On high Pip numbers and the new Overpipulation mechanic

[Catman]

I am writing this to explain the rationale beyond the new Overpipulation mechanic (available in 0.022).

The new mechanic introduces a cap on the number of Pips you an sustain in your village. It is not a hard cap (i.e. "you cannot make more than 100 Pips"), but a soft dynamic cap, in the form of an exponential increase of generated danger on active non-Cold visions over a certain Pip threshold. This means that the malus starts appearing at the threshold (which is 50 at the moment, but I am tuning numbers in the experimental branch), but it is basically negligible until you get a few more Pips, allowing you to counteract it in time. It also means that each new Pip as diminishing returns, elegantly creating a soft cap that will depend on the player's skills, and the game's difficulty level.

The reason this mechanic is needed is that the game does become less fun if you have *too many* Pips, but the game rewards you for it. This is an issue I knew would come up, but I had erroneously thought it would self-regulate itself as I had underestimated how much complexity some players could and would be willing to handle, and had overestimated the effect of the limited space in most maps. I, and most people in the beta, never got past 50 Pips in any runs, and the game is solvable with a lot less.

With 100+ Pips, some of the mechanics become understandably tedious, and micro starts to become too much of a hassle, lessening the fun of the game. Also, when the problems the game throws at you are solved with just adding a few more Pips, it becomes a non-game. I want you to find other ways to solve the game's challenges (i.e. with efficiency!).

However, I do like that some players want to make more and more Pips, and for some, that can be fun. If you are such a player, you are free to rise your Pipulation, as long as you can counteract its effects! Otherwise, you can try lower difficulties, which mitigate the danger, and see how far you can go!

If you want to give me feedback about it, enter the Experimental branch and you can try it out right now!

EDIT:
Note that this will appear only on *newly created games*. The memory is unlocked if you join the Experimental branch, but it *won't* affect the current game unless you started it with that version. It will show on the top-right the current value of Overpipulation.

[Deadweight]

If we're soft capping pops then we need more options, more boons, more small in game choices to boost efficiency.

A second meta progression? Or perhaps a second in game research tree that can enhance buildings? "research" the ability for houses to hold 1 more pop? Or invest a tonne of brick/stone/wood in so that houses generate 1 heat/cold passively? Reduce feed required by animals or increased harvests for crops.

[Catman]

Originally posted by Deadweight:

If we're soft capping pops then we need more options, more boons, more small in game choices to boost efficiency.

A second meta progression? Or perhaps a second in game research tree that can enhance buildings? "research" the ability for houses to hold 1 more pop? Or invest a tonne of brick/stone/wood in so that houses generate 1 heat/cold passively? Reduce feed required by animals or increased harvests for crops.

I do have an idea to add a Boon that can rise this soft cap a bit. Note that at the moment some people are winning Challenge mode with very high number of Pips, which defeats the purpose of the mode.

I'd like to investigate more later, let's see how the meta shifts with this!

[Deadweight]

As long as consequences are rather clear in game, then things should be OK, losing because you have no idea you've "accidentally" hit a cap by a pop or two and suddenly your danger generation has increased by like 20-40% or something.

IDK if you've seen games like kingdoms reborn, patron etc? Being able to upgrade buildings to make them better/ more efficient would probably be a good way to counteract pop bloat. Currently I feel like the easiest way to play is just have more population, having less just means I'm not playing efficiently.

[Catman]

Originally posted by Deadweight:

As long as consequences are rather clear in game, then things should be OK, losing because you have no idea you've "accidentally" hit a cap by a pop or two and suddenly your danger generation has increased by like 20-40% or something.

IDK if you've seen games like kingdoms reborn, patron etc? Being able to upgrade buildings to make them better/ more efficient would probably be a good way to counteract pop bloat. Currently I feel like the easiest way to play is just have more population, having less just means I'm not playing efficiently.

I added a Hint, and there is a UI that shows the current value always. Also it remains at 0 for a few more Pips. That should be enough!

The game already has buildings that are a lot more efficient, and bourgeoise too are more efficient than basic Pips, so I think it's only the case that it is easier to make more Pips than to upgrade which is blocking that space for many people

[DarkenDragon]

I think if this is the direction you're going, you should probably combine quite a few of the jobs together. the reason I feel I need to make such a large population of pips is because I need more jobs. I have about 1-2 of each, except for some very common ones like the wood cutter, and since they are limited to their job and handyman work, it becomes quite a puzzle of how to balance it all. especially later on in the game when events and dooms are adding such huge amount of penalty like right now I get +30 illness and I was only able to counter it with 4 medicals or when I get +30 heat, I had to have 4-6 watchers on the big fans.

some changes that can be done are like fisher and hunters could be combined to be the same role, the butchers and cooks can be the same role, the herbalist and farmers can be the same role. things like that, its just right now there are so many different jobs out there and you pretty much need it all. and Im not even using all of them as I didn't even research any crop farming, or sheeps and their line.

[Catman]

Originally posted by DarkenDragon:

I think if this is the direction you're going, you should probably combine quite a few of the jobs together. the reason I feel I need to make such a large population of pips is because I need more jobs. I have about 1-2 of each, except for some very common ones like the wood cutter, and since they are limited to their job and handyman work, it becomes quite a puzzle of how to balance it all. especially later on in the game when events and dooms are adding such huge amount of penalty like right now I get +30 illness and I was only able to counter it with 4 medicals or when I get +30 heat, I had to have 4-6 watchers on the big fans.

some changes that can be done are like fisher and hunters could be combined to be the same role, the butchers and cooks can be the same role, the herbalist and farmers can be the same role. things like that, its just right now there are so many different jobs out there and you pretty much need it all. and Im not even using all of them as I didn't even research any crop farming, or sheeps and their line.

Do note that you do not need all professions to beat a game, at least in Normal and Hard difficulty, we'll see the feedback that comes out of Harder with this. Indeed having a limit to the number of Pips makes choices related to what professions should be duplicated more important.

[galahadba]

I like the idea, i just got the the warning on the thrid season, my pips are actually habbits lol. I think what incentivates to make more pips is the fact that in the beggining you don't have many unlocks (you have to start new games to unlock some things) so not too many efficient buildings, i sarted playing on hard, so to solve the domains problems i usually added more low eficient buildings (and it's pre-requisites buildings, like wood, hunting, etc). Discovering things mid-game is another factor, i just unlocked hospital, had a bonus to being near houses, this means 4 more houses.. and no one like empty houses right? :)
I will see on subsequent games, if with more unlocks and knowlegde of the game i can make it with fewer pips

[Senlin]

This changed popped up in the middle of my first gameplay round. So it's very hard for me to even say if it had any effect. I think it would be very beneficial if the game was much more specific as to the effects of the overpopulation. What exactly does having 60, 70 or 100 pips mean? By the end of the game I had around 65 pips (I did stop growing the number after the pop-up about overpopulation) and I have zero clue of how harder it made things.

Also, just a random thought - if the idea is for players to have around 50 pips, then the capacity of houses are waaaay too big. I mean, townhall itself houses 30 pips. And you need quite a lot of houses to get bonuses for a lot of different buildings. So by the end I had capacity to have much more pips.

[Catman]

Originally posted by Senlin:

This changed popped up in the middle of my first gameplay round. So it's very hard for me to even say if it had any effect. I think it would be very beneficial if the game was much more specific as to the effects of the overpopulation. What exactly does having 60, 70 or 100 pips mean? By the end of the game I had around 65 pips (I did stop growing the number after the pop-up about overpopulation) and I have zero clue of how harder it made things.

Also, just a random thought - if the idea is for players to have around 50 pips, then the capacity of houses are waaaay too big. I mean, townhall itself houses 30 pips. And you need quite a lot of houses to get bonuses for a lot of different buildings. So by the end I had capacity to have much more pips.

The memory is unlocked if you join the Experimental branch, but it *won't* affect the current game unless you started it with that version. It will show on the top-right the current value of Overpipulation.

I changed locally the fact that it unlocks when you load, so that it will unlock only when you reach 50 Pips in a *new* game (will be up later)

About houses, yes, I am aware, I am thinking and the best course of action would be to change some adjacency later on

[Catman]

https://imgur.com/O3DHQUC

[Senlin]

Ah, so it wasn't enabled, I see. Thank you.

[Senlin]

Just to be clear - I'm not on experimental branch, yet I did get the memory unlocked, I guess (it was a pop-up notification explaining overpopulation, it showed up after I loaded the game after it got an update today).

[Catman]

Originally posted by Senlin:

Just to be clear - I'm not on experimental branch, yet I did get the memory unlocked, I guess (it was a pop-up notification explaining overpopulation, it showed up after I loaded the game after it got an update today).

Ah ok! Thank you, I'll be removing it from there, it must have slipped in, thanks for the heads up!

[Deadweight]

You might not need all the buildings for a run, and I appreciate needing the challenge of asking "Do I really need this pip/job/building?" But it kinda feels bad when the answer is "Just don't use stuff".

Surely the dev should be promoting engagement?

When it takes 3 days and a tool to train a pip, it's much easier to just make a new one and train them up rather than swap jobs with people. There are too many jobs in the game for that. I'm almost surprised the big game hunter isn't a different kind of hunter to the normal hunter.

As the game progresses I'll stop using inefficient buildings and use more efficient ones, but when one random sickness can bring my entire game to a halt because 5 pops got sick, refuse to work and it happened to include my two medics, so I need to wait X days to heal them as I train up a newbie... I'd still rather just have an extra redundancy of the extra pip.

I like the idea of a soft cap, but in general, fewer pops = less potential and less engagement with the game in my opinion.

[Catman]

Originally posted by Deadweight:

You might not need all the buildings for a run, and I appreciate needing the challenge of asking "Do I really need this pip/job/building?" But it kinda feels bad when the answer is "Just don't use stuff".

Surely the dev should be promoting engagement?

When it takes 3 days and a tool to train a pip, it's much easier to just make a new one and train them up rather than swap jobs with people. There are too many jobs in the game for that. I'm almost surprised the big game hunter isn't a different kind of hunter to the normal hunter.

As the game progresses I'll stop using inefficient buildings and use more efficient ones, but when one random sickness can bring my entire game to a halt because 5 pops got sick, refuse to work and it happened to include my two medics, so I need to wait X days to heal them as I train up a newbie... I'd still rather just have an extra redundancy of the extra pip.

I like the idea of a soft cap, but in general, fewer pops = less potential and less engagement with the game in my opinion.

My thoughts about the changes are geared towards making the game more engaging, of course. All buildings have a use (apart from some balancing issues), and the differences become more important as the difficulty level increases. However, see the first post for the rationale, as having too many Pips leads to worse games, not better. You can still have the redundancy, but this will make it harder to just solve all problems by just throwing more Pips at them, which makes for blander games.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not talking about having to play with 20 Pips, I'll find the correct number with testing in the experimental branch, it won't be too few

EDIT 2: Also do note that the whole game plays a lot with constraints, which is what makes runs different and interesting. This is the same reason that the map is constrained! You could have a very large map, but that would void a lot of the fun interactions.

EDIT 3: Just to be clear clear, I appreciate the input! I want to preserve the good feeling of having a big village, and allow that to be a viable tactic, just not the only tactic :)