So here comes a new faction trait for the Broken Lords.

Put the files in the following folders :

FactionTraits[DustCravers] and SimulationDescriptors[DustCravers] in the Simulation folder

GuiElements[DustCravers] in the ... Gui folder

LocalizationDustCravers[english] in the eng subfolder of the Localization folder.



You'll only have the Gui element and the Localization elements from the english version of the game.



What does it do ? It's a custom faction trait (in economy) you can chose in the custom factions if you chose the Broken Lord affinity.

So to test it you'll need to create a custom faction with the BL and chose that trait from the Economy list. It would be better to test it alone, without adding more faction traits.



It will add as many Population per Dust as the population of the city. So a city with population 10 will get +10 in BaseDustPerPop for a +14 total. So you'll have a better time trying to get as few cities as possible... or take big juicy cities.



The rationale behind that is that the BL should be the kind of "tall" empires that strives with few cities. If you have 10 pop in a city you'll get 10x14 Dust if you put them all in Dust.

If those 10 pop are on two different city, then you'll get 5x9 + 5x9 Dust.

So up to the 10th pop you woul dget more Dust from different cities. But once you get cities with more than 10 pop you'll get more for your Dust.

It means that an early expansion is still a good idea but you'll have to get a city with a lot of pop to get a good bonus to dust.



Here are the files to test !

"TrythisawesomeFactionTrait!" wrote:
DustCravers.zip

That's incredibly overpowered. O.o

Not that much with the BL. They need Dust for so many things.

At the moment I just need to test it, then I'll adjust the cost from the custompoints.

A really interesting idea. I threw together a quick spreadsheet to compare the effects, I'll post a few numbers here. I'm not sure how the cost of increasing population is calculated though, so this may not tell the whole story.



The numbers in brackets at the start of each line are the number of cities in your empire (assumed even split). The next listed number (in bold) is your total empire dust production (assumed all workers are on dust). Calculations assume a base dust/pop of 4.



edit: Finally, the "i=" indicates the cost of increasing population for such an empire.



Empire Pop: 20

[1] : 480 i=1537

[2] : 280 i=1037

[4] : 180 i=787



Empire Pop: 80

[1] : 6,720 i=8293

[2] : 3,520 i=6293

[4] : 1,920 i=5293



Empire Pop: 200

[1] : 40,800 i=26971

[2] : 20,800 i=21971

[4] : 7,040 i=19471



I'll just break down the last set of numbers into how the spreadsheet is calculating it so you can check my workings.



[200/1+4] * [200/1] * 1 = 40,800

[200/2+4] * [200/2] * 2 = 20,800

[200/4+4] * [200/4] * 4 = 10,800

[Dust/Pop] * [CityPop] * [Cities]



Note: There are obviously ways to modify base dust in game, changing this value brings the wider empires closer to tall ones in small towns, but makes very little difference to the numbers here in large towns.



It seems there's a reasonable balance between tall and wide cities. Tall cities seem to win out though, as their dust production advantages seem to scale better than their population increment disadvantages. But it doesn't seem too out of control. You could always have one Megacity and a few strategic/luxury satellites to get the best of both worlds too.

Ah, I found this in another thread...

Nosferatiel wrote:
According to Meedoc, it is: population_city*50+population_empire^1.5 * 6

A problem I have is I'm not sure if the "*6" refers to the whole expression or the latter term. Normal order of operations would suggest just the latter, but that makes the second term so much bigger than the first term that number of cities has little effect over just 'empire population'. I might try to test it in-game.



Edit: nevermind, the multiplier seems to just affect the latter term (otherwise you would pay 1248 for increasing a 4 population, single city empire) -- and that uh, sounds wrong. I'll edit in some increment costs to my earlier post.



Edit2: I look forward to trying the mod out next time I play, sometimes Excel is fun too though

I'm pretty sure it is the latter, cos the price starts at around 60 dust, and first steps are aroudn 50 each. And indeed in my playthrough with the broken lords, I had 3 main cities, which each had 20 - 40 population. Basically at some point it was like increasing pop in a small city cost 4 k, while in the capital it cost 5.5 k. Which was like, meh, I'll just boost the capital since all trade routes go to there anyway + it was slightly more effective due to the hero.



So the modded trait at hand... I believe it is insanely overpowered. So with 40 size capital you would make 40*44 dust base? You wouldn't even want to build other cities as you can pretty fast grow your pop by 1 per turn because the gold income grows faster than the cost goes up. You will have 100 size city in no time at which point you will be making 10 k per turnand you win commerce victory soon after. The strategy will be so strong, straightforward and boring. But you may test it out if you want.



The idea in itself is actually interesting, but I think it should definintly not be 1 per population making it pop^2 formula which beats the population growth formula, but instead be less than ^1.5, I'd suggest starting out at something like 0.1-0.2 per population. Though even then I'm not sure you want to build a second city with pop > 1. At 0.2 I believe a 100 pop city can effectivily double it's dust income compared to not having it and that is with the best tech available + good hero (doubling something while already having best tech is significantly harder than without). But it becomes better than any other dust trait relatively soon. I'd suggest a 55-80 trait cost and with 0.1-0.2 per population. And I'm still afraid it is OP.

I guess there are two issues:

i. Parity of growth between Food empires and Dust empires

ii. Empire output parity at a given population



I feel it's possible that a food empire could still outgrow the dust empire of this thread (because they can have several fast growing cities). It's certainly true however that the Dust empire would outproduce the food one at a given population.



If you have only one fast growing city, maybe it should be able to grow almost every turn; but the things you could do if you weren't growing are a touch scary for large buyout focused empires.

synra wrote:


I feel it's possible that a food empire could still outgrow the dust empire of this thread (because they can have several fast growing cities). It's certainly true however that the Dust empire would outproduce the food one at a given population.

Maybe so, but growing your cities with food does not count towards a victory condition, while the dust you make to buy your pop does... and when it can actually compete or even outgrow food empires at the same time then it is all the good with no bad.

Hum.. I didn't think of the economic victory. But having 40 pop in cities in late game seems a really high number.

Moreover, think about the fact that you'll have some problems to stop your neighboors if you stick with only one city from start to end (unles you start capturing and take only the better cities).

I also made an AI mod, and using my AI mod and my Dust trait help BL a lot to be on par with other empires.



I had another idea but I'm not sure how I could implement it : the base idea is to give an incentive to stay with very few cities and getting the best of them. Instea do fgiving +1 dustperpop thanks to the pop, you could research a tech that would let you "burn" your pop and get +1 basdustperpop. So a city with 10 pop would get to 9 pop but your base dust per pop would be higher. So you would need some time to get the enough dust to be back at what was your ancient level.



Or even better ! You would HAVE to do that and every 10 turns, every city "burn" one pop and you get one more dust per pop. If a city reaches 0 pop it woul dbe razed. So Dust would flow, but you would need to keep enough to avoid your cities to get at 0 pop. That idea would be like the cravers that needs expanding. BL would have a urge to get more Dust. After all it's their life !

Really interesting, I look forward to seeing the ideas develop



I don't play with eco victory (unsatisfying), but yeah point taken. I guess the conclusion drawn from this is:

with current costs of increasing population, any attempt at bringing the Broken Lords some degree of population parity by increasing income will break this victory condition.



edit: clarity

Hum.. What could be good would be the ability to give more ways to use the Dust.

If we want a "tall" empire, maybe we should give the BL more costly units but a lot better. So you would need to keep them alive.

Maybe we could use Dust to buyout tech research ? To buyout new levels for units ? To buyout +5 or -5 to the number of winter turns (so you would be able, through Dust, to lengthen or shorten the winter length) ?

And new ways to get Dust, like razing cities.

I'm not sure this will work really well for what you want. It affects the curve of the game too much. Late game BL would be a runaway.



There are a lot of different ways you could approach this-- but how narrow do you want your BL to be, and when do you want them to expand?



1) Early game: Limit settlers. Make them expensive, slow, limit the locations they may settle, or just get rid of them entirely.



2) Mid game: Make approval painful-- probably by affecting dust.



3) Late game: Give them that Cultist trait that auto demolishes conquered settlements.



In compensation, I think a few buildings in the "+x to all tiles" vein would work for limited settlements. They'd have to be available without extra research, though. Just time the techs to coincide with whenever you start squeezing them on settlements.



But you want to be careful, because making them narrow also limits the development of conflict. It's a little important that each player, in order to win, has to take something away from another player. Mostly, that happens because there are limited places to settle. A "tall" faction that defaults to economic victory is especially free of conflict.



Only recently started playing, so hopefully I'm not just spouting off ignorantly!