Discussion Bonus Recalculation - Changes in Culture

[DeletedUser]

If it is like other games by Inno then they will constantly develop and expand the game over time. If players advance too fast then they will complete the knowledge tree quickly and then spend all their time exploring the world map where they will help new neighbours and fight / negotiate new encounters and become bored and leave the game.

The game is designed to go at a certain pace. At that pace the quests will happen logically and in order, your cities will expand to coincide with those quests and the developers will refine the current world and develop new sections of the knowledge tree / quests / buildings and other items to keep players interest alive. To do this then all the factors like cultural bonus, how many coins and supplies your buildings produce, the cost of items etc need to be calculated and adjusted from time to time to maintain this pace. New development takes time to do it properly so this adjustment to the cultural bonus is one of those adjustments to make the game more enjoyable. It is not a race to complete the game then sit and get bored with it while you wait on the next development to be released.

Arcael I think I mentioned this point in my post on page 2 of this discussion.

200% (and 170% with this change) cultural bonus is possible without spending any money and without having too much space dedicated to cultural buildings. You have to strike a balance with all your buildings (Main hall, houses, workshops, manufactory, military and cultural). The larger your main hall the more coin and supplies you get from neighbour help but you also need more culture, likewise with your other buildings. If you throw up lots of buildings and workshops without the cultural buildings to support it then yes you will have problems. It could be better to have less buildings and workshops but have more cultural bonus as that will give each building and workshop the equivalent 1.7 the production. Or put another way, with the maximum cultural bonus you only need 2 buildings to get approximately 3 buildings worth of coin or supply. So you must decide which is better for you, cultural bonus or more buildings.

 

[DeletedUser]

Since culture only affects gold and supplies bonus, it has nothing to do with progressing too fast. The main thing you need in the tech tree are goods, so it doesn't matter how many coins and supplies you have, if you don't have the goods, you won't progress.

but with coins you can buy goods from the wholesaler to use in the tech tree and speed up progress that way.

 

[DeletedUser]

Ooops, I forgot to collect my productions in the game because I was trying to figure out the formula...... now I wait and see what happens

 

[DeletedUser]

but with coins you can buy goods from the wholesaler to use in the tech tree and speed up progress that way.

True, but it's still very expensive at a 1:5 ratio and the amount of goods you need increases rapidly. Tier 3 goods will either cost you 128k coins, or 12800 supplies per 20, i'd rather take my chances with the trader ^^

 

[DeletedUser]

good point..... I have only been playing 15 days so still have those joys to look forward to.

 

[DeletedUser205]

you can buy goods for coins and supplies at the wholesaler ...
(I did wonder if somebody would do, because its rather expensive compared with price from boosted good, but actually I do now myself, when my stock is overflowing with coins or supplies)

 

[DeletedUser594]

Lets have a go at it and if no good, we can always complain about it!

 

[DeletedUser326]

That was my entire point, too... people can throw a million calculations at it and manipulate and say you can build more with the extra room... I just don't see the necessity in removing the top level bonus.

I think ist like they wanted the Bonus to be smaller to do not overpower massive Diamond and active users.

At the Moment you have massive Advantages by only being active 10+ hours a day. These Advantages are multiplied by the massive Bonus of investing good amounts of real Money into the game because you can reach 200% relatively easy by investing 200 bugs.

So i think they want the top bonuses to be smaller because they are nearly impossible to achieve for normal Players (f2p or Little Money).

Thats only my guess and in future it will be the same effort to reach 170% as it is now. Therefore reaching even 170% is nearly impossible for most People. Maybe the want that neighbourly help becomes a bit more attractive then buying Diamonds. Isn't interactivity the biggest part in an MMO?
When you don't want o interact you can manually reach the top Bonus in future by buying it.

 

[DeletedUser205]

I can tell you from my experience, that it is NOT easy to buy 200% (and really not with only 200 bugs if you get a bit futher with upgrading your city), because there is a connection between space and number of culture you place. Actually, the farer you go with upgrading your buildings, the more difficult it is to get 170%.

I'm now short under 170%, One neighborly help on my vallorian seasnake doesn't help out now and I can be glad, if 5 neighbors a day will visit me, but mostly only 2 polish my snakes, what is a sad circumstance ^^). And I don't hesitate to spend money, but not a fortune to negotiate me via money through the encounters to get expansions from time to time. I'm shure, that alone will be far over 200 bugs ;-).

I absolutly agree, that you go your way faster as a premium player, but it is not possible to buy everything (as sometimes is suggested here).

I leave that status on 140% now to see, what will happen after next update, muf muf announced.

 

[DeletedUser]

Since culture only affects gold and supplies bonus, it has nothing to do with progressing too fast. The main thing you need in the tech tree are goods, so it doesn't matter how many coins and supplies you have, if you don't have the goods, you won't progress.

You need gold and supplies to produce goods. And you need them to build the goods buildings. Directly or indirectly you need them for everything in the game.

Under the old system you did not notice this much because gold and supplies were always plentiful. With the new system gold and supplies will be in shorter supply. Perhaps the devs wanted to make them more uncommon thus slowing down progression through the game. We have yet to see whether this will be the case or not but we cannot yet disregard the possibility that this is a balance change.

 

[DeletedUser651]

I would like to request though that for all of us who will now be dumping tons of our culture items we bought, could it be possible that we get 100% of the cost back...at least for a few weeks?

I agree with Ddevil and RugBug that your culture bonus should be tied to how many players you visit, and not on who visits you. I too have lots of neighbors who play at different times than I do, so their help isn't that much use to me. And, most of my neighbors are inactive, so I visit them, but they can't help me. If you want to encourage player visits, then the player needs to be rewarded for making those visits. The tiny amount of coins you get isn't worth it.

Being Beta I can't complain as I feel it is our privilege to be able to play the game now and accept changes as they come as that is part of the deal. I would like to request though that for all of us who will now be dumping tons of our culture items we bought, could it be possible that we get 100% of the cost back...at least for a few weeks? I think it would help people figure out quickly how this new change will affect things. Otherwise, there will be such a large time lag as we need to catch up to where we would have been had this been the case all along.

For example, I now will be selling spots of whispering trees, replacing them with workshops and of course more houses to support those workshops, and all that will take lots of time and coins. I won't really be able to get a feel for this new change until all that has occurred. With that time lag, it may harm our ability to provide proper feedback for this change.

Currently, I am at a huge log jam on my tech tree and it will take me forever to get past it. No one in my area is trading silk or crystal, and I need 1480 combined of those two goods to move on. I need to buy every single one of those goods from the wrongly named "wholesaler". You know, the "wholesaler" who trades goods at five times the going rate of the retail market. I don't know how this new change will affect things. But instead of being able to spend all my resources gaining those items, I will now need to rebuild my city.

I do think it is good that something changes. My city is looking a bit odd with nearly one gigantic cultural spot of trees per house. lol!

P.S. I do worry though that every city in the realm will be named "Culture Please".

 

[DeletedUser326]

With the new system gold and supplies will be in shorter supply. Perhaps the devs wanted to make them more uncommon thus ....

I Doubt that very much.
Most of endgame Players now sit at 140% ant in future they will sit at 150 percent with being able to reach 160% and now not being able to reach 170% Bonus. So more or less nothing will Change else we will have MORE coins and supplies then now. because first 2 stages will give more Bonus then today.

 

[DeletedUser]

I Doubt that very much.

Most of endgame Players now sit at 140% ant in future they will sit at 150 percent with being able to reach 160% and now not being able to reach 170% Bonus. So more or less nothing will Change else we will have MORE coins and supplies then now. because first 2 stages will give more Bonus then today.

Maybe the end game will be faster but the start of the game most certainly will NOT be faster. I have been at 170% to 200% sense I started and intend to stay there as long as I can. I see many other players saying the same thing. All of us will slow down because of this because we will be at 160% to 170% under the new system. It is obvious the beginning of the game will slow down. Some folks like yourself will not think this is great because you have already passed the point where it will be more difficult but think about the game as a whole. Everyone who starts from scratch will have to go through this slowdown. Maybe they will catch up later in the game but maybe they won’t. I am inclined to believe that it will be quite hard to make up for a 30% drop in income for the first several months.

 

[DeletedUser326]

I can say that you don't Need the 200% especially in the beginning.

When i started the game i got much more coins / supplies (even with 170%) then i could spend.
Now i have 140% Bonus and have much more coins / supplies then i can spend because i don't have near to enough workers to upgrade any building.
The only Limit we have are the goods and workers. Not Coins nor supplies.
And yes you CAN buy goods for Gold and supplies but as soon as you reach Tier 2 goods the 30% make a difference of about 40-50k coins a day whis is nothing compared to the goods Prices.

I watched shortly over your City and i can say that my income with 140% will be higher then yours with 170% by simply not wasting km² of space for 30% Bonus which i can get easier by building 2-3 residences more while needing 50% less space.

The new System won't be a pushback. Maybe it will be the first week of a new game - but the Little coins you get more with 200% in early game you will produce in 24 hours in late game while having more Bonus then you have now.

 

[DeletedUser]

The only Limit we have are the goods and workers. Not Coins nor supplies.

And yes you CAN buy goods for Gold and supplies but as soon as you reach Tier 2 goods the 30% make a difference of about 40-50k coins a day whis is nothing compared to the goods Prices.

You and I have opposite problems. I have rarely had goods problems and am always short on coins and supplies, especially supplies. Maybe it is a difference between Elves and Humans. Maybe we have different play styles.


I still do not understand how you can claim that you have a surplus of coins/supplies and are short on Goods. You can buy goods with Coins/supplies as you say. Regardless of how much they cost a shortage of goods is a shortage of coins/supplies. The opposite is not true. The exchange is only one way.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think this says a lot:

I need to buy every single one of those goods from the wrongly named "wholesaler". You know, the "wholesaler" who trades goods at five times the going rate of the retail market.

I propose to rename the "Wholesaler" to "LoanShark"....

Yes it is hard at the moment with all the dead weight around us, few of us are fortunate to have active players around us.
We will see what happens with the next update.
This said, remember it is Beta-Testing a game, we are able to make suggestions in the appropriate areas of the forum... what puzzles me is the amount op individuals signing up and becoming abandoned accounts... makes me think that something is seriously putting them off, but what is it?
I see cities with less than 10 Buildings in it or some between 10 to 20 Buildings into the progress, none have changed for over a week.
These are new players, I started my city almost at the edge of the map... now I see more names, but the battles to reach them take my troops to defeat. So potential trading partners get out of reach (at least at the moment).
We all have different approaches, but we all seem to hit a wall sooner or later.

For me personally, it is interesting to overcome the bottleneck in the game and strategise my resources to their potential...and then I hit the next bottleneck and figure that one out.....

Sharing this info is vital, another thing that would be great is to know the requirements of building, their resource ratio and space needed to place the upgrades.... at this point I would like to thank Tinker and many other of the top players, you enabled me to look at your cities, figure out my space requirements and plan my next steps.

 

[DeletedUser651]

"But since you guys are now "simplifying" it, can we get the exact formula how to calculate it?
We won't be releasing the exact formula for these calculations, but you are of course free to try and figure them out yourself! "
(sorry, haven't learned how to block quotes yet)


I disagree with not releasing the exact formula. This is a city planning game. Costs and benefits shouldn't be a mystery otherwise there is no way to plan.

The numbers should be extremely easy and straightforward: If you have 10 buildings that require 150 total culture, then 100% of that is 150....125 of that is 187.50....200% of that would be 300...etc etc. Simple math. I don't know how or why all this got so convoluted.

Part of the problem comes with the term "available" in the first culture box. I don't know where that odd term comes from.

Basically, the "available culture" shouldn't be in that first box at all it should only be under the culture bonus tab.

Under the Culture tab all it should say is:

Total Culture: X (This is all the culture points added up from all your culture features)
Required Culture: Y (This is the number of culture points that each building requires added together)

Under the Culture BONUS section it should say:

Total Culture: X (This should be the same figure as above)
Required Culture for current level: (Y * culture%) = Z (This is in case you can't figure out percentages, so the game calculated them for you)
Available Culture: (X - Z) (This is the extra culture you have available at this level so you can quickly look at that figure and know how many extra buildings you can build and not change your current level).

In sum...you would have two figures under the Culture Tab and three figures under the Available Culture tab.

(Here is an example if you want to see what I mean and lets just use the 200% level to make the numbers easy
CULTURE TAB
Total Culture: 500
Required Culture: 100

CULTURE BONUS TAB:
Total Culture: 500
Required Culture for current level of 200%: 200 (100 required times 200% bonus)
Available Culture: 300 (500 total culture minus the 200 needed to stay at 200% leaves you with 300 culture to spare)


Now, if you want to drop those percentage numbers to whatever value you want, that is fine....100%, 150%, whatever. You can still have a neighbor bonus on top of what you can get yourself (though I still think you should be able to get that bonus by visiting neighbors, not being visited) But the CALCULATIONS shouldn't change from any of this.

tl:dr?

The culture calculations should never be a mystery. They should be simple math based off the numbers of culture points required and obtained by objects.

 

[DeletedUser]

Sharing this info is vital, another thing that would be great is to know the requirements of building, their resource ratio and space needed to place the upgrades.... at this point I would like to thank Tinker and many other of the top players, you enabled me to look at your cities, figure out my space requirements and plan my next steps.

Just a bit off topic: many information can be found in the elvenar wiki. Some things need an update but many things are included with space and other requirements

 

[DeletedUser58]

And the wiki itself is constantly being updated. There is stuff on there that wasn't there a few days ago.

But I'm going off-topic I see... I'll edit this post when we get the changes to provide feedback based on that, to avoid being completely off-topic. But once I managed to do some rearranging in my city, I can now provide additional culture and I've managed to get out of the 100% level.

 

[DeletedUser]

Thank you, thought there would be something like it