Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

[Bedwyr]

The feedback is good.

Yes, I will change things a little, with large cities shrinking more and smaller ones less, and also large townslands gaining a bit less.


And yes, we will keep an eye out for "strange regions". With over a thousand regions to change, over all the islands, there is no way we can do it individually. So it's going to be a few formulas applied and then we can tweak a few(!!) individual cases that really make no sense at all.

Tom, Tim and I hammered out a set of formulas for this way back when which I think would redistribute things nicely.  I'll see if I can dig up the spreadsheet when I get home, but it handles the large vs small region thing and redistributes population within geographic areas.

[GoldPanda]

I believe we should distinguish mountain, woodland, and badland regions more, instead of lumping them together as "other".

Mountain regions should have much higher gold income but much lower food production than an rural region. They should be net food importers like cities. Currently it seems that most mountain regions can feed themselves. If realm A wrecks realm B's food supply chain, realm B shouldn't be able to keep its gold mines, iron mines, and stone quarries operational.

Woodland regions should be somewhere in between an rural region and a mountain region in terms of income and food production.

Badland regions should have much lower food production and population than an rural region, especially if the region looks like a desert or a tundra on the map. You could argue that they still generate some income from trading and crafting. Dwilight is pretty good at making this distinction, but on the other maps, a badland region is not that different from an rural region.

[De-Legro]

I believe we should distinguish mountain, woodland, and badland regions more, instead of lumping them together as "other".

Mountain regions should have much higher gold income but much lower food production than an rural region. They should be net food importers like cities. Currently it seems that most mountain regions can feed themselves. If realm A wrecks realm B's food supply chain, realm B shouldn't be able to keep its gold mines, iron mines, and stone quarries operational.

Woodland regions should be somewhere in between an rural region and a mountain region in terms of income and food production.

Badland regions should have much lower food production and population than an rural region, especially if the region looks like a desert or a tundra on the map. You could argue that they still generate some income from trading and crafting. Dwilight is pretty good at making this distinction, but on the other maps, a badland region is not that different from an rural region.

When you think about it, badlands and mountains operating the way they do is a balance thing. Otherwise starvation would be far too powerful. This way SOME gold is maintained even when your main gold sources, like cities are starving, giving you some possibility to continue to fight and perhaps rescue the realm.

[GoldPanda]

I somewhat get what you mean, but I feel that you can't call it balanced when most realms don't even have access to mountain regions. I would be fine with mountain and badland regions staying food-neutral, which seems to be how they work now. I would object, however, to turning mountain and badland regions into food exporters. That's just getting silly if ask me.

[De-Legro]

I somewhat get what you mean, but I feel that you can't call it balanced when most realms don't even have access to mountain regions. I would be fine with mountain and badland regions staying food-neutral, which seems to be how they work now. I would object, however, to turning mountain and badland regions into food exporters. That's just getting silly if ask me.

We don't balance realm choices. Just like we don't balance so every realm has a net food surplus. It would be impossible anyway as the Dev team don't control where and how realms form. However
 towns are also generally able to feed themselves and produce good gold. At the end of the day region envy is supposed to create friction, if every realm had the same access to similar regions, bang there goes that friction.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Mm mountains...Where people train and monks stay. You'd think they figured out how to find food there to feed at least themselves. And, of course, they have gold if they're sitting on a mine. Not all mountains have valuable minerals though.

On the other hand, at least on Dwilight, this would actually make it viable to have Balance's Retreat area settled.

[GoldPanda]

We don't balance realm choices. Just like we don't balance so every realm has a net food surplus. It would be impossible anyway as the Dev team don't control where and how realms form. However
 towns are also generally able to feed themselves and produce good gold. At the end of the day region envy is supposed to create friction, if every realm had the same access to similar regions, bang there goes that friction.

Right, so make the regions "more different" then. Make the mostly mountainous realm and the mostly woodlands/badlands realm next to it salivate after each other's regions. Don't make them all the same.

[De-Legro]

Right, so make the regions "more different" then. Make the mostly mountainous realm and the mostly woodlands/badlands realm next to it salivate after each other's regions. Don't make them all the same.

In either of those two cases, both realms suck so much they should be salivating about ANY extra region they can claim.

[GoldPanda]

Any Barca players want to take offense at this? 

[De-Legro]

Any Barca players want to take offense at this? 

Saex
Type:Woodlands
Population:2991       
Gold:189 gold
Food:92 bushels

Larodais
Type:Badlands
Population:2390
Gold:215 gold
Food:157 bushels

Zolon
Type: Moutains
Population:4500
Gold:388 gold
Food:81 bushels

In general Badlands have low populations and reasonable gold. There food production can vary from just enough to a small surplus, which often depends on placement, if they are near production rurals it will make sense that they produce more than a desert badlands for example.

Woodlands are usually in between rurals and badlands, they also have a low population, but generally produce less gold with a higher food surplus.

Mountains generally have a higher population, good gold production and lower food production. Its not uncommon for mountains to need to import food. This reflects the labour intensive activity of mining.

Of course it varies, some regions are better examples of there "types" then others and it is by design that some regions are less desirable then others. When you also add the fact that region type affects what infrastructure you can build and probably has some other hidden effects that most the players haven't found, types are not so irrelevant as as been suggested.

[GoldPanda]

Fair enough. I'm just worried that giving mountain regions a large food production boost would turn them into food exporters. Realms which previously imported food would suddenly find themselves with a large food surplus... which may nip a few future wars in the bud.

[De-Legro]

Fair enough. I'm just worried that giving mountain regions a large food production boost would turn them into food exporters. Realms which previously imported food would suddenly find themselves with a large food surplus... which may nip a few future wars in the bud.

The change is about populations, moving more people out into rural areas and the like. If anything the net food production of mountains could reduce, as a higher local population eats into that small food surplus.

[GoldPanda]

• Cities: 60% population, 80% food, 78% gold
• Townslands: same population, 125% food, 126% gold
• Rurals: 140% population, 180% food, 144% gold
• other regions: 120% population, 165% food, 144% gold

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting Tom's post, but that seems like an adjustment to population, food production, and gold income. The uniform adjustment to "other regions", and giving mountain regions a 165% food boost, is what I'm arguing against.

[Tom]

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting Tom's post, but that seems like an adjustment to population, food production, and gold income. The uniform adjustment to "other regions", and giving mountain regions a 165% food boost, is what I'm arguing against.

Don't forget that total food consumption will also rise. I mentioned that as well. It is still a small rise, but taking both population and food demand increases into account, it's more like a 10% food production gain.

[De-Legro]

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting Tom's post, but that seems like an adjustment to population, food production, and gold income. The uniform adjustment to "other regions", and giving mountain regions a 165% food boost, is what I'm arguing against.

If you are going to adjust populations obviously some of the other parameters need to adjust as well.
You missed some other important parts of his post

Food and gold production will change as well, but not on a 1:1 basis. Rather the focus is to keep it stable at least on the large scale (whole-continent view). In fact, gold production will increase slightly (10-20%).

Now for food, there is a bigger change. Food will be produced daily in the future, not in weekly harvests.  This should dramatically simplify food management. Both food production and food consumption will be increased a bit (around 30%) so there are less rounding issues with daily cycles.

Those changes will help give the values he threw around some context, in particular note that the increase in food production for things like bandlands is largely part of the 30% general increase to offset the increase in food consumption.