The Citadel

Cabezaestufa wrote:I just realized something. When assigning buildings to settlements, I just gave them the highest value building I thought would fit them (for instance, only ct_asoiaf_basevalue_5 to White Harbor). But now I remembered that's not how buildings are supposed to work here. I should actually have given them the highest building... and all of the lesser ones (as in ct_asoiaf_basevalue_1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 for White Harbor, but if I did that I probably shouldn't give them the fifth). I can think of a couple of reasons for doing it like that, apart from the fact that that's how normal buildings work:

- These buildings wouldn't show up in the buildings screen of that settlement. It would be as if you didn't have any, unless the building is just level1, in which case it will just show the first one.
- If this building get destroyed somehow (rebels, special events) the settlements would instantly become level 0. If we do it the other way, it would gradually lose levels, which would be much better.

We also can't do it both ways, because it would screw up the economic balance. I calculated the money values for just one building, if we do it the other way I'll have to change them because it would bankrupt everybody otherwise. I could "fix" the first issue by making these buildings invisible (i found a trick to do that), but the second one would force us to make sure these buildings never get destroyed no matter what.

What do you guys think we should do?

I think its wiser to add all of the "previous" buildings as well.

If it was possible i would even like it to change the name of the whole settlement from "the city of x" to "village of x".
I doubt its possible tho...

Sunspear wrote:To be honest I would disabled the rebels' building destroying function completely. It just does more harm than good for our concept. We can always add something different (province modifier etc) that would actually work for us in terms of destruction and rebels.

I also agree with this.

Ok, I have a proposal. I have been thinking and I think I might just have come up with a solution that could fix both the potential issue of buildings being useless while at the same time give us a more or less "stagnant" Westeros.

On the one hand, we have these very powerful, unbuildable buildings. On the other hand, we have less powerful, buildable buildings. And then, we have winters which will have a chance of destroying the latter. This could make them an unsound investment. Why build them if they probably are just going to get destroyed in a few years, long before they had a chance of paying for themselves?

Well, what if once the province has no more buildable buildings left... Winter started destroying the unbuildable ones?

Think of it; once a town has no stables, no good fields, no cattle, no good walls and no soldiers to keep order, it would be much more vulnerable and less prepared to face a bad winter. Lots of people would die, and the unbuildable buildings (at least the few ones proposed) are just a measure of the population of that province. You'd still have to keep building stuff not only to gain new bonuses, but also to avoid losing the ones you already have.

Then, if we implemented Rodri's suggestion and made the building destroying mechanics depend on a player choice at the beginning of the game, if people would hate it, they could just choose to deactivate the destruction. And we could even go farther, like make the chances of buildings getting destroyed dependant on the difficulty level (and unbuildable buildings would only get destroyed on normal or harder).

What do you think? Please guys, give your opinions and feel free to disagree; this is important stuff, maybe the most important thing we have yet to decide.

i like it, tho it might be micro management hell...

Well, I like the idea about unbuildable buildings. Though maybe you should balance winters to make progress realy slow instead of impossible. After all, Dorne has no winters, and neither does the Reach (at least not harsh ones). What is the justification for them? And, anyway, I would not like a truly stagnant Westeros. Just slow on the development. Btw., what happens if all unbuildable buildings get destroyed? The county pretty much turns into something like Oldstones? By the way, it is rather funny how in vanila CK II troop numbers go through the roof with the passage of time and it was the other way around in real life, so troop spam should be averted. It irks me, seing armies of 100 000 men in the 15-th century. Possibly in Westeros there will be sometinhg of a cycle to it and a very gradual and slow growth of resources.

In short: yes to the idea and a very big yes to the addition of options to it.

Cabezaestufa wrote:Ok, I have a proposal. I have been thinking and I think I might just have come up with a solution that could fix both the potential issue of buildings being useless while at the same time give us a more or less "stagnant" Westeros.

On the one hand, we have these very powerful, unbuildable buildings. On the other hand, we have less powerful, buildable buildings. And then, we have winters which will have a chance of destroying the latter. This could make them an unsound investment. Why build them if they probably are just going to get destroyed in a few years, long before they had a chance of paying for themselves?

Well, what if once the province has no more buildable buildings left... Winter started destroying the unbuildable ones?

Think of it; once a town has no stables, no good fields, no cattle, no good walls and no soldiers to keep order, it would be much more vulnerable and less prepared to face a bad winter. Lots of people would die, and the unbuildable buildings (at least the few ones proposed) are just a measure of the population of that province. You'd still have to keep building stuff not only to gain new bonuses, but also to avoid losing the ones you already have.

Then, if we implemented Rodri's suggestion and made the building destroying mechanics depend on a player choice at the beginning of the game, if people would hate it, they could just choose to deactivate the destruction. And we could even go farther, like make the chances of buildings getting destroyed dependant on the difficulty level (and unbuildable buildings would only get destroyed on normal or harder).

What do you think? Please guys, give your opinions and feel free to disagree; this is important stuff, maybe the most important thing we have yet to decide.

I really want to comment something useful to this, but im really torn here.
The idea is sound, the implementation sounds like hell but doable.
Yet,
Is it actually worth it?

The more i look at the vanilla buildings, the more i like them...
And it seems people are having second thoughts about a stagnating westerose.

There are simpler ways to achieve a semi-stagnation-state;
- Implementing the Winter/Summer mechanics (ofc).
- Maybe throw in a few extra "evil" event such as fires to add some extra destructive power. Keep the destruction ratio a nice 3:1, roughly for each 3 building you build one of them will be destroyed.
*Then again if we go this way, we need more vanilla like buildings, to be worth their re-building.
- Increasing the building times. Maybe even doubling it.

While we actually keep the vanilla buildings.
Adding just a few extra, like the Mines and the cultural troop converting buildings such as Jousting Arena (- some footman + knights, adding a total of 0 or even losing you some men due to injuries to balance it out).

These are my thoughts on going "half-way" on stagnation.
Not even sure i convinced myself, but perhaps this provokes a better line of thought from someone else....

If we do decide to keep the BV buildings, and build some smaller add-on buildings;

I gave it a few thoughts (again in my dropbox, and print for those without access);



Now again the numbers and actual values are pretty much useless until we really start the balancing work.
Main "jist" is;
- We can use the 1-5 base value buildings as requisitions for further buildings.
- Shorter building times, with max 3 years. SO that if building get destroyed it will be easier to re-build. Adding a more interactive building game/micromanagement hell. Thoughts?
- Troops convertors;
"Normal" Onces like the blacksmith, lowering your light infantry and converting it into heavy infantry. Adding you in total 0 men.
"Special ones" Like the jousting arena. lowering men and adding knights. De-facto lowering the number of men. For balancing issues. Plus lore-wise men get injured in these arenas.

If we go with a linear BS building (BV1 is 250men, BV2 is 250men ect... basically adding up.) it will allow us to REALLY fine tune balancing. So I think that's what we should do.

Another radical idea is to actually let players upgrade their BV buildings. (throwing stagnant westerose to the wind).
With the exception of the lvl5 ones, to still keep the major cities major players no matter what. (for a semi-stagnation-westerose).

Common guys... thoughts!
We should reach some kind of decision and start moving forward.

ive posted some thoughts in the other balancing thread so I'll post them here also.

A linear system might be more flexible with the fine tuning of balancing, but how about a toned down version of the current system? here are some numbers ive tried:

Linear Increase: Tier 0: 225 , Tier 1:450 , Tier 2: 675 , Tier 3: 900 , Tier 4: 1125 , Tier 5: 1350 e.t.c
*1.5 Increase: Tier 0: 225 , Tier 1: 470 , Tier 2: 840 , Tier 3: 1390 , Tier 4: 2220 , Tier 5: 3460 ,
*1.75 Increase: Tier 0: 225 , Tier 1: 470 , Tier 2: 900 , Tier 3: 1650 , Tier 4: 2960 , Tier 5: 5260 ,
*2 Increase: Tier 0: 225 , Tier 1: 470 , Tier 2: 960 , Tier 3: 1940 , Tier 4: 3900 , Tier 5: 7820

With the linear system we are probably going to need quite a few tiers, which could get cumbersome, however the current *2 system seems to have too big a jump in between 3, 4 & 5.
I quite like *1.75 increase as the levels are still fairly close but level 5 is still quite valuable. Level 5 would probably equate to Storm's End, Wintefell e.t.c so i think thats fairly appropriate.

I'm still quite in favour of a stagnant westeros. I feel the base buildings should be set in stone (or at least exceptionally difficult to build), and then have all the additional buildings that you can build on top of that. I really like the idea of shorter build times to replace destroyed buildings. it may increase the level of input needed from the player but demesnes are supposed to be small anyway so i dont think that would be too much of a problem. it would also help to keep the number of buildings fairly small, I quite like the list of buildings you've outlined.

knuckey wrote:
With the linear system we are probably going to need quite a few tiers, which could get cumbersome, however the current *2 system seems to have too big a jump in between 3, 4 & 5.
I quite like *1.75 increase as the levels are still fairly close but level 5 is still quite valuable. Level 5 would probably equate to Storm's End, Wintefell e.t.c so i think thats fairly appropriate.

I'm still quite in favour of a stagnant westeros. I feel the base buildings should be set in stone (or at least exceptionally difficult to build), and then have all the additional buildings that you can build on top of that. I really like the idea of shorter build times to replace destroyed buildings. it may increase the level of input needed from the player but demesnes are supposed to be small anyway so i dont think that would be too much of a problem. it would also help to keep the number of buildings fairly small, I quite like the list of buildings you've outlined.

The linear system i support will "add up".
So a lvl 1 will have - 300 men (example).
Lvl 2 will have 1 +2 - 600 men.
Lvl 3 will have 3+2+1 - 900 men.

As cabe said, this will allow the buildings to be viewed by the player. Instead of having it hidden.

I also think the base value 1 shouldnt be "destroyable".
And all the other BV buildings should be the "last ones to go" (as cabe said), examples;
You have a province with BV2 Building, A stable and a Wall -- Winter Strikes event --> Either the wall or the stable will be destroyed. Not the BV building.
You have a province with BV2 building and nothing else. -- Winter Strikes event --> BV2 gets "destroyed", and goes back to being a BV1.
If you only have a BV1 and winter strikes it will not destroy, as someone pointed this out, what actually happens? It turns into an "Oldstones"?
Do we want to be this evil?
It will be close to impossible for someone having only this province (player or AI) to build it back. Instead i think we should add a timed modifier.
"Harsh starvation" with serious penalties for 6 months or a year.

I agree with base value building should be hard to build, allot of money and allot of time. Myabe even some other kind of handicap, like being the capital of a duchy?

But say we have a crappy backwater like standfast, we will want it to have 300 troops for example. Then how many do we give Storm's End or Casterly Rock e.t.c? If we give them about 5000, we will have to have 16-17 base castle tiers if we want a linear system, i think that may be too many IMO.

Another option could be making a linear system with 10 levels, each one giving like 250 men. Winterfell and the like could still get a lot of men by boosting the other settlements in their same province or by giving them a few buildable buildings from the start.

On the other hand, the 1.5x system with a 6th level (5,320 men) could be interesting too. Might make a few tests later using it.

For the record, whatever we do, I am still very much in favor of a semi-stagnant Westeros.

1.5x system sounds like a good idea to me.

First post...

I like the economic cycles idea to replicate winter. Ideally there should be a modifier to every county called "winter"(although there should be a scale, so there can be mild or very harsh winters). The modifier reduces the efficiency of buildings(tax, levies, etc) with a low% (depending on severity of winter) to destroy the building itself. The severity of winter can depend on the specific winter itself and it can depend on location.

There should also be event chains for seasons. Such as when winter ends there could be a random "Optimism" event chain that may give a boost to technology, tax, levies, etc with lower chances of better things. The opposite for winter...

Thoughts?

Is there anything you guys need help with?

I didn't play CK1 but I have tons of personal modding experience on EU3 and V2 and have done a bunch of stuff for myself on CK2.

Well, you can always start making some of these seasonal event chains you suggested.
I highly doubt we will scrap the summer-winter mechanics, so they'll probably get in.

So, I'm not that familiar with buildings, so I'll need somebody to point out what I'm doign wrong, but I think we need to get the naval buildings going, because we've already killed base naval levies, and there is no way for the Iron Islands to do ANYTHING... or Dragonstone. etc etc

For reference: Each ship can carry 100 men.

How does this proposal look...

ca_shipyard_1 = {
potential = {
port = yes
}
trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 10 }
build_cost = 1000
build_time = 1000
tax_income = 2.5
galleys = 10
ai_creation_factor = 0
}

ca_shipyard_2 = {
potential = {
port = yes
}
upgrades_from = ca_shipyard_1
prerequisites = { ca_shipyard_1 }
trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 10 }
build_cost = 5000
build_time = 1000
tax_income = 5
galleys = 50
ai_creation_factor = 0
}


ca_iron_shipyard_1 = {
potential = {
port = yes
FROM = { culture = ironborn }
}
build_cost = 100
build_time = 365
tax_income = 1.5
galleys = 10
ai_creation_factor = 0
}

Only the real naval centers (The Arbor, Kings Landing, Lannisport, Dragonstone, Storm's End, White Harbor) would have a level 2 naval yard, which would be unbuildable (maybe incredibly expensive later if we so decide).

A level 1 naval yard would come with our minor ports (including all island provinces). If you don't have one to start, it would be very expensive, because most people didn't have or need navies. Most places should rely on sellsails.

Meanwhile, every Ironborn castle gets a cheap port so each lord can move his troops around. The Lord Reaper can still call on a large number of ships from his vassal fleets.

Even for a strong King, it should be really hard to move a big army in for a naval invasion. We've seen how bad the various attempts to take Dragonstone have gone, and the Iron Islands should be VERY difficult to invade.

QUESTION: I can't figure out how to make it buildable without having it get placed everywhere at start. If I take out the trigger on the level 1 port, it starts everywhere. What am I doing wrong?

great idea, it would be good to include ships to get a betetr idea of balance.

If you don't want them in every province put a start = { year 9000} in:

Code: Select all

ca_shipyard_1 = {
potential = {
port = yes
}
start = {
year=9000
}
trigger = { TECH_CASTLE_CONSTRUCTION = 10 }
build_cost = 1000
build_time = 1000
tax_income = 2.5
galleys = 10
ai_creation_factor = 0   
}

Also would it be a good to include city versions of the buildings as well? Some provinces , like The Arbor, might have it's naval strength in it's ports , like Ryamsport.

Works for me, though I think I would suggest only putting level 1 ports into towns, just because at least for westeros itself, the fleets are all directly responsible to feudal leaders, and the Redwynes are feudal leaders ruling from a castle. Adding 10 ships for a city vassal gives an extra handful ships for the feudal lord, which is reasonable I think.

Free Cities if we ever added them would be republics and could have big ports, but that's a ways away!

And of course, we really need to work on implementing sellsails, even if we don't know what we're doing for the army part of mercenaries.

look at this.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?595487-Buildings-Prerequisites

we can use terrain to limit the construction of buildings.

How about Religion specific and Region Specific buildings? Like Rebuilding Harrenhall and such?