[Anonymous Player]

Rather than paying the full cost upfront to construct a building, how about a bonus system where the cost is spread out over the course of the build?

For example, building a castle would require a single stone to begin the process, and then the rest of the stones could be mined and used to complete the structure.

However, if the building is abandoned before it is completed, no refund would be given.

[remarkable_corgi_]

I just want to say the comments on this thread made me laugh.

Not one person offered the obvious constructive criticism after claiming the bonus is too strong: choose another parameterization.

Which leads me to believe those people have no idea how to analyze this.

It takes 2 seconds to realize one relevant parameteriztion: Buildings cost X% when first placed and the remaining (1-X)% is paid for as the building is built.

You get back (1-built %)*X if deleted.

Clearly it’s not OP at like X=95% up front cost because thats basically indistinguishable from the game as it exists.

What about 75? 50? 25?

It’s not hard to realize what an acceptable value for X is that e.g.

solves the quickwall problem and otherwise offers minor timing/quality of life advantages, especially if you allow yourself to exempt castles and town centers.

[JoshVMZ]

This sounds more a nerf TBH.

You cannot advance to next age because you have to finish the building to do that.

Why you want to start a castle or a TC if you cannot finish it?

Idle time of villagers stoping building because you don’t have the resources necessary to complete it.

[nelliott13]

Interesting!

I think that this would be a very strong bonus overall with the potential to be OP in a few situations, most notably in dropping your first castle 1 – 2 minutes earlier and/or allowing a double castle drop.

You’d be able to focus much more on food, first be able to delay moving to wood for your age up buildings and then to stone for the castle.

Other situations where it would be very strong are in tower wars (can drop two towers right when reaching feudal), immediately dropping multiple stables / ranges in feudal, and in selling stone to go up to castle faster while still being able to immediately drop TCs.

Running out of resources while building would be very annoying, having the potential to increase villager idle time substantially and/or mess up your build order if you shift-queue villagers to do something else after building.

So definitely a complicated mechanic.

For evaluating, this bonus would essentially treat your economy as being ahead of a generic civ by the average build times of your buildings multiplied by the percent of your total resources that are spent on buildings.

It’s a zero interest loan, letting you build based on the resources collected when the building is completed instead of the resources you have now.

And that is a pretty good bonus, especially for slower and more expensive buildings.

For example, over 50s (stable/range build time), a 20-villager (early feudal) economy collects 300-400 resources (assuming an average gather rate of 0.3 – 0.4 res/vill/second).

So that would let you immediately build 1 – 2 extra production buildings when reaching feudal and/or have a better food economy by delaying the transition to wood.

Which is strong, but probably not OP.

I’d consider it on par with bonuses like the Dravidians (+200 wood), Ethiopians (+100 food & gold), and Cumans (save 150 wood on a two range or stable opening).

What would be potentially overpowered is that this bonus lets you immediately build multiple towers in feudal age without having mined any stone.

Where I think this definitely becomes overpowered is in a fast castle to castle drop build.

First, you can age up more quickly and drop your first castle 1 – 2 minutes earlier.

I haven’t worked out the exact build order, but you would start more heavily on food, delay the second lumber camp, delay collecting wood for your market + blacksmith until just before Feudal Age, and delay the stone mining camp and villagers to stone until just after Castle Age.

This would let you skip 2 – 3 villagers vs the standard FC to castle drop order, I think.

More worringly to me, your second castle is also 1 – 2 minutes quicker, which I think would make all-in castle pushes very hard to stop.

Following the standard FC + castle drop build order, you could even drop two castles simultaneously upon hitting Castle Age, though that would require keeping your stone miners on stone instead of sending them to build.

I think you’d either need to require some upfront investment (10 – 50%), apply this to only non-stone resources, and/or exclude certain buildings (towers, castles, and maybe TCs).

This bonus would definitely give you timing advantages, but is complicated by the age-gating of buildings.

I think it has the potential to be overpowered regarding stone buildings (towers, castles, and TCs) right after age up, but I don’t think it is stronger overall than Vikings getting free wheelbarrow/handcart, Malay aging up faster, or Poles/Franks farming eco.

EDIT: formatting

[[deleted]]

im also reacting so harshly because both of you (+ umdeuter) lord over other posts as if you are kings of the game, never admitting when you are wrong and i dont think i have ever seen either of you support other people’s suggestions

and then propose such an obviously abusable suggestion that will lead to toxic AF gameplay

[[deleted]]

you probably spent about a min thinking about this

consider how it can be abused, then come back

[niyupower]

only in cases like castle does this make a HUGE diff.

otherwise, it feels like a nerf if you cant get res back by deleting.

[Hoeveboter]

As a sidenote, foundations should be walkable.

I hate the idea of quickwalling.

Makes the villagers look like earthbenders

[Umdeuter]

Oh a huge thing here would be that you can literally place an endless amount of farms when you spare a minute and you only have to assign vils to them later, not have them actually built yet.

But I guess this can be balanced by having like 5 or 10 starting investment for everything

[niyupower]

I just realized that this could be overpowered in making quick castle or wonder walls.

You can stop the enemy from coming in by droping 4 markets with just 20 wood etc.

[WombozM]

This could work, but would only be balanced if you are allowed to start the building when you have lets say 50% of its initial cost?

Otherwise it would probably be overpowered.

So lets say you need 100 wood to start a siege workshop to build it 50% and trickle in the 2nd 100 wood in the meanwhile.

[El_Tich]

The Italians in Age of Empires 3 have a similar mechanic.

They have a special villager, the architect, which can build for free, but it takes longer to do so.

You can speed up the construction using normal villagers, but then you have to pay depending of how much is require to complete.

[scotland1112]

A better bonus would be to get the cost of a building fully refunded if you delete it at any percentage complete

[gtathrowaway95]

So one Civ get to play by Command and Conquer production rules for buildings then?

[Umdeuter]

I like that.

One of these things that are quite unique and just smooth things out rather than giving a huge power boost.

[Author]

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