Warrior Temple Broken? [PICS]

Ha.. /Facepalm

OK, about the Warrior temple issue, i think i know what's wrong

I had two other structures at level 3 city that gave -25% training time bonus (don't remember the names). Checking the XML files i see that negative bonuses are given in 0.f format, so -25% becomes 0.25. So if training time is x, then the new training time after the bonus is applied becomes  x - x*0.25 = x*0.75 (where 0.75 is the new train ratio)

However, the ADDITIVE bonuses seem to be wrong.

Example:

Let's say training time is 12 turns. A -25% reduction is 12*0.25 = 3 turns less, so the new training time is 12-3 = 9 turns.
A second -25% bonus would give 9*0.25 =  2.25 turns less, so the new training time would be 6,75 turns, rounded to 7 turns.
The Warrior Temple gives another 50% reduction so 7*0.5 = 3.5, = 4 turns after rounding.

BUT THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS IN THE GAME

The game just takes all the 0.f values and subtracts them from the training ratio, so 1.0 - 0.25 - 0.25 - 0.5 becomes 0.0 and then it multiplies by x, thus x*0.0 = 0, and probably due to some safeguard that sets the minimum training time to 1, EVERY training time for EVERY unit becomes 1.

At least that's how i think it works. If that's true and the mechanism is universal the problem propagates to all aspects of the game, so it's probably reproducible for eg. Construction Ratio. It's rather late now and tommorow is a workday so i can't test it right now.

Can a developer or some modder please verify this??

You are correct. I'll throw in a fix in the next bugfix mod.

That's how it works with resources; you add up all the modifiers first, then multiply it against your base. Of course, since you're always adding, it doesn't show up here.

That's probably what they intended to do here as well but they forgot to check that the ratio is at least 0.1 (or whatever).

Added to 1.5 bugfix mod.

If I remember it correctly the beta seemed to multiply the multipliers  ... sounds terrible, I know. Or in Mr. Wardells words, replying to a preview that had a problem with following BETA-4's math:

The final release seems to have switched to an additive approach, that works with positive multipliers, but apparently - as your example and explanation show - not for the negative ones. The question is now, why did they switch to adding multipliers on top of each other? And why didn't they figure out, that this system would break down dealing with negative multipliers?

Rabenhoff

Sleep deprivation and crunch time do horrible things for common sense.

Truer words have never been spoken.

But I also wonder, why nobody else playing a Fallen faction had noticed and reported something so apparently broken up to this point. Or maybe those cheeky Fallen-playing fellows actually enjoy this unfair advantage over us righteous Kingdom lovers. *evil grin*

The answer to this, like so many things, is Brad's proud assertion that one developer can "balance things in an afternoon (sic)."  But change is happening, at least.

Nice, didn't know someone was already working on a bugfix mod. 

If we didn't take advantage over the others, we woulndn't be Fallen 

Seriously now, it's not rocket science, it's high school math:

If current quantity value is x, a postive bonus A (or penalty if the quantity is time) would give a new value: x + Ax = (1+A)x
A second bonus B on top of the previous would give: (1+A)x + B(1+A)x = (1+B )(1+A)x
So if A = +25% = 0.25 and B = +50% = +0.5, the modifiers seperately would be 1.25 and 1.5, but the combined modifier
would be 1.25·1.5x = 1,875x OR +87.5%

Same goes for a negative penalties C and D (or bonus if the quantity is time):  x - Cx = (1-C)x,   (1-C)x - D(1-C)x = (1-D)(1-C)x
Now if we have three negative modifiers C = -25%, D = -25% and E = -50% the correct formula is:
(1-E)(1-D)(1-C)x = 0.5·0.75·0.75x = 0,28125x OR -71.875%

Adding the modifiers makes no sense at all and results in odd and unexpected behaviour.

It's not that it's odd and unexpected behavior though. If it's suppose to represent working on something at the same time like a lot of water pumps in tandem, then it works fine. If it's suppose to represent some sort of refinement process where everything makes everything better, than the math is wrong.

The funny thing is they might have changed to additive bonuses so that it would be more understandable. I always thought cumulative bonuses made more sense, and when we're talking negative bonuses it's a given. I think they should change ALL the bonus going on to be cumulative (like in earlier games), and THEN try to balance it out.

They probably wouldn't even have to balance it out. "Going additive" was a last day change as Mr. Wardell's comment of "we're all multiplication" dates from the 22nd of August. And I don't know how much balancing they could have done in the half a day tops they had after changing the system to addition. So I think its fair to assume that the basic numbers stayed the same to a large degree.

Rabenhoff

Adding the modifiers makes more sense than multiplying them. The only "unexpected behaviour" here is that someone didn't rebalance the numbers after the change from multiplicative to additive bonuses. People don't want to have to do lots of cumulative multiplications in order to work out what benefit they're going to get from a building. I literally cannot think of a single game that I've played in recent memory which didn't use additive bonuses - and there's a good reason for that. The only problem here is a balance issue, not a bug.

I agree. Additive bonuses absolutely make sense in this game. It is the only way to avoid insane stacking. I think you can get around +300% gildar as empire. Say 20 from the start, would increase to 80. If it was multiplied, it would end up at more than twice that.

Two problems, though. First, they should have changed all the values - they didn't. Secondly, they still haven't made any design decision in regards to empire cities under kingdom control and vice versa. Right now you can get -175% training time in a perfect city (obviously, anything more than -100% is redundant).

If something costs 100 euros and i see a "25% off" sign, i expect the new price to be 75 euros. I don't care if it used to cost 200 euros a year ago and got to 100 through an earlier "50% off". That's how it works in everyday life. Bonuses or reductions are applied on the current value not the initial one.

That said, i do unserstand Stardock may want to use a different system. That's fine. But you have to warn the players about it.

Plus, i think adding all the bonuses/penalties and applying them on the initial value increases/decreases the value faster. Take the previous example: 50% off + 25% off = 75% off, applied on 200 gives the new value 50 euros < 75. It also has the odd effect of making the value zero or negative eventually.

Anyway even if i don't agree with the "additive" system, it wouldn't be a problem if it was explained in-game or in the manual

Alternative way to brake training cost:

-play as Kingdom

-conquer city of empire faction that has both War Council and Garrison (shouldn't be too difficult, since both can be build at lvl1 city)

-level the city up, and build kingdom training buildings: Barracks at lvl3, Command Post at lvl4

And you get again 100% training discount.

Yeah, after the first silly game review of 1.01 they changed the percentages in the game to be percentage-points instead of real percentages in the zero-day patch (1.05). This means +10% +10% now adds up to +20% to base instead of +21% to base (100% + 10% = 110%,  + 10% = 121%). This system is more catastrofic for penalties and rebates. Since -25% -25% -50% is now -100% instead of cumulative improvements.