Varadhon wrote:
The numbers are supposed to harmonize. You have both city-level happiness and empire-level happiness, with modifiers that function at one or the other level. Right now, the numbers add up strangely and the feedback looks bizarre, which indicates, at a minimum, that something is or may be wrong in the number crunching. It yields results like the following that should be impossible (0% happiness but the city remains content):

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.

Wredniak2003 wrote:
Silly question but isn't it already implemented? I mean not on city scale but I was sure unhappy empire got penalties to dust/research on empire level. Would you propose those bonuses/penalties be moved to the city only or should they add up?

The numbers are supposed to harmonize. You have both city-level happiness and empire-level happiness, with modifiers that function at one or the other level. Right now, the numbers add up strangely and the feedback looks bizarre, which indicates, at a minimum, that something is or may be wrong in the number crunching. It yields results like the following that should be impossible (0% happiness but the city remains content):

Silly question but isn't it already implemented? I mean not on city scale but I was sure unhappy empire got penalties to dust/research on empire level. Would you propose those bonuses/penalties be moved to the city only or should they add up?

[QUOTEusername='Fifix[FR];173764']There's a Dust & Science malus on the "Unhappy" level (around 10-20%).

This malus is cumulative with the "Rebellion" level, which greatly decreases (around 50%) Food & Production.



Problem is : The Dust & Science malus is too weak to really damage the Broken Lords' empire (contrary to empires requiring food). I can totally handle -20% Dust if I take all the map for myself, and I gain some time by ignoring happiness-related tech and buildings. Other empires, on the other hands, will probably have some problems with low food/production, as they have much less incentive to stockpile huge loads of Dust.



Possible solution : Decrease ALL FIDS production by 20%, then 50%. This way, every faction will be punished. [/QUOTE]



Seems like a viable way of going.

There's a Dust & Science malus on the "Unhappy" level (around 10-20%).

This malus is cumulative with the "Rebellion" level, which greatly decreases (around 50%) Food & Production.



Problem is : The Dust & Science malus is too weak to really damage the Broken Lords' empire (contrary to empires requiring food). I can totally handle -20% Dust if I take all the map for myself, and I gain some time by ignoring happiness-related tech and buildings. Other empires, on the other hands, will probably have some problems with low food/production, as they have much less incentive to stockpile huge loads of Dust.



Possible solution : Decrease ALL FIDS production by 20%, then 50%. This way, every faction will be punished.

Igncom1 wrote:
Strangely, I have had approval affect my food and production on my citys. I think there is a disconnect between empire approval, and city approval.

There's a huge disconnect, especially if you have happiness boosters running, have located the city near happiness-modifying anomalies or have built happiness-modifying improvements. Let's face it, probably every city meets some part of that description. The values it gives you in feedback don't make much sense. I think the happiness system needs some technical analysis and correction first before we start to question its effect on gameplay. Right now, we don't really know what it's doing, how it's working.

Varadhon wrote:
I've put in about 50ish hours at this point, primarily on the Broken Lords. I think the following are all extremely important to note before becoming too concerned that the BL are especially "broken":



1. The happiness/approval values don't make a whole lot of sense at the moment and don't really hedge population/borough growth on other factions, especially the Wild Walkers. Once this mechanic is working properly (and accurately reflected in the city happiness meters) I think it will allay a significant amount of concern. It SHOULD affect all FIDSI.

2. The Broken Lords have an obvious strategic trajectory: produce as much dust as possible. If you play them with that mentality in mind, then you are playing to their strength as designed. It should therefore be little surprise that they would seem easier as a result. If you play the Wild Walkers with an industry production mindset, you can crank out units in Era II with great speed as well.

3. The population growth/city size issue I'm surprised to read. My BL cities have always had lower population than the cities of other factions I've conquered in the game. The rising cost of population units makes buying more population more prohibitive the higher the relevant city's population already is.

4. The AI doesn't yet have an idea of how to fight a human player. In the several play-throughs I've had so far, the BL strike me as weaker at the outset of the game than most of the other factions. Mind you, much of that was during VIP alpha and a few things were different that made the first 30 turns more taxing on the BL. I'm not sure if the AI knows how (or when) to buy out anything or operate luxury resource boosters.

5. I agree that there's a lot of luck involved in dust returns from ruins. In part, I think that's as intended, but I'm sure any real problem it presents will wash out in the course of testing.

Strangely, I have had approval affect my food and production on my citys. I think there is a disconnect between empire approval, and city approval.

I've put in about 50ish hours at this point, primarily on the Broken Lords. I think the following are all extremely important to note before becoming too concerned that the BL are especially "broken":



1. The happiness/approval values don't make a whole lot of sense at the moment and don't really hedge population/borough growth on other factions, especially the Wild Walkers. Once this mechanic is working properly (and accurately reflected in the city happiness meters) I think it will allay a significant amount of concern. It SHOULD affect all FIDSI.

2. The Broken Lords have an obvious strategic trajectory: produce as much dust as possible. If you play them with that mentality in mind, then you are playing to their strength as designed. It should therefore be little surprise that they would seem easier as a result. If you play the Wild Walkers with an industry production mindset, you can crank out units in Era II with great speed as well.

3. The population growth/city size issue I'm surprised to read. My BL cities have always had lower population than the cities of other factions I've conquered in the game. The rising cost of population units makes buying more population more prohibitive the higher the relevant city's population already is.

4. The AI doesn't yet have an idea of how to fight a human player. In the several play-throughs I've had so far, the BL strike me as weaker at the outset of the game than most of the other factions. Mind you, much of that was during VIP alpha and a few things were different that made the first 30 turns more taxing on the BL. I'm not sure if the AI knows how (or when) to buy out anything or operate luxury resource boosters.

5. I agree that there's a lot of luck involved in dust returns from ruins. In part, I think that's as intended, but I'm sure any real problem it presents will wash out in the course of testing.

From my experience in role playing games when a character replaces the use of one stat for another he becomes overpowered. For example i was playing a game called apocalypse world (like a simple dnd that focuses more on storytelling) and i had a gunlugger (something like a gunslinger) with 3 hard (something like strength but for all attacks) and i took an ability that makes me use hard instead of cool (Dexterity used for avoiding stuff and being stealthy) of which i had 1 and that immediately made me overpowered and i could not loose no matter what the GM threw at me. Lesson here, you need to nerf their ability to produce dust since you only need to make dust producing cities, create more people and place them in other positions and with that you have a huge power in your hands.

My ranged does minimal damage to necrodrones, despite their defense of 4. And how do I assign equipment to units? do I need to research the upgrades?

necrodrones have high health and depending on what equipment they have, can be quite tanky. a good strategy is to have a fewhigh health infantry units like Walkers protect the ranged units which will do quite a bit of damage against necrodrones which are flying.

I'd have low happiness reduce Dust and Research production, as well as food and Production.



Am I doing something wrong? My Wildwalker armies get slaughtered by necrodrones, despite my having a leader and outnumbering then 2:1. They plow through my infantry and one shot my ranged. And they fly.

What if happiness affected growth? If the cities aren't happy enough, they stop growing around some level?

Hmm yes and no, it would make it definitely harder, but what you are forgetting is that other faction use up Food to keep the population alive so if your food production gets a 50% penalty cities often end up starving, this is not so for the Broken Lords, their Population is static.

If we play this out and go ahead do play the ICS game the end result is that our Dust income is cut by 50%.

So as soon as I double the amount of cities, from the number when they were content, I'm ahead again, because I can also build the maximum of Street Boroughs (extra districts), and if I exceed the double amount of cities well my advantage just goes up.

Would a faction trait for Broken Lords setting approval to affect dust yield be balanced?



I guess the risk is that it nerfs them too hard... either way it sounds like a good idea. ICS-type strategies are bland.

Ahh yeah forgot the Healing with Dust point.

Good addition!



Combat will probably change but right now in any drawn out Combat, or combat over several turns the Broken Lords dominate. Instantly healing any surviving unit.

Yeah. It's true. Those guys are a bit broken. Just tried Broken Lords and Vaulters, and playing Broken Lords much easier. Broken Lords just could buy everything and heal everyone by dust. More dust more power. Other doesn't matter.

Hi,

just passing through rapidly to confirm some points (sorry if some of these already have been explained above):



¤ There is a bug on Approval consequences, allowing old bonuses or maluses to stay, and making it difficult to read and understand. We're working on it.

¤ City approval can give Food and Industry bonsues (or maluses).

¤ Empire approval can give Dust and Science bonsues (or maluses).

¤ Empire Approval is the average approval value of all your cities combined.

¤ Approval statuses are :

¤-| Strike/Rebellion (less than 10%)

¤-| Unhappy (between 10% and 40%)

¤-| Content (40% to 60%)

¤-| Happy (between 60% and 90%)

¤-| Ecstatic/Fervent (more than 90%)

¤-| ... each status giving different bonuses/maluses.

(we'll also work on ways to feedback this in-game in the future)



'Hope that helps



And thanks for your feedback on Broken Lords, we'll work on that too !

Mmmm, that certainly explains this:

wyldmage wrote:
So you could just re-assign every single population to production, buy something, and then assign them back to what you want them doing.

Disregard the population bonus then...