Beautification Improvement Category

[Jefferson Davis III]

In the beginning of this game, we really didn't see this issue up until recently, but with nations growing ever and ever bigger, nations are starting to run out of improvements to build. These are a group of improvements, that have no limit to how many are built. But these are very expensive and are for the larger nations.

 

Large Statue: Your city is looking kind of dull, build a large statue to spruce things up. Improves moods, making your city more appealing. Increase your cities population by 0.1% above base. Costs $100,000 plus 10 steel.

 

Eco-Green Office Building: Utilizing solar power and special insulation, this building replaces one of your less efficient buildings, which means you use less electricity. So your Power plant upkeep decreases by 1% for this city. Cost, $1,000,000 plus 50 Aluminum plus 25 oil.

 

Skyscraper: This is a plane skyscraper, but it does provide a place for your people to work, and so more people move to your city, Increases your population by 25,000 more people. Cost $5,000,000 plus 25 steel.

 

University: Educate your people, universities turn out doctors, lawyers, engineers, and your city becomes better and better. Increases population by 50,000 people, but mainly, it produces smarter people, so your upkeep costs decrease by 1% in that city. There is no limit to how many you may build, but you must have 1,000 infrastructure to support each university, otherwise your students won't have any jobs to work at in the first place, if you sell or lose your infrastructure, you will lose university, if you have 1, and you drop below 1000 infrastructure, then you lose that university. Costs $7,500,000 plus 25 steel

[Pax]

Couldn't you have included this in your other thread?

and imo either improvement caps need to go or we need a lot more improvements. As in, at least double or maybe triple the amount of improvements we currently have.

 

Nations are going to continually grow and the idea that they could run out of improvements this soon after starting is ridiculous. If we expect people to play this game for years (like people do with (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways)), we can't run out of content for their nations within a few months. And it's only going to get worse as large nations get more and more income and can provide more aid to new guys.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Pax

[Pax]

I do like the idea of implementing some new improvement categories that have no cap on the amount, though. I think they may be a little too light on benefit though - 7.5m for an improvement that only reduces a single city's upkeep by 1% isn't worth it for anyone, even if that slot won't get used otherwise.

[Jefferson Davis III]

well, it is only the natural course of things, that big nations will chose to help the little guys, and also, I didn't want to include this one with the other because they are two completely different classes of improvements.

 

But Also I do agree with your idea, things are too simple, there is a game out called Democracy 3, it utilizes an extreme level of complexity when involving a nation. But that level of complexity couldn't ever be attained by this game, but this game should take some tips from D3, of course you have to buy D3 and it isn't much of multiplayer, but Sheepy could "beef up" the complexity of each citizen which would allow for more improvements and more well thought out strategies. 

[Jefferson Davis III]

I do like the idea of implementing some new improvement categories that have no cap on the amount, though. I think they may be a little too light on benefit though - 7.5m for an improvement that only reduces a single city's upkeep by 1% isn't worth it for anyone, even if that slot won't get used otherwise.

It would if your city's upkeep it 1million every couple days, eventually, it pays off.

[Pax]

It would if your city's upkeep it 1million every couple days, eventually, it pays off.

 

Eventually, but not very likely to happen in a realistic scenario - at least not until nations are much, much, much larger than they are now.

 

Right now my nation is in the top ~9%, and my total upkeep us $1m per day for everything. Considering my seven cities, that comes out to roughly 140k upkeep per city per day. Multiply that by 1% (the total saved by that improvement), and you're saving less than $1500/day - even as one of the largest nations ingame. It would take 13.7 years for it to pay itself off - and in the meantime that's one less improvement slot I have available for war.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Pax

[Jefferson Davis III]

Yes, and my nation isn't far behind yours, but remember, there are nations much bigger, and think how big you or I will be in just 2 or 3 months, how about 6 months. By the end of the year, both of us will have 10 cities and be over 1,800 score. By then, become more relevant, the top 5% are almost to that point now, I figure that by the time sheepy puts this in, 

[Pax]

I don't think upkeep increases as exponentially as costs do, though. Sure, it'll continue going up, but not the point where that 13.7 year figure suddenly becomes a few weeks/months - at least not for another few years of ingame time, minimum.

The only reason that improvement could be useful would be the extra population - which I didn't originally notice and is actually ridiculously useful. Touting the reduced upkeep as an important thing is just plain wrong based off of current mechanics - it might be worthwhile if it was like, -5% upkeep in that city, but even then it would still be a long time till that paid itself off. It might even be useful if it was -1% upkeep nationally, but really it isn't going to do much of anything if it's just 1% upkeep in one single city, ever. Even when nations grow past where they are now, they're going to be growing more in number of cities than amount of infra per city - meaning that the upkeep reduction per single city won't do a whole ton.

 

The fact is that implementing an improvement that is completely irrelevant to current mechanics based off of the idea that it might eventually become relevant is a bad idea.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Pax

[Jefferson Davis III]

depends on how you look at it, I only buy a city when it starts costing more to buy 100 infra than it would to buy a city, as a result, my cities are pretty big and my score being pretty high with only 6 cities

[Lilac Veritas]

depends on how you look at it, I only buy a city when it starts costing more to buy 100 infra than it would to buy a city, as a result, my cities are pretty big and my score being pretty high with only 6 cities

That's a pretty inefficient way to grow. You want to weight up the profit you'd get from increasing 100 infra in ALL cities compared to the profit you'd get by getting another city and building it to the same level as the others, AND THEN you want to work out which provides the most profit per dollar spent.

 

As for the actual topic, I like the general concept, but it needs more balance. Not just in terms of cost and effect on one nation, but on the bigger picture. Yes, big nations running out of improvements is a bit of a problem, however we don't want them to become EVEN MORE powerful.

[Hereno]

could possibly work something about urbanization into it. large amounts of people congregated together tend to do things differently than smaller groups, and the addition of urban areas into our nations would pose a host of problems that improvements such as green spaces could fix. if you have it be a function of larger population in one city, you could help to push people toward expanding outward (limiting cash flow for larger nations), in addition to off-setting the income gap. eventually, the formula could get so that it wouldn't be worthwhile to expand a city any farther because you would run out of new improvement spots, or you could make it so that you can just keep buying more and more. lots of possibilities, but the key is keeping it simple.