Economy Rebalance II

[Tom]

I am working on a second round of economy rebalancing. This one will (again) change gold and food values of all regions, some of them dramatically.

The main purpose this time is to have values that the game generates from the available data (region types, locations, population density and more). Doing it this way will allow us easier changes in the future if, say, we think that gold needs to be raised or lowered in total.
One important benefit is also that this calculation will automatically balance island-wide food production to a stable level so that every island produces enough food to supply its population plus some troops plus some margin for damaged production and so on. Having food production neither too low nor too high is an important part of making sure that trade actually can happen.
Finally, this change will level out the differences between the islands, making them fairly close in wealth potential, so how much gold you can make is not an important factor in island selection.

While I'm still tweaking and other dev team members are taking a look at the numbers, I wanted to let you know as early as possible, because for some regions the changes will be fairly substantial. I'm currently thinking about how to best show you the new numbers in advance.

[LilWolf]

Finally, this change will level out the differences between the islands, making them fairly close in wealth potential, so how much gold you can make is not an important factor in island selection.

Could you perhaps elaborate more closely what this means? My simple and slightly drunken mind is thinking "Dwilight will see drastic drops in gold income while Colonies will see large increases" but I suspect there's more to it than that?

[egamma]

Could you perhaps elaborate more closely what this means? My simple and slightly drunken mind is thinking "Dwilight will see drastic drops in gold income while Colonies will see large increases" but I suspect there's more to it than that?

I think that's pretty much what he means. Also, FEI has a very low population--perhaps that will change as well.

[LilWolf]

I think that's pretty much what he means. Also, FEI has a very low population--perhaps that will change as well.

If that's so he'll probably have a lot of angry people to deal with. Would be simpler to just remove the gold income estimate when you're creating a character and choosing an island if you want to eliminate that issue almost entirely(not that I think it's an issue to begin with).

[vonGenf]

Could you perhaps elaborate more closely what this means? My simple and slightly drunken mind is thinking "Dwilight will see drastic drops in gold income while Colonies will see large increases" but I suspect there's more to it than that?

The rebalance would affect gold per region, not gold per character. Is Dwilight so unbalanced on that count? I think there are just less characters by settled regions.

[Indirik]

Could you perhaps elaborate more closely what this means?

Overall island gold production shouldn't change too much. Some islands will go up a bit, some will go down. Almost every region will have significant changes to both gold and food production. Again, some up and some down. One big benefit to this rebalance is that if we ever get to the point of introducing some of the new resources (wood/goods/stone/etc.), this rebalance will automatically account for them.