Apheirox wrote:
Even a such theoretical powerhouse city would be strictly counterproductive to create (1): First of all, it wouldn't be possible to create a huge city without it weighing in heavily on empire-level Approval (you'd need a whole lot of happy mini-cities to keep just one large unhappy city OK)(2). Secondly, it is particularly counter-productive for the BL to create some cities that are large and some small; you want to keep increasing population in all cities at the same time to avoid driving up population buyout costs.



I'm playing a BL game now, and I see absolutely nothing to suggest they are overpowered - just different.(3)

1. I think you've seen this thread : /#/endless-legend/forum/9-tips-tricks/thread/3824-building-big-efficient-cities-borough-streets-leveling-districts You can achieve a sort of runaway happiness effect under the current modifiers if you build the city correctly. However, there's a strategic trade off inherent in doing so: building in the patterns suggested might make you lose out on the most productive tile exploitations you might otherwise achieve (not to mention the heavy cost of population purchases in larger cities, as you've underscored).



2. You typically wind up with some of these anyway in your quest for strategic and/or luxury resources or as a result of conquest.



3. Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. lol

Seek wrote:
It makes sense to me - city-level approval affects yields that only affect the city, while empire-level approval only affects the yields that are aggregated from all cities. It affects all yields but Influence* this way, but allows for different empire styles (as this thread is evidence for) to some degree, and hopefully to a greater degree in the future.



*Influence is generally small enough that it can be ignored (it doesn't affect gameplay in any drastic way, at least with the currently released factions), but it would be nice to see it included in the empire-level for completeness' sake.

Not correct. Influence is pretty significant - for instance, it allows the BL to almost double their Dust output from workers in the early-mid game. Also, Influence directly scales with the size of your empire, it becomes much harder to produce enough Influence for the desired Empire Plan if one overexpands: Not only does each new city drive up the cost, there are also modifiers on the Sewer improvement that provide additional Influence yields if the population is happy enough (Sewer provides +1 Influence/turn if its city is at least Happy). Effectively, this is what limits rapid expansion since reckless overexpansion into unhappiness makes it very difficult to recover in terms of Influence (and Influence is a good way to create Approval in the first place). Really, Influence is very well done in the current build.

Varadhon wrote:
The reason for the confusion is the misleading feedback on city-level happiness and the heavier penalty that food and production receive in a large city. The BL can--to an extent--exploit the bifurcation of the happiness modifiers and build a huge powerhouse city and avoid the empire-level happiness penalty by keeping happiness very high in other cities (leaving them with smaller foot prints) or by using global happiness boosters (wine luxury goods booster or the empire plan modifier).



That said, I don't find this to be a problem after about 80 hours of gameplay (half of that as the BL). The concerns expressed in this thread seem to be based on either (a) a misconception of how happiness functions (as you've pointed out), or (b) a theoretical notion of what the BL can do without examining the faction in comparison to others, or (c) general hostility to the concept of buying things out.

Even a such theoretical powerhouse city would be strictly counterproductive to create: First of all, it wouldn't be possible to create a huge city without it weighing in heavily on empire-level Approval (you'd need a whole lot of happy mini-cities to keep just one large unhappy city OK). Secondly, it is particularly counter-productive for the BL to create some cities that are large and some small; you want to keep increasing population in all cities at the same time to avoid driving up population buyout costs.



I'm playing a BL game now, and I see absolutely nothing to suggest they are overpowered - just different.

Varadhon wrote:
Out of curiosity, what was the design motivation for bifurcating the application of city-level approval (to food and production only) and empire-level approval (to dust & science only)? This mechanic strikes me as odd.

It makes sense to me - city-level approval affects yields that only affect the city, while empire-level approval only affects the yields that are aggregated from all cities. It affects all yields but Influence* this way, but allows for different empire styles (as this thread is evidence for) to some degree, and hopefully to a greater degree in the future.



*Influence is generally small enough that it can be ignored (it doesn't affect gameplay in any drastic way, at least with the currently released factions), but it would be nice to see it included in the empire-level for completeness' sake.

It's difficult to judge today as worker-based FIDS output is super strong. Even non-BL players can get similar results if they focus buildings and workers on Dust.



That said, high Dust output is inherently better than the other FIDS as you can do more with it. You can't spend food on the Marketplace, or use Industry to upgrade heroes. Without stockpiles, you can't transfer Food or Industry production to other cities...

Yesterday I tried the Broken Lords again (second time), this time knowing better what to do. Nothing like building a city and that same turn buy 1 extra population (region was pacified with 2 villages already) and around 7 buildings (including one expansion). Some turns later, repeat in another region. XD



Managed to get my capital with shape of triangle to maximize level 2 districts (after faction quest required 1 of those). Even producing quite a lot of dust, it took some turns just to get to population 10. Which also meant not upgrading troops or buying stuff in the other cities. don't want to imagine what it'd mean to try to reach higher populations, in multiple cities! But I'm more concerned by the first paragraph of my post. Where is the hard limit to what you can buy each turn in a city?

The inability of Broken Lords to make their own large cities is a major weakness.



By Era 4, there are a lot of Food techs and it's pretty easy to get giant, high-level cities if you aren't a Broken Lord. Size 16 cities are something that just happens around turn 150 when you aren't even thinking about growing your population, and it's not hard to get size 32 cities by that time if you actually try for it and have some Production cities using stockpiles to boost Food production in your mega-cities.

hellheaven1987 wrote:
On the other hand all other factions would not get much meaningful dust production until mid-game, so to increase population really is not an issue for Broken Lords.

I don't find this to be true in practice. The BL face increasing costs for each unit of population in a city. While the first few units are a trivial cost, the increase becomes much more prohibitive after 6 units of population. I reloaded one of my longer running BL games so I provide a few examples:



To go from 6 units to 7: 2.3K

To go from 8 units to 9: 4.0K

To go from 12 units to 13: 8.6K

To go from 14 units to 15: 11.6K

To go from 16 units to 17: 15.0K

To go from 24 units to 25: 33.0K

To go from 28 units to 29: 45.0K



Keep in mind that BL population doesn't grow on its own. The dust expenditures on population growth have to be balanced against other concerns, such as apportioning population to research, raising and maintaining an army (which, in practice, has to be purchased because BL production is typically pretty gimpy), healing armies, upgrading armies, and maintenance. As the AI gets "smarter" many of these competing expenses will be a more serious hedge against expenditure on population growth.

MomoOG wrote:
The thing people are not realizing is that food in itself is just a means to an end. The end is population growth. Just because Broken Lords don't use food doesn't mean they still don't need population growth. I actually see the fact that Broken Lords use gold for EVERYTHING both a strength and weakness. The weakness is that they have one less resource at their disposal. You have to choose to use your gold for buying a unit/building, healing your units, or increasing your population. But with necrophages for example I can just rely on the small amount of food I get from land combined with food stocks I get form killing enemies and lastly the population I get from killing off minor faction villages (this is huge and people always overlook this when talking about necrophages) for population growth then use all my gold to buy buildings/units quickly.

On the other hand all other factions would not get much meaningful dust production until mid-game, so to increase population really is not an issue for Broken Lords (since you should already hit a 3-digits income rate before turn 20).

Propbuddha wrote:
Disregard the population bonus then...

My point was that its a noble idea, but wouldn't work.

You're just skewing one balance problem for another. Basing it on production would solve problems, but create others.



Its better to tackle the roots of the problem than simply try and apply a band-aid solution over the top.

I can't tell if any of the factions are actually strong or tier 3 equips combined with basic ai makes the faction seem strong.



Broken lord population growth is not bad and probably on the really high side in late game once you have 2k dust per turn.

The thing people are not realizing is that food in itself is just a means to an end. The end is population growth. Just because Broken Lords don't use food doesn't mean they still don't need population growth. I actually see the fact that Broken Lords use gold for EVERYTHING both a strength and weakness. The weakness is that they have one less resource at their disposal. You have to choose to use your gold for buying a unit/building, healing your units, or increasing your population. But with necrophages for example I can just rely on the small amount of food I get from land combined with food stocks I get form killing enemies and lastly the food you get for buildings you have (cull the herd) all being dedicated to population growth then use all my gold to buy buildings/units quickly.

MomoOG wrote:
I'm finding all four factions to be very strong if played to their strengths. People seem to find Necrophages weak? They can be brutally strong if played right.

^This. Precisely because all factions are very strong if played to their strengths, the discussion of any BL "brokenness" is only meaningful to the extent that it highlights things to watch so as to prevent an easy exploitation of any theoretical advantage they might have. Until the factions can be meaningfully tested against each other, any assertion that the BL (or any other faction, for that matter) are OP is premature.

MomoOG wrote:
I'm finding all four factions to be very strong if played to their strengths. People seem to find Necrophages weak? They can be brutally strong if played right.

To be clear, I don't think the Necrophages are weak. Rather, I mean that they have an actual weakness that forces the player to make different decisions than they might have otherwise. I don't really see the same for the broken lords, unless they end up in a map or region that's really low on dust.

i'm hoping for a fix to them as well but i love the idea of each of these races playing so differently. a lot of strategy games these days are so similar when it comes to classes or races.

I'm finding all four factions to be very strong if played to their strengths. People seem to find Necrophages weak? They can be brutally strong if played right.

Larcent wrote:
Perhaps consider whether the things you think are downsides are actually downsides. If you don't need food at all, is it really a downside that you don't have food production or food-related tech and industry? You don't need any of those things. Their absence actually benefits the player. Not having to build/research certain things means getting to go straight to other things. Not having to worry about food means one less consideration when building/expanding cities. There is no downside to eliminating a resource if the faction is designed to do without it. It is not a downside to not have to research or build something to keep your empire growing (snip) This streamlines the broken lords, not penalizes them.



As for the failure to heal, the problem with treating this as a downside is the length of time it takes for other units to heal up. Ultimately, given the access to dust (and they get so much more dust both from their trait and from not having to put anybody on food!) they really end up healing more efficiently than other units.

It's true that since the BL don't need food, they can focus on other things - primarily dust production. But regardless of whether or not they need food, the fact remains that the BL are denied access to the food techs and their corresponding buildings. Well, so what, if they don't need food? All other factions can build (for example) a Seed Storage facility in each of their cities. These give a good passive return on investment, and that ROI will accrue each turn, ad infinitum. It's not zero sum: the BL player doesn't get some dust building to research and build as a replacement to Seed Storage. BL cities, therefore, have fewer options to increase their passive income. Sure, this lets them research other techs and build other things - but there's only so many good techs to research, only so many good buildings to build.



Think of it this way - if the BL were able to use food, and could grow their population either traditionally or by purchase with dust... would that make them more or less powerful? Would you be happy to research and build Seed Storage and some of the other food facilities, or would you stick exclusively with dust production? IMO, you'd be gimping yourself not to pursue food production, even though you could theoretically do without it. If you accept the premise that the BL would be even better if they could use food at their option, then it follows that not having access to food production is a down side for the race.



Similarly, the BL would be better off if their units would heal over time, in addition to the option of insta-healing with dust. Therefore, the fact that other races' units will heal over time, and the BL do not, is a down side for the BL. You can argue that insta-healing is well worth the trade off, and perhaps it is - but that wasn't my assertion. What I pointed out is that there are trade-offs that come with the BL advantages, and that's demonstrably true.

j.a.paisley wrote:
For those who consider the Broken Lords OP, it's worth considering that each of their advantages also has a downside.



Yes, they can buy pop increases with dust - but then again, they give up all food production, whether on the map or from nice efficient buildings such as Seed Storage. Those aren't replaced with some dust-equivalent, they're just stripped from the Broken Lord's options entirely. For the Lords, it's not FIDSI, it's just IDSI. Or maybe iDsi?



Yes, they can heal their units instantly with dust, and yes that's powerful... but otherwise they get no natural healing at all. With other factions, if they can pace their battles, their units will eventually heal to full at no cost.



Don't get me wrong, I think the Broken Lords are powerful overall... but not OP.

Perhaps consider whether the things you think are downsides are actually downsides. If you don't need food at all, is it really a downside that you don't have food production or food-related tech and industry? You don't need any of those things. Their absence actually benefits the player. Not having to build/research certain things means getting to go straight to other things. Not having to worry about food means one less consideration when building/expanding cities. There is no downside to eliminating a resource if the faction is designed to do without it. It is not a downside to not have to research or build something to keep your empire growing.



Compare them to the necrophages, who have a penalty on food tiles but still actually need food. That's an actual weakness, causing necrophage players to have to be more careful about placing cities and to be more aggressive in order to take advantage of their faction ability to create food stockpiles. They have reduced access to a resource they need, whereas the broken lords have eliminated a resource entirely. This streamlines the broken lords, not penalizes them.



As for the failure to heal, the problem with treating this as a downside is the length of time it takes for other units to heal up. Ultimately, given the access to dust (and they get so much more dust both from their trait and from not having to put anybody on food!) they really end up healing more efficiently than other units.

Have you tried bug spray instead of bow against necrodrones?

Wredniak2003 wrote:
Yup I saw that on many let's play videos. I was assuming current state is a bug and should be ignored for the purpose of balancing Broken lords talks ^^". My question should be: Assuming the system works as intended and the happiness level for dust at empire level is correctly applied should it still be moved to the city or just added regardless of empire modifier.

I wouldn't ignore it because it indicates that there are things wrong with the happiness modifiers in general. It may *just* be the feedback system (how it's indicated in the city management interface). I don't think that's a safe assumption during an alpha especially. Once that's fixed, then it's easier to try to balance what level of happiness penalty is right.



People are totally correct to point out that there may be a problem with the BL dust production vis–à–vis the BLs' relationship to happiness modifiers. However, because there are so many other factors that come into play--especially features that are unimplemented or unfinished--it's simply premature to single out this particular matter as a problem. In particular, the AI opponents are too weak to have a meaningful discussion of the happiness mechanic. When the game is ultimately played, it will be against a craftier AI and wily human players in MP. Right now, the comparison is essentially being made against a void. I'm willing to bet that if you pitted against one another two VIP players who have had access to alpha for longer, one playing as the BLs and the other as the WWs, you'd find a much closer match.