Is boosting construction broken?

[Sotnik]

Currently you can boost every construction project by changing province specialization for free which makes the whole mechanic redundant.

It feels like the system should have worked in another way by design, and free province respec has to disappear to make it work correctly. Or do I miss anything?

[Midas]

What do you mean "changing province specialization for free"? It takes 3 turns, so it's not generally something you can just do on demand.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by Midas:

What do you mean "changing province specialization for free"? It takes 3 turns, so it's not generally something you can just do on demand.

Do you lose the province's yield for these 3 turns?

Well, even if you do, these 15 resources per province are negligible compared to the advantages of boosting.

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by Midas:

What do you mean "changing province specialization for free"? It takes 3 turns, so it's not generally something you can just do on demand.

Do you lose the province's yield for these 3 turns?

Well, even if you do, these 15 resources per province are negligible compared to the advantages of boosting.

That really depends on the length of game and how it all plays out. And you are talking about changing one province for 3 turns. That won't make much difference in any game. Try changing more and it will have an impact for sure.

[Indure]

If you have to wait 3 turns for the providence to change, aren't you delaying production of the building you want?

[Midas]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by Midas:

What do you mean "changing province specialization for free"? It takes 3 turns, so it's not generally something you can just do on demand.

Do you lose the province's yield for these 3 turns?

Well, even if you do, these 15 resources per province are negligible compared to the advantages of boosting.

I don't think it's worth it for boosting alone. Sometimes I do it to meet building requirements early, but waiting 3 turns for a boost is too long a delay for me.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Do you lose the province's yield for these 3 turns?

Well, even if you do, these 15 resources per province are negligible compared to the advantages of boosting.

I don't think it's worth it for boosting alone. Sometimes I do it to meet building requirements early, but waiting 3 turns for a boost is too long a delay for me.

You don't have to wait for the boost, as long as the conversion finishes before the unboosted build time ends. The boost will still kick in on buildings under construction, and you even get a refund, if the building was already more than 2/3 built.

To the OP question about game design. Basically it means, you can reduce every building cost by additional clicking around.
Unless you end up in an area, where some of the building spaces just aren't there.

It seems to make the game a tiny bit more complicated, without actually adding a lot of actual additional complexity and depth. They could have just lowered the construction costs all by 2/3 and gotten rid of a mechanic, that doesn't do a lot.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

It seems to make the game a tiny bit more complicated, without actually adding a lot of actual additional complexity and depth. They could have just lowered the construction costs all by 2/3 and gotten rid of a mechanic, that doesn't do a lot.

I think the plan was to introduce city specializations/diversification as an important choice, but with the current implementation Boosting failed to contribute.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

It seems to make the game a tiny bit more complicated, without actually adding a lot of actual additional complexity and depth. They could have just lowered the construction costs all by 2/3 and gotten rid of a mechanic, that doesn't do a lot.

I think the plan was to introduce city specializations/diversification as an important choice, but with the current implementation Boosting failed to contribute.

Nah, I don't think that's the intent. The boosts correlate to things that are the opposite of what you're expanding into. I saw it mostly as a counterbalancing system, so that if you're heavy in one direction for expansion, you get bonuses in the other direction for city building.

If you build your city in an optimized order, you don't even need to change any provinces for boosting.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by Midas:

Nah, I don't think that's the intent. The boosts correlate to things that are the opposite of what you're expanding into. I saw it mostly as a counterbalancing system, so that if you're heavy in one direction for expansion, you get bonuses in the other direction for city building.

It depends on production/food ratio, but I thought it would probably limit you to some resource specializations (2-3 resources?), and you won't be able to construct everything with Boost.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by Midas:

Nah, I don't think that's the intent. The boosts correlate to things that are the opposite of what you're expanding into. I saw it mostly as a counterbalancing system, so that if you're heavy in one direction for expansion, you get bonuses in the other direction for city building.

It depends on production/food ratio, but I thought it would probably limit you to some resource specializations (2-3 resources?), and you won't be able to construct everything with Boost.

It depends entirely on growth. If you're starting from no provinces, then your first structure probably won't have any boosts, but I find so long as you have even one population to pick a province with, and you know (or check) what buildings require what specializations to boost, it's pretty easy to expand around boost requirements to get them all. Typically this means you want to get all your T1 buildings before T2 buildings, etc, though. It's not as good if you want to rush certain kinds of resources over others, but it works fine if you're building a generic settlement.

Honestly, even if you're not building a generic settlement, I find the basic structures are too good to pass up on anyhow for their price, and specialized resources and structures can also come from the special province improvements as well, which don't care about the actual province resources they're built on.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by Midas:

If you build your city in an optimized order, you don't even need to change any provinces for boosting.

I disagree on that part. There are a number of possible optimization goals possible, and not all of them care about boosts.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

Originally posted by Midas:

If you build your city in an optimized order, you don't even need to change any provinces for boosting.

I disagree on that part. There are a number of possible optimization goals possible, and not all of them care about boosts.

I'm not sure what your point is if they don't care about boosts. I never said boosts were necessary.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by Midas:

Honestly, even if you're not building a generic settlement, I find the basic structures are too good to pass up on anyhow for their price, and specialized resources and structures can also come from the special province improvements as well, which don't care about the actual province resources they're built on.

By the way, sometimes traits and special improvements might discourage from balanced expansion. And then respecs start to require a lot of micro to satisfy Boost requirements.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by Midas:

Honestly, even if you're not building a generic settlement, I find the basic structures are too good to pass up on anyhow for their price, and specialized resources and structures can also come from the special province improvements as well, which don't care about the actual province resources they're built on.

By the way, sometimes traits and special improvements might discourage from balanced expansion. And then respecs start to require a lot of micro to satisfy Boost requirements.

They do, later on, for sure. And some builds do as well. Materium is big on going heavy into lots of one thing for various bonuses. But usually boosts are no longer the priority at that point anyways, so you get what you can, but you don't usually need to go out of your way for it.

[Aunty Herbert]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by Aunty Herbert:

I disagree on that part. There are a number of possible optimization goals possible, and not all of them care about boosts.

I'm not sure what your point is if they don't care about boosts. I never said boosts were necessary.

Mostly a minor semantic problem with the way you used the word "optimized".