A basic upgrade increases farm profits by a fairly small amount in my experience. However the population grows to, which also increases taxes (& probably trade). Your 0.5% growth rate in Patavium, matches what I've seen, it stabilises without revolution for Julii.
But these large town issues, may be more of a problem for barbarian factions, which have fewer "civilisation" options to reduce unrest.
Loss of revenue due to a rebellion, appears less important to me, when you have a very large number of provinces, so struggle to understand why so many guide posters have been so single minded to avoid it.
05-04-2008, 03:28
Quirinus
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by RLucid
So you're handicapping yourself to make the game more challenging. Optimum strategy for less experienced players, or those who want to finish game faster (as it gets boring when you have 20+ more settlements than any opposition) is to capture Carthage, and become a stronger Roman faction, rather than the backward "runt".
Well, in that vein.... the optimum strategy for the Julii would be if they also take Sparta, and preferably Appollonia and/or Thermon in addition to Carthage. Then the civil war would be limited to Italy. An argument can be made for taking and defending these settlements in the early-game against non-Romans is easier than doing so against post-Marian Romans later on.
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This is exactly what Guyus and I complain about in this thread. No balance to that statment, no explanation of factors or trade-offs. Just a repetition of a point, without regard to the settlement conditions and lead to myths & game hoodoo. The points made about timing of development, and the short/medium term losses are disregarded.
Repetition of a point takes two, RLucid.
Case for some buildings just being better than others: trade temples versus markets (the former -the first two tiers- provides the same trade bonus as a market, takes the same three turns to build, but also have a 10% happiness bonus that markets don't), or academies versus execution squares (both provide a similar law bonus, but academies gives more retinues). There are many other examples like this in the building roster-- some buildings are just better.
I'm not saying that it's a good thing, but if you want to discuss optimum performance, it's true. There's something to be said about looking for deep strategy where there is none.
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Someone who plays Prologue to conclusion sees the issues involved and benefit of stabilising the population, and methods of doing that, and need to plan ahead pop growth.
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I've not seen vastly greater additional revenue in naturally fertile provinces from farm upgrades, so as far as I can see, they're more useful in the moderately fertile regions, which can become large strong cities with sufficient growth.
Which was what I was driving at, innit? :sweatdrop: (Unless I'm misinterpreting you completely)
Quote:
Some places need farm upgrades, and in others you should be wary of going beyond basic land clearance. The argument seems to be going round in circles now despite our discussion in more depth than previously seen, which is rather disappointing. I guess it's just easier slagging farm upgrades, than it is to produce a list of generally recommended settlement farm-tech levels, which permit settlement management.
Now you're attacking the person. While some places do need farms, such as the aforementioned barbarian lands, most places don't, which is the basis of my argument: that farms, in general are counter-productive. I was replying to Guyus' statement that farms are always good and that we should build farms everywhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guyus Germanicus
I understand your point about Antioch. But I'm not sure I completely agree. Regardless of whether Antioch has a 0%, 3% or 6% growth rate after reaching 24,000 population, you're going to develop a squalor problem. You can't really stop a squalor problem from occuring. To me that's the strawman I was trying to 'knockdown' behind this whole issue. You can't really stop squalor. Even in a city like Antioch where I'm recruiting pikemen like mad, I'm still not going to completely neutralize city growth. And the continued growth eventually causes squalor. But, at the same time, squalor alone will not be what drives your city into rebellion if rebellion does happen.
As I understand it, if your population growth is at 0%, your squalor remains constant. And as Omanes and yourself noted, squalor is only one factor contributing to low public order. But runaway squalor is a problem because, as its name implies, it can get out of control.
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Here's my RTW sacreligious thought: I don't worry about squalor. And the main reason? You can't fix the problem.
I agree completely. :yes: So what I'm advocating here is simply to pre-empt the problem, as far as that's possible. In my opinion, that makes the mid- to late-game more fun because I don't have to struggle with my own cities and rebels in addition to fighting the Egyptians or the Brutii or whoever I happen to be bordering.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RLucid
The problem that is trying to be avoided is run-away population growth, where your means to counteract squalor, unrest and reduce population, become insufficient, leading to need to lower taxes (and increase undesirable growth or risk rebellion).
The basic problem is, that 1% of 12,000 is 120; which happens to be the large unit size for peasants, so recruiting alone cannot suppress growth in large towns with significant growth rates.
Exactly so. Even if a city of 24000 has only a modest 0.5% growth (the lowest growth above 0%), that means an extra 120 people a turn, which in effect means that, to use this method to keep the squalor down, you need to keep building peasants (assuming you're Roman) every single turn.
The problem with lowering taxes is that it's a short-term solution, as lower taxes also mean a growth bonus. Games and races as the Romans help a lot, though, I suppose.
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The tiny barbarian towns, suffer increased squalor as they approach the 2,000 mark, and new public buildings are needed. It is documented somewhere in the game, manual or in Victoria, that upgrading government offices reduces squalor.
:yes: I've noticed it too! A 50% squalor was cut down to 15% after building an Imperial Palace. That was probably an extreme example (it was super-growth Patavium), but still.
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If you stabilise a city at 0% growth, it looses the happiness bonus due to pop growth, and now remains roughly the same size.
The public order bonus from that, IMO, is negligible-- 10-15%?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guyus Germanicus
Patavium showing +5069 on map, normal tax rate, Imperial palace. (no games)
a) Farms - 1762 - excellent harvest - crop rotation
b) Trade - 2228 - Curia, Dockyard, highways
c) Admin - 847 - have a posted governor
d) Taxes - 1308
e) squalor 100%
f) population 36,248 @ .5% growth rate
Arretium showing +4208 on map, normal tax rate, Imperial palace (monthly games)
a) Farms - 1056 - avg harvest - crop rotation
b) Trade - 2721 - forum, Dockyard, highways
c) Admin - 675 - have a posted governor
d) Taxes - 1300
e) squalor 95%
f) pop. 35,317 @ .5% growth rate
IMO the data is incomplete. What is the size of Samarobriva, Trier, Condate Redonum, Mogontiacum and Iuvavum? They are barbarian towns, are they not? Might it be that the fact that they are poor is because they are smaller than Thermon, Arretium, etc.?
Also, I think three of the settlements in this set is instructive:
They all have average harvests, and they all have exactly the same farming income, the only variable being the farm level.
Patavium had a high base farming rate to begin with, and there was an excellent harvest while the others have average or poor harvests, so I think you'll agree with me that it's not an objective representation of the value of farm upgrades.
I would like to direct your attention to Arretium and Thermon. Thermon, on poor harvest, and a level two (?) farm, has about the same farming income as Arretium with an average harvest, and a level three (?) farm. While I'll concede that Thermon probably has a slightly higher base farming rate to begin with, the comparison is still pretty glaring.
As I previously pointed out, I'm not questioning that farming pays. It definitely does. Where I disagree with you is whether farm upgrades contribute significantly to income.
05-04-2008, 13:50
RLucid
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quirinus
Now you're attacking the person. While some places do need farms, such as the aforementioned barbarian lands, most places don't, which is the basis of my argument: that farms, in general are counter-productive. I was replying to Guyus' statement that farms are always good and that we should build farms everywhere.
I did not attack the person at all, it is wrong of you to suggest that, and your quote certainly does not support that view. You are mistaken.
What I did do was point out that folk were generalising, so thank you for finally qualifying your statement and use the "in general".
Your point, on the drawbacks of farm upgrades, has been acknowledged and understood; it has been made in many places. I have not up to now seen a more in-depth discussion, considering development factors, nor the specifics of when they're likely to be beneficial/harmful.
The point about buildings not being "equal" limiting strategy is irrelevant and erroneous, if they all were "equal", it would not matter what you build and there'd be no strategy at all, one decision would be as good as another. You need differences, for there to be meaningful decisions, and that means investigating the circumstances, which make an option beneficial. Most comments have wanted to see something as bad or good in general terms, and avoid explaining applicability as it's more time consuming to express detail.
The fact is, that farm upgrades are more useful in some places than others, and also better early in the game, to aid development. It is my view, that an optimal strategy involves sacrifices, either short term ones in return for long term gains, or long term outcome for some settlement, in return for more rapid expansion and an increase of edge over other factions.
It is wrong to ignore that element of strategy, and simply evaluation of options in terms of the long term outcome for a settlement, rather than what is best for future of the whole faction.
Where I do agree in particular with your last post is that the income increase of a farm upgrade, is less important to me, than the population growth benefit, and more ppl do increase other tax revenues (income & trade). A large part of my reason, to develop farming in an area, is to allow other enhancements. The more advanced ones, are built by me, to overcome undesirable pop. stagnation, in cities which are not prone to run-a-way.
05-04-2008, 19:25
Guyus Germanicus
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Good morning fellow farm threaders, (We need a smiley pushing a plow or something, eh?) :idea2:
Firstly . . . fear not, I'm not offended by anything anyone has written concerning our topic in rebuttal to my opinions. I will admit I have generalized a bit on farm benefits. And I am equally guilty of contending, in so many words, that I do believe you should build farms everywhere. Even I don't build them at every opportunity. I prioritize my building projects as you do based on military and economic necessity.
And . . . I do agree (with Quirinius) that you can mitigate your city's public order problems to some extent by slowing growth way down via 'not building farms.'
I won't try, at this point, to deal with every question that was brought up since my last post. I 'shorthanded' some of the information that I posted from the Julii game simply to focus on the farm income numbers. What I was trying to show was simply the amount of denarii involved in income.
I don't want to belabor our discussion much more as I think our thread is yielding diminishing returns the longer we talk on the issue.
Both RLucid and Quirinus are correct in pointing out that your actual farm upgrade, say, going from No Land Clearance to Land Clearance, or from Land Clearance to Communal Farming, is not a very large improvement. That's if you're talking about the difference of one city's harvest at the same level of performance, say 'poor harvest,' etc. Depending on the level of difficulty you play the game and fertility of the city, your increase is probably going to be vary between 70-90 denarii. For really infertile regions like Nepte, it might even be less. I'll try to monitor that the next time I play Carthage.
I started a game with the Brutii yesterday and decided I would simply monitor farm output of my cities early in the game on the 'easy difficulty' setting so I could see what the most liberal game productivity setting puts out. I'll take one city as an example: Thermon. When I captured it from the Greeks, it had no farms. In my first full turn of occupation it produced 821 denarii, a poor harvest under 'No Land Clearance.' My first harvest after I completed Land Clearance produced 1037 denarii, an excellent harvest. Thereafter, I produced nothing but poor and average harvests alternating between 912 and 960 denarii until I built 'Communal Farming.' My first harvest under Communal Farming was 'poor' yielding 1,003 denarii. My first excellent harvest yielded 1,137 denarii under CF.
Thermon's 'poor' harvest yield of 912 denarii with Land Clearance, only improved to the 'poor' harvest yield of 1,003 under Communal Farming. Again, that reinforces a point made by both RLucid and Quirinius. That's under 100 denarii. It's likely to be less if you play the game at a more difficult setting. Even the poor harvest yield of 821 d. under 'No Land Clearance' is only improved at the 'poor' harvest level of Communal Farming by 182 d.
Now here's my economies of scale point, I fear I'm just repeating myself, and I apologize . . . (then I'll drop the issue): If I played the game with a policy (basically advocated by early game guides) that after land clearance I simply don't build any farms anywhere, and I occupy 25 cities, I am depriving my treasury of roughly 1,750 to 2,275 denarii per turn per improvement. (70 denarii x 25 cities, or 91 denarii x 25 cities, generalizing on possible differences in game difficulty levels). That projection assumes that all cities are equal performers, harvest performance is always the same every turn for every city, and no governors are penalized with poor farmer traits. Yes, I'm generalizing a bit.
2,275 per turn for one improvement for 25 cities may not seem like much. It's 4,500 (+or -) denarii for foregoing two improvements. In truth the actual amount of treasury loss is probably a great deal more. Think about this: the carrying cost of 10 Principes for a Roman faction is 1,700 denarii.
. . . when I practised the old style of play with 'low' farm development I saw a slow tightening of my income as the game progressed. It started to hurt my ability to recruit and finance city improvements. I had to finance my faction by more rapid play - sacking more cities. I never got the the higher levels of city development because the game was over (50 regions + Rome)before I got there.
When I changed my habits and started to make building farms an integral part of my economic development, I gained a great deal more freedom for my planning. I could even recruit and support more armies giving me more freedom in campaign choices. I found that I had less to fear from squalor than I thought I would. And, I was able to occasionally forego sacking cities for income which allowed me some captured mid-sized cities to grow faster getting me higher in the tech tree sooner. Ah . . . to each his own, eh?
Now I'll shuddup. :clown:
05-05-2008, 07:17
Quirinus
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by RLucid
I did not attack the person at all, it is wrong of you to suggest that, and your quote certainly does not support that view. You are mistaken.
I was reacting to this quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by RLucid
I guess it's just easier slagging farm upgrades, than it is to produce a list of generally recommended settlement farm-tech levels, which permit settlement management.
...which I thought dismissed my entire argument out of hand without qualification, instead implying that I was just holding an opinion out of convenience. But I suppose I over-reacted, sorry.
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The point about buildings not being "equal" limiting strategy is irrelevant and erroneous, if they all were "equal", it would not matter what you build and there'd be no strategy at all, one decision would be as good as another. You need differences, for there to be meaningful decisions, and that means investigating the circumstances, which make an option beneficial. Most comments have wanted to see something as bad or good in general terms, and avoid explaining applicability as it's more time consuming to express detail.
What about my examples?
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Quote:
Case for some buildings just being better than others: trade temples versus markets (the former -the first two tiers- provides the same trade bonus as a market, takes the same three turns to build, but also have a 10% happiness bonus that markets don't), or academies versus execution squares (both provide a similar law bonus, but academies gives more retinues). There are many other examples like this in the building roster-- some buildings are just better.
There's no equivocation at all: a trading shrine + temple is simply just better than a market, period. There's no downside to choosing to build shrine+temple over market. It's cheaper, and gives a happiness bonus that a market does not. A temple even gives retinues, a market does not. It's better in every way except for role-playing, that is, if you feel that it's unrealistic.
To give another non-building analogy, it's like comitanses versus plumbatarii in BI. They are from the same tier, they have the same recruitment and upkeep, the same melee and defense stats, clones in every way but that the plumbatarii has a slightly higher missile attack. So optimally speaking, you should not build comitanses at all but build plumbatarii. I just don't because I think it's unrealistic, and also because I like the comitanses unit card better.
So frankly I don't really see where you're coming from when you speak of 'applicability' or 'investigating the circumstances' or 'meaningful decisions'. It's like, if you'll forgive me for saying so, weighing the pros and cons of receiving a two-dollar banknote or a five-dollar one -- a no-brainer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guyus Germanicus
Now here's my economies of scale point, I fear I'm just repeating myself, and I apologize . . . (then I'll drop the issue): If I played the game with a policy (basically advocated by early game guides) that after land clearance I simply don't build any farms anywhere, and I occupy 25 cities, I am depriving my treasury of roughly 1,750 to 2,275 denarii per turn per improvement. (70 denarii x 25 cities, or 91 denarii x 25 cities, generalizing on possible differences in game difficulty levels). That projection assumes that all cities are equal performers, harvest performance is always the same every turn for every city, and no governors are penalized with poor farmer traits. Yes, I'm generalizing a bit.
2,275 per turn for one improvement for 25 cities may not seem like much. It's 4,500 (+or -) denarii for foregoing two improvements. In truth the actual amount of treasury loss is probably a great deal more. Think about this: the carrying cost of 10 Principes for a Roman faction is 1,700 denarii.
I see what you're saying, and there's probably the taxes from all those extra people too on the plus side, but you haven't factored in extra garrison costs, lower taxes resulting from squalor, games, etc. The first (extra garrison costs) alone is already 25 x 100, assuming you only need one more peasant garrison per city. That's 2500 denarii. The second (lower taxes) is a little hard to count, but it's safe to say that the numbers are not negligible. The third (games and races), well..... it's 400d per monthly game/race, and more for daily ones.
05-05-2008, 10:52
RLucid
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quirinus
I thought dismissed my entire argument out of hand without qualification
...
What about my examples?
I tried to argue against over-generalising, which leads to superficial routine thinking, and it has frustrated me that more subtle aspects have not featured much in this debate.
On your specific example, I actually feel you're committing a common logical fallacy. Because you're positing an either/or choice, deciding which is better, when in fact you can have both types of building upgrade. Furthermore the upgrades are different types of things, and may enable recruitment, so other factors may come into play, making a so called "worse" building better in the circumstances for balance reasons.
More especifically, I'd very commonly build as Julii Shrine Ceres & farm upgrade, to encourage population early in game. I don't see how it's meaningful to debate which is "better", when at time of construction, I'm looking at how to grow a population, increase income and achieve an effect for a certain fixed sum. In certain towns, I might build farm upgrade and but go Bacchus route (and in another Jupiter), in order to improve the retinue of Generals. This is because the game rewards mixed strategies, that is having 100% one type of temple is not optimal. So the ideal for a settlement, should in my view be compromised in interests of strengthening the factions empire.
Finally, I'll add that the costs of forgoing upgrades in certain regions will actually be higher than the lost farm income, because the population growth acts as a stimulus to the regional economy, increasing revenues and permitting greater development earlier, so the investment pays off much sooner.
05-05-2008, 11:39
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Might I request the maintaining of civility here folks. If things get too heated I'll have to take the unfortunate steps of closing this thread down.
Thanks :bow:
05-06-2008, 14:37
Quirinus
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by RLucid
I tried to argue against over-generalising, which leads to superficial routine thinking, and it has frustrated me that more subtle aspects have not featured much in this debate.
On your specific example, I actually feel you're committing a common logical fallacy. Because you're positing an either/or choice, deciding which is better, when in fact you can have both types of building upgrade. Furthermore the upgrades are different types of things, and may enable recruitment, so other factors may come into play, making a so called "worse" building better in the circumstances for balance reasons. [...] This is because the game rewards mixed strategies
This is where I differ in opinion with you. It's no more an overgeneralisation than, say, stating that everyone has ten fingers.
But I don't suppose we'll convince each other, so.... :shrug:
05-07-2008, 19:03
RLucid
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quirinus
This is where I differ in opinion with you. It's no more an overgeneralisation than, say, stating that everyone has ten fingers.
Does that mean you think EVERYONE has 10 fingers, or you realise that's not true?
Don't actually think discussion is about "convincing", generally folk aren't flexible enough to change their minds. More in discussion try to investigate the issue and see what points ppl come up with on both sides, so greater understanding is possible.
05-07-2008, 19:19
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Re: RTW - Game Changes Obsoleting Guide Advice
I think this argument has concluded - the topic of farming appears to no longer be on the agenda and discussing why we are discussing is probably a matter best kept out of the mainstream forums.
