Food Shortage

[mexxico]

Let me give you some information about latest developments :

I examined why kings are overriding most decisions and taking all settlements and I see related code is changed new (at 1.4s) and new code is not well written and not working good, there were lots of bugs there, reported it. I hope it will be fixed. Also currently at 1.4s kings do not spend any influence for overriding decisions, that part is also forgetten while rewriting that code parts. So you are right kings being so greedy is a bug / not intended and I had no information about this part is changed. Still even it is fixed we need to give reasons for kings to stop overriding all decisions, they can have enough influence but other than influence cost we need more penalties like relation penalties.

We decreased influence gain of forum building by half and prosperity effect of aquaduct building by half and increased all building costs about 2- 2.5x also decreased village hearth increase to 0.5 from 1 daily. Now you will not see all buildings are level 3 and all village hearths are 600+ from 1090s. So this will slow down influence / prosperity / village hearth inflation a bit. If this is not enough we can implement new decay systems for especially influence variable in future. Also hostile actions like sieges should damage buildings more we can add these developments in future. Also I see most policies award clans with 3+ tier. So they get lots of influence. I will report this too these policies need some work & balance.

About starving problem, I added a new code to lower garrison numbers in fortifications with low prosperity, if tests are finished today this will be send with hotfix today with above ones, this will probably reduce amount of starving settlements. I will continue working on starving problem. I know this is not enough. I will make new tests to see what is starving settlements ratio now after these and will report you. Also related people are working on to reduce number of wars at 1.4.1 as you know war / peace systems are changed (which is another reason of starvation) if everything goes fine we can send hotfix today. I have less info about if lots of war problem is fixed or not.

 

[TheShermanator]

so hostile actions like sieges should damage buildings more we can add these developments in future.

Yes please!

Still we need to give reasons for kings to stop overriding all decisions, they can have influence but other than influence payment we need more penalties like relation penalties.

Yes, absolutely: the king should have the option to override, but it should be expensive in terms of multiple currencies (e.g. relations). That penalty , however, assumes that lost relations produce further consequences that the player (and AI) would want to avoid. Right now, relations between king and vassals seem to only affect a) the cost of enlisting cross-clan parties to an army and b) the odds of a dissatisfied clan defecting. B) seems under-powered right now. In a few hundred hours of game play, I have never seen a clan defect to another kingdom AND take fiefs with it - only defect w/out fiefs. Fief-less defection hurts the kingdom because of the loss of parties available to enlist, so that's something. But IMO, overall, there's not enough reason(s) for rulers to preserve good relations with vassal clans.

Also, secession with fiefs to new kingdom/same culture for vassals for bad relations with their king would be great - and would seem like a good way to address this influence-fief-gold ruler clan snowballing, presuming negative relations pressure that scale with ruler clan size.

 

[TheShermanator]

also decreased village hearth increase to 0.5 from 1 daily.

This may make raiding brutally consequential for a city's food supply. Especially if the ability of the village to bounce back from a raid and thus supply more food to a city is a part of ensuring a stable city food supply. Right? I could well be missing something here.

 

[Patwick]

We decreased influence gain of forum building by half and prosperity effect of aquaduct building by half and increased all building costs about 2- 2.5x also decreased village hearth increase to 0.5 from 1 daily.

Ok this scare me a little to be honest, i'd rather go with your proposition of changing construction formula.
Raided village and the related city/castle will take soooo much time to recover !

Edit: @TheShermanator same point of view apparently haha

 

[TheShermanator]

Right. To be clear, I think it's not impossible that it could be justified, but reducing hearth rate by 50% may have huge impacts on other aspects of the game not intended to be in scope of the targeted prosperity --> gold-- > garrison size --> garrison food shortage causal line or the related influence --> fief ownership causal line.

Intended or not, it's (IMO) the most important single detail in this update on this thread. (Which again, @mexxico, thanks so much!)

 

[mexxico]

Ok this scare me a little to be honest, i'd rather go with your proposition of changing construction formula.
Raided village and the related city/castle will take soooo much time to recover !

Edit: @TheShermanator same point of view apparently haha

Currently total village hearth at game start is 86K and it goes to 300K in 15 years (400K in 21 years). More than 3x. Total town prosperity goes 180K to 300Ks at 15 years, total castle prosperity is always about 50K. So total prosperity increase in 15 years is only 1.5x and will be less with reduce of aquaduct effects and increase of project costs, probably will be 1.3-1.4x. So we should not solve starving problem by creating hearth inflation at game. Otherwise there will be inflation at item counts at world too. If items are not spread to all towns as good as should be it is another problem.

 

[Patwick]

So we should not solve starving problem by creating hearth inflation at game

That's true, and when when you put it that way it's understandable.

However the issue is that i believe that those 300K Hearth are heavenly concentrated on relatively safe location villages, like middle of Vlandia territory (That would fit with the food tables that you shared with us actually), while the villages on border territory might be average or poor.

I know that this issue will kind of balance itself when there will be a fix for the war bug, but i don't know if it's a good idea to implement that before it is, seems risky to me.

1 to 0.5 seems a bit heavy, even for testing purpose.

This and, wouldn't that change the total food created in the world and cause problem ?

 

[TheShermanator]

Currently total village hearth at game start is 86K and it goes to 300K in 15 years (400K in 21 years). More than 3x. Total town prosperity goes 180K to 300Ks at 15 years, total castle prosperity is always about 50K. So total prosperity increase in 15 years is only 1.5x and will be less with reduce of aquaduct effects and increase of project costs, probably will be 1.3-1.4x. So we should not solve starving problem by creating hearth inflation at game. Otherwise there will be inflation at item counts at world too. If items are not spread to all towns as good as should be it is another problem.

As a global phenomenon, in the abstract, I think that makes sense. But border fiefs that get raided a lot may (?) see hugely disparate impacts. As in, some towns/castles with villages raided often may have serious food issues. Caravans would help, but still ... I would worry that those particular towns/castles would be at a disadvantage.

 

[TheShermanator]

This and, wouldn't that change the total food created in the world and cause problem ?

I think what @mexxico is saying here, essentially, is the less food overall shouldn't be a problem because less food will simply mean less prosperity overall, which is the goal. It does not have to result in excessive starvation, just less population (prosperity) in the first place

Also: If less prosperity coincides with unaffected village level material production, then stocks are going to increase everywhere (perhaps too much), as lower prosperity cities consume less stuff.

But I share the concern about disproportionate war border town impacts. Potentially. A lot may depend on caravan performance in that context. I'm happy to wait and see of course, though.

 

[Patwick]

is the less food overall shouldn't be a problem because less food will simply mean less prosperity overall, which is the goal

Yes but Hearth at 0.5 daily will basically make Irrigation daily project useless (because it scale on the base growth), Raided village will take years to generate appropriate number of militia (scaling on hearth aswell) so it will be easily raided again.

So if food is the goal why not simply change Hearth to food production ratio ? However i agree that with the numbers mexico provided 300k hearth seems a lot compared to city but i still find that reducing it by half is too heavy, even if it's for testing and fine tuning later on.

I'm afraid that it's gonna make the game on the player point of view unbearable for certain players (because you usually get fief where village are already looted).


@mexxico and sorry i'm only focusing on the thing that bother me, but good work on finding bugs and fixing stuff !

 

[Bronk the Raven]

I think the hearth growth rate reduction will balance well with the reduction in wars, other variables changing to prevent starvation, and the possibly changing of town and fief map layout.

Also, I've seen one or two nice threads detailing how villages tied to certain cities and castles forces some villagers to be very vulnerable while delivering supplies, either due to poor bridge placement, isolated village placement, or weird convoluted county boundaries. If the map developers plan on making updates to fix some of these problematic village locations, I'm sure that will greatly reduce the negative impacts of slashing hearth growth rate in half for these border regions.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Currently total village hearth at game start is 86K and it goes to 300K in 15 years (400K in 21 years). More than 3x. Total town prosperity goes 180K to 300Ks at 15 years, total castle prosperity is always about 50K. So total prosperity increase in 15 years is only 1.5x and will be less with reduce of aquaduct effects and increase of project costs, probably will be 1.3-1.4x. So we should not solve starving problem by creating hearth inflation at game. Otherwise there will be inflation at item counts at world too. If items are not spread to all towns as good as should be it is another problem.

@mexxico Could there be a progressive hearth growth system? Something like:

• At < 200 hearths, villages grow by 2 hearths per day
• At 200-400 hearths, villages grow by 1 hearth per day
• At > 600 hearths, villages grow by 0.5 hearths per day

Those numbers can be adjusted to suit balance. That way, villages that have been repeatedly raided to < 200 hearths will be able to recover at a faster pace, but the rate of growth will slow once they have recovered a bit.

 

[Patwick]

Could there be a progressive hearth growth system? Something like:

• At < 200 hearths, villages grow by 2 hearths per day
• At 200-400 hearths, villages grow by 1 hearth per day
• At > 600 hearths, villages grow by 0.5 hearths per day

Those numbers can be adjusted to suit balance. That way, villages that have been repeatedly raided to < 200 hearths will be able to recover at a faster pace, but the rate of growth will slow once they have recovered a bit.

I think that's a good idea, like the retirement for Militia, but i would have said something different like

• At < 200 hearths, villages grow by 1 hearths per day
• At 200-400 hearths, villages grow by 0.8 hearth per day
• At > 600 hearths, villages grow by 0.5 hearths per day

 

[TheShermanator]

@mexxico Could there be a progressive hearth growth system? Something like:

• At < 200 hearths, villages grow by 2 hearths per day
• At 200-400 hearths, villages grow by 1 hearth per day
• At > 600 hearths, villages grow by 0.5 hearths per day

Those numbers can be adjusted to suit balance. That way, villages that have been repeatedly raided to < 200 hearths will be able to recover at a faster pace, but the rate of growth will slow once they have recovered a bit.

+1. I was going to suggest some kind of exponential + asymptotic curve system, but this makes good sense to me. And as you said, we could even play with those #s to tune it down if they would still result in excess global hearths. E.g. 1.5, 0.8, 0.4. Etc. The most important thing, I think, would be to have a low hearth village have a growth rate of greater than 1, and for mid-hearth village to have a growth rate of less than 1. We'd just have to find the inflection point.

 

[mexxico]

@mexxico Could there be a progressive hearth growth system? Something like:

• At < 200 hearths, villages grow by 2 hearths per day
• At 200-400 hearths, villages grow by 1 hearth per day
• At > 600 hearths, villages grow by 0.5 hearths per day

Those numbers can be adjusted to suit balance. That way, villages that have been repeatedly raided to < 200 hearths will be able to recover at a faster pace, but the rate of growth will slow once they have recovered a bit.

I also thought that solution (changing according to hearth) but wanted to keep formula simple for now. Having average hearth increase as 1 is still too much according to datas I see. We can make it 1 / 0.5 / 0.25 maybe in future however average cannot be higher than 0.5. Currently there is too much hearth inflation. I understand your concerns but ratio of villages with low hearth is so low in world currently. To keep formula simple I reduced base to half for now. Later we can think 1 / 0.5 / 0.25 solution. As you see in picture even in first 4 years and even there are lots of raids how t1 villages are reducing and t3s are increasing.

 

[Patwick]

I also thought that solution (changing according to hearth) but wanted to keep formula simple for now. Having average hearth increase as 1 is still too much according to datas I see. We can make it 1 / 0.5 / 0.25 maybe in future however average cannot be higher than 0.5.

Ok that's fair then, but i think you will still have to go for 1 / 0.5 / 0.25 or something like that in the future because with the table you provided yes, t1 is decreasing, t3 is increasing, but t2 tend to decrease, it means that t2 to t3 happens faster and more often than t1 to t2.

And as the average increase but not by much every year, it means that those remaining t1 should have really really low hearth.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Do they, though? (not rhetorical) I thought you had to assign a governor and then leave them in the settlement for them to be a governor such that they could impact anything in the settlement.

The -2 to Loyalty indicates that they are actually governors in more than just title. If you look at the tooltips of Nobles in the encyclopedia, you can see who governs what. These are usually the non-vassal lords (i.e. they don't make parties), but there are some cases of vassal type lords who both create parties and govern towns (such as Bortu being the governor of Makeb and leading a party). These towns governed by vassals appear to still get the benefits of having a governor too, even if the lord is not home.

Assuming that: They would have to loosen restrictions on companion count for this to be worth anything, IMO. Pros and Cons to that (companion restrictions exist for a reason, of course).

I'm not sure that's necessary. Presumably, the player's children will be assignable as governors once they grow up, as well as your brother and sister if they ever rejoin the clan. The player also has access to the +50 boost from the "Reserves" construction system, which the NPCs do not.

I quite like the fact that you have to compromise when determining where your companions would be most impactful. All it takes is one engineer type companion to rotate around as a governor to the most needy fiefs.

 

[TheShermanator]

These towns governed by vassals appear to still get the benefits of having a governor too, even if the lord is not home.

Huh ... that's good to know. It's key because it means you can still keep a couple companions in your party, if I understand correctly, and have them serve as governors. (E.g. Your wife if she has really high stewardship, the engineer in your party, even the scout and the surgeon could provide the loyalty bonus and thus might be better than nothing.)

I do agree that having unlimited companions would remove strategic depth; I'm in favor of the 'choices-have-consequences' mentality in all game design features, including companion selection by their best skills. I just always thought that limited companion function was mis-matched against a governor system that required the governor to be physically sitting there in the settlement. (Also, all of the character's own perks that involve a governor role made no sense to me: Who would just be sitting there in the city just to gain the benefits of those perks?) But if you don't have to actually be there ...[" A Whole New World" intensifies]

So yeah, you could use governors to selectively manage the city construction feature as desired to mitigate the general nerfs in that area.

 

[Bannerman Man]

I also thought that solution (changing according to hearth) but wanted to keep formula simple for now. Having average hearth increase as 1 is still too much according to datas I see. We can make it 1 / 0.5 / 0.25 maybe in future however average cannot be higher than 0.5. Currently there is too much hearth inflation. I understand your concerns but ratio of villages with low hearth is so low in world currently. To keep formula simple I reduced base to half for now. Later we can think 1 / 0.5 / 0.25 solution. As you see in picture even in first 4 years and even there are lots of raids how t1 villages are reducing and t3s are increasing.

Glad to know you've considered it! We can take it one step at a time.

It's also important to know which villages remain in t1. I would venture to guess it's almost always the Empire villages that have < 200 hearths in the late game, while the villages on the edges of the map are those that are most likely to have > 600. This means whomever has control of the Empire's settlements is at a disadvantage economically because their production is on average lower than the factions on the edges of the map. The Empire serves as a high traffic area where raiding can happen from all directions. Without the ability recover hearth numbers quickly after a few raids, the Empire settlements will consistently be at an even greater disadvantage I would think.

Huh ... that's good to know. It's key because it means you can still keep a couple companions in your party, if I understand correctly, and have them serve as governors. (E.g. Your wife if she has really high stewardship, the engineer in your party, even the scout and the surgeon could provide the loyalty bonus and thus might be better than nothing.)

No, sorry, I didn't mean to imply this works for the player too. It only applies to NPC clans. If you assign a companion as governor of your fief they will automatically be teleported to the fief. That's fine though, because again, the player can access the reserves system to boost construction speed. I was only suggesting that as a way to give NPC owned low prosperity towns a flat boost to construction rate, independent of the base rate.

NPC clans can only field a maximum of three parties on the map per clan including the clan leader (these are the "Vassals"). The surplus lords are all "Nobles" who serve as governors in available openings. So, while the player can field as many parties as their clan rank at one time (up to 6, I guess?), NPCs cannot. If you wanted to play by the NPCs rules, you could stop at three parties and use the rest as governors (or caravans).

 

[TheShermanator]

No, sorry, I didn't mean to imply this works for the player too. It only applies to NPC clans. If you assign a companion as governor of your fief they will automatically be teleported to the fief. That's fine though, because again, the player can access the reserves system to boost construction speed. I was only suggesting that as a way to give low prosperity towns a flat boost to construction rate independent of the base rate.

I see. This would be stronger strategy, then, if there was a messenger mechanic in the game. Otherwise, the player is forced to physically go all the way across the map to retrieve the companion from the city if (e.g. if the engineer is done boosting production and now needs to come back for player army siege purposes).

Given the difficulty of retrieving companions, then, I feel like the boost to construction rate might not be worthwhile in many/most instances even given the construction rate nerfs. Player time (and opportunity cost) is a currency too!

Edit: Maybe it would be more worthwhile in a recently conquered border settlement, if the player needs to hang out near there anyway.

NPC clans can only field a maximum of three parties on the map per clan (these are the "Vassals"). The surplus lords are all "Nobles" who serve as governors in the available openings. So, while the player can field as many parties as their clan rank at one time (up to 6, I guess?), NPCs cannot.

I do think player parties are maxed at 3 as well. Certainly at clan tier 5 you only have 3 parties, and tier 6 screen indicators do not appear to advertise any added parties. I've never bothered to play past that, as by then, I have half the map.