city to have a retroactive amount to build the next.

^

This ties into a larger problem of enabling new players to engage and compete in the game which should be encouraged. A player starting today should be able to catch up to a whale for the game to be fun. Retroactively charging players however undermines the choices they made while playing the game. It is better to boost new players than to nerf older ones. 

You could tie resource costs to the next tier of cities 40+ (unsure if anyone has reached that yet but start the increase at a new unreached level) that will tale longer to have an impact but truly be fair.

The difficulty of retroactively in the name of fairness is that it fails to actually be fair... some alliances choose to tier rather than build cities. It was a smart choice but needs to be considered when desiring to close the gap between city counts. 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Senatorius
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On 4/29/2019 at 8:26 PM, Alex said:

Brainstorming with @Prefontaine about some changes that ought to be made to the game, he pitched this idea to me. I think it's a good idea, and one that could easily be implemented in a very short amount of time.

The idea is increasing the costs of cities over city 20 (starting with city 21), specifically by added resource costs (not affecting cash costs in any way.)

How Prefontaine explains it: "Cities over 20 cost raw resources to build 1k for each city above 20, 21 costs 1k Baux, Iron, Lead where as city 26 costs 6k of each. Cities over 30 cost 2k Oil, Coal, Uranium to build for each city above 30, if you want to make it fair to the people who haven't already built these city levels versus those who have you can require the next city to have a retroactive amount to build the next. This will likely cause a massive demand increase on raws for a short period of time (3 months or so) before normalizing if you do the retro."

Here's a table illustrating the costs to help understand the idea:

image.png

The resource costs would be applied retroactively, so that if you already have more than 20 cities, your next city would cost the cumulative total of whatever resources you were not required to pay previously. For example, if you had 24 cities, when you went to build city 25 it would cost 15,000 Bauxite, Lead, and Iron (not 5,000) but after city 25 was built, you would go back to the regular costs (6K of each for city 26.)

Hopefully the idea is explained clearly enough. The implications of this suggestion would just be an increased demand for the raw resources in the market.

Please use the upvote/downvote reactions to help me gauge public opinion regarding this idea. Thanks!

@Alex It should also be considered the affects this would have on the entire game. Banking is my main concern, because of the large pullout of whales. For example if just 3 people, me, @Seb and @Sphinx pulled everything we have invested in banks across that game it would have a relatively serious negative affect on banking. Now imagine everyone with 30+ cities and investments doing this, which judging from everyone I have spoken to seems probable. While some banks with a large reserve such as Orion and a few others would likely be fine, it would cause a lack of cash further compounding the price of resources as everyone below 20 cities would sell needing cash, while the whales have already bought cities, so they have no reason to buy. It would also cause a significant increase of interest rates, (supply and demand) further spreading the gap between whales and newer players.

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@BOYCE THE GREAT Alex has already stated on discord he couldn't give less of a shit about the player-created meta game and how interacts with the actual game. I guess he thinks there's a magical barrier that stop it from messing with his grand ideas, but he should learn quickly no such barrier exists. 

@Frawley You may think it makes no sense until you realize most whales pursue wealth as a means to grow cities, Grumpy specifically to remain above us plebeians. Considering what Boyce has said, i have said, and Alex and SRD's own notes on the costs for an actual whale with this being implemented, why would they not do it? They'll build a bunch of their cities before the change, after turning the entire financial meta game into an ocean of fire, and then sit back and slowly collect the crap needed for their retro payments. Because they achieved their goal. The fastest way to catch up to them is to use their own money, to use the banks, but seeing as how they turned that into aforementioned sea of fire, nobodys going to be closing ground particularly fast. They're further above us than ever and they've made it more difficult then its been in recent memory to try and catch up. Mission accomplished, as far as they're concerned.
Hell, they'd even succeed in shitting on Alex's little plan here, since you really would need that 3-month window to start seeing any effect. And if you implement your idea of turning off cities until they're paid for, i would presume they'd do it anyway except now their motive would be to spite you. 

Now if whales were corporations you'd be right. They'd be focused on profits. They're not corporations, however, and they're not focused on profits. Profits just fuel their actual goal. Your belief that they wouldn't do this breaks down because you misappropriate their goals. SRD only cares how much money he makes because that dictates how quickly he can grow, same with Sphinx. A means to an end, but not the end itself. 

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12 minutes ago, BOYCE THE GREAT said:

Banking

Banking is a player made construct which is entirely optional and not a regulated in any way outside of players themselves. Changes to the game mechanics shouldn't concern themselves with these sort of player made constructs. I say that as a player who profits from banking. The player made constructs will have to adapt with the game, or not.

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11 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

Banking is a player made construct which is entirely optional and not a regulated in any way outside of players themselves. Changes to the game mechanics shouldn't concern themselves with these sort of player made constructs. I say that as a player who profits from banking. The player made constructs will have to adapt with the game, or not.

Yeah I mean who cares if your update to help resource inflation and small nations make money fails utterly because a class of player left unchecked to run well beyond the developers expectation feels like they're being punished and happens to no have the power to spitefully gut those smaller nation's and make an entire update worthless with their indignation.

Hopefully for you most of them don't feel like Redarmy, Boyce, seb and sphinx.

If they really wanted to spite you they'd not only buy their cities force, collapsing a meta game that helps small nations, but then use the massive stockpiles of raws they already have to turn on as many cities possible, incase you try to get them with that. Then just take a commerce hit to max raws. Instead of selling them on the market they'll trade them to each other for next to nothing pooling their ridiculous production capacity to turn on cities without buying a thing.

Ah! You say, that gives people time to catch up! Yes, it does, people have been growing quickly and catching up for some time with their clever use of..., Ah the system your angry whales just lit on fire. 

So they built a buncha cities, collapsed an industry and made it harder for small nations to grow, then organize and share resources with each other to avoid buying any, further hurting those small nations and doing nothing to help the resource inflation crisis. 

In... What way is that a successful or useful update? Sure, a small group of people shouldn't have this power, but they do. Saying you don't care and will go on anyway is not a solution so long as they have it. Saying you don't care only works after you take that power away, which this update won't do either.

 

But by all means keep insisting it will absolutely be helpful to the game and that adverse consequences which don't stem from mechanics will be irrelevant to it's success. Considering all it takes is basic organization by a small group to shut it down to the detriment of everyone I will not be sharing your mindset. Especially further considering just two of those speak for and could mobilize a significant portion of that group. Three could do almost all of them!

In the meantime, brainstorm ways to take such power from the 1%, they can't do much to spite something that removes their ability to spite it.

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16 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

Yeah I mean who cares if your update to help resource inflation and small nations make money fails utterly because a class of player left unchecked to run well beyond the developers expectation feels like they're being punished and happens to no have the power to spitefully gut those smaller nation's and make an entire update worthless with their indignation.

Hopefully for you most of them don't feel like Redarmy, Boyce, seb and sphinx.

If they really wanted to spite you they'd not only buy their cities force, collapsing a meta game that helps small nations, but then use the massive stockpiles of raws they already have to turn on as many cities possible, incase you try to get them with that. Then just take a commerce hit to max raws. Instead of selling them on the market they'll trade them to each other for next to nothing pooling their ridiculous production capacity to turn on cities without buying a thing.

Ah! You say, that gives people time to catch up! Yes, it does, people have been growing quickly and catching up for some time with their clever use of..., Ah the system your angry whales just lit on fire. 

So they built a buncha cities, collapsed an industry and made it harder for small nations to grow, then organize and share resources with each other to avoid buying any, further hurting those small nations and doing nothing to help the resource inflation crisis. 

In... What way is that a successful or useful update? Sure, a small group of people shouldn't have this power, but they do. Saying you don't care and will go on anyway is not a solution so long as they have it. Saying you don't care only works after you take that power away, which this update won't do either.

 

But by all means keep insisting it will absolutely be helpful to the game and that adverse consequences which don't stem from mechanics will be irrelevant to it's success. Considering all it takes is basic organization by a small group to shut it down to the detriment of everyone I will not be sharing your mindset. Especially further considering just two of those speak for and could mobilize a significant portion of that group. Three could do almost all of them!

In the meantime, brainstorm ways to take such power from the 1%, they can't do much to spite something that removes their ability to spite it.

You should take a step back and a breath. Your, for whatever reason, anger over this is clouding any sort of point your attempting to make. Passive aggressive insults get you no where. 

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