Adjustments to resource consumptions

[Prefontaine]

There has been a lot of talk regarding hyper inflation of resources, largely since RPC. While some metrics are skewed based on how many of those resources fall into inactive nations, market values are dropping which shows the production of many resources is outpacing uses. Some changes have been considered for addressing this imbalance. Please provide feedback, thanks. 

 

POWER PLANT INCREASES
Oil and Coal increased from 1.2 tons per day -> 2.0 tons per day
Nuclear 1.2 tons per day -> 2.4 tons per day

REFINEMENT INCREASES
OLD: 3 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas
NEW: 4 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas

OLD: 3 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel
NEW: 3.5 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel

OLD: 3 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum
NEW: 4 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum

OLD: 6 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions
NEW: 8 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions

RAW RESOURCE REFINEMENT
Food no longer has bonus to production for having more farms. 

RESOURCES USED FOR CITIES
Starting after C20, every city requires 100 iron, bauxite, lead, steel, aluminum. This increases by 100 for each city until C30, after C30 it increases by 200. After C40 it increases by 300. After C50 it increases by 400. Cities above C20 are reduced by 2.5% for cash Cities above C40 are also discounted by another 2.5% (5% total). Any current discounts to city production does not impact resources, only cash costs. 

Examples:
C21 Costs 100 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C25 Costs 500 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C30 Costs 1000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C35 Costs 2000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C40 Costs 3000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C45 Costs 4500 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $

FOOD CONSUMPTION
Formula Change: (basePop)^2/125m + ((basePop) * (age modifier) - basePop)/850

The red line is the new formula, black is the current.  We were looking at some other options as you'll see an orange and green line as well. I'll let members of the team who took a deep dive into the formula provide some more information. 

Edited June 7, 2023 by Prefontaine

[Alan]

Just now, Prefontaine said:

RAW RESOURCE REFINEMENT
Food no longer has bonus to production for having more farms. 

How to ostracize the big farmers in 1 easy step. GG to the billions they've put into land for the farms. 

[Jacob Knox]

Just now, Prefontaine said:

- basePop

What happened to this when you were putting them in Desmos, bro?

[Danzek]

Just now, Alan said:

How to ostracize the big farmers in 1 easy step. GG to the billions they've put into land for the farms. 

The increased food consumption will drive prices up. I haven't done the math but it could balance out (or even leave our mega whale farmers better off)

[The nine tailed imortal fo]

Just now, Prefontaine said:

REFINEMENT INCREASES
OLD: 3 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas
NEW: 4 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas

OLD: 3 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel
NEW: 3.5 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel

OLD: 3 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum
NEW: 4 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum

OLD: 6 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions
NEW: 8 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions

RAW RESOURCE REFINEMENT
Food no longer has bonus to production for having more farms

These sound like good suggestion the rest won't be a huge change and won't affect Whales that much it will probably just make them richer

Edited June 7, 2023 by The nine tailed imortal fo

[Hulu]

Just now, Borg said:

The increased food consumption will drive prices up. I haven't done the math but it could balance out (or even leave our mega whale farmers better off)

wouldnt that just drive the food demand up, increasing the price of food, it would still benefit the farmers.

but the reason is why is this change happening.

[Anarchist Empire]

Commerce is superior to mines at pretty low infra, guess this could change that. Industrial it doesn't matter if a city is leveled for it to still work as long as it has power, so guess I wouldn't mind. Increased consumption of Uranium would be kind of annoying, might produce it myself if this comes to be.

 

Edit: I guess this just does so people need more resources for everything. Right now even lead mine only makes like 10k per turn even with a full stack. Is this suppose to make their price go up?

Edited June 7, 2023 by Anarchist Empire

[George Clooney]

I don't see how making it more difficult for newer nations with lower city counts to approach the number of cities that older, high city count nations have is productive for the long term health of the game.  Sure it's great if you want to fossilize the existing order of things, but that should never be an objective.  Also...

While it's true that resource prices have been in decline for well over a year, in reality, the cost of resources on the open market are actually recovering to levels they were several years ago.  I don't see a resource inflation problem, based on the cost of resources at present.  Again, why change?  So that people who have stockpiles millions of units of resources under the current system can retain their resource advantage and increase their profits on the sale of existing stocks?  Again, not needed.

 

[Anri]

9 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

FOOD CONSUMPTION
Formula Change: (basePop)^2/125m + ((basePop) * (age modifier) - basePop)/850

Food has been rising at an alarming rate since the end of January, going from ~1.4b food in the game on January 28th, to ~4.7b in April 28th. The food supply dropped to 3.85b after a war involving ~70% of the game, and now that the war is over it will soon continue to rise. A telling sign that something is wrong is the lack of change in food prices this past war, with the price staying at around 120 ppu for the majority of the war. In the past, wars have drastically increased the food price, such as the Clock vs TBR war where, despite radiation only capping out at around 70%, food prices shot up from 120 to 140, and maintained that level for 3 weeks until Hollywood hit Celestial, which brought food prices up to 200 ppu. 

This unprecedented increase in food supply is partly due to the fact that the production of food, unlike other resources, is not capped per city as you can purchase land to increase production, with a better ROI than cities in most cases. Additionally, there is virtually no risk in buying land as unlike infrastructure it cannot be destroyed. There have also been several recent additions to the game that decrease the price of land, making it more accessible to nations. Lastly, the crash of market resources caused by RPC has caused producing food to be much more profitable relative to the other resources, causing more people to shift to it. 

Despite this, the biggest sinks for food lie in UP and AUP, both projects confined to small nations, while nation's food consumption has remained linear over the years.

A crash in the food market would impact the growing middle-upper tier who have only begun to develop their food producing capabilities, while allowing whales who have already profited from food to be further entrenched (since commerce typically makes up a majority of whales' incomes, which means they are more insulated from resource prices tanking compared to other tiers.  Additionally, as food continues to crash, people producing it will switch off and start producing other resources which are already at record lows, causing further market deflation and resource inflation at a time where resource inflation is already at a disastrous high. 

The current formula for food consumption per city is ((population)/1,000). Our proposal for this is to change the linear food consumption formula to a polynomial formula: ((basePop)^2/125m + ((basePop) * (age modifier) - basePop)/850). This would decrease the food consumption for those with a base population under 125,000 while increasing it for those who are over. We seperated base population (population after factoring disease/crime) and the population gained by the age bonus to hopefully mitigate any unforseen consequences of changing the formula to be polynominal rather than a simple linear one. 

While a mechanic change that could result in an increase in food prices might appear to disproportionately favor whales, a change in food consumption that increases how heavily population is weighed will impact the biggest whales with high infra the most while also decreasing how much the low tier consume. The biggest detriment of this change for the low tier will be an increased cost for AUP/UP, however, many major alliances where the majority of UPs/AUPs are granted have in-house food producers that will supply the food, and at the very least, the price of food is unlikely to increase enough to cause the projects to return to their 2020/2021 prices.

A lot of people have spoken about the need for catch up mechanics, and while there have been a slew of changes aimed at allowing new players to catch up to old whales, we believe that a change that aims to keep mid/high tier growth competitive with the whale tier is especially necessary in a time where whales dominate the meta both militarily and economically.
 

[Anarchist Empire]

Could be good for raiders if it actually translates into resources prices going up a lot. Since inactive nations still produce it even without power. (My opinion on the change is pretty meh though, but trying to look at the good angles.)

Edited June 7, 2023 by Anarchist Empire

[Kastor]

i don’t and have never understood why PnW hasn’t just implemented a storage system. 
 

Every building gives X storage and add a new building, storage center, where you can increase it by either a flat amount or percentage. I would make these unlimited, but capped higher. This would solve the issue while also giving players another area to “meta” that seems like a better solution.

 

as for the mentioned proposals, the resource production is just a bandaid that we’ll have to fix later. It serves a *short* term purpose but not really a long term one. This kicks the can for 1 maybe 2 years before we just go back to the same issue.

 

i do like the city nerfs, however I think they should be bigger or extend the 100 to start at city 10, rather than 20. 
 

so, from an rp perspective, i really think food should be untouched. In real life, food naturally goes down in price and up in quantity as society becomes more stable. That is the reflection we are even seeing on Orbis. I would prefer global “pandemics” or “famines” coded in that randomly affect alliances/players/globe. The food nerfs are meh. I don’t think it provides good gameplay to just completely shift the meta like this. I would random add to the meta than shift to deal with issues because then you are constantly shifting every few years. Is this the 3rd 4th resources/cash balance buff since the start? There has to be a better solution.

 

 

EDIT: tldr; add more features to combat the problem, rather than tweaking the formulas AGAIN just to do it AGAIN later.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Kastor

[Anarchist Empire]

More Projects are cooler improvements, Activity Center was the most notable improvement I've noticed to the game. (Good to do a mix of adding new ones which benefit newer nations & top tier ones.)

This is mostly just a balance change, which will have wide reaching effects in weird ways. Some will figure ways to take advantage of the new mechanics, others it will just suck. Since it costs a ton of resources as well for most Projects, if it increases the price of those a lot; just made it a hell of a lot more expensive for newer nations to get any of those. So don't want to be purely negative, but not an exciting change. (Feel I can adapt to this if it happens though. What problem it's trying to solve isn't a problem for me, so seems kind of pointless. However sure there is a reason.)

 

So if I to say yes or no to this, would probably say no; because it might break things when nothing is really broken there. We all like to see updates adding stuff, but this adds nothing. Think now it's balanced so if you have a full stack of lead in city, can cover 5 factories. If you have a full stack of Iron and Coal, think it can cover 5 factories in 2 cities. I don't have any mines or factories atm, so could be off. However think so. Not sure on these numbers, but would make balancing it even harder for nation who might be taxed & might not want to take a hit on the factory resource consumption. So could make a lot of stuff go way up in price if nobody under taxes wants to make factories anymore.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Anarchist Empire

[Callisto]

Just now, Anri said:

While a mechanic change that could result in an increase in food prices might appear to disproportionately favor whales, a change in food consumption that increases how heavily population is weighed will impact the biggest whales with high infra the most while also decreasing how much the low tier consume. The biggest detriment of this change for the low tier will be an increased cost for AUP/UP, however, many major alliances where the majority of UPs/AUPs are granted have in-house food producers that will supply the food, and at the very least, the price of food is unlikely to increase enough to cause the projects to return to their 2020/2021 prices.
 

As to your first paragraph, it is true that major alliances would still be able to provide AUP and UP to their members, but do realise, if you're increasing the price of food, and in turn increasing the price of UP and AUP, that also means that the major alliances in the game only get to enjoy an even greater advantage out of UP and AUP than they already do. This is a potential issue, and I think it needs to be taken into consideration. 

While you are increasing the burden of food consumption on larger nations, I'm not convinced that this is a true solution to the problem, and I tend to think that the people who make food will likely only serve to benefit in the long term from the change, more than whales in general getting hurt by it.

[Danzek]

> POWER PLANT INCREASES
Are good sinks, because almost everyone has a power plant, so its a forced cost. 

> REFINEMENT INCREASES
May not have the intended effect. If you make manu production less viable, less people may manufacture and you end up with more raws.

> Food no longer has bonus to production for having more farms. 
Good that we're not solely buffing the mega whales. This will help lower tier players farm.

> RESOURCES USED FOR CITIES
Cities increase in cost exponentially. A resource sink that increases linearly whilst the $ cost increases exponentially is not a balanced sink, and will thus lose relevance as the player base shifts upwards. 

It would be useful for us to know the following:
1. How many c20+ cities are built on average each day
2. What % of the excess resource production this change will attempt to address (and therefore how relevant it is now)

> FOOD CONSUMPTION
Will benefit farmers by driving up food costs

Other notes:
1. Market inelasticity
A lot of resource production is inelastic. i.e. The market could turn to shit but people will still produce because they need *something* to fill the slots in their high infra cities. 
Increasing the number of buildings you can have for a resource, scaling down the production at higher levels, and adding more tradeoffs (like upkeep or pollution) would make the choice more elastic. 

2. The need for future correction
Sinks which do not self-regulate, or which are known to become detached again (like with city resource costs) mean that we will likely need more balancing changes in the future. 
I'd also be surprised if these changes will properly account for market effects, but incremental balancing is still good. 

3. Raising resource prices will be more of a burden on lower tier nations wishing to purchase e.g. AUP/UP etc. and be counterproductive to their ability to catchup.

[Deraj]

 big brain moment here….if the RPC is the major driver to the economic issue…then delete the RPC. 

Established players are only growing (and producing more rss) there is probably also an inbalance of new players to come consume said resources too. 

Some of these tweaks may improve things at the expense of experienced players…idk the right answer but I’d lean heavilly on the player base to influence your changes. 

[KindaEpicMoah]

Just now, Borg said:

> REFINEMENT INCREASES
May not have the intended effect. If you make manu production less viable, less people may manufacture and you end up with more raws.

I'd also like to add that cheap manu prices are partially the result of most wars requiring very few resources to be consumed outside of the first round, so changing consumption rates for improvements would only be a band-aid fix that doesn't change the fundamental problem with manus (especially gas and munis) in the long run. 

 

Just now, Deraj said:

 big brain moment here….if the RPC is the major driver to the economic issue…then delete the RPC. 

 

RPC has already been deleted. 

[SlyWolf21]

Additional Idea to help rid the world of excess. 
Has anyone played those city builder games where citizens need stuff besides food to be happy? Like EdUcAtIoN and HeAlThCaRe. But basically theres those games where you need additional resources in your nation to make those citizens happy and more productive. 

1) What if instead of trying resource bonuses to quantity of mines/farms you add a "citizen productiveness" bonus that can increase or decrease
2) Citizens will require some different resources as upkeep, or add "consumer goods" which is a stockpile like credits that can't be touched. Devs can have consumer goods traded through the game for other in game resources EX: 200CG per 1000Gas. That gas basically gets deleted from the world, the consumer goods goes to keeping the citizen productiveness bonus which effects tax/recruitment rate/production bonuses. 

[Jordan]

40 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

There has been a lot of talk regarding hyper inflation of resources, largely since RPC. While some metrics are skewed based on how many of those resources fall into inactive nations, market values are dropping which shows the production of many resources is outpacing uses. Some changes have been considered for addressing this imbalance. Please provide feedback, thanks. 

 

POWER PLANT INCREASES
Oil and Coal increased from 1.2 tons per day -> 2.0 tons per day
Nuclear 1.2 tons per day -> 2.4 tons per day

REFINEMENT INCREASES
OLD: 3 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas
NEW: 4 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas

OLD: 3 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel
NEW: 3.5 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel

OLD: 3 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum
NEW: 4 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum

OLD: 6 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions
NEW: 8 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions

RAW RESOURCE REFINEMENT
Food no longer has bonus to production for having more farms. 

RESOURCES USED FOR CITIES
Starting after C20, every city requires 100 iron, bauxite, lead, steel, aluminum. This increases by 100 for each city until C30, after C30 it increases by 200. After C40 it increases by 300. After C50 it increases by 400. Cities above C20 are reduced by 2.5% for cash Cities above C40 are also discounted by another 2.5% (5% total). Any current discounts to city production does not impact resources, only cash costs. 

Examples:
C21 Costs 100 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C25 Costs 500 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C30 Costs 1000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C35 Costs 2000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C40 Costs 3000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C45 Costs 4500 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $

FOOD CONSUMPTION
Formula Change: (basePop)^2/125m + ((basePop) * (age modifier) - basePop)/850

The red line is the new formula, black is the current.  We were looking at some other options as you'll see an orange and green line as well. I'll let members of the team who took a deep dive into the formula provide some more information. 

Pre, what the game needs from you is actual numbers.

You and the dev team should look at production levels prior to this last global, and tell us exactly what effects this would've had on production at that time.

[Raphael]

24 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

POWER PLANT INCREASES
Oil and Coal increased from 1.2 tons per day -> 2.0 tons per day
Nuclear 1.2 tons per day -> 2.4 tons per day

Both of these are doubling the usage of the most commonly used power plants, I like the concept we're going for but I think smaller tweaks would be in order here.

30 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

REFINEMENT INCREASES
OLD: 3 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas
NEW: 4 tons of oil -> 6 tons of gas

OLD: 3 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel
NEW: 3.5 tons of iron and coal -> 9 tons of steel

OLD: 3 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum
NEW: 4 tons of bauxite -> 9 tons of aluminum

OLD: 6 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions
NEW: 8 tons of lead -> 18 tons of munitions

So the question here is: Do you want to drive prices on the market up from multiple directions all at once? Cities costing resources, power plants consuming more, population eating more food, food production being reduced, manufacturing costs more, etc. It all seems like a lot, and I would again caution against drastic changes like this. Maybe do one for a month or two, then introduce the next.

Conceptually I don't see this as a bad change, but compounding with the other changes I could see potential for disaster. Generally speaking, it's not an elegant suggestion but why don't you make this particular change only kick in after c30? Slow whales down a bit.

 

35 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

RAW RESOURCE REFINEMENT
Food no longer has bonus to production for having more farms. 

Solid change.

 

36 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

RESOURCES USED FOR CITIES
Starting after C20, every city requires 100 iron, bauxite, lead, steel, aluminum. This increases by 100 for each city until C30, after C30 it increases by 200. After C40 it increases by 300. After C50 it increases by 400. Cities above C20 are reduced by 2.5% for cash Cities above C40 are also discounted by another 2.5% (5% total). Any current discounts to city production does not impact resources, only cash costs. 

Examples:
C21 Costs 100 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C25 Costs 500 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C30 Costs 1000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C35 Costs 2000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C40 Costs 3000 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $
C45 Costs 4500 Iron/Baux/Lead/Steel/Alum in addition to $

Good in concept but bad in the meta context. Whales are a huge unbalanced problem right now, increasing city costs that current whales will never pay will inflame the problem in my opinion. I'm not sure what the "reduced by 2.5% for cash" means. City output is decreasing? Or city cash cost is decreasing? I'd like to see a more transparent breakdown of whether this is a net increase or decrease in city cost either way.

 

41 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

The red line is the new formula, black is the current.  We were looking at some other options as you'll see an orange and green line as well. I'll let members of the team who took a deep dive into the formula provide some more information. 

I like the concept but again the proposed red line formula looks like a drastic increase. The green line may be better to start with and then if-needed increase again.




Overall cool to see the team tackling econ tweaks. Can't wait to see how it pans out.

[Abaddon]

I like everything except for the deletion of the food production bonus. You could've lowered it to 25% or something, but taking out a third of food production entirely will seriously impact the current mid tier that's between c25 and c35.

 

[Anarchist Empire]

Personally I'll just stay low city count raiding longer, if this pushes resource prices way up. (Hence also all the really good project way more expensive, as well as cities. So probably how it will effect newer nations if they know what they're doing. New nations did get activity center, so nothing to care to much about if it's made a little more expensive to get the best stuff.)

Obviously nations already 30 cities is who this will benefit. They're already loaded with the already expensive projects which will be way more expensive with this.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Anarchist Empire

[KindaEpicMoah]

Just now, Roberts said:

I like the concept but again the proposed red line formula looks like a drastic increase. The green line may be better to start with and then if-needed increase again.

For context, the red line formula is using a base population of 300,000, which is at 3k infra.  

 

At 200,000 population, or the base population for 2k infra, the consumption would only be increased by around 150%, whereas at 300,000 population this increase is roughly 200%.

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by KindaEpicMoah

[Deraj]

Just now, KindaEpicMoah said:

I'd also like to add that cheap manu prices are partially the result of most wars requiring very few resources to be consumed outside of the first round, so changing consumption rates for improvements would only be a band-aid fix that doesn't change the fundamental problem with manus (especially gas and munis) in the long run. 

 

RPC has already been deleted. 

Lol…tells you how not in tune with the projects I am 😅

[Odin]

Easy fix: Just uncap commerce and remove commerce buildings limit.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Odin

[Anarchist Empire]

On 6/7/2023 at 2:36 PM, Odin said:

Easy fix: Just uncap commerce and remove commerce buildings limit.

Could just increase how many factories people can fit into a city if it's lack of things to build. Same with resource stacks. Really resources now are no cheaper than they were years ago, it's an imaginary problem. Some of the older nations have to much money so they seem cheaper somehow, this will just benefit them even more. Was time iron and coal would often fall below 1k. Food Price? Only this high during global wars. All this does in benefit the top .1% in making it harder for others to catch up.

 

Ultimately Commerce is more profitable for most nations, so they do that instead and that is what keeps the prices of those up. (Feel otherwise my points still stand on how it would effect the game, but shouldn't have made it out intentional anyways)

Game is not made so it's beneficial to buy new cities as soon as you can, I'll buy more when it's worth buying more. Some of these changes seem meant to make it so new nations don't even want to try getting higher city count, with every change stacked against them. Resources going up in cost will make the climb exponentially more expensive? Smaller City Nations can still loot inactives, so they don't need to rush & can still have hope of benefitting from resources going up? Delete the inactive, so no reason for new nations to want to achieve the upper tier. lol. Or old nations coming back to want to play, since their nation will be gone and everything stacked against them being able to get back up.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Anarchist Empire