Balancing Economy & Resources

[Stewy13 0]

Hello fellow community member, thank you for showing your interest in this topic. I highly encourage you to take part and let your own ideas be heard.

Quite simply I'm posting this new topic to discuss Cities XL's current gameplay balance, economy and how it works right now in game as a single player experience, along with how it will be evolving with new custom content.

Besides changing current in-game values of buildings (which I believe another member is doing - kiwispanker?) it'll be a question of how new custom content should work in terms of economy. Currently retail is only produced through the consumption of food, however what if you were to make your own car dealership? Shouldn't that logically consume another resource like High-Tech? Meanwhile we also should discuss what the definition of each resource is, fuel for example is only oil at this point in time but we all know you can use coal for your fuel along with electricity. My ideas are as follow;

Fuel: Either fuel needs to be redefined to be a more broad resource such as Raw Resource, or have alternatives/subsidies for fuel. Redefining this resource would open up more room for custom content and allow for more room in the single player economy. My thoughts with a redefinition of the resource is that cities may be more diverse allowing forest industries, mineral extractions, new farming goods such as industrial-hemp and non-food purpose corn. I'm sure the creative community here at Simtropolis, along with other community members of other fan sites will have a lot more ideas than what I simply have.

Electricity:

Not sure if this exactly requires a definition, but the way I see electricity is just the capacity your city has to produce. Therefore, while your city's actual consumption may not be your capacity, narrowing those two numbers closer will have negative effects.

Currently electricity is produced through the consumption of fuel, mainly along with money. Wind power consumes only money however produces a fraction of what other power stations produce when comparing the money:energy production ratio. While somewhat realistic of the limitations of green energy, further windmills or other green technology should increase the effectiveness of these buildings.

In real world today we are looking at combining several technologies together to make a more efficient and effective power grids. Technologies such as electric cars and even hybrids are being looked for what's known as Vehicle to Grid or V2G, something that relieves peak load which working with Green Energy increases the effectiveness of those sources. Google it, it's quite interesting.

My main point about the last paragraph is that a simple idea like that can be taken into Cities XL through custom content in the form of either single lots or an entire series of content which functions together. V2G could be as simple as just a parking lot with the technology and gives your Windmills a 5% increase in production. However I'm hoping that content for Cities XL will become more organized than previous custom content for other games and instead release content in almost GEM packs or expansions. That way balancing of content would not be an individual building basis but rather the content pack or perhaps an entire content creation team.

Food: Who consumes food? Is food actually consumed by people in your city or is its only purpose to be converted into Retail Goods? Depending what occurs with retail goods as a resource and how it's produced; values for residential and business/retail buildings may need to change to reflect the new changes.

Retail:

Retail currently is only produced thought the consumption of food resources. However most of the retail stores in the game would not consume such resources such as the Auction House and all the malls (6 by my count). So it just remains a question at this point in time of what exact function is retail supposed to have, is it just a service to residents? Anyways, progress towards more diverse retail sector would be a wise step I think. Currently there's a mod out by Povis123 which has a few lots that are gas stations exchanging fuel for retail.

These are only a few resources and while there is many more in the game, I've felt ever since the Beta of this game that these were the most in need of balancing. The ability to trade with others allowed this balance issue to go mostly unnoticed but now with our copies of Cities XL reduced to a single player experience the resources with the bigger problems are having even more problems. However I'm highly encouraging discussion about all the resources and how they interact in our game's economy. Also let your ideas be known for either current fixes or upcoming content and what they should incorporate or consider.

Looking forward to everyone else's contribution to this discussion

[Regular forum posts should be posted in the default text size, color and font - GlobexCo]

[mr-tom 2]

Tidied up version of post above. (No offence intended).

Hello fellow community member, thank you for showing your interest in this topic. I highly encourage you to take part and let your own ideas be heard.

Quite simply I'm posting this new topic to discuss Cities XL's current gameplay balance, economy and how it works right now in game as a single player experience, along with how it will be evolving with new custom content.

Besides changing current in-game values of buildings (which I believe another member is doing - kiwispanker?) it'll be a question of how new custom content should work in terms of economy. Currently retail is only produced through the consumption of food, however what if you were to make your own car dealership? Shouldn't that logically consume another resource like High-Tech? Meanwhile we also should discuss what the definition of each resource is, fuel for example is only oil at this point in time but we all know you can use coal for your fuel along with electricity. My ideas are as follow;

Fuel:

Either fuel needs to be redefined to be a more broad resource such as Raw Resource, or have alternatives/subsidies for fuel. Redefining this resource would open up more room for custom content and allow for more room in the single player economy. My thoughts with a redefinition of the resource is that cities may be more diverse allowing forest industries, mineral extractions, new farming goods such as industrial-hemp and non-food purpose corn. I'm sure the creative community here at Simtropolis, along with other community members of other fan sites will have a lot more ideas than what I simply have.

Electricity:

Not sure if this exactly requires a definition, but the way I see electricity is just the capacity your city has to produce. Therefore, while your city's actual consumption may not be your capacity, narrowing those two numbers closer will have negative effects.

Currently electricity is produced through the consumption of fuel, mainly along with money. Wind power consumes only money however produces a fraction of what other power stations produce when comparing the money:energy production ratio. While somewhat realistic of the limitations of green energy, further windmills or other green technology should increase the effectiveness of these buildings.

In real world today we are looking at combining several technologies together to make a more efficient and effective power grids. Technologies such as electric cars and even hybrids are being looked for what's known as Vehicle to Grid or V2G, something that relieves peak load which working with Green Energy increases the effectiveness of those sources. Google it, it's quite interesting.

My main point about the last paragraph is that a simple idea like that can be taken into Cities XL through custom content in the form of either single lots or an entire series of content which functions together. V2G could be as simple as just a parking lot with the technology and gives your Windmills a 5% increase in production. However I'm hoping that content for Cities XL will become more organized than previous custom content for other games and instead release content in almost GEM packs or expansions. That way balancing of content would not be an individual building basis but rather the content pack or perhaps an entire content creation team.

Food:

Who consumes food? Is food actually consumed by people in your city or is its only purpose to be converted into Retail Goods? Depending what occurs with retail goods as a resource and how it's produced; values for residential and business/retail buildings may need to change to reflect the new changes.

Retail:

Retail currently is only produced thought the consumption of food resources. However most of the retail stores in the game would not consume such resources such as the Auction House and all the malls (6 by my count). So it just remains a question at this point in time of what exact function is retail supposed to have, is it just a service to residents? Anyways, progress towards more diverse retail sector would be a wise step I think. Currently there's a mod out by Povis123 which has a few lots that are gas stations exchanging fuel for retail.

These are only a few resources and while there is many more in the game, I've felt ever since the Beta of this game that these were the most in need of balancing. The ability to trade with others allowed this balance issue to go mostly unnoticed but now with our copies of Cities XL reduced to a single player experience the resources with the bigger problems are having even more problems. However I'm highly encouraging discussion about all the resources and how they interact in our game's economy. Also let your ideas be known for either current fixes or upcoming content and what they should incorporate or consider.

Looking forward to everyone else's contribution to this discussion

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Food is one of the tokens consumed by residential buildings. Residential buildings consume a lot of food and actually increase consumption as population grows because Monte Cristo thought that bigger cities are far more wasteful than smaller cities.

I think that there should be factory farms that are zoned like regular farms but the agricultural products would be converted into fuel or industrial products on site with production based on size of field (like a regular farm). Then maybe we could make a textile mill which turns food into manufactured products. Then maybe we could make SkyFarms that consume water and electricity while reducing pollution and producing MASSIVE amounts food on a 60x60m lot. Advanced SkyFarms would consume waste (produce waste treatment), reduce pollution, produce MASSIVE amounts of food, produce a tiny amount of water and produce as much retail as a medium sized store, still on a 60x60m lot.

[mr-tom 2]

I do like the sequence, food to shop to person as few people buy their food direct from a farm (although I have been known to).

As such there is a lot of sense in what MC have built.

I also agree that the larger the city, the more likely it is to have significant waste, although whilst it makes sense to me, I don't really know how I would verify it.

Not sure about turning food into fuel - whilst biofuels sound sexy, in reality they are a big mistake (a range of issues including food vs fuel) and just aren't happening on any significant scale.

I do like the idea of zoning more varied retail, which take in a better range of products. Petrol stations are one obvious option. Manufactured goods and high tech another. I guess heavy industry could even be an option if you built a DIY store as an outlet for your local sawmill. Likewise, they could sell human labour in the form of decorating services etc.

(quick edit) Something genuinely useful would be to enhance the output of farms near to nuke plants.  Nowadays rather than building cooling towers, many plants duct their hot water to fram greenhouse systems - 10% of the UK's tomatoes come from suck a system at one coal fired plant in Yorkshire.  Rather than building bolt ons or anything complex, we could just have a zone of effect.  For the comedians, we could always say that proximity mutates the veg... 

There's any number of possibilities here, the one thing I would say is that we should ensure they genuinely enhance the game.

[Stewy13 0]

I love the Sky-farm idea because I saw an article awhile ago about them and that would be great to see something like that in a large city. Toronto had something similar in the talks, but talk is nothing but hot air. As for Cities XL, it'd be a blueprint because of it's shear size and give ya a nice amount of food tokens, sounds win-win. Also I'm surprized there isn't small greenhouses yet, it'd almost be like the 'Windmills' of food, but it'd be interesting additional content to add to your city, community gardens anyone?

As for the food to fuel, simply someone should make a Biofuel content pack, shouldn't take more than a few buildings for the process and btw, biofuel is practical but only if it's grown from Hemp. I was wondering if say a Home Depot would sell Heavy Industry or Manufactured goods, or perhaps both? Same with a Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart Superstore? Well right there that's food, manufactured goods and high-tech. Probably more could be thought of.

One of the problems I see with allowing just random zoning however is it could cause an unbalance in the economy. However by the looks of how modding development has been progressing, we very well might just be able to make a new sub-menu allowing more control and organization to it all. I'm not sure what all is possible with this game, but I hope this is what we've all been waiting for and it's just a matter of time before things explode into development from the community.

Anyways, glad to see the comments guys!

[mr-tom 2]

Problem with biofuel (and I suspect this could be considered off topic) is that we have 6.something billion people on this planet and seem to be unable to feed them all. The amount of land you would need to cover with cannabis plants in order to make a significant impact on fossil fuel usage would have the effect of starving the best part of a billion human beings.

It's a lovely idea, but people are slowly realising that it can only ever be a fashionable fad for Western societies.

Slightly more on topic, the nuclear plant blueprint - 10 electricity tokens is nowhere near enough. Consider the amount of space it takes up. A real life plant of that size would power a whole city with plenty left over. Just a thought.

(edit) Although don't let me put you off of implementing biofuel...

[Ocram's Razr 964]

People are starving because of the distribution of wealth. There is more than enough food for everyone to get their RECOMMENDED daily allowance of food. The problem is that the wealthy waste TONS of food while the poor live hand to mouth and often starve. The farmers will grow whatever will give them the highest profits.

[mr-tom 2]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

People are starving because of the distribution of wealth. There is more than enough food for everyone to get their RECOMMENDED daily allowance of food. The problem is that the wealthy waste TONS of food while the poor live hand to mouth and often starve. The farmers will grow whatever will give them the highest profits.quote>

Absolutely true.  Although likely to change in a hurry unless people stop procreating...

However acknowledging that fact does not mean that we should do all we can to reduce the supply of food to the poor still further in order to make petrol for our oversized cars.  Because believe me, the food supply to our countries will not decrease one little bit.  Even though it should.

[Stewy13 0]

Well you take the postition that I want to replace all petrol with biofuel

Yes I do...but I want EV's to be driven and not our accustomed ICE cars, along with other changes from petrol. I'd say Hemp could fill the gap if we didn't use obscene amounts of it. Don't use as much, don't need to produce as much. But it's hard to cut back or break an addiction I guess. As for feeding the world, as the next poster stated, there's enough food. Problem is we still focus on money and status, along with several other reasons too.

Interestingly enough, the first content I want to try to create, if learn how to, will hopefully be Electric Car Infrastructure. Biofuel however would be an interesting add-on too

As for the Nuclear Power Plants output, easy solution of changing values no?

Anyways, great discussion guys. Kinda disappointed when I see the views to posts ratio, but that's to be expected I suppose. Hope some will change their mind and post, more than welcome and encouraged

[mr-tom 2]

Originally posted by: Stewy13

Well you take the postition that I want to replace all petrol with biofuel

Yes I do...but I want EV's to be driven and not our accustomed ICE cars, along with other changes from petrol. I'd say Hemp could fill the gap if we didn't use obscene amounts of it. Don't use as much, don't need to produce as much. But it's hard to cut back or break an addiction I guess. As for feeding the world, as the next poster stated, there's enough food. Problem is we still focus on money and status, along with several other reasons too.

Interestingly enough, the first content I want to try to create, if learn how to, will hopefully be Electric Car Infrastructure. Biofuel however would be an interesting add-on too

As for the Nuclear Power Plants output, easy solution of changing values no?

Anyways, great discussion guys. Kinda disappointed when I see the views to posts ratio, but that's to be expected I suppose. Hope some will change their mind and post, more than welcome and encouraged quote>

Nice post!

I think hydrogen fuel cell infrastructure would be fabulous.  Couple that with nuke plants and you can have a nice, clean, green city.  Until the first meltdown.  Although arguably that would also enhance the city as it would cut traffic.

[Stewy13 0]

Anything that's an alternative I like.

Just to quickly post another thought I had, just so it's not just an energy & fuel discussion over here just quickly thinking of other things that might be a fair trade for another resource.

Say for instance a travel agency; fuel and money tokens for vacation tokens. Fuel due to the travel invovled and money is simple....you're just that kind, cover the costs and don't pass it onto your citizens with taxes...right? Haha!

Anyways, we should build a list of buildings/lots complete with details, ideas for bonuses, consumption and production, etc.      

PS- I don't exactly excel at writing my ideas down, I'm more of an oral speaker and these very letters (keys) I'm pressing right now give my fingers a stubling feeling. It's just how my brain works I suppose, but my point is to ask for forgiveness if something isn't clear in my writing or if it seems lacking somehow.

So my idea with the EV Infrasture would go something like this for content and how it'd effect your city

Name:

-EV* Dealership           

(*Brand name more than likely, but at current time I'm unsure if you need permission from that company)

Details*:

Congratulations on becoming part of the EV revolution and bringing a new era towards a more efficient, quieter and Zero Emissions future. This EV Dealership is one of the first steps towards this new era and as infrastructure, vehicles, batteries and technology advance forward, so too will the effects of EVs.  Your city was selected for a test rollout because...Yada yada..this isn't exactly important, just saying it should have the appropriate background to give it a better experience of what it's doing in your game.

(*When built and clicked on, idea can be explained further

Consumes:

-Skilled and Execs for workers (maybe an elite)

-Electricity (It's a business afterall, and real-life EV dealerships offer charging stations at the lot for customers)

-Hightech tokens (If hightech is to be understood as devices such as iPods)

Produces:

-Retail (If retail statisfaction can be altered, elites happiest down to unskilled not really caring)

-Park Effect 5%?

-Increase park effect by # %  (# tied to number of other buildings built in city related to EVs thus representing the 'growth' and thus the increase in park effect)

-Decrease city fuel consumption by # % (obviously this number will need to be examined for gameplay reasons, but again the # amount is tied to your cities 'growth' of EV infrastructure)

Other Details:

-The building is a blueprint/landmark that's unlocked by another building or buildings yet to be determined at this time, but initial thoughts are that either a car manufacturer HQ would have be present in your city, other linked content such as factories related to EV production are present in your city or your city has a surplus in electricity but negative fuel.

-Unlocks other buildings such as Charging lots, EV service stations, etc etc.

-Only 1 allowed until pop limit allowed for more?

That it just one example and I hope it shows what I'm thinking myself in terms of new custom content and how it should interact with our game's world, economy and complete what we came to know in Sim City 4 which was unique content. I hope to do a complete list like the above soon and make a thread for it when modding becomes more open to actually creating content ourselves and putting it in-game. BTW, anyone who's reading this now and has some know-how, PLEASE PM me because I want to learn.

If you read all the above, I thank you and hope you understood and enjoyed what I wrote. Hoping for more e-mails telling me of replies here.

Cheers everyone.

[mr-tom 2]

Originally posted by: Stewy13

PS- I don't exactly excel at writing my ideas down, I'm more of an oral speaker and these very letters (keys) I'm pressing right now give my fingers a stubling feeling. It's just how my brain works I suppose, but my point is to ask for forgiveness if something isn't clear in my writing or if it seems lacking somehow.

quote>

Actually that was a very coherent post indeed.  And I like the idea.

Tesla Volt would be a great move, but we'd have to create the model.

We could then advertise it via the in-game billboards.

I've been thinking about those in-game billboards - it's Novotel, Ford and game features, if I recall correctly.  Pretty sure we can do better although may need to consider legalities.

We could link them to something that advertises new mods or updates to existing ones.  Anything like that.

[jeremy12 0]

Originally posted by: mr-tom

 We could link them to something that advertises new mods or updates to existing ones.  Anything like that.

quote>

That line got me thinking about how we find new mods or updates to mods... 

as the billboards cannot be changed without applying a new .patch file, and obviously we cant use CXL built in updater.... Soooo that leads me to this concept Program...

[mr-tom 2]

Excellent.

It could use one more function. With installed mods (or those queued to install) it should have a red, amber or green (or tick, question mark and cross, etc) to show whether the mods are compatible. Tick - known and tested. Cross - known not to play nicely together.  Amber - nobody's checked. Maybe something to highlight dependencies.

There was a good mod manager for oblivion that did this very well.

Thoughts?

P.S. Would be happy to lend a hand checking compatibilities.

[jeremy12 0]

Originally posted by: mr-tom

Excellent.

It could use one more function. With installed mods (or those queued to install) it should have a red, amber or green (or tick, question mark and cross, etc) to show whether the mods are compatible. Tick - known and tested. Cross - known not to play nicely together.  Amber - nobody's checked. Maybe something to highlight dependencies.

There was a good mod manager for oblivion that did this very well.

Thoughts?

P.S. Would be happy to lend a hand checking compatibilities.

quote>

my thoughts exactly, of course it would grow over time with more and more features all that would not be Version 1.  

[mr-tom 2]

Sounds great. Happy to test as well when you hit that stage.

[chris0101 8]

I think that cities are going to have to be "self-sufficient" nowadays with the online play gone (ex: cities should have a bit of access to all resources) at this point without the ability to interact with other cities.

[zwr100 2]

The thing that really frustrates me is the lack of value for open space in city builders.  In real life (particularly where I'm most familiar - Pennsylvania) the 'open space' is often 'working forest.'  Forests can be managed to sustainably supply raw materials (wood), fuel (firewood is the most used source of heat in the world), and even some food. The forest products industry is the number 1 industry in PA.  Forests also provide outdoor recreation.  Many municipalities get ALL of their water from reservoirs and wells in forested areas - being able to zone for water production anywhere would have balancing issues though.  Some forested areas can even be considered landmarks.

It would be nice to be able to zone 'working forest' and designate it's use.  It should be zonable on any slope.  Forest management does come at a cost (employees, roads, dams, law enforcement, etc).