QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city spam needs to end

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QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city spa... - 12/5/2020 2:56:55 PM

Dampfnudel

Posts: 126
Joined: 2/27/2019
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At the moment there is 0 reason for the player to improve QoL/civilization level.

There is no benefit to it. It only affects happiness positively if the current level is below average level or above.
So you're over average cities get a happiness buff and all under average a malus.
It also does not improve the economy or affect research.
Ignoring QoL is better than investing in it.

Privat assets that produce QoL are garbage because of this. They are simply a waste of money and workforce.
The only private assets a player wants is light industry and farms. These produce credits.
Neither the light industry nor farms do benefit from QoL.

Only upgrading bureaucracy buildings need Civ level and therefore QoL. But as it is stronger to fill the map with small cities anyway, there is no need for them either.

City spamming is the games design desire:

As cash is only generated by the hidden economy, light industry, and farms, 10 cities with � 10k population and 0 QoL can produce 5 times the cash as a single city of 100k with maxed buildings (with a QoL of a billion). And significantly more free IC too.

This leads to the incentive for the player to spam as many 0 QoL cities around the map as fit.
This is bad gameplay. Shadow Empire isn't a civilization game where founding cities make fun.

City with 10 k pop:
Hidden Economy 25$
Light Industry 15$
Farm 10$
= 50$ Income (0.005 income / head)
x10 = 500$ raw income

City with 20 k pop:
Hidden Economy 25$
Light Industry III 45$
Farm 10$
= 80$ Income (0.005 income / head)
x5 = 400$ raw income

City with 100k pop and amazing QoL
Hidden Economy 25$
Light Industry I 15$
Farm III 30$
= 70$ Income (0.0007 income / head)
x1 = 70$ raw income

City with 100k pop and amazing QoL
Hidden Economy 25$
Light Industry III 45$
Farm III 30$
= 100$ Income (0.001 income / head)
x1 = 100$ raw income

City with 200k pop
Hidden Economy 25$
Light Industry III 45$
Farm III 30$
= 100$ Income (0.0005 income / head)
x1 = 100$ raw income

Spamming cities allows the player to fund more workers for research and more soldiers.
Ignoring QoL also frees up more workforce to fund more cities to get more cash to get more research and soldiers.

The "tax loop" (giving workers high wages and putting tax at maximum" was nerfed in 1.06 and will be nerfed in future patches probably more. So the player is more limited in cash to fund his workers/soldiers in the present and future patches.

The strategy that maximizes cash is therefore the intended strategy the game design is supporting.

Is it really WAT that the player is supposed to spam cities and ignore QoL?

My suggestion:

The Cash/IC generation of the private economy should be a function of population size and QoL.
This would mean that one big advanced city is an economic powerhouse and many backward villages are not.

Post #: 1

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 3:35:01 PM

Maerchen

Posts: 348
Joined: 6/16/2020
From: Germany
Status: offline

Private economy contributes to security, learning and health via police, schools, sewers. In a crisis I am happy these private assets exist. I almost never experience a longer episode of calm to have the time, money and colonists to power more than one colony.

What I do, is eyeballing closely if the privates do build on my precious resources I want to mine myself. I buy them off as soon as I can afford mothballing or setting them to 25% productivity and thus controlling the market prices a lot. I rarely sell off excess resources, but when I do, I make big money.

As the civ level rises and the cities grow I can snowball off into an administrative avalanche. High civ levels attract more people, so more recruits, workers, tax payers.

As write this, I wonder if I did understand you wrong(?).

_____________________________

The logistics hell this game is IS the fun part! - Maerchen, 2020

The good thing is, we have all the information in the reports. The bad thing is, we have all the information. Maerchen, 2020

Came for SE. Will stay for SE.

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 2

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 3:56:14 PM

Dampfnudel

Posts: 126
Joined: 2/27/2019
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Maerchen

Private economy contributes to security, learning and health via police, schools, sewers. In a crisis I am happy these private assets exist. I almost never experience a longer episode of calm to have the time, money and colonists to power more than one colony.

What I do, is eyeballing closely if the privates do build on my precious resources I want to mine myself. I buy them off as soon as I can afford mothballing or setting them to 25% productivity and thus controlling the market prices a lot. I rarely sell off excess resources, but when I do, I make big money.

As the civ level rises and the cities grow I can snowball off into an administrative avalanche. High civ levels attract more people, so more recruits, workers, tax payers.

As write this, I wonder if I did understand you wrong(?).

You probably did understand me wrong. I assume you actually didn't read my post.

Police, schools, and sewers are QoL. Which is useless.
As I argued in my post.

Bigger cities have a positive effect to attract free folk. But that factor is insignificant compared to its economic disadvantages.

Shot question: Why would you want to have sewers, police, and schools? and why would you want to have a big city?
The short answer is: You dont want to.

< Message edited by Dampfnudel -- 12/5/2020 3:59:44 PM >

(in reply to Maerchen)

Post #: 3

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 4:28:18 PM

eddieballgame

Posts: 676
Joined: 6/29/2011
Status: offline

Interesting post; I am genuinely curious Dampfnudel, depending on the size of the map you are playing on...how many cities do you build?
My experience has not been very positive per the strategy of a lot of cities.
Thus I need to improve that area if what you are suggesting is so.
I do not see this game as a 'city spammer type' similar to the 'civ' series, but then this game is still in its' infancy & thus there is much to learn.

< Message edited by eddieballgame -- 12/5/2020 11:59:14 PM >

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 4

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 5:09:49 PM

Soar_Slitherine

Posts: 426
Joined: 6/7/2020
Status: offline

The public economy does benefit from significant efficiency gains with higher-level buildings (= larger cities), it's just the private economy which suffers from not having enough useful buildings or building levels to build to scale well without city-spam.

(in reply to eddieballgame)

Post #: 5

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 7:14:22 PM

Destragon

Posts: 475
Joined: 6/8/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

At the moment there is 0 reason for the player to improve QoL/civilization level.

There is no benefit to it. It only affects happiness positively if the current level is below average level or above.
So you're over average cities get a happiness buff and all under average a malus.
It also does not improve the economy or affect research.
Ignoring QoL is better than investing in it.

You're missing a lot of things here. If you seriously want to suggest some sort of rework, you need to actually know what the effects of civ score currently are and what it affects.

The only thing you mention is the happiness buff, but not even on that you are accurate. Normal population gets the happiness buff from having higher zone QoL than zone civ score. Only public workers compare the QoL to the average of all your civ scores. You can satisfy the happiness of normal population pretty easily with QoL buildings.

Higher zone civ score will make the zone care less about unrest and danger and makes suppression via your military more effective.
However, it also reduces fertility and militancy.

Raising your average civ score will raise your regime's civ level, which comes with the usual fate points/ cards, lets you build bigger bureaucratic offices and sometimes comes up as a demand.

The QoL scores of your zone are important for the zone danger events and some of the QoL buildings come with research bonus and training bonus.

I'm sure I'm missing more.

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 6

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 7:42:13 PM

Dampfnudel

Posts: 126
Joined: 2/27/2019
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: eddieballgame

Interesting post; I am genuinely curious Dampfnudel, depending on the size of the map you are playing on...how many cities do you build?
My experience has not been very positive per the strategy of a lot of cities.
Thus I need to improve that area if what you are suggesting is so.
I do not see this game as a 'city spammer type' similar to the 'civ' series, but then this game is is still in its' infancy & thus there is much to learn.

All 5 tiles one city. until no pop is left to bring them to 12k pop.
With 12k pop, they build a farm and a light industry and I can add one truck and one bureaucratic building.

(in reply to eddieballgame)

Post #: 7

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 7:50:27 PM

Dampfnudel

Posts: 126
Joined: 2/27/2019
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Destragon

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

At the moment there is 0 reason for the player to improve QoL/civilization level.

There is no benefit to it. It only affects happiness positively if the current level is below average level or above.
So you're over average cities get a happiness buff and all under average a malus.
It also does not improve the economy or affect research.
Ignoring QoL is better than investing in it.

You're missing a lot of things here. If you seriously want to suggest some sort of rework, you need to actually know what the effects of civ score currently are and what it affects.

The only thing you mention is the happiness buff, but not even on that you are accurate. Normal population gets the happiness buff from having higher zone QoL than zone civ score. Only public workers compare the QoL to the average of all your civ scores. You can satisfy the happiness of normal population pretty easily with QoL buildings.

Higher zone civ score will make the zone care less about unrest and danger and makes suppression via your military more effective.
However, it also reduces fertility and militancy.

Raising your average civ score will raise your regime's civ level, which comes with the usual fate points/ cards, lets you build bigger bureaucratic offices and sometimes comes up as a demand.

The QoL scores of your zone are important for the zone danger events and some of the QoL buildings come with research bonus and training bonus.

I'm sure I'm missing more.

I know that tehre is a difference between normal pop and workers. But that is only how the happiness buff is calculated. In both cases it is either temporary (until civ score caught up to qol score) or a difference to your average.
In both cases ignoring QoL buildings have no drawbacks.
I mentioned bigger bureaucratic buildings and I argued that it isn't worth the investment as you can spam level 1 assets in bazillion cities.

The research bonus is useless as it does not stack well. Usually, you have 2-3 of these map tiles that buff research. After that any extra buff is useless.

The training buff is good, but that requires a high building. And that is not worth it.

QoL offers so little and costs so much.

A. You spread your population around 20 cities with 12k population and 0 QoL and earn millions in cash&IC
B. You have a developed big city with high QoL and have only a few cash and IC to spare. But: You have a few nice little buffs that you wouldn't notice if there were not there.

A>B by a big margin in any situation. Therefore QoL assets are a bad choice and a noob trap. A smart player prevents the construction of them to free up the workforce. Also, many cities > few cities. So a smart player prevents the population from gobbling up in a single city. This makes QoL buildings even worse, as you would have to build too many of them.

Higher tier bureaucratic assets are actually LESS efficient than lower-tier buildings.

A level 3 bureauratic assets + the QoL building to unlock it needs more workers and upkeep than dozens of level 1 assets without any QoL.

< Message edited by Dampfnudel -- 12/5/2020 7:56:11 PM >

(in reply to Destragon)

Post #: 8

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 9:10:56 PM

Destragon

Posts: 475
Joined: 6/8/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

Higher tier bureaucratic assets are actually LESS efficient than lower-tier buildings.

A level 3 bureauratic assets + the QoL building to unlock it needs more workers and upkeep than dozens of level 1 assets without any QoL.

How many workers are you calculating would be required to reach level 3? Sounds like you're overestimating it.
Aren't 2400 QoL building workers more than enough to reach level 3? Adding those to the 14200 workers of the bureaucratic office level 3 would bring it to the BP production of 9 level 1 offices, but with only 7.5 times the amount of workers.

Like Soar said, the public economy benefits a lot from having larger cities and the private economy benefits from having more cities.
When you have a single level 4 bureaucratic office, it produces as much BP as 20 level 1 offices at a little more than half the amount of workers.
Is the money you get from the private economy of 10-20 low civ cities really worth losing out on the worker efficiency? This requires a lot more calculations than the stuff in the OP.

< Message edited by Destragon -- 12/5/2020 9:12:26 PM >

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 9

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/5/2020 10:13:22 PM

Daza99

Posts: 285
Joined: 8/1/2017
Status: offline

Does universities impact at all quality of Recruiting Juniors for example?
The manual doesn't mention that at all only Qol impact it has. And someone stated that a good Interior Director with high Int can affect the chance of getting better Recruits? when playing a Recruit Junior stratagem.

I think it would be interesting if you get a little increase in chance of perhaps higher capability junior recruits from the recruit junior Strat. based on level of your university in the main/capital city, after all it would be those who graduate from a University would be applying for top jobs and will have the education to get them ahead. This might fit with the current method to improve chances of getting better quality junior recruits of making sure you have a good Interior Director, however this isn't always possible you might have to wait until much later to replace them with someone better qualified for the job.

< Message edited by Daza99 -- 12/5/2020 10:14:43 PM >

(in reply to Destragon)

Post #: 10

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/6/2020 10:15:13 AM

Falke

Posts: 179
Joined: 8/13/2004
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

Higher tier bureaucratic assets are actually LESS efficient than lower-tier buildings.

This is wrong. Level 1 1BP per 4 Workers
Level 2 1BP per 3 Workers
Level 3 1BP per 2.88 Workers
Level 7 1BP per 2.2 Workers.

All other Buildings are also more efficient as the level increases. Thus with city Spam you end up using more workers

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 11

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/6/2020 10:39:36 AM

Dampfnudel

Posts: 126
Joined: 2/27/2019
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Falke

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

Higher tier bureaucratic assets are actually LESS efficient than lower-tier buildings.

This is wrong. Level 1 1BP per 4 Workers
Level 2 1BP per 3 Workers
Level 3 1BP per 2.88 Workers
Level 7 1BP per 2.2 Workers.

All other Buildings are also more efficient as the level increases. Thus with city Spam you end up using more workers

My argument was that if you add the workers needed to unlock the tiers, these tiers are not efficient anymore. Nice that you cut that out and made an argument out of context
Other buildings do not need QoL to unlock.

City spamming results in most cash and IC. Maybe the optimum is spamming t2 cities, to get most of the tier efficiency of other buildings.

(in reply to Falke)

Post #: 12

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/6/2020 10:55:05 AM

springel

Posts: 363
Joined: 1/2/2005
From: Groningen, NL
Status: offline

What if you only have a limited number of metal mines (for example)? You need a city of a higher tier to create a higher tier mining operation on that mine. At least that is what I thought. I just upgraded a newly conquered village to be able to increase my metal production.

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 13

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/6/2020 12:26:56 PM

Destragon

Posts: 475
Joined: 6/8/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

My argument was that if you add the workers needed to unlock the tiers, these tiers are not efficient anymore. Nice that you cut that out and made an argument out of context
Other buildings do not need QoL to unlock.

City spamming results in most cash and IC.

I don't understand why you're replying to this guy, saying that he hasn't read your post properly, while ignoring my post where I'm asking you how many QoL workers were in your equation?
I said that even if you add 2400 QoL workers, you still are vastly more efficient on workers than if you ignore QoL.

You are also forgetting that the city will have more buildings than just bureaucratic offices. If you add industry, refineries, etc, it will get even more efficient.

I'm also doubting that the industry points you get from the private economy compare to proper high level industry assets unless you're showing some actual evidence for that.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel
Maybe the optimum is spamming t2 cities, to get most of the tier efficiency of other buildings.

I think this is the main problem with this thread. It's not really a question of "either fully ignore QoL or go full QoL". The truth is that city spamming and high QoL don't really exclude each other and that the best path is probably somewhere in the middle.

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 14

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/6/2020 1:10:47 PM

Falke

Posts: 179
Joined: 8/13/2004
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dampfnudel

My argument was that if you add the workers needed to unlock the tiers, these tiers are not efficient anymore. Nice that you cut that out and made an argument out of context
Other buildings do not need QoL to unlock.

City spamming results in most cash and IC. Maybe the optimum is spamming t2 cities, to get most of the tier efficiency of other buildings.

Basically you are argueing QOL is bad therefore you must city spam.You have not included the following:-

Larger cities = Higher more efficient Buildings
The workers in QOL get taxed adding some money
Other benefits of the Buildings. eg Like University improving research .

You can argue that Qol Benefits are insufficient for there "Cost". but imo to link it with spamming cities is wrong.

(in reply to Dampfnudel)

Post #: 15

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/6/2020 5:17:54 PM

Destragon

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Joined: 6/8/2020
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I think one thing that could be changed is the city level system. Unless I'm missing something, the only downside to increasing the city level is that your QoL buildings produce less QoL points. That means that if you only have cities with low civ scores anyway, then increasing the city level doesn't actually change anything for them, besides letting you build bigger level assets and attracting more freefolk.

Maybe city level should not just be locked behind population numbers, but also by the city's civ score. Or there should be some sort of downside to having a high level city with low civ score. I mean a high level, but low civ score city is probably some sort of sprawling slum, right? That can't be good for the city's productivity.

(in reply to Falke)

Post #: 16

RE: QoL need a purpose / private sector a rework / city... - 12/7/2020 6:29:00 AM

GazBot

Posts: 84
Joined: 7/12/2020
Status: offline

2 aspects no one seems to have discussed yet are the interaction of;

1. Regime Profiles
2. Quality and Quantity of leaders

in the city spamm vs QOL tradeoff.

I could easily see how it pays to centralize production to maximize the bonuses from high level governors. Especially if these are a rare commodity.

I suspect how you go about pursuing one end of the strategy spectrum to the other, also depends on your regime profile.

Other factors include the density of resources on any given planet. If you have loads of resources scattered randomly but densely over the surface then perhaps City Spamming is the better choice.

Dont you also have to factor in the extra logistical costs of lots of smaller cities as opposed to fewer larger cities???

Then what about garrison requirements????

I think their are many more variables to be considered and where on the spectrum between city spamming or QOL enhancement the best benefit lies can change in every game and depending on a variety of player choices and strategies....as well as luck of the draw on where the player finds oneself.

(in reply to Destragon)

Post #: 17