SP - Economy Settlement development and upkeep

[Shrugging Khan]

I don't know what's planned for settlement management, but I find its present state very shallow and uninteresting, so here's some quick suggestions that would work without having to completely replace the existing system.

• Add construction costs to each settlement improvement, and not just money - let training grounds require a small number of high-tier units in the garrison, let fairgrounds require an investment of alcohol, for example.
• Add financial upkeep costs to each improvement, increasing non-linearly with each level.
• Have improvements downgraded when a settlement is conquered, say a 50% per improvement to be downgraded when the settlement changes hands.
• Let improvements decay over time, say a 25% chance to downgrade by one level per ingame year per improvement.
• Most importantly, add additional tiers with greater costs and effects beyond the third tier, or greatly increase the effects of the second and third tiers.
• Make governors prioritize maintaining existing high-level improvements that the player manually built over building new ones.

I hope that this would make settlement management more involved, and require some more planning and foresight to get high-level improvements without ruining your budget, but also provide greater rewards by making those improvements actually worth it.

 

[KidKiedis]

+1
But I think there's no need to add more tiers. Increased building terms will make players choose priorities instead of just building all there is. 3 tiers would be more than enough in that case.

Those ideas and features are obvious. Actually, I think devs just removed building costs due to EA and testing.

 

[andycott]

• Have improvements downgraded when a settlement is conquered, say a 50% per improvement to be downgraded when the settlement changes hands.
• Let improvements decay over time, say a 25% chance to downgrade by one level per ingame year per improvement.

Agree with most ideas, except absolutely net agreeing with these two.☝
Why would improvements decay without a reason or when conquered? Not random. No to 25% and 50% chances.
Thread including a suggestion on how it may be realized in a realistic and logical way.

 

[Shrugging Khan]

That would also be fine by me.