What possibilities are there?

The simplest way would be to have a building that reduces construction cost, something like "Reduce construction/destruction cost by X*BUILDING% to a max Y% cost reduction".

But for me it feels weird to build a building to reduce the cost of construction. It opens up for some annoying optimization calculations, like destroying one of those buildings one at a time to benefit as much as possible.

It could maybe be a new Improvement. Max would be like 60% then, or something.

or that the higher amount of workers you have, the lower the cost is.

Any other ideas? and should lowering the building cost be a strategical choice?

_________________
In his last Budget as chancellor in 2007, Gordon Brown said: “We will never return to the old boom and bust.”

(Workers / Peasant) * 10%

1000 workers, 10000 peasants (ratio 1:10) ==> 1% reduction
Ratio 1:1 ==> 10% reduction
Ratio 2:1 ==> 20% reduction
Ratio 3:1 (which is pretty high, we don't see higher than this very often) ==> 30% reduction

Ofc the multiplier can be tweaked to something like 15-20 maybe, instead of 10. And Leshkin should get half of the normal modifier or maybe nothing at all.

But this is not a strategical choice, since everyone will pump high workers anyway at some point in the round. It's a boost to players that run high workers from the start and overall, I think, a boost to slow/efficient strategies.

What happens if you have 10k peasants and 20k workers and you destroy like 600 dms? With some nice pop bonus you would soon be on 2k workers. Which is a ratio of 10:1. 100% reduction seems not so good.
You would simple wait until the peasants have died until you rezone and rebuild.

Just simply workers per acre= % reduction. Would be a statistic next to MPA and SPA. Would be anything from 0-40%, most realistically 10-20.

_________________
In his last Budget as chancellor in 2007, Gordon Brown said: “We will never return to the old boom and bust.”

Workers per acre sounds good indeed

yes, hehe. But even if the idea as a whole is not so popular, I think we still should ad Workers per Acre on the statistics Manager, for any possible future use.

_________________
In his last Budget as chancellor in 2007, Gordon Brown said: “We will never return to the old boom and bust.”

Wouldnt workers per acre favor races with population bonuses and/or cheaper workers?

Extreme example: Troll versus Spirit

_________________
The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup

In a lot of other games there is a building which lowers building costs.

Something like:

building cost reduction = Engineering Guilds[random building name] % * 2.5 %

Also a lot of other games also has this function for troop costs and exploring costs.

EDIT: something that reduced exploring costs would be nice - it seems pretty hard to stand a chance as a pure explorer as the round progresses.

Explorers are typically able to compete fairly well, but very rarely able to win. I did an attacking converting to explorer strat not too many rounds ago (10?) and got pretty close to winning (ended 2nd). And wasnt Immors win an explorer?

Exploring has probably lost some appeal with the changes lately that give out a lot more land on oop for attackers, but i am still not sure if there is a need for an exploring building. And there is ofc still the possibility of running a normal oop and then convert to exploring.

That being said your ideas are pretty interesting. Could be fun to add more options to the game if nothing less.

This would overpower massing taverns and then destroying them when done attacking. Just build 80% taverns then switch to 80% homes when done attacking. Assuming they are 50% or less of the current price this strategy would overpower any other strategy.

I think a relic with -4% build cost per day up to 20% would be cool without overpowering the mass tavern strategy.

_________________
You cannot define this.
There is nothing else like it.
It's how you react, no it's not what you say.
You're running from nothing you're running away.
-Steromud

I am not sure what exactly you are referring to with your "this", so I might be wrong here.
You can't really be that crass in your conclusion. Everything is just numbers, I don't think it would be that overpowered if you need 50% of that building type to have 50% less cost, but totally different if you get 50% reduction with just 10% of that building type.

Your relic idea is interesting and should be added. One a side note, are there not to many relics around? Perhaps going back to having less relics in the game at the same time could be something?

_________________
In his last Budget as chancellor in 2007, Gordon Brown said: “We will never return to the old boom and bust.”

Making workers lower construction cost % by workers per acre * 3 sounds like a much better idea. So if you have 10.5 workers per acre, it would cost you 31.5% less resources to make buildings. This would help slower come from behind strategies and explorers. Right now playing as fast as you can and attacking with just enough workers for troops is the usually the best strategy to compete for the win.

I don't think you should cap the max % reduction because it is nearly impossible to get 33.33 workers per acre and if you did manage to get that many workers, you would be an explorer who is 1,000 acres behind the competition, making your economy almost useless and free buildings irrelevant. Also taverns are useless for an explorer so mass rezoning to taverns would not be overpowered cause there useless to you. Also exploring costs mass workers, lowering your workers per acre, so buildings are still gonna cost you money even when your 1,000 acres behind.

I don't like lowering building costs by worker to peasant ratio as it adds more power to fast players who are already overpowered. Lets say a runaway spirit builds 9,000 cheap workers with his massive peasants. He then masses gold and spends all his money on banshees trained from peasants lowering his peasants to the minimum of 1,000. At that point he has the biggest army in the game by far and he gets 2 war conquests for 800 acres total. He has a 9:1 worker to peasant ratio and he builds 800 acres that cost 90% less than the regular price. His almost free buildings and massive land and army lead make him set to runaway and be unstoppable.

By making construction costs lowered by workers per acre you are forced to run a much slower land gain strategy, which adds more strategy to a game dominated by fast players who conquer much more land at out of protection and keep gaining land before anyone elses economy can ever catch up.

_______________________________________________________________________
*Why buildings lowering construction costs can become overpowered*

I played the game elveron was made from and factories reduced building construction costs and rezone costs by 4 * factories with max 80%, and it overpowered a strategy were people destroyed gold production buildings and massed mod buildings that added defense and offense.

Buildings cost about 25% more in that game with the exception of later in round where buildings become unusually expensive compared to elveron, but gold production is about 25% more in this game. Also mod buildings in the other game are 2* defense or offense alone rather than .7 times offense and defense. So mod buildings in elveron are 70% as effective as that game. Factories were fixed in that game by making them, Lowers construction and rezone costs by 3 * factory % with max 75%.

Since taverns are weaker than mods in the other game and there is a cost to destroy buildings in elveron, 3 * factories reducing the cost of building and rezoning would be balanced, and probably a little underpowered. But it's better to start a building underpowered rather than overpowered.

Making a building that lowers construction and rezone costs by 1 * the building % would make a completely useless building. Even 2 * building % would be useless.

_______________________________________________________________________

Having less relics makes game more boring in my opinion. The most wanted relics will still be contested for. But with more relics noob realms will be able to have a relic they normally wouldn't have, making the game funner for them. It will also help them keep up with realms that dominate and have the best relic around.

_________________
You cannot define this.
There is nothing else like it.
It's how you react, no it's not what you say.
You're running from nothing you're running away.
-Steromud

I'm lazy, i havent read any suggestion, but here's my idea :

Sacrifice (acre*constant) workers to get faster building for the remaining of the tick. Remove the sacrifice payback for this option.

Think of it as overworking your pop so much that some of them die

High cost = high reward. You're getting something quicker by slowing you down.

_________________
We can't hear the truth
When we kneel down
In front of what we think
We cannot change