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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/9/2017
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So, Ive been thinking. You know how cities spawn where there is industry? But they do not actually benefit from it. It would be nice if having industry at a city added some inhabitants (I think 1 inhabitant/10 production/turn is a good number.)
"But Ay, I hear you cry, isn't 1 ihabitant/ 10 production just pissing in the wind?"
Well, first of all, don't underestimate the power of a small change in an exponential system. But more importantly the smallness of the change is part of the point- we don't want to seriously change the familiar system, just give a boost to newborn or already dying cities. For most cities on Earth the change will be nigh imperceptible. For places like Vallejo or Meges- crucial.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/9/2017
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I could make the industry scale the existing growth rate. The growth rate is based on the average demand against 200 being zero, at 100 demand its 0.1% a turn which is 100% in 1000 turns (1 week) doubling population every week.
I could make the industry scale THAT percentage based on, say 10k industry is "normal" which means 1000 industry would make it 10% of normal and the city would grow by 10% not 100% every week. but if you had 50k industry happening, you would have a growth rate that's 5x normal and the city would grow 500% in a week. That might be too much. Wellington and Mexico city have like 60k industry apiece
Or I could actually lower the existing growth rate default and then add in that kind of formula., Say cut normal growth rate in half to be 0.05% but for every 10k industry its another 0.1% so a new city with 5k Industry would grow as it normally did.
However we do the math on it, industry gives a bonus to population growth. I think we would still make it only multiply the current positive number though. Meaning if the average demand is over 200, no amount of industry will make the growth positive. Otherwise high industry cities are going to have 600 demand average and still growing, that would break the games economy.
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TimurThunder Posts: 28
8/10/2017
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You could make it a positive population modifier that only triggers while the town is "too small for that industry". And a counter-effect negative population modifier if the industry is "too small for that town".
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+1
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TimurThunder Posts: 28
8/10/2017
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I assume that a solidly developed corporation has an industry of 25k, and that most of that is focussed on the home town. You can assign a "supported" home town size to whatever you think is appropiate.
The demand level modifier would counteract growing beyond that size without sufficient sales, and even maintaining it would require more industrial input than a single corporation can provide.
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/10/2017
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I think trade should apply short term upward pressure on the population. Right now, the most effective way to encourage growth is to sell as much as you can to a city and never buy from it. That doesn't feel right. Buying products from a city should stimulate the economy and create jobs. I think you should take the amount of product both bought and sold in the past 50 turns and convert that into a subtle boost to population growth.
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+1
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/10/2017
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Hutton wrote:
I think trade should apply short term upward pressure on the population. Right now, the most effective way to encourage growth is to sell as much as you can to a city and never buy from it. That doesn't feel right. Buying products from a city should stimulate the economy and create jobs. I think you should take the amount of product both bought and sold in the past 50 turns and convert that into a subtle boost to population growth.
There used to be a mechanic where the more that was bought and sold, the higher the demand would go for that product. You can literally buy and sell it into 1000.
If you wanted Buy and sell to influence growth it could be something like a fraction of a percent of the amount of product bought or sold increases the growth rate. Something like every 100k qty is a 0.1 of a percent or something . It can happen every turn It sounds like an expensive calculation to make every turn against every city on every demand product though. The structure industry is a lot easier as its a set number that doesn't change much unless something is upgraded,
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/11/2017
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The old mechanic you describe would do just the opposite of what is proposed. Commerce increases demand, therefore kills population.
It looks like the volume of goods sold bought and sold over the last 500 turns is already tracked under the demand tab in the viewscreen. Is that calculated in the turn flip or is that calculated in our browser when we load that screen? If those number are already getting generated during the flip it doesn't seem like it should take a lot of resources to add them up, divide them by 1000 and add that to growth. But I'll take your word for it if you think it is.
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Vulpex Posts: 390
8/11/2017
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There are two issues to distinguish trade and production going to split those up, also going to tackle both the in game and the "real world" effects.
Industry - yihaa. Having industry in a city creates jobs which encourages people to move into the city - this is reflected in how cities are created but as Ayw says it sorta dissapears as an effect after that (except for protecting a city from complete collapse). Going by the jobs makes people move to the place and grow - production could be used as a basis to increase the growth of a city. However frankly from a game mechanics perspective city growth already goes through some crazy up and down swings. It may be more interesting to use the production figure to set the hard cap as to how far a city will collapse. Right now 500 industry sets that cap at 90k - you could set a series of industrial levels to a city, which prevent a city to collapsing beyond a certain point. This can help cities recover faster but at most that cap should never be above 1 million - you do not want to have a city which cannot collapse with huge demand! That would wreck the economy. It would also be interesting to have an effect of the industry of the city on the profile of the population - with cities which focus on the extraction of materials having a bias towards lower classes which cities with a focus on services having a bias in the other direction.
Trade is honestly weird. If you buy stuff from a city irl you are stimulating production, therefore jobs, therefore population stays there. If you are selling stuff to a city you are meeting a demand but cities do not grow simply because bananas are cheap there, it is kinda much more complex. However from a gameplay perspective the current system kinda works though it would be great if mayors and emperors had bit more of a say in the overall management of a city (which they do, even now, indirectly by voting on the events but still you know what I mean)
Having said all that there may be a case to be made for a closer look to city growth, development and collapse overall, but I find that the current system pretty much seems to work as expected.
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/11/2017
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The thing that makes it seem off is that the incentives feel off kilter from the consequences. If I wanted to make New York the biggest city on in the galaxy for vanity's sake and I didn't care about anything else, the most effective strategy would include attacking or threatening to attack any transports that attempted to buy anything from the city. That behavior should not contribute to long term population growth.
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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/11/2017
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Why didn't you? I kind of toyed with the idea myself (vis-a-vis Milnor) but never had to decide if I was up for it (resources were plentiful enough that people only sold stuff and didn't buy it.)
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Vulpex Posts: 390
8/11/2017
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I very seriously considered blowing up transports in Chicago but it was too much of a hassle (mainly because of terran defense forces) not bothered about city size now though but the logical thing is to blow up anyone who tries to buy anything from a city which you are trying to grow.
It is a harsh universe out there....
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/14/2017
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I didn't do it because it is a flaw in the game design and I'd rather see it fixed than exploited.
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Aywanez Posts: 64
8/14/2017
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Well this is the first time I ever heard of it being an issue (even though, yes, I also thought it was weird.) I was not here for the betas, though.
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/14/2017
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Well, it would be costly to exploit on Earth so it hasn't been much of an issue. But it still feels wrong. When I look at my demand tab and resent players for buying from New York and undoing all my hard work to drive down demand... well, that just doesn't seem like the way I should be reacting if this is supposed to be an accurate, albeit highly abstract, representation of a working economy.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
8/14/2017
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Hutton wrote:
Well, it would be costly to exploit on Earth so it hasn't been much of an issue. But it still feels wrong. When I look at my demand tab and resent players for buying from New York and undoing all my hard work to drive down demand... well, that just doesn't seem like the way I should be reacting if this is supposed to be an accurate, albeit highly abstract, representation of a working economy.
If you sell down the price, of course other players are going to buy it =). If you want an increase in population growth based on how much trade is happening (a lot of buy and sell on the same product) in addition to the current demand that's a legitimate.mechanic. If people are buying ad selling millions on a city where all the prices are in the 300s, it should still increase in popualation. Theres a lot of subtle population factors I can work into the game
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Hutton Posts: 276
8/14/2017
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Yes, of course they are going to buy it. It just felt wonky that that would have a directly inverse effect on population. A mechanic that applied short term upward pressure would make it feel right. That still leaves open the door for a hard crash in a large city if commerce suddenly stops because demand is out of control.
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