Howdy folks. I just posted my first mod to https://humankind.mod.io/thethejeff, which is the first step in attempting to bring the game more into line with my vision of how resource management and city-building should interact. There's a lot still to do, a lot still unavailable in the mod tools, and a lot I have to figure out. However, I figured it was best to get it up as soon as possible because the sooner I can get some feedback and some more eyes on it (I can only play so many games myself, after all), the better the end result will be.

I would really appreciate it if y'all would play a game or two with it the mod and let me know what you'd think. Especially welcome are comments about what works in theory but needs adjustment, but I'll take whatever you got.

What I've changed so far:

1. City and Administrative Centers exploit all FIMS types - Provide more decisions in outpost placement by allowing an early science or money boost for settling near luxuries or strategic resources
2. FIMS Districts now have an upkeep cost of 2 gold/turn - Partly to provide another balance knob to turn on district spam, but also to increase the overall importance of money. I do feel like 2 gold might be too much but time will tell
3. Removed base district synergy of +1 yield to adjacent tiles - Another knob to turn on district spam, exploitation and infrastructure bonuses still encourage adjacency, but no more huge Industry yields on grassland tiles on top of all of the other bonuses, for example.
4. Reduced second exponential factor of base district cost from 2.25 to (2.25 - Percentage of worker slots filled for that type): No, you can't have for Maker's Quarters, you have plenty at home. This will hopefully help prevent spamming districts in empty cities while also cutting down on the massive cost bloat for natural expansion, while also feeling a bit more organic and immersive hopefully.
5. Removed second exponential factor of emblematic district cost and added a linear increase of base cost based on era - Emblematic districts by definition cannot be spammed, some increase in cost is good to require a solid economy as the game progresses but building other districts making it hard to build the district you chose your culture for turned out to be...problematic.
6. Updated Gold Buyout formula to replace the needlessly complicated and punishing inflation formula with a simpler one based on era level
7. Harbors should now be extensible districts. This is a very recent change and I have not been able to test it yet.

Enchanteur wrote:

1. I would like to add this to my mod. I think there is just one parameter to change, and put exploit all-FIMS. One question, if you know: Does the city center proc a resource? Like a merchant district does? So the resource gives +3 money?

2. I hesitated to use this. But since I already had a mechanism that calculates the difference between pop and quarters, I let it go. Also, my mod has another way to value money, so that was two reasons not to use that. 2 gold per turn does seem punitive. Perhaps putting only 1 gold per turn might encourage more players to play the mod.

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4. This is something we were talking about here, balancing districts and pop. Same, I have a different way to solve it. I don't influence the cost of districts but the general production, and I also use the general population versus the general number of districts. Of course, with less general production, I observe that building a quarter is more difficult, without increasing its cost. It would need to be more precise but I haven't found a way. The simplicity of the mechanism makes it easier for the player to grasp though. So, unless it's a great idea, I'm fine with it. I didn't know that you could put a population parameter in the cost of a district, as you do.

If the population is 100%, the factor goes from 2.25 to 1.25, if I calculate correctly. This is still higher than before the patch in any case.

5. Again the cost is still higher than pre-patch. It's still nice to let some freedom to build the emblematic. But an emblematic quarter will be cheaper than a normal quarter. Does the emblematic quarter also have an upkeep cost of 2 money? 

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7. I have incorporated this change. I also did it for resources, a riskier choice. I observed something during testing: I can build next to the harbor, but I can't build next to the neighborhood built next to the harbor. I just changed the "build from" parameter nothing else. There is certainly another parameter to change to allow building the city from there. But in the end I won't use this. Indeed, it brings a limitation. It helps to place a merchant quarter or two near the harbor, but it does not allow to build the whole city from there. That's even better!

Thanks so much for the feedback and kind words! As far as your questions:

1: It doesn't extract the resource, it just exploits the money and/or science from the tile until you build the extractor

2: I haven't really found 2 per district to be that devastating, even in the early game. I had thought of starting lower and gradually increasing up to 2 as eras progress, but I didn't want to run into the situation where suddenly the player is going bankrupt when they advance to the next era. I might tweak it down to 1 or 1.5 at some point in a future relief if it is a problem.

4: Reducing the overall FIMS output based on population was my original thought, I actually posted about it in game suggestions before the tools even dropped. I did this instead because I was afraid that the first city in the ancient era would spend too long spinning its wheels trying to get up to speed. Your way might be better, I'll give it a try.

5: Emblematic Quarters do not have upkeep cost under this mod. In addition, the price does go up by era, but that scaling is all done on the base level, so it's just an inflation of like 400 production max assuming all other variables being equal.

7: I did not know it was possible to set things up so you can build off the district itself, but not build off of the extensions. I really do like that better, I'll see if I can implement it.

Overall, this mod is in the early stages, I do have a vision of what I'd like things to look like but the specific numbers are going to be hard to pin down. At the end of the day, the mod is for me, but if other people like it that's great (who doesn't like a little validation now and then?) which is why I want to hear from people who try it. Partly because I do want it to improve people's experience with the game, and partly because I'm not a genius, my vision is broad strokes, and the more feedback I get on the details the better the end result will be.

I do like influence upkeep, actually, it fits in with my vision of influence as your ability to exert control, or political capital, more than simply an analogue of civ's culture. My original plan to increase the importance of influence was to make it the currency to buy out units, but that seems to be impossible. So I'm thinking what I'll do instead is influence upkeep on districts, and have units bought with currency. That'll decouple a huge part of the game from production also, which is part of what I want to do.