Hey everyone!

In the Lucy OpenDev, we still saw many players talking about their impression that they progressed through the eras too quickly, and that their economy was growing too fast. Many players who shared their feedback with us felt that this significantly reduced the impact of decisions made later in the game.

To slow down the progression through the eras and the rapid growth of cities, we have made the following changes:

• Rebalanced technology costs
• Rebalanced various District and Infrastructure bonuses, for example:
  • City Centers no longer exploit Money and Science
  • Research Quarters and Market Quarters now synergize with themselves
  • Increased some previous Research and Market synergies
  • Increased science yields of natural modifiers
  • Strengthened early game science infrastructures
• Introduced new growth system: Food Surplus increases growth with diminishing returns
• Increased population food consumption
• Increased population base yields from 4 to 6 to increase their value
• Rebalanced Influence cost for claiming and attaching territory and for creating cities
• Implemented ability to detach territories from a city
• Introduced Unit upkeep
• Introduced a City Cap; exceeding the cap reduces Influence income
• Introduced stability penalties for being at negative Money or Influence; penalty grows each turn

We want to hear from you what you think of the pace now: Is your overall progress through the eras and through the technology tree too fast or too slow? Do you spend any periods of time in the game just passing turns? How much do you value the different resources and districts? Are the decisions you make throughout the game as interesting towards the end as they are in the beginning?

Let us know how you feel about the economy and pace of the game now!

i just play focusing gold with carthagian and it's way too powerful, i was able to build buy every infrastructures, every districts on the region in a mater of 5-6 turns in a brand new cities, my first 2 games in other hands(without focusing gold) result in a huge struggle to improve my cities even the first one.

The problem in my opinion is the fact that buying infrastructures and district made them pop instantly is broken (same case than civilization game) modders often adresse this issues by replacing "buying" by "invest" instead of instantly building (by magic) an entire cities you lower the production time by half instead, this ways it impose a limit to what moneys can do.

anyways at the current state GOLD > every other yields. (and take carthage -50% on buildings in insanely powerful)

now on food, it has a lot more impact early game but became less and less impactful, reaching the "medieval era", even with an average of 4 famr district per cities, it was pointless to construct more as a lot of infractructures increases the foods production from different sources(specialist, district, tiles with some features).

So in the early game food has a good feel, you need it and you see the use of optimize tile positionning and there is satisfaction to see the numbers grows on the tiles, or puting a farm on a river tiles but passing classical era.. i didn't even check if my cities needed food (spoiler alert: they didn't).

infrastructures vs district?

after some test, i found infrastructures way more powerful than actual district; early game when you don't have a lot of citizen, it's may more efficient to make use of passiv tiles yield than district; you obviously need at least 2-3 farm and maybe 1 production district but overall infrastructures are by far superiors as they provide more yields AND cost less in general(at least the early ones)

district in general:

farm district            : good early then go infrastructures

production district  : i built one at the beginning then realize infrastructures where much "productive" ("insert sarcastic voice here")

market district        : for some reason i didn't really need them i only built them at the end of the game for the fun of buying an entire army in one turn)

science district      : difficult to say about them since i played in one lvl above normal, i wasn't behind so didn't felt the need to build them, i still buy some but since i was already ahead i can't say how effective they are.

culture district(not sur about the name) : same for science.

EDIT:

I forgot to speak about Era stars who inherit the issues of the previous tech pace:

to illustrate when i finished my first game i was a proud industrial germany but.. was still in medival era in term of technology, i precise i was not behind in tech, i was actually N°1 in science

this scenario repeat in every game, whenever i'm ahead or not.

Overall the pacing seems alot better than Lucy, however the balance issues exist:

• Resource stacking is very powerful and completely dwarf everything else. This means large empires become very snowballing. When a single marble give the same production as a factory to all cities and 2 marbles give twice the amount it quickly lead to extreme yields, which make further expansion even easier which give more cities and resources and thus even more snowball potential. Suggestion is to add diminishing returns on resource stacking, first resource could give 100% of the value, second could be 50% and third could be 25%.
• Infrastructure, some like power line is very good and some like tax office is bad, I dislike basically all infrastructure with flat yields on city center, make them affect districts, explotation or population.
• Allow unlimited harbours again or make it so that the harbour exploit all sea tiles, right now water feels too weak, Lucy was better in this area.
• Attached territories look like wasteland, hamlets which is supposedly like villages to be built in those territories are too expensive. I would suggest hamlets to have their own cost progression, separate from other districts but make them only exploit food and industry, not allow other districts to be built next to them and remove the population slots. Right now the main territory is a huge city, attached territories have maybe an harbour and emblematic quarters, no villages exist at all.
• Stability is too much tied to commons quarter, make each population give like +5 stability so to make district expansion tied to population. I would make common quarter give just like 5 or 10 stability and maybe +2 influence per adjacent district that is not another commons quarter.
• Market quarter, change the infrastructure tied to it to give adjacency with other market quarters instead of agriulture quarters.
• More cities are better than larger cities, however getting cities are a bit harder compared to Lucy. Main issues is population growth and district cost very much favor quantity over quality.

The normal districts are mostly fine, atleast they don't seems to cause pacing issues. The emblematic districts need a rework, some like the Mughal one can give huge amount of resources and some like Assyrian one are pretty much worthless. Religion is perhaps the worst offender, the ability to get +1 resource per pop times number of holy site, and those pops don't even need to be in your empire. With 10 holy sites you can get 10 resources per pop, maybe for the whole world which may be more resources than the pops would produce themself. Luxury Resources is also a major offender and can dwarf the yields you get from infrastructure, a single marbel is like having a factory in every city, 2 marbles is two factories in every city, I don't see how that make much sense, it don't feel like resources, just pure buffs, endless legend resources do feel like resources and while powerful they could not be stacked in the way they can in humankind. Overall infrastructure feels weak compared to how it was in endless legend, the factory line at industrial era is just 4 production per worker = 2 marble resources (which apply globally and is accessible in ancient era) and if you play Mughals you can build emblematic districts that is like factories, if you have a 5 territory city you can build 5 emblematic districts and basically add 5 factories to your city. Tech cost seems fine, now it take some investment to be good at tech, and you don't need all tech of past era to enter the next era of techs.

I don't really like that you cannot plant multiple cities in era 1. Well, in theory you can, but the influence cost is pretty harsh, which results in cities without your emblematic districts from era 1 later in the game. It's cheaper to attach territories to existing cities than to found new ones, which feels wrong.

I would allow players to have multiple cities right from the start, but counteract that with other things like increased science cost, increased unit upkeep cost or adjusting of the goals for era stars, making it require more X the more cities you have.

I've played through the game 3 times by now: once as builder, once agrarian and once as a merchant.

The merchant was the fastest but had the slowest start. But once you get your money flowing you snowball out of control, earning all era stars in a few turns due to being able to buyout districts, from which you can fund your science. Finished this playthrough in turn 105.

The agrarian playthrough was similar: Once you get mothers milk each turn, you just buyout everything with population. The start is faster than as a merchant but it does not snowball as well due to pop growth limitation (food does not scale linearly like money does). Still, I finished the game turn 115.

The builder playthrough was the slowest. You got your building fame stars, but not really anything else, so you had to wait longer. Gets going pretty fast, but there will come a point where you're out of stuff to build, if you don't want to go to war, which is boring. Finished turn 149 (because I had to wait for an influence star).

Overall my impression is, that emblematic districts are way too powerful compared to anything unlockable in the tech tree. Your infrastructure is nearly useless in comparison and I just build everything in my cities without caring for the effects, because the raw output of districts is super high coupled with emblematic districts buffing them. Everything responsible for city development (food, money, industry) could use another tune down (or in the case of food and money the conversion rate f/m->i should be adjusted, maybe with a debuff on your city if you rush construction).

In general the start has been slowed down, but you still scale exonentially, making the game VERY fast. Concentrating on one aspect (FISM) is the way to go and it would be nice if there was more incentive to mix up your priorities, like meaningful things unlocked in the tech tree or the output from population not being overshadowed by passive effects of districts, 

Guys, could you help me to understand the food yield calculation? (apologies there mb another thread better suited for it but I can't find it)

On the following screenshot everything kinda makes sense for the city yields apart from "+11 from Luxury resources". The only luxury resource empire-wide I see adding food is salt (+5), which doesn't match with +11 seing there.

1271140_screenshots_20210425103441_1.jpg

The requirements for expansionist Fame is ridiculous, honestly the most difficult star to go for in the game, even expansionist cultures I find have difficulty getting stars, it doesn't help that their ability resets if anything happens while annexing. Honestly if outposts gave half a point for expansion stars and the amount of territories required was reduced I think it'd be much more fun and viable compared to everything else.

That's the most obvious game pace issue I've found, otherwise I like the new slower pace of the game, It feels perfect, getting all the fame you want for your culture at just the right time, although I haven't played long enough to see if it snowballs. Up until the Early Modern era, science and economy progress at a modest enough pace which you can influence through your culture and buildings, which makes it feel very enjoyable as you pull ahead in what you focus on! There is the issue of money getting pretty crazy though, I don't understand why people want more synergies with merchant districts when the current interaction between them and farms is much less snowbally. Seriously complaining about money getting out of hand while also wanting to make money districts even better seems counter-intuitive.