1.09p: On that 'broken gold multiplier' thing...

from Elemental Forums

Last night, I was playing a game, and my cities couldn't produce enough gold to keep me out of the negative.  this was partially due to a lack of gold mines, as well as the fact that the Merchant building only multiplies gold collected from structures (gold mine) at this point, but not tax income...

I've spent the greater part of this morning trying to figure out what the ingame variable for Tax Income is.  I ended up going another way, and assigning gold revenue to the cities, with the amount produced each turn scaling with the size of the city.  I copied the K_CityHubs.xml over to the Mods/Data folder, then modified each city level with a <Attribute>Gold</Attribute> addition, with the higher levels producing more gold.

Specifically, I've added these lines to each of the 10 (5 Capital, 5 Normal) city levels in the K_CityHubs.xml for now, just above the level cap notation line.

        <!--Produces some gold-->
           <GameModifier InternalName="L1_Gildar">
                 <ModType>Resource</ModType>
                 <Attribute>Gold</Attribute>
                 <Value>2.0</Value>
                 <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
           </GameModifier>
       <!-- Level-up Cap -->

I went with 2/4/6/8/10 bonus gold, but it probably should be more like 1/5/25/100/125 to reflect the 'city max' levels.  Also, I don't know if L1_Gildar is proper notation, but the production is appearing in my city window at least.

I also noticed that bonuses are added together, not multiplied by each other, in the gold production window (saw a 20% bonus and a 30% bonus from city leveling in the window, and a total multiplier of 50%).  So my calculations in the library versus 4 studies thread are WRONG.  But I digress...

Of course, I'd need to mod the F_CityHubs.xml as well, but mostly I'm just happy it works.

My cities are pumping out roughly twice as much gold as they did before, which actually is kind of pleasant, and I'm in the positive income this time around.  The merchant building only multiplies the assigned gold revenue, but at least now it's doing SOMETHING. 

If I planned to keep this, I'd go through and nerf the goody hut gold rewards appropriately, to balance it out.  However, Derek said they'd be fixing this soon in the changelog, so no need to get too excited.

Have any of you modder types been able to figure out what the tax variable is?  The merchant bonus should probably be applied to                  <Attribute>Tax</Attribute> instead of  <Attribute>Gold</Attribute>.  CityLevelUpBonuses.xml would need to be similarly modified to affect 'Tax' instead of Gold. 

 

OR, if you could do a

<Attribute>Gold</Attribute><Value>Population*.1</value>(Whatever the Population variable is, and however you'd write that)

conversion in the CityHubs .xml, then the game could modify the tax income directly, hence there would be no need for a separate hack.

 

Yeah, I know the Stardock guys are on this.  I'm just curious as to how you'd do this.  I like learning new things!

 

3,084 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd wait. The XML isn't set up to handle the new situation. I doubt there's a simple magic fix.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I still would like to find out what the variable name for tax income is, so I can play around with it.  Anyone know that would like to share?

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

In ElementalDefs.xml <TaxIncomeRateNormal>0.10</TaxIncomeRateNormal>

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

That sets the tax rate (I saw that one), but doesn't show the variable it applies to...

It isn't being applied to Gold directly.  I'm thinking a 'tax' tag is in play, which utilizes the definition.  That definition exists so the value can be tweaked easily without having to edit a bunch of .xml files.

I've checked a lot of the other .xml files, and am not seeing code relating to tax revenue anywhere, so apparently that calculation occurs 'under the hood'.  Maybe I missed something, though.

Thanks for the input!  Always nice to have people wanting to help out!

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

The 0.1 tax is the gildar you get from each member of your population.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Just for the record, I'm liking my change a lot!  Adding 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 Gildar to city production hasn't been too imbalanced as of yet (biggest city is size 3 at the moment), but I'm not awash in gold either.  The tax revenue, on top of the 2-6 extra gildar for the smaller cities, seems about right.

This is changing with the level 3 goody huts, but I have a lot of heroes to equip, so my Gildar is floating the double digits usually, not triple or quardruple digits.

I am concerned that once you hit around 500 or so population in a city, the 50+ gildar you will be getting from your citizens (500 x .1) may be excessive though.  I've seen comments about that in other threads.

 

I have an interesting idea r.e. gildar tax generation.  [2 -[Squareroot (population/1000)]] * population * .075

That'd mean...

10 citizens generate 1.425 gildar

25 generate 3.454 gildar

50 citizens/6.66 gildar

100 citizens/12.63 gildar

250 citizens/28.125 gildar

500 citizens/48.48 gildar

1000 citizens/75 gildar

 

Hmmm, this is sort of close to what I was trying to achieve. 

I'm trying to achieve about 2 gildar a 2 turn at 10 citizens, 10 Gildar a turn at the 100 or so level, and about 50 or so at the 1000 level, I think.  This way, there's more gold available in the early game, but not as much in the late game, without falling back on randomness (goodie huts).  My brain hurts, so

That being said, the above spread intrigues me...

I'll come back to it...

Edit: Nailed it!

[1.5-[Squareroot (population/1000)]] * population * .1

at 10, this still means 1.468 gildar

at 100 it's 11.84 gildar

at 250, it's 25 gildar.

at 1000, it's 50 gildar.

At 1250 it's only 47 gildar(!).  At this point, the city is so big that corruption/bureaucrats/etc. are running rampant. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

3 times the tax level at level 1 than level 5-ish is close enough for me!