Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
For the original sowers, they had the black thumbs trait decreasing food production, so they were very slow to grow, your proposed trait would allow the broken lords to be too adaptable, they would have to have a negative bonus to offset this, this trait would most likely be against dust production, and then the main theme of the faction is changed. Just a thought.

I think the main difference between Sowers and BL situation is that Sowers gained 2 benefits from industry : they got the production AND extra food. And they still use food to grow, even though it has a penalty



Meanwhile, Broken Lords gain nothing from Food whatsoever. imo, balancing the broken lords food to dust transformation would simply require tweaking the numbers/percentages a little. I could be wrong though...



Overall, I think from the Broken Lords point of view, the Grasslands tiles should feel the same way other races feel about desert tiles >> harsh and barren, difficult to grow... but should still be slightly useful in desperate situation, which is why we though about the food to dust transformation idea

Broken Lords cannot buy population after first war. There is no way of doing it. Cause it cost so much. Other factions just have happiness problems and science and dust boost for empire.

Just started playing and share the pain expressed about Broken Lord population mechanic, which really goes geometric when they start to conquer other factions. With their lore in mind, i.e., their ability to soul leach, why couldn't they (the army that takes the city) be given experience points for each citizen over, let's say arbitrarily, two districts worth. The city would lose any extra districts and the associated population, and the army would gain experience plus allow a more manageable growth curve for the Broken Lord faction. With excess population and city growth a downer to begin with, the Broken Lords really need some way to bleed off excessive growth in my albeit inexperienced opinion.

Ok so now we are on the same page, except would this stay with BL or would it be for everyone? And if it's only for BL then we couldn't package it as that although essentially that is what would happen.

One possible solution to this issue would be to allow settlers to join an existing city. That way the BL would at least be able to ferry population back to their capital to create a sprawling mega-city.

Of course, that could be exploited to create 3-tile triangles everywhere, but considering the effort involve din doing so, I don't think that would break the game.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
I agree with ProBuddha.

The basic mechanics of Broken Lord growth work just fine. The numbers, however, need tweaking. Linear cost increase by negligible amounts for local population and quadratic cost increase for global population may be too harsh in the late game, essentially locking down BL growth in their home cities after conquering a single high-population city.

That is exactly what I'm talking about, problem wise. I can deal with the toxic city placement for a few turns while I wait to raze it, but the hit to the population cost is just killer.



The solution I suggested was in hope of balancing out the issue, and I thought it would be a subtle way to encourage militarization of the BL, but if tweaking the numbers a bit gets the job done then great.

I agree with ProBuddha.

The basic mechanics of Broken Lord growth work just fine. The numbers, however, need tweaking. Linear cost increase by negligible amounts for local population and quadratic cost increase for global population may be too harsh in the late game, essentially locking down BL growth in their home cities after conquering a single high-population city.

So, what factions beside BL can be stopped hard on expansion tracks by conquering 1 city? For faction pitched as agressive it doesn't look good.

And, I dunno, it might be some bug, but it doesn't look like you can raze city unless you gained full control - that makes it somewhere around 13 turns until you can raze bad conquered city and return to upgrade your old cities.

Some of you are missing the forest for the trees. Consider the following:



- The only thing Food does for the other races is grow population in the city the where the Food was produced. Nothing else. Dust is a much more flexible resource that can be used to do a lot of other things.



- Buying population for Dust allows you to have fine control over city growth.



- Broken Lords get "Dust Efficient" so they get +1 Dust on terrain with Dust.



- Other races have to pay 2 Food each turn in upkeep for each population. Broken Lords do not pay Food or Dust for population upkeep.



- Broken Lords never have to research Food techs or build food structures, allowing them to focus on other things.



- Broken Lords never need to assign workers to produce Food, which allows them to focus on other things.



- Dust is an Empire-level resource where Food is localized to the city it was produced. You can use Dust generated in city A and B can buy population in city C.



- There is a Level 1 Empire Plan Bonus that give +3 Dust per Worker, which is a huge boost the Broken Lords can take advantage of for fast early growth, (since they don't need to have Food workers).



These advantages more than compensate the loss of Food production.

KrimsonVagus wrote:
I think the main difference between Sowers and BL situation is that Sowers gained 2 benefits from industry : they got the production AND extra food. And they still use food to grow, even though it has a penalty



Meanwhile, Broken Lords gain nothing from Food whatsoever. imo, balancing the broken lords food to dust transformation would simply require tweaking the numbers/percentages a little. I could be wrong though...



Overall, I think from the Broken Lords point of view, the Grasslands tiles should feel the same way other races feel about desert tiles >> harsh and barren, difficult to grow... but should still be slightly useful in desperate situation, which is why we though about the food to dust transformation idea

Maybe a tech could be introduced allowing the broken lords to extract trace amounts of dust from food, like the "dust farming" that was proposed before. Although it might be better to call it "dust extraction."

So I have been playing as Broken Lords for a few games now and reading the forums about the Broken Lords. They seem to be a bit of a controversial faction. From my own experience they seem quite potent. My only issues with them arise when I aggressively expand into another factions territory...at their expense of course. I find that in many cases the cities I conquer while useful to the faction that previously owned it and would have been useful had I played another faction other then Broken Lords is more or less useless to me, in addition many of these cities come with large populations which then causes the cost of population in the cities that I want to increase to skyrocket. For EX: in my most recent campaign I took a necrophages city, several of the encompassing tiles where useless to me as they only produced food, and the population was at 8-10 which made the cost for pop rise dramatically. I remember reading a post where a member proposed using a slider to create population for the Broken Lords, while I agree that I think the problem lies within population control I think It would be better if a Broken Lords player could transfer a portion of a cities population from one city to another during a turn, they would still have to deal with a near useless city, either accepting it as is or tearing it down a rebuilding it somewhere else, and I'm thinking a player couldn't transfer pop whole scale from one city to another, but I think I would relieve some of the problems surrounding broken lords. Story wise it could be explained as a mass transfer of souls from one suits of armor to another.



Just my two cents, thx.

KrimsonVagus wrote:
I absolutely agree with your idea of converting food income into dust. In Endless Space, a similar mechanic existed for the Sowers (I think) which allowed them to add 30% of industry on a planet into food, because they are a cybernetic race who feed on industry. We could use the same thing with Broken Lords but food into dust instead.

i agree - broken lords are very dependent on the terrain types a good starting environment can accelerate your growth to imbalanced magnitudes whereas a bad starting environment can doom you from the start of the game.



I am not sure if i want to Broken lords to be able to convert food from ALL sources into gold ; but i think there should atleast be a trait which converts Food from Terrain tiles into gold- because lets face it no broken lord would ever settle in a region without Gold ; which means that these regions are as useful as if they were completely void.

For the original sowers, they had the black thumbs trait decreasing food production, so they were very slow to grow, your proposed trait would allow the broken lords to be too adaptable, they would have to have a negative bonus to offset this, this trait would most likely be against dust production, and then the main theme of the faction is changed. Just a thought.

Naturallog wrote:
I'm having more or less the same issue with broken lords. They are potent in desert zones and awful in grasslands. I would propose that instead of their current "dust efficient" trait they get a new one, something like "dust farming" where food is converted to dust. That would take away some of their dominance in desert areas, and give them a fighting chance at growing cities in the grass.

I absolutely agree with your idea of converting food income into dust. In Endless Space, a similar mechanic existed for the Sowers (I think) which allowed them to add 30% of industry on a planet into food, because they are a cybernetic race who feed on industry. We could use the same thing with Broken Lords but food into dust instead.

I'm having more or less the same issue with broken lords. They are potent in desert zones and awful in grasslands. I would propose that instead of their current "dust efficient" trait they get a new one, something like "dust farming" where food is converted to dust. That would take away some of their dominance in desert areas, and give them a fighting chance at growing cities in the grass.



I do think something needs to be done about this. Currently the broken lords are much more dependent on terrain types than the other races.

Like I said you wouldn't be able to move the population whole sale. I think restrictions would need to be put in place. A max of one population per turn could be exported or imported by any one city to/from another city, and if a city was in rebellion it could not export population at all.



I think it's unfair to the broken lords that if I conquer a city as a wild walker or the vaulters I have in most cases a ready to use asset.



Would you disagree with that?

That's a little unfair for the other factions, don't you think? Just because it's on terrain that produces Food doesn't mean the city is useless, possibly just not optimal. If the city is truly useless to you, you should have no problems razing it. All factions face this when the conquer a city to one degree or another.



Being able to transfer population would be exploited. This ability would allow players to transfer population from a big city to another city, then use Dust (or Food for other races) to grow the original big city super fast. Rinse/Repeat. Now you could set up all kind of rules to prevent this abuse but I doubt this ability is worth the effort.

I'm talking about food producing tiles which do nothing for this faction, not the improvements.

You can remove just the offending Food improvements if you want to...