Cave Population and Income (and income comparisons to other provinces)

[Selgeron]

So recently, I've heard a number of people complain that cave income is too high in comparison to other parts of the map- generally leading to cave nations getting far more income than other nations. I thought that SOUNDS true, but I wanted some hard data, so, I generated a map.

MA, 20 nations, (3 UW, 3 Cave, 14 Surface) with 20 provinces each, one large cave, random surface generation, and then wrote down some information for every single province into a spreadsheet. I made sure that no nations that affected heat or cold scales were generated, waited until mid-fall to let sites with turmoil etc do some work and make sure surface temps were neutral.
No underwater caves were generated.

One throne was generated on the surface, and that province was removed from the averages. All capital provinces were removed from the average.s I ran a mod to give me sight on every province and another mod that made all sites automatically discovered.

It generated approx 400 surface provinces, 100 caves and 50 water provinces.

Basically province type, subtype, pop, income, resources, gem income.

So here's what I found.

The average income of the whole map was 109.3
Average income of the surface was 104.6
Average income of Underwater provinces was 83.8
Average income of Underground was 141.3

The average Population of the whole map was 9972.8
The average Surface population was 10,104
The average Underwater population was 8039.8
The average Underground population was 10507.6

The average gem per Province for the whole map was 2.5
The average gem per province for the Surface was 2.5
The average gem per province for Underwater was 2.4
The average gem per province for Underground was 2.8

The average resources for the whole map was 57.1
The average resources for the Surface was 56.3
The average resources for Underwater was 49.6
The average resources for Underground was 57.1


So some thoughts- First of all, I was surprised that the average population for the underground was actually HIGHER than the average population for the surface! So even without sites and just on taxes alone, the caves (at least in this world) are going to make more money than the surface.

The expected taxed income of the Surface would be on average approx 101 per province, while the expected underground taxed income would be around 105. With income adding sites the surface only goes up on average to a meager 104.6- most income generating sites can only generate on mountains- which make up a relatively small percentage of the surface, and only a small percentage of mountains have income generating sites.

With income adding sites on the Caves it goes from the taxed income of 105 to 141.3 more than a 40% income increase- because every single cave has a chance of spawning a mine or other similar site- and many of them do. Some will often even spawn more than one! The caves do seem to spawn undead provinces at a higher percentage on the surface , the caves also don't have highly limited population combos like the surface does, like swamp/mountain highland/mountain or waste/mountain combos, which result in even lower population.

The caves cave Forests are also the 2nd most populous province type- after farmlands and Drip Caves are also quite populated as well. (Cave forest average population is 14279.7, farmland averages 17276) However cave forests are far more common in caves than farmlands are on the surface- 28 of the 100 cave provinces were cave forests- I suspect that each of the 4 cave province types have an equal 25% chance to spawn. This is what ends up pushing the cave population up so high. I also noticed that most cave provinces are larger in size than surface provinces- though I had no way to quickly get ingame size of each province.

On top of that, the surface provinces will end up with an additional- not seen in my spreadsheets- 5% income penlalty for summer and winter- half of the year. Underground provinces are not affected by the seasons so an average 2.5% lower income just from seasons.

Then in addition, more than half the underground nations have a 10% resource and income bonus in underground provinces (All 3 Abysias, all 3 Agarthas, and EA Pyrene all have a 10% bonus)

This results in an even bigger push toward income disparity. Then on top of that there are more gem sites and other special sites as well- since caves in general produce more sites.

The caves have some disadvantages too. Only Zotz and Agarthans (and LA agarthan's blindfighters) have perfect dark-vision, so even the other cave nations still have a penalty in the caves. The indys in the caves are generally harder to fight than the surface indys. Cave provinces often have very few connections, which means that when expanding it can be easy to hit a bottleneck, or have to turn around resulting in slower expansion. There are fewer cave provinces, so 3 or 4 population killing undead provinces in your immediate expansion can hamstring your economy very quickly. Resources, while generally higher, can sometimes be hard to pool into a fort because of the before mentioned lack of connections.

On top of that, in medium or larger games, the caves generated are generally too large for the cave nations- Really cave nations shouldn't be able to get their 'share' of the provinces entirely underground- they should be forced to take some of the surface. But in my example game, 3 nations shared the 100 caves, for 33 provinces each. 3 Nations shared a lake of 50 for 16 provinces each. 14 Nations shared the 400 surface nations, at 28 provinces each. Since most people concerned with balance use mapnuke or other similar custom maps, this isn't really a huge problem though.

I think in general- cave nations need their populations lowered- either by just giving them about a 15-20% population drop, or alternatively, adding a 5th type of cave province 'Barren Cave' that has similar population as a waste, and making each cave type 20% likely. I don't think it's especially good for the game if the caves are the highest population, the highest amount of sites, the most gold generating sites, and the highest resources- and have nations that get additional bonuses in them. Mines should probably be added to wastes and highland provinces as well (at the moment they are only available in mountains and all caves)

If you have any questions about specific province types or averages, I do have that data as well, and after organizing it, and possibly collecting more data I will publish it on the Dominions Reddit discord. (I think I want more than 50 UW and 100 caves for better averages, but for what I have right now I wanted to make a post about it)

[powerfinder]

I think caves should have fewer inhabitants, not only for balance reasons, but also for general logic. Life in caves is most likely difficult. I doubt that in caves the same fertile soil is possible as on the surface illuminated by the sun and irrigated by rain. And without good soil, effective agriculture is very difficult (at least in medieval conditions).

[Selgeron]

Originally posted by powerfinder:

I think caves should have fewer inhabitants, not only for balance reasons, but also for general logic. Life in caves is most likely difficult. I doubt that in caves the same fertile soil is possible as on the surface illuminated by the sun and irrigated by rain. And without good soil, effective agriculture is very difficult (at least in medieval conditions).

I agree, for lore reasons the population of the caves should be reduced. The cave forests and drip caves both have much higher population than one would think (14,279 and 12,793 in my game much higher than the average surface population of 10,104)

Thats a lot of mushroom pickin' agarthans.

[timlagor]

Magic rather upends the logic that caves should be less fertile but from a game design perspective it does seem at least dubious.

[timlagor]

If they do change the caves though it would be nice to have cave walls look different from unexplored caves.

[powerfinder]

Originally posted by timlagor:

Magic rather upends the logic that caves should be less fertile but from a game design perspective it does seem at least dubious.

While it's true that magic can have whatever properties the setting author wants, using this explanation too often quickly makes the world boring and unconvincing. In my opinion, magic is best left for phenomena that cannot otherwise be explained, such as flying elephants. Of course, Dominions are a highly magical world, but this does not automatically mean that magic takes part in all ongoing processes.

Moreover, such an explanation does not answer the question, but simply redirects it. Magic may have its own operating laws and limits, even if they appear messy, unknown, or unspecified by the author of the work.

Regarding underground plants. In addition to mushrooms, strange dark flowers grow in the caves of Dominions. Perhaps they use magic as a source of energy instead of sunlight. However, assuming that background magic is capable of supporting large-scale ecosystems in the same way that the sun does on the surface, this means that Dominions space is filled with a enormous amount of energy. Then the question arises, why the same magic-consuming plants do not grow on the surface or in the Void. It would be more logical to assume that magic is still not enough to maintain the same amount of vegetation as under the sun.

[Hasefrexx]

I think the mines bring too much gold and as you correctly sumed up, this is on large part due to the gold excess from mining sites.

It ranges from a humble 30 gold to 200 gold.

Rarity 0 great gold mine or hidden gold deposit bringing 150 gold is a bit much. It's on the range of the income of one good EA province. It would be fine as a very rare site but this is a lot more impactful compared to a lot of rarity 0 sites that bring 1 gem a turn.

What's unclear to me is how the magic site pool is chosen, as the inspector only has the cave tag. Do you have information about this?

[Una]

This is interesting data! However, it's still only an N=1 sample size on the map front, even if it was a big map, so not conclusive. It feels intuitively right, but more testing may be needed.

[ebakshis10]

I can speak a bit to that.

So, back in Dom 5, when a site was generated, it had a 75% chance of generating a rarity 0 site, a 22.5% chance of generating a rarity 1 site, and a 2.5% chance of generating a rarity 3 site. It's my understanding that it then went through the list of relevant sites to pick one that can generate in the area.

So, for example, if you have a province whose only tag was "cave", and it generated a site, that site would have a 1.74% chance of being a Great Gold Mine. If the province was also a forest, then that chance would drop to .71% (because you add the forest provinces into the pool of sites that can be picked in that province, not including the forest provinces that can't generate in caves). Which doesn't seem like much, but when you have 550 provinces and the potential for 4 sites per province, you start to see a lot of them.

[Una]

There are also a few common good, and some uncommon good, events that establish new mines. I believe, but am not certain, that these can happen in caves. They can happen multiple times, up to a total of 8 sites (pre-generated + event made) in one province, I believe.

[Bumc]

Pop number can be explained without resorting to magic as zotz live in a huge colonies and probably form a decent chunk of underground population. They breed quickly down there in the dark.

[timlagor]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Pop number can be explained without resorting to magic as zotz live in a huge colonies and probably form a decent chunk of underground population. They breed quickly down there in the dark.

The issue here, as powerfinder noted, is about energy budget. Clearly caves in Dominion do have a lot more energy available than our world and magic is the obvious explanation. Magic is so abundant that is can crystalise into gems.

On the surface there simply isn't space for more life -except in places where conditions are simply too harsh -energy supply isn't a limiting factor. Well that's one possible explanation: obviously I'm just making stuff up but that's how it looks to me.

While the caves clearly have more money and the populations being the same feels wrong, I think more money and less population would be fine. It's perhaps worth noting though that a population number is a little strange since 1000 giants and 1000 wisps are very different things.

140% (154%) wealth from caves is enough to be noteworthy but not enough to be automatically problematic or demand all nations rush for caves.

Sample size is fairly small but 140% is a big enough gap to be confident there's a real effect here (caves could be 120%, could be 180% but unlikely to be equal).
For now I provisionally assume the gem difference was just variance though it wouldn't greatly surprise me if there was something happening there too.

[Sombre]

It feels to me, anecdotally, that cave provinces tend to have a bit too much population.

[Selgeron]

I like the 'feel' of caves being full of mines and gems and stuff- But I feel like the caves should on average have less population. I don't particularly mind them being 'richer' than surface provinces- nor do I really mind the abundance of mines and gems- all the old legends are always about how much wealth there is in the underworld, it's why Hades was considered the 'richest' god. It is also somewhat balanced in that caves are harder to expand in (even for cave nations) so there is sort of a 'risk and reward' thing going on with them- and then its a gamble if you'll actually find sites on top of hat.

But I don't like that the caves 'double dips' by having very large populations AND having so many mines. It feels weird from both a balance and a flavor perspective. I feel like there should be some changes to population in one of these below ways-

-Cave Forests just need their population dropped by a lot- like 20-25%
-All caves need their population dropped by a little, like 10% across the board
-A new cave type mixed into province generation 'barren cave' that has on average less than 2k population, to lower the average down.
-Cave Forests become much rarer.
-Surface populations go up instead

[Selgeron]

Originally posted by Una:

This is interesting data! However, it's still only an N=1 sample size on the map front, even if it was a big map, so not conclusive. It feels intuitively right, but more testing may be needed.

I do feel like I would like to add more data to the data-pool. For instance, in my underground I only had one very short river that bordered only 2 provinces- Most games I've played have had many more- (which incidently would raise the income of caves even more) I also had no underwater cave provinces

For underwater surface provinces my map generated only ONE gorge- they seem so rare now I almost thought they had been removed from the game- and they are no longer a 'subtype' province like in dom 5, but their own 'thing'.

Since I have 400 surface provinces and only 100 cave and 50 underwater, I think generating another map and then adding the information for another 200 caves and 250 water would probably be useful- but it would take some time.

I also wonder if I would get 'better' or more 'average' data from generating many smaller maps instead of one big map, which might skew the data towards weird geological stuff in how the big map generated by chance.

[eddieballgame]

Would be nice if the 'devs' noticed this thread & offered their thoughts; it did get noticed by Sombre. :)
The consensus appears to be the population, at least, should be decreased in the caves. Which begs the question...can this be addressed via modding?