SP - General Drift mechanics are a mess

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In my current game, I own 3 cities and 7 castles. Each one with a Governor of his nation, with a garrison to keep security at 100 and all social structures at level 3. How many of these well-cared for properties give me profit? Well, none, on the contrary, give me expenses. I'm paying to own property and the most ridiculous thing is that I can't even have 100 loyalty, it's like having a son who says he hates you after you give him money to go out with his friends.

This nonsense is the fault of the drift mechanics, which always seeks to zero your increase or loss of security or loyalty. Therefore punish the owner for being good and reward whoever is bad.

This drift means that you can have 2 properties with the same prosperity, but one requires 200 soldiers and the other 300. Simply because of the level of security it originally had, or simply because you temporarily put a very large garrison on it. Which means, that if I were to abuse that mechanism, I could remove the entire garrison, wait for security to stabilize at zero, create an army and stay in and out of the city every day until I have 100 security. . And so maybe every day this city generates an income of 10 denars a day, whoops!

The drift in loyalty is also unfair, in a city it achieved the support of its 3 notables, thus gaining 1.5 more loyalty thanks to that, but the game quickly began to negatively increase the drift and that support did not even serve to reach a high loyalty value.

Another detail is that the militiamen seem to have no effect on security. Is seriously? Shouldn't a city with 300 militia feel safer?

I understand that one should put a garrison on the property when conquering it to protect the city while the militia recovers. Therefore you could gradually decrease the number of soldiers in the garrison if you want or have them for extra support in sieges or a source of recruits, all that in spite of not having much income from that property.

Loyalty should also change mechanics, or just eliminate drift, I really don't know. It only seems unfair to have a city without high loyalty when you do everything right. It should be directly affected to security, if they loot some of the villages you should lose loyalty for not protecting them, if you do not solve the problems of the area you should lose loyalty for not caring and things like that, even maybe losing loyalty for not being present when the city emerged victorious from a siege. Don't lose extra loyalty gains to the invisible hand of drift mechanics.

Finally and most importantly, the city should reward efforts, the extra you earn daily for maximum security is ridiculous. Well, it's totally ridiculous that you don't have a profit owning these. If I give away all my properties I would possibly have a positive daily income value.
 
This drift means that you can have 2 properties with the same prosperity, but one requires 200 soldiers and the other 300. Simply because of the level of security it originally had, or simply because you temporarily put a very large garrison on it. Which means, that if I were to abuse that mechanism, I could remove the entire garrison, wait for security to stabilize at zero, create an army and stay in and out of the city every day until I have 100 security. . And so maybe every day this city generates an income of 10 denars a day, whoops!
I do not understand how can you stabilize the security at zero, as it always tends toward 50. Currently our tax rates are 35% and it requires prosperity. I would be happy if you can explain us more about the issue you're having here.

The drift in loyalty is also unfair, in a city it achieved the support of its 3 notables, thus gaining 1.5 more loyalty thanks to that, but the game quickly began to negatively increase the drift and that support did not even serve to reach a high loyalty value.
Each additional passive loyalty gain increases your "stable loyalty", for example if you have 0 passive loyalty change your loyalty will stabilize at 50. If you have +1 passive loyalty change your loyalty will stabilize at 60 (to stabilize at 100, you require +5 passive loyalty change)

Loyalty is not really a currency you can spend or save, but an active indication of how general public views your governance.
However, it also makes sense to me that to gradually add some amount positive loyalty change as you reign longer so that your realm can become more stable as time goes on.

As always, thank you for your feedback!
 
I do not understand how can you stabilize the security at zero, as it always tends toward 50. Currently our tax rates are 35% and it requires prosperity. I would be happy if you can explain us more about the issue you're having here.
I talk about the increases, you have +1 loyalty, the drift will stabilize it at zero.

If you put twice the garrison in your city from one day to the next, the security drift increases negatively so that eventually your security will be 100 with zero increase or decrease. You had 200 men and 100 security, so you had the necessary garrison to cover security, you put 200 more for whatever reason and you leave them for a week. When you remove them from the city again, the city begins to lose security because the drift is in high negative values.

Yesterday I went to visit a city that I had not visited in a long time, because the game is in a state that everyone is at peace waiting their turn to declare war on me, I was with 100 loyalty and the effect of festivities had been activated, I changed it to increase irrigation. It had -5 loyalty drift. I've already lost about 10 loyalty points that I shouldn't have.

Each additional passive loyalty gain increases your "stable loyalty", for example if you have 0 passive loyalty change your loyalty will stabilize at 50. If you have +1 passive loyalty change your loyalty will stabilize at 60 (to stabilize at 100, you require +5 passive loyalty change)
You mean that now in the city I mentioned earlier, I'm going to go from 100 to 70 loyalty for nothing (When I change from holidays to irrigation, the loss of loyalty remains at -3). All for a -5 drift that left my loyalty to +0, which makes that if I change holidays to increase production or prosperity, it is considered a bad thing. You see the point, the game punishes me for doing things well. It was better at first to never have used the effect of festivities, because over time it ends up worsening the situation.

If the game is going to be punishing me for making a safe city or castle with its negative drift, it is best to gradually remove the garrison from it so that it eventually has +5 "imaginary" security points and makes a profit. Literally, the game is going to start rewarding me for abusing a mechanic that previously punished me for being good.
 
I talk about the increases, you have +1 loyalty, the drift will stabilize it at zero.
Nah, once it goes below 50 it starts pushing back up until it hits 50 again. You can get free Loyalty that way, without having to do anything to boost it.

It is just a thing to make it more dynamic, rather than staying pegged at 100 all the time like before.
 
Nah, once it goes below 50 it starts pushing back up until it hits 50 again. You can get free Loyalty that way, without having to do anything to boost it.

It is just a thing to make it more dynamic, rather than staying pegged at 100 all the time like before.
I'm talking about the increase! not the value of 1 to 100 loyalty.

He had 100 loyalty with Revyl, I changed the policy from festivities to irrigation, he went from 100 loyalty to 68 in a week. Is that dynamic?

Imaginary security and loyalty is not dynamic. It's like being the best runner in the world but you are forced to run carrying a 10 kg bag at the Olympics to balance yourself with the competition.

I already listed several dynamic methods above.
 
I'm talking about the increase! not the value of 1 to 100 loyalty.

He had 100 loyalty with Revyl, I changed the policy from festivities to irrigation, he went from 100 loyalty to 68 in a week. Is that dynamic?

Imaginary security and loyalty is not dynamic. It's like being the best runner in the world but you are forced to run carrying a 10 kg bag at the Olympics to balance yourself with the competition.

I already listed several dynamic methods above.
You can think of this as diminishing returns. For example, it takes 1 apple per day to make some 1 unit happy, but after the initial apple you have to give more apples if you want to make them even happier.

Another example is fuel consumption. If you go at 90, everything is working fine and you spend let's say 1 liter per 1 km/h speed gain (so a total of 90 liters of fuel is burned each hour to maintain 90 km/h). However if you want to increase your speed, you can still do so by spending more fuel per km/h. E.g. If you want to move at 100 km/h, then the air resistance and other inefficiencies will make your fuel economy worse and you will end up spending 1.2 liter per km/h (so you will spend 120 liter of fuel per hour instead of the 100 liters as one might expect.)
This is of course dynamic and depends on how far you're from your "efficient speed" (in the case of loyalty it's 50)
 
You can think of this as diminishing returns. For example, it takes 1 apple per day to make some 1 unit happy, but after the initial apple you have to give more apples if you want to make them even happier.

Another example is fuel consumption. If you go at 90, everything is working fine and you spend let's say 1 liter per 1 km/h speed gain (so a total of 90 liters of fuel is burned each hour to maintain 90 km/h). However if you want to increase your speed, you can still do so by spending more fuel per km/h. E.g. If you want to move at 100 km/h, then the air resistance and other inefficiencies will make your fuel economy worse and you will end up spending 1.2 liter per km/h (so you will spend 120 liter of fuel per hour instead of the 100 liters as one might expect.)
This is of course dynamic and depends on how far you're from your "efficient speed" (in the case of loyalty it's 50)
My first question is what is "Loyalty" in this case. For me it´s a collection of paramters that could have been worth an own settlement attribute.

The big positive modifier is food. Thats good but very simple. Yes, different food-sources provides different but for a starving citizen grain or meat does not matter, they will live another day while for a well fed prosperious citizen the divercity and quality is more importand. The food-stock value is static. When at 0, it triggers are loyalty malus of starving -2.

There only 1 real negative modifer and that´s culture. This modifier makes sense.

Then there are the drift...

A starving city with raided villages can still get that huge static positive boost when in the lower areas it does not at all deserve - as well as the high area loyalty that has the luxery they demand on the market, are prosperious and wealthy but still has another static barrier to bang the head against.

I understund simplifications are needed to simulate economy and settlement life but both the above scenarios should be mitigated.
 
You can think of this as diminishing returns. For example, it takes 1 apple per day to make some 1 unit happy, but after the initial apple you have to give more apples if you want to make them even happier.

Another example is fuel consumption. If you go at 90, everything is working fine and you spend let's say 1 liter per 1 km/h speed gain (so a total of 90 liters of fuel is burned each hour to maintain 90 km/h). However if you want to increase your speed, you can still do so by spending more fuel per km/h. E.g. If you want to move at 100 km/h, then the air resistance and other inefficiencies will make your fuel economy worse and you will end up spending 1.2 liter per km/h (so you will spend 120 liter of fuel per hour instead of the 100 liters as one might expect.)
This is of course dynamic and depends on how far you're from your "efficient speed" (in the case of loyalty it's 50)
I understand that the drift in loyalty seeks not to reach 100 easily. in fact it makes total sense. Although I have seen allies lose territories they own for years because the drift, despite helping them, does not help them enough. And one of the reasons is the drift in security, which does seem pointless to me. The drift of security should not exist, there is already the loss of security due to prosperity, which is always increasing in a healthy city. The cities are not able to cover the expenses of a good garrison and everything begins to fall apart, not so much for the player but for the AI. +5 loyalty drift cannot compensate for the -5 loyalty that causes having a governor from another culture, being from another culture and having low security because the city is poor.
 
Pass policies to help loyalty! Sweep some hideouts when you can and it's easy to keep everything smoothed over in foreign land.
People get confused over the drift often though and think it's something they can change or that they caused. I don't know though, I can't think of a better way to convey that "hey it's going to be harder to raise and maintain higher stats but you also have cushion zone before it hits rock bottom". "Drift: to move slowly, esp. as a result of outside forces, with no control over direction"
 
Pass policies to help loyalty! Sweep some hideouts when you can and it's easy to keep everything smoothed over in foreign land.
People get confused over the drift often though and think it's something they can change or that they caused. I don't know though, I can't think of a better way to convey that "hey it's going to be harder to raise and maintain higher stats but you also have cushion zone before it hits rock bottom". "Drift: to move slowly, esp. as a result of outside forces, with no control over direction"
Decay would be a better word if not for the cushion part. (i.e. it is sometimes positive) Though since it's from both ways drift is also fitting I think.
 
Decay would be a better word if not for the cushion part. (i.e. it is sometimes positive) Though since it's from both ways drift is also fitting I think.
Yeah I think Drift is a good word for the mechanic, I've just had explain it a lot so I know people are just seeing this negative stat and getting annoyed. Maybe an encyclopedia page on fiefs explaining each stat and effect would be good, but still they would have to read it.
 
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