[1.08] New economic tactics and strategies to help contend with the new resource costs of buildings

from Elemental Forums

I am spending a lot of time breaking from playing to comment, especially on that unrecruitable champions thing.  I saw a couple Stardock official replies to -other- threads (oddly not the one I made specifically targetting it) that it is partially a new feature, partially a bug -- previously, you could recruit any hero from the getgo, but higher level heroes would simply cost more (the SD official indicated this was based on their level above yours, but in actual gameplay, it was my experience they did not go down in price even as your level increased).  The 'bug' portion is they did not intend for this to be a big mystery, and there should be a disabled recruit button you could use that gives the reason why, like would happen in 1.07 if you  clicked on a hero, went to the Action tab but lacked the gold they demanded -- there would be a disabled recruit icon there that would indicate you did not have enough gold.

 

Anyway, I intended to make this thread to throw out a couple comments on a change in strategy required for 1.08 because of the significant changes made to income and cost.  You now get only half the gold from battles, so its harder to get gold (though another official SD thread indicated there are more gold resources; I managed to snub one near an AI's first settlement before their borders extended there :P).  I think this could help make regular non-hero troops more useful ... instead of just letting monsters roam near your settlements, send your guard troops out to intercept.  Because each battle gives less gold, you need to battle more, so use your non-hero troops as well.

In anticipation of economic hardship due to buildings costing more maintenance, and reinforced by discovering battles only give half the gold, I think the 'Thief' trait for your sov is all the more valuable, and of course seeking to recruit thief NPCs.  It doesn't fully make up for the gold loss -- if you were to get 100 gold from a battle before, the 50% rate now puts it at 50 and a thief giving a 50% bonus gives 50% of that 50 gold, or 25 gold bonus for a total of 75 as [(X - 50%) + 50%] will always be less than X, contrary to popular belief.  The +1 Gildar/Arcane/Research heroes hold their value a lot longer now, as they generate those points maintenance-free even though they don't get improved by city % bonuses even when stationed in cities.

 

I still am not 100% sure on how trade caravans work, but they seem to generate food production bonuses in both the sending AND receiving cities (can anyone tell me for certain whether this is true?).  If that is true, then with food becoming a more precious resource due to some buildings now requiring food that didn't before, it would behoove players to carefully plan their cities and trade routes to maximize this by sending trade caravans between major food producing cities (not just the +1 food enchantment), and sending caravans from the 1-enchantment-only cities to major food producing cities so the % bonus on the receiving city's end at least grants more overall food.

elemental
3,683 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

  You now get only half the gold from battles, so its harder to get gold (though another official SD thread indicated there are more gold resources; I managed to snub one near an AI's first settlement before their borders extended there ).  I think this could help make regular non-hero troops more useful ... instead of just letting monsters roam near your settlements, send your guard troops out to intercept.  Because each battle gives less gold, you need to battle more, so use your non-hero troops as well.
End of quote

It's much more than 50%, it's about 75% including a 75% reduction in gold-from-experience. THis pretty much makes troops "essential" as opposed to "more useful".

I'm not complaining, it's one way to balance the AI. Whatever it takes to balance the AI trumps anything else.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, caravan bonuses apply to both starting and end city. This was the same behavior pre-1.08.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Then it would make sense to always target your highest base-food city for a caravan, if its feasible (i.e., not a lot of wild territory between to menace caravans) for maximum food production since the actual yield of food from the % bonus on the recipient will be highest where you have the highest food production, especially important in 1.08 due to more buildings having food costs.

 

Anyone know if its possible to cancel a caravan route for, say, when your borders have matured and its safer for your caravans to go where it was not safe to do so when you first used them?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

You can always disband caravan, to free trade route slot.

I often do it early, when goal is just to get as many roads as possible.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't know. So far the new version even with the economy change is even easier. Its probably because I never farmed monsters I found that boring so I played the AI on equal footing in that regards. But now it seems like the AI doesn't know what to do anymore. By turn 100 on this latest game I was racking in 65gp a turn, was sitting at almost 196 power rating, and had already smashed 2 ai's who had only build one city. Magnar didn't connect up to his food. He built too far from it. And Relias never connected up to his gold. Making both easy prey. At this point I got bored as I was marching across capitars city sprawl smashing them one at a time. I quit when I looked at the power ratings in the Log and saw that the next highest one only had a 23 power rating. Now mind you this was with Procipenee and I had a HORRIBLE starting location, but once I went down the resource tech line in adventuring it all turned around.