WtP SP costs

[Nexii]

Yea but the others have big modifiers to ECON, nutrients, LABS. The psych is more of a side benefit. I made Holo theatres on the cheap side, 50/1 like Rec Commons. Compared to 2 sentinels at 40/2 (minerals), assuming 1 or 2 POLICE SE. Although at 3 POLICE or non-lethal methods, that price drops way down to 20/1. If you have both then it's even lower.

It's hard to say what they really intended in the early game. Police State SE was really bad. In Civ2 the early governments had good POLICE equivalents while energy was still low. So you'd build a Temple (Rec Commons) and use 3 police units to control the population. The next worker control facilities did require more tech. But then again so did the economic government.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Would I satisfy everybody by decreasing HT maintenance and increasing VW cost? Would it close the gap and reduce the urge to have it?
Hologram theater = 60/1
Virtual World = 800

[bvanevery]

It doesn't carry plans like multi turns SP rushing preparation, etc.

So the AI would need to maintain a fleet of some amount of supply crawlers, to be used for whatever purpose in any given turn.  And it would need to decide each turn whether to replenish the fleet or not.  And that would be contingent upon keeping them safe, as otherwise it could lose all of them to strafing or invasion.

I believe it is possible to teach it money rush since it is single turn operation. This disables whole empire participation in SP building which is sad. I always imagined how people across whole empire contribute to a single epic building.

Wat, you mean you can't imagine all the Scrooge bankers signing little bits of paper as they deprive their employees of lumps of coal?  Think of the sacrifices everyone has to make in their accounting hovels.

You could go the other way with this and deny anyone the ability to Hurry a SP.  That would greatly change the game, but it's a valid game design decision.  The human player wouldn't have this "hoard a pile of money" ability over the AI.  On the other hand, one might rightly ask what piles of money are for.

[bvanevery]

I hear you, man. However, it would be a revolution to implement something like that. Besides, it would not be easy just to correctly adjust their cost by map size. It would require tons of play testing. Unfeasible.
🙁

It also doesn't make any kind of sense for early game SPs.  Nobody has a sprawling empire yet, they have to actually build those things.

Also, who says I want to win by building more than 20 cities, no matter the map size?  Who says I want to conquer?  When I conquer, who says I want to leave enemy cities standing rather than Obliterate them?  The risk in "tying cost to map size", is strongly biasing towards larger horizontal empires.  Which can be very tedious to manage.

The Netherlands used to be powerful.  They were small.  They had population density.  They got that because all the people who didn't like being oppressed by Catholicism, flocked to their more tolerant country.  Compared to the "map size" of Earth, they did quite well for themselves at one point in history.  In Civ terms they were a "vertical" empire, at least in their home territory.  Strong empire core.

The best way to understand SPs is they are a race.  Someone needs to win the race, and they get a reward for having done so.  It is not an actuarial calculation of what it would take to build all those buildings individually.  It's supposed to be an advantage.

Some advantages are clearly worth way more than others, i.e. free Aerospace Complex vs. free Command Center.

[bvanevery]

Agree. Actually, I was pondering whether I could nerf the project itself a little. Say to stop base size growth beyond nutrients/4. So one would need more than 4 nutrients per citizen to grow it further. Just a thought.

The most obnoxious thing about the Cloning Vats is not the growth, it's the IMPUNITY to Power and Thought Control.  It's a total giveaway.  If I were a binary modder I'd get rid of the latter.  In my own modding I've at least made it one of the most expensive projects.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I agree with everybody that SP cost should not correspond exactly to its benefit. It should be placed correctly on time scale and then it should be buildable in 20-40 turns or so just to support competition. That's all.

I am using my way to calculate the price based on facility cost just to ease this weighting for myself. Otherwise, it would be just completely arbitrary judgement.

[bvanevery]

VW is quite strong because Holo Theatres are pricy for what they do.

So I made them cheap in my mod.  Because they're not interesting, they're grossly expensive to make, and grossly expensive to maintain.  It's going to a freakin' futuristic movie theater, the narrative on this is completely stupid.  You know what else was stupid?  The overpriced Colosseum in Civ II.  That's the play mechanic they're imitating here, this idea of sticking it to you if you want people happy.  Screw them.  Only costs 50 to build and 2 to maintain in my mod.

Since these are cheaper, VW is not exciting in my mod.  It can be useful, but it's not exciting.  Also, I have the HT and the VW available from different techs.  This is because if they come with the same tech, the AI will stupidly build HTs when it doesn't need to.  Even after it builds the VW those HTs will still be around.  So I put them on different tech paths.

I downgraded the AI weight in alphax.txt since it's not an exciting SP anymore.  Human Genome Project is always better, because it's not a building replacement SP.  There's no other way to get that +1 Talent.

Oh and BTW my Recreation Commons only costs 30 and 1 to maintain.  Instead of costing 40 in the stock game.

[bvanevery]

I am using my way to calculate the price based on facility cost just to ease this weighting for myself. Otherwise, it would be just completely arbitrary judgement.

I establish costs based on playtesting.  When things are too easy to get, I raise costs.  I don't usually raise lots of cost all at once.  It can take many mod releases to arrive at cost.  Most of my SP costs have been stable for a long time, but recently I shifted all the mindworm oriented SPs much later in the tree.  Some of them had their costs go up, to match the general trends in the tree.  The biggest things I picked on lately are the Neural Amplifier, the Dream Twister, and the Manifold Harmonics.  The NA and DT are clearly very powerful in combat in the real world.  MH I already had expensive, I just made it more expensive and moved it even later.

[Nexii]

Yea enduring unique benefits tend to be a bit better than free facilities. I'm noticing this in faction balancing a lot since I gave most of my factions a free facility of some sort. Although there is a limit, some facilities get too powerful to start with without huge downsides. And then when everyone gets that facility you're still left with those huge downsides.

[bvanevery]

Hologram theater = 60/1

The base cost is close to what I do, 50.  You don't need to be so generous on maintenance.  It removes 2 drones and gives +50% PSYCH bonus, it's ok to make people pay 2 to maintain it.

Virtual World = 800

By the standards of my own mod this would be completely silly.  I price the Cloudbase Academy and the Cyborg Factory that high.  However my mod has factory, crawler, and borehole only coming late game.  I don't know what the timing is like for your mod, because I gave up after mindworms trounced me.  My gut feeling though is this is completely absurd, unless it's your design intent to stop anybody from ever completing a SP earlier in the game.  In my mod, getting a 500 mineral project done mid-game is actually a challenge.  For me that's the Planetary Energy Grid.  You are unlikely to get all the important ones done, the AI factions are likely to complete some of them.

[lolada]

I like bvanevery reasoning here for i suppose almost everything including that tall vs wide example and race for the projects.

Neural amplifier and Dream Twister are not exactly game breaking - worms have their weakness - it helps to win the game without losing them 50% of the time ^^. I wouldn't touch that.

So suggestions:
- Hologram Theater 50/2 looks good
- Virtual World - 600 is plenty you still have to build all those Network Nodes.. (lucky Zakharov.. but he does need it the most).. and its less op now with cheaper HT

- About rushing - i doubt we can teach AI to be really competitive with rushing - i would second that removing Crawler rush of Secret Projects completely. Crawlers are still awesome for resource extraction. They can rush prototypes as well - not that i ever remember to use it - even when i needed that badly. If thats out of the question 50% effectiveness is better than 100% we have now.
Teaching AI to rush with energy is something i suppose - someone like Morgan can put it to good use and some other AIs sometimes have lots of energy.

[bvanevery]

Basically the way i play the game is to spam colony pods up to a number and then grow cities. You can't grow cities past 3-4 really unless you have Hologram Theater.

Sounds like you're too much of a spamming horizontal Infinite City Sprawl player.  The Bureaucracy penalty is there to punish people like you.  I routinely get cities up to size 5 without issue.  Some get jerky face, many don't.  I make Non-Lethal Methods available relatively early in my mod, so 2X police units come along soon enough to get me to size 5, with 1 per city.  One can always go Police State if one needs more early control over cities, although I tend to go Democratic because in my mod that's worth money.  Some factions of course are prohibited from choosing one or the other.  Some factions have inherent happiness benefits so city size is not such an issue for them.

I only play on Huge maps, which could make some scaling differences.  i.e. when Bureaucracy penalty sets in.  My mod is designed for Huge maps.  Standard maps are too small, they have no logistical challenge to them.

[bvanevery]

With low pop its not safe to build special projects.

False.  The enablers you're looking for are 1) a minerals special on Rocky terrain, 2) a Nutrient special combined with forests, 3) cashing in Artifacts to speed the SP along, and 4) spending money gained from popping supply pods out in the hinterland.  That said, my early SPs cost 300, not 800.  A 500 mineral SP is somewhat challenging to get done in my midgame.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Released new version where AI hurry projects.

We can continue discussing project costs. However, we should also try how fast AI can build project with hurrying available and maybe it won't be that bad anymore.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Reduced SP cost a little. Let me know if not enough.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#sp-cost-table

I clearly see that after 20,40,60,80 there is a jump to 200. Almost all end game projects are 200 or 300. However, it is also true that almost all of them are broken. That is why the cost.