Ideology Point Generation Improvement Unbalanced
Issue: the number of Ideology points that the various Ideological improvements generate isn't in any way scaled to the number of available planets to build them on.
- All are "one per planet" improvements, that leaves the number of planets on a map as the relatively low upper bound of how many can be built. This is further constrained by the general empire size limits Governments place on a Player.
- Larger maps inherently can generate far more Ideology points than smaller ones, so small maps don't make anywhere near as much use of the Ideology tree as gameplay would want.
- For anything but the very largest maps, building Ideology improvements is virtually useless for anything other than those improvements secondary attributes - the main reason being pointless (literally).
- Example: An good-size empire of 20 planets can, in the current setup, generate a maximum of 2 ideology point per turn. Which, given the very quick escalation of Ideology Ability costs, means that this number is mostly irrelevant. By the time you'd have a 20-planet empire and the production to build all those ideology improvements, you're looking at a minimum Ideology Ability cost of 50+. It can easily take even a large empire 50+ turns to acquire a single Ideology Ability solely through improvement point generation. With game turns almost never exceeding 500 and often under 200, that's unreasonable.
- As ideological events drop radically in number after the initial planet colonization phase is over, production of Ideology points drops to near zero. Thus, Ideology is much less of a dynamic after about turn 50.
- Few games end with more than a half-dozen Ideology Abilities chosen, out of the possible 100+
Found in Patch: 3.9, all versions.
File Location:
data/English/Text/ImprovementText.xml
data/Game/ImprovementDefs.xml
DLC/EXP2_Crusade/English/Text/ImprovementText.xml
DLC/EXP2_Crusade/Game/ImprovementDefs.xml
DLC/EXP4_Retribution/English/Text/ImprovementText.xml
DLC/EXP4_Retribution/Game/ImprovementDefs.xml
This applies to the ElevationFoundation, MissionaryCenter, TempleofEnlightenment, PreparednessCenter, ArbitrationCenter, IntimidationCenter, CitadelofRevenue, DeathFurnace labels in all versions.
Proposed Fix:
Increase the per-turn generation of Ideology improvements, and scale this INVERSELY to the size of the map (or, more exactly, the number of colonizable planets).
I think the most relevant scaling factors are HabitablePlanets and ExtremePlanets (from MapSetupDefs.xsd). There's a fudge factor here that has to be played out, but, personally, I think that each improvements should be generating close to 1 Ideology point per turn for the mid-sized maps.
E.g. take the existing values, then multiply by the following formula:
1000/(HabitablePlanets+ExtremePlanets)
Thus, for example, the current MissionaryCenter generates 0.1 Benevolent per turn. For a small map which has maybe 20 total colonizable worlds on it, that would mean it would really generate 5 points per turn. Which is fine, since on that map, you're unlikely to have more than 6 or so worlds until very late game.
Conversely, if you had a map with 200 colonizable worlds on it, you're more likely to have 20 such worlds in your empire relatively soon, so having each one potentially generate 0.1 * 1000 / 200 = 0.5 points per improvement would be scalable.
The exact scaling number (1000 in the formula above) is the tweakable one, but the formula should be roughtly that.
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