Tech upkeep based on population (Settled Area)
Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 12:03 am
Among others, one of the options for tech upkeep is "multiplied with the number of cities".
How difficult would it be to tweak the code so that there are more ruleset options to set this up?
Namely: after calculating base upkeep (based on number of tech and pre-set values), instead of multiplying it with the number of cities, multiply it with:
A * pop + B * city
pop - "Settled Area" from Demographics, a real effective representation of the population size
city - number of cities
A, B - values to be chosen in the ruleset
(With A=0 and B=1 this is the already existing option that uses the number of cities)
Reasoning:
1. Realism
A nation needs to expend resources to maintain the literacy and expertise level of its population. Simply put, it needs to educate plumbers, carpenters, technicians, medics. teachers etc. or else all the knowledge it has gathered throughout history will be lost. And obviously, the more people there are, the more doctors and teachers you need. But also, the more cities there are, the more needs to be invested into infrastructure: maintaining roads, pipelines, communication, post office...
2. Gameplay
This gives enormous flexibility to setting limits to the size of the empire and ways of crossing those limits. Adjusting A can make smallpoxing impossible, while adjusting B can make it possible to have effectively very different games regarding the technological gap between big and small empires.
How difficult would it be to tweak the code so that there are more ruleset options to set this up?
Namely: after calculating base upkeep (based on number of tech and pre-set values), instead of multiplying it with the number of cities, multiply it with:
A * pop + B * city
pop - "Settled Area" from Demographics, a real effective representation of the population size
city - number of cities
A, B - values to be chosen in the ruleset
(With A=0 and B=1 this is the already existing option that uses the number of cities)
Reasoning:
1. Realism
A nation needs to expend resources to maintain the literacy and expertise level of its population. Simply put, it needs to educate plumbers, carpenters, technicians, medics. teachers etc. or else all the knowledge it has gathered throughout history will be lost. And obviously, the more people there are, the more doctors and teachers you need. But also, the more cities there are, the more needs to be invested into infrastructure: maintaining roads, pipelines, communication, post office...
2. Gameplay
This gives enormous flexibility to setting limits to the size of the empire and ways of crossing those limits. Adjusting A can make smallpoxing impossible, while adjusting B can make it possible to have effectively very different games regarding the technological gap between big and small empires.