Building costs / times that scale with city size

Who: Pode, a very minor modder

What: A text only micro-mod that gives discounts on all buildings to towns and large towns, leaves city costs alone, and imposes penalties on large and huge cities. The net result of the current set of changes is that small towns get a 25% discount, large towns get a 12.5% discount, cities are unchanged, large cities pay 12.5% more, and huge cities 25% more.

Where: Attached for those who use Ferromancer's EB for BI installer, too lazy to do it over for vanilla EB. See the How section below to learn how to modify the EDB file yourself.

Why:
- Realism: Most buildings in EB (and most other RTW mods) represent infrastructure or cultural conversion more than individual buildings. As such, I feel it's more appropriate for developing infrastructure to a certain level to cost less in small towns. Three roads upgrade to highways more cheaply than 30 roads do. A town of 1000 will acculturate faster than a town of 10000 since there are fewer people to convince. Etc.
- Gameplay: I feel there's too little downside to maximizing population growth. By making buildings more expensive and more time-consuming as the settlement grows, there's now a strategic tradeoff to be weighed: is the extra tax income from a growing population worth the cost of upgrading buildings later, or should I build them cheaply now and allow squalor to suppress my population growth (to a more realistic long-term average, BTW)? I want to have to think about whether or not to upgrade a settlement to the next level, and this mod creates an argument for not where previously there wasn't a compelling one. Furthermore, the escalating cost of everything as settlements grow will help preserve the economic challenge a bit longer into the game.

How:
- The first series of buildings in the export_descr_buildings (EDB) file are the core buildings that determine settlement size. In the capability block of the first one, above the line about agent diplomat, paste

Quote:

---

construction_cost_bonus_religious 40
construction_cost_bonus_defensive 40
construction_cost_bonus_other 40
construction_time_bonus_religious 40
construction_time_bonus_defensive 40
construction_time_bonus_other 40

---

This gives a level 1 town of 400 a 40% discount on cost and time for all buildings (bonus_military doesn't work, barracks are included in bonus_other).
- Skip down to the capability block of the second core building, and paste the same six lines but change the numbers to 30. Now take the construction time and cost numbers and divide them by 0.6 (100%-the 40% discount for a lvl 1 town, since only a lvl 1 town can build the lvl 2 core building). This will give you the new cost and time for the lvl 2 building so that when the discount is applied, you get the original cost back. Don't panic this is as hard as the math gets and it only affects core buildings.
- Paste into the capability block for the third core bldg and set the discount to 20, then divide costs by 0.7. Repeat for the 4th core with a discount of 10 and costs divided by 0.8, then the 5th core gets no discount and costs divided by 0.9. Now we're done with modding the core buildings.
- Go through the rest of the buildings and increase their costs and build times by 25%. This way, when the 20 % discount for cities is applied to the new cost, the original cost so carefully worked out by the mod team is restored. Smaller towns will build that building cheaper, larger ones will pay more, but the middle of the road settlement that affects the bulk of the game is unchanged.

Edit: The attached file also has the non-functional unit morale bonuses from buildings replaced by experience bonuses instead.

I wish I can say yes but AFAIK we have no chance to add another tax level. I tried, failed. {cruel_taxes} also I tried to add war taxes as a goverment bulding but failed to activate when in war but the second one one can be moddable. the problem is I am not sure wether buildings have tax bonus or not....
You can mod construction cost, no idea on maintenance...

One of us is misunderstanding the other. I'm not advancing an idea, I'm describing what I've done and have working, which changes construction costs and times.

I too have no idea if this affects building maintenance. If it does, I suspect that the maintenance cost is set by the baseline build cost without discounts, so in this case 25% higher than vanilla EB regardless of city size. If that's the case, I think I approve, as it should be disproportionately hard for a small town to maintain higher tech. There's no one to cover for Lvcivs the master smith when he gets sick and so on.

I'm interested in your work on additional tax levels, as I'd very much like to see a no taxes setting for depopulated towns (and for BI engine mods, towns of the wrong culture)

What I said is the point that I would like to add your mod but sorry pal ; I cannot because of real life issues that disables me so It would be good if you try them. :yes:

Ah, I understand now. Appreciate both the offer and the real life constraints, been there myself.