Level Scaling

[Thorgrimm]

I am at the point now that my towns are grinding to a halt because of the level scaling.

320 million gold coins for a Trade Post?!?! Due to those costs I cannot afford the trading posts so that I can send water to my other towns.

I simply do not understand why you are using mobile device game designs in a PC game that I have purchased...

The level scaling is simply getting out of hand. All of my towns have ground to a halt due to the extreme level of the costs of a single building!!!

As an adjunct you REALLY need to add a water regeneration building. Even with water pumps, which require electricity, it does not prevent a town from grinding to a halt from a lack of water.


Cheers, Thorgrimm

[Erik Asmussen]

I know what you mean by 'mobile game designs', because often those games are built with punishing time & currency scaling specifically so that they can induce the player to purchase (with real money) some boosts to overcome. Since this game is not free-to-play, I promise you that any imbalances that feel punishing are simply due to mistakes on my part, not because of any nefarious intentions : )

That said, I do want some parts of the progression to feel steep because I feel like a lot of fun in Idle games is hitting a wall, then making other adjustments or even coming back the next day and then be able to get over the wall easily or in the next time you're building a town. So, some of the cliffs are intentional. But obviously it's a balance question and I don't want the game to feel like a slog.

It's hard for me to visualize the whole game's scaling / pacing through an entire playthrough, because I've been rapidly adding & changing things and a number in once place can dramatically affect the curve of a number somewhere else. So any kind of feedback on balance & pacing is really helpful.

So in this specific case, there should be some global or town perks that make construction cheaper or lower the growth curve. (my main work computer is getting repaired right now so I can't check on details).

There are some late-game buildings that produce lots of water, and are also should be some upgrades to the water pumps that may help. I don't know which of these you have unlocked yet. (Note: the game should be doing a better job of pointing you towards these items, I'll fix that).

I'm also planning a redo of how water regeneration works, it's currently pretty confusing. I think water regeneration should scale with water capacity. The idea is, the more water reservoirs you have, the more rain you can collect per day. Wells instead should provide boosts to manual water harvesting. Aqueducts can continue to auto-harvest, although perhaps they could instead be used to transport water between towns. Either way, that's a known issue and I'll fix it.

[FMAylward]

Originally posted by Erik Asmussen:

I'm also planning a redo of how water regeneration works, it's currently pretty confusing. I think water regeneration should scale with water capacity. The idea is, the more water reservoirs you have, the more rain you can collect per day. Wells instead should provide boosts to manual water harvesting. Aqueducts can continue to auto-harvest, although perhaps they could instead be used to transport water between towns. Either way, that's a known issue and I'll fix it.

Just dropping that I like those ideas with water and its making me think what else could have a special thing for trading between towns outside of the normal trading post/mechanic.

Edit: So just thought of something to both affect the trading mechanic and partially "fix" the OPs Trading Post example. You have conveyor belt items but why don't you use those to construct a conveyor system building which boosts the actual item throughput of a trading post. I've only really messed around up to the tech level of what was in the demo but I would like to see more things like the chute, buildings which will improve other buildings.

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by FMAylward:

You have conveyor belt items but why don't you use those to construct a conveyor system building which boosts the actual item throughput of a trading post.

Steam Locomotives, once unlocked, do exactly that. Each train you build in your town will raise the transfer rate of that town's tradeposts by 20%. It quickly becomes better to build more trains at the cost of more population than more tradeposts at the cost of more land.

Then, even further techs down the line (Magic rails) will increase the 20% bonus from trains even higher for each magic rail line built.

[Thorgrimm]

Originally posted by Erik Asmussen:

I know what you mean by 'mobile game designs', because often those games are built with punishing time & currency scaling specifically so that they can induce the player to purchase (with real money) some boosts to overcome. Since this game is not free-to-play, I promise you that any imbalances that feel punishing are simply due to mistakes on my part, not because of any nefarious intentions : )

That said, I do want some parts of the progression to feel steep because I feel like a lot of fun in Idle games is hitting a wall, then making other adjustments or even coming back the next day and then be able to get over the wall easily or in the next time you're building a town. So, some of the cliffs are intentional. But obviously it's a balance question and I don't want the game to feel like a slog.

It's hard for me to visualize the whole game's scaling / pacing through an entire playthrough, because I've been rapidly adding & changing things and a number in once place can dramatically affect the curve of a number somewhere else. So any kind of feedback on balance & pacing is really helpful.

So in this specific case, there should be some global or town perks that make construction cheaper or lower the growth curve. (my main work computer is getting repaired right now so I can't check on details).

There are some late-game buildings that produce lots of water, and are also should be some upgrades to the water pumps that may help. I don't know which of these you have unlocked yet. (Note: the game should be doing a better job of pointing you towards these items, I'll fix that).

I'm also planning a redo of how water regeneration works, it's currently pretty confusing. I think water regeneration should scale with water capacity. The idea is, the more water reservoirs you have, the more rain you can collect per day. Wells instead should provide boosts to manual water harvesting. Aqueducts can continue to auto-harvest, although perhaps they could instead be used to transport water between towns. Either way, that's a known issue and I'll fix it.

I really appreciate your design so far. Please do not take my post as a statement of dislike for it. I am having a blast. If I were not having a blast I would have just moved on to another game!

Moreover, I appreciate the idea of making it a challenge in the end game. So, per say, I do not mind the level scaling, and it only really hurts when you cannot afford to purchase the Trading Posts to distribute the goods needed by my non-main towns.

My non main town cities are requiring so much cotton that I have 355 trade points on export, yet that is still not enough.

For apples I have 109, and it is barely maintaining what is needed. However, I have just opened up the snow biome, so I expect that will not hold long.

For water I have 137, and it is nowhere near enough water for what my other non main towns need. With opening up the snow biome I expect the demand for that will increase.

My main town, if my calculations are correct, can provide the required goods, IF I could purchase the trading posts. But even for my main town 342 million gold coins, not to mention what the next one will cost, is too much for it to handle.

As a suggestion, maybe lower the scaling algorithm folr trading posts so it is not so devastating in the end game.

As for techs so far I have unlocked everything up to Industrial knowledge tome 3 and all I have left to research are the Processing speed Lvl 3 perks, Amethyst Necklace, and Sapphire Ring.

So I have nothing left to research that will help with trading for the resources that my non-main town needs.

As for steam trains and such, it is not the speed of the trades it is a lack of the goods themselves. Without the water no amount of steam trains are going to matter. You need the goods or throughput does not matter! :-)


Cheers, Thorgrimm

[CyborgKropotkin]

"As a suggestion, maybe lower the scaling algorithm folr trading posts so it is not so devastating in the end game."

There's a global perk that does this and you can reset global perks once a day

[Thorgrimm]

Originally posted by CyborgKropotkin:

"As a suggestion, maybe lower the scaling algorithm folr trading posts so it is not so devastating in the end game."

There's a global perk that does this and you can reset global perks once a day

Yep, I am quite aware of the perks, in point of fact, most of my perks are at level 4 or 5.

The point is that water has no prospecting building, so all of the prospecting productivity perks in the game will not increase your water production. :-)


Cheers, Thorgrimm

[Thorgrimm]

As an FYI, I managed to save up for the trade post, and the next one now costs 435 million gold coins. Purchasing this trade post gave me 17 trade points. Nowhere near an equitable amount for what the player is required to purchase the trade post.

I currently have 65 trade posts so it would be number 66 for 435 million.


Cheers, Thorgrimm

[CyborgKropotkin]

I just respecced and put half my points into construction and I can afford plenty of water pumps and trading posts. It's not a linear reduction, every additional level gives huge savings. Even in my hybrid spec right now where only half my points are in construction, the 66th trading post is only 9.57m coins.

also water pumps are affected by the town perk for craft speed and don't pull from the other water resource so you're not limited by the top most water resource.

and if you do a construction focused respec, you can build many more steam locomotives which reduces the number of trading posts you will need.

[Thorgrimm]

Originally posted by CyborgKropotkin:

I just respecced and put half my points into construction and I can afford plenty of water pumps and trading posts. It's not a linear reduction, every additional level gives huge savings. Even in my hybrid spec right now where only half my points are in construction, the 66th trading post is only 9.57m coins.

also water pumps are affected by the town perk for craft speed and don't pull from the other water resource so you're not limited by the top most water resource.

and if you do a construction focused respec, you can build many more steam locomotives which reduces the number of trading posts you will need.

After more experimentation You are correct about steam trains. However, the description says all trade, while it only effects your export trades. Maybe the description needs to be updated.

So after constructing a few steam trains my trade points went up enough to provide enough goods to cover the cotton demand.

As for water pumps, you are correct. But it costs electricity, and once you have a few the level scaling for electricity makes them prohibitive due to their high electrical costs.

Then add in the fact at how much the costs for other resources rise, and that is when the bad side of level scaling rears its ugly head.

Level scaling is usually used to reflect what other games call maintenance. Scaling keeps maintenance costs hidden and easy to reflect... in theory.

At higher levels is where scaling goes off the path.


Cheers, Thorgrimm

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by Thorgrimm:

The point is that water has no prospecting building, so all of the prospecting productivity perks in the game will not increase your water production. :-)

'No' and 'Yes'...?

Technically, Wells are the prospecting building for water, they just don't have a perk or prestige bonus directly associated with them. If you make them x10 at a time, wells unlock progressive bonuses to individual wells, which I'm sure you're already aware of. I believe that bonus maxes once you hit 50 (?) wells, same with aqueducts. So, getting that minimum 50 wells to unlock the maximum bonus upgrade will go a long way. Even if you reduce your overall well count to recoup land, you still get to keep the bonus per well.

It is true that perks don't help here ... BUT, in your Prestige menu, the 'Cultivation Productivity' bonus will increase the the farm/forester production rates WITHOUT increasing associated water usage with it. Obviously not directly increasing water production - but if you get more crops for the same amount of water, then it functions the same in the end.

Cyborg also touched on the other major source of water in your towns, the mechanical pumps. Those provide water directly without reducing the natural water availability. I imagine it all analogous to surface water feeding the wells that you start with then advancing to infinite ground water which is extracted by pumps - which basically amounts to converting coal/wood into more free water whenever needed.

Originally posted by Thorgrimm:

My non main town cities are requiring so much cotton that I have 355 trade points on export, yet that is still not enough.

One of the other things to start getting in the mindset of, is efficient logistical use. Sending that much raw cotton is a waste, because literally the only recipe to use cotton is making cloth. You can cut that transport cost in half by converting most of that cotton to cloth in the native town (2 cotton -> 1 cloth), then shipping the resulting cloth to the rest of your towns as needed for a 50% reduced shipping cost. Just make sure you send a very small of raw cotton, maybe enough for 1 or 2 cloth bolts to be made continuously to earn the skill points needed to level up the tailor shop in the other towns. If you place that 1-2 bolts of cloth production at max priority in each town, then it will always be making at least a little cloth locally, raising that all-important skill level continuously. The town then pulls whatever remaining 90% (or more) cloth needed from the logistics network for everything else.

This also applies to goods like suagarcane, wool, and mana crystals, as they, too, only have one recipe use. Make the majority needed at the native location (or in the case of wool, the zone with the bonus to pasture and wool production - less wool and wool cloth made everywhere else ALSO reduces overall water usage - pastures are huge sinks for water, both the recipe itself AND the grain needed for feed) and ship out the rest to everyone else while also shipping a small amount of the base raw material everywhere to gain the necessary skillups in all the other towns.

Each town has bonuses and penalties. While we all normally work to succeed against the penalties (or in spite of them :-p ), I imagine many still aren't using the bonuses to their full potential.

[Thorgrimm]

You are absolutely correct about how I should be exporting cloth and not wool & cotton! Time for me to rethink my export strategies!


Cheers, Thorgrimm

[Silberfuchs]

Originally posted by Thorgrimm:

As for water pumps, you are correct. But it costs electricity, and once you have a few the level scaling for electricity makes them prohibitive due to their high electrical costs.

That's not a problem, at all.
Because you get your electricity from water.

And steam generators can produce a alot more electricity than the wells needed to run said steam generators need.

[Erik Asmussen]

FWIW in the next update (coming soon, need to repair my main work computer first) there's two helpful improvements to trading:

- Steam Trains have a lower bonus, BUT they affect all towns. So building a lot of trains in one town will boost trading capability of all your towns.
- Packager building improves trading post productivity. What that means is, instead of trading 1 item every time the recipe completes, it sells 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, etc

So the two boosts are complimentary.

Note: The game already has a Packager which boosts production, I renamed it to Factory. So the building I described above is a 'new' building.

These changes are on the public beta branch if you want to try them out.

[Thorgrimm]

Those updates sound most welcome!

I really appreciate your quick responsiveness!


Cheers, Thorgrimm

[Eyedoll]

As a another point of view I just finished the game (finished all research, including magic on last town) and repeatable research upgrade at least 2-3 levels.

I had NO issues whatsoever with trade.
If anything, each town can do anything without the help of others (except unique ressources that you'll export). Even desert can sustain water without any issues with water pump, it's just a early game issue that's fixed as soon as you have water pump that produce water out of thin air.

At first I had issues with trade because I was trying to play the game as intented where I pay attention to bonuses and try to have the first town doing gourmet food, snow doing tailors ect.

But it's just not worth it. Most bonuses from town are production SPEED, and not productivity, and those bonuses are not enough while progressing to sustain other towers. Even desert with 100% productivity is not enough to sustain other towns.

The best way is just to make each town work on their own and build around their weakness, instead of building around their strenghs. (There is an exception for last biome).

What I would have loved to do is see two things while playing :
- Having biomes feel way more different from each others (as in, at least 1 or 2 special building on each with thei own perks/production, like the last town). This would incentive the trade.
- Having a better "ressource sink" than market. I stopped playing because there was no way to scale my ressources sink enough. I'am producing close to 50k rings a second, yet I can barely trade 200 of them even with the perk upgrades. There is no icentives to really try to min/max and speed up production because in the end, Market selling speed is the bottleneck.

I must admit, last biome was what I was expecting the game to be, and I glad I continued playing until I unlock it, because having access to infinite research/upgrade is exactly the ressource sink that it needs, but it only works for a few ressources.

Still, definitely worth my money, and I might check in a few months when there will be more updates.

Edit : Just a quick note, as balance goes, it's pretty good on ressources, but Iron bar always has shortages, and there is almost no way to fix it. There is way too much drain on that ressource, it's used everywhere early/mid/late game. The rest is really well made and balanced imo.