Developer Diary | Economy Part One

[Xemu]

Does not compute

LOL! Government is the sixth domain, it often gets separated out in my mind because only the five I listed have National Spirits for them (your active Government "is" the Government Domain equivalent).

 

[Xemu]

Will buildings or improvements that fulfill advanced needs like ideology or information be unlocked before those needs become available?
Otherwise, all regions would have those needs at 0% when you adopt a government that requires ideology or, presumably, enter age 9 for information.
In that case the only way to prepare for the new needs in advance would be to overfulfill other needs to make sure the average stays above 100% while you build stuff that meets the new need.

Generally advanced Governments provide 1 or 2 points of all Needs so that you have a softer introduction to them. Also because it's your average Needs satisfaction that controls population growth, the impact of additional later game needs are somewhat mitigated overall (adding in a sixth Need is a much smaller mathematical change than adding in your second Need). In order to offset that, many of the later game needs also have other functionality (Faith also is involved in spreading religion, Ideology also ties into the Faction-level gameplay, Power has an extra penalty if it falls below 100%).

 

[Xemu]

Oh damn. I loved Age of Mythology!

Also pretty enjoyable Dev Diary, I really liked the first look into Economy of this game. The production chains are much welcomed additions. Speaking about them - which production chain is currently the longest in the game? How many elements does it have? Can you transport some of the unused goods to other cities (for example Bread (as seeing in the example you provided 1 farm on wheat tile can result in 2 breads, which is probably 32 food)?

Also are there any sources of Improvement Points? How many Improvement Points do you need to build improvement? Does the cost also changes depending on the era of the building/good?

We'll be talking more about Trade in a later Design Diary (which is a key part of moving Goods around).

There are many different sources of Improvement Points - Goods & Buildings can generate them, you can convert Engineering XP into them, or use a Project to convert Production to IP. As an example, one of my favorite early game "key decisions" is whether to invest in the Tribalism Government which can get you some passive Improvement Point income, but that will delay your early Settlers as both of those things require Government Domain XP.

Costs for improvements generally do increase as you get later in the game, though you also get some powerful new sources of them via late game techs and Goods.

 

[Xemu]

Sounds interesting so far! Have some questions:

It seems like disruptions to your goods chains will be very damaging. How easy is it for others to temporarily disrupt your Improvements or destroy them?

Now, on the topic of comparisons to other games: I gather that requiring specific Goods to make certain Units or Buildings is not a factor in Millennia?

What's the reasoning behind Vassals not needing to have their Needs met? Since they construct things autonomously, they should build the things needed to fill their Needs anyway, correct? Otherwise that will be a nightmare whenever you turn a Vassal into a Region.


Is this saying Specialists are similar to Improvement Points or similar to Improvements?


An important thing to keep in mind is that easy readability is very important. Though for the visual I agree it's a bit perplexing, especially when you compare the scale of some Improvements to Towns. Things like farms and pastures make a lot more sense and look much better when covering whole tiles. I think this is an inherent downside of having in reality very small structures like ovens and kilns as tile Improvements rather than buildings in the City or towns.

To clarify, Specialists are similar to Improvement Points - some late game improvements require Specialists to build instead of Improvement Points, which means you need to invest in some different infrastructure if you wish to go deep in those types of improvements (generally high-tech Knowledge & Power).

 

[Xemu]

Since this came up in a couple of replies, specific Goods are never required for specific Units. This is something we've discussed a lot internally, but it didn't prove to be a great fit because it made those Units too difficult to get and also made gameplay around Goods more finicky and difficult to manage.

Our equivalent of that same concept is using Domain XP generating Goods - having a lot of Iron lets you pump a lot of materiel through your Weaponsmiths, which in turn gives you a lot of Warfare XP. That Warfare XP can then be used to make more expensive units (or do other things with Warfare XP like providing reinforcements to a unit). So it's a bit more abstract but it results in a similar overall economic impact.