Turn based strategy.

- there is land, each plot of land allows construction of 1 building, land is gained purely by player's actions like conquest (highly affected by player's actions)
- there is population, it grows linearly each turn as long as proper housing, food and other conditions are present (player can not affect it much)

Now about education. Population starts uneducated, player wants to make them educated (reason is irrelevant right now, could be for more effective workers or for faster research or whatever). Education is increased by building schools (each building require 1 plot of land, so the number of available buildings is determined by player's actions while the number of population that would benefit from the building is mostly out of player's control).

I have a dilemma, how school should work?
1) It could turn 5 uneducated population into educated per turn permanently. If school is later removed (to make space for other buildings), the educated population stays educated forever and ever (the game scale is years, so it is a bit unrealistic, since in fact these people next turn would not be the same people from the 50 turns ago but rather a next generation).
2) Each school turns instantly 50 uneducated people into educated. In short, as long as you have 1 school per 50 people you have 100% education. When building is removed the population turns instantly into uneducated (which is not very realitic eaither...)

Also take a note on the land to population growth difference. It is really hard to predict what a player will have more, land (and possible schools) or population?
Ignore other factors, like buildings being destroyed by enemy, assume permanent peace and no random encounters destroying buildings.

What are the implication of these two choices? Are there other choices available? Which one to choose?

How about make the schools an area effect attribute. Factories and research centers in the area gain productivity and effcientcy through educated population. So do the thing where say 5% of the population near the school becomes educated per turn...leading up to 100%. And when the school is gone...Educated population is reduced 5% per turn...dropping back to 0%.

There is no city map nor buildings position. Only quantity of buildings (numeric value) you have in your country. So area effect is impossible.


I have also related mechanic in mind. Some buildings produce paper, each population that has paper (it is not used up) is considered literate. Only literate population can become educated. Literacy+education percentage affect research (or something else).
I wonder, if this mechanic exists isn't option 1) the only viable? I mean, paper is produced per turn, so parallel education should be generated per turn too, right?

Another problem is with production research points. I thought of making university building that produce 10 research points * percentage of literate+educated people. But then, if your population increase (and therefore education level drops because of less schools per population) it would make the decrease in research points... It is valid in both models 1) & 2), increase of population without adequate change in schools means lower research.

Overall, the separation of population growth and land growth gives me a headache It is very nice to have these separated since it balance the game very naturally, you can't go on conquest spree because your population would not grow fast enough to utilize all gained land and you naturally start conquest when your country become too crowded. But maybe I should make these tied together more?

Don't make universities work based on the percentage of educated people, but on the number of educated people. That way, even if your population increases, the number of educated people remain constant.

My suggestion for schools is to add death to your population. For example, you could say that 2% of your population dies each year(~50 year old life expectancy). People are born uneducated and schools convert them to educated status by a fixed amount each turn. This will create an equilibrium where the number of educated people is related to the number of schools, birth rate and life expectancy. That will also give you other strategic options. For example, one may choose to improve life expectancy to reduce the number of required schools if land is scarce.

Schools are prisons for children.

Don't make universities work based on the percentage of educated people, but on the number of educated people.

Not sure I understood... universities provide research points based on universities number. Education percentage would be just a bonus (up to 100%), so still the most important thing is how many universities you have built.

If you meant that research points should be universities number multiplied by the number of educated people then I can't imagine me being able to balance it...

I start to think that I will be forced to choose if research is buildings based or population based, but not both... I feel I'm missing something here...

'Tiblanc' said:

Don't make universities work based on the percentage of educated people, but on the number of educated people.

Not sure I understood… universities provide research points based on universities number. Education percentage would be just a bonus (up to 100%), so still the most important thing is how many universities you have built.

If you meant that research points should be universities number multiplied by the number of educated people then I can't imagine me being able to balance it…

I start to think that I will be forced to choose if research is buildings based or population based, but not both… I feel I'm missing something here…

If an university requires 500 educated people to work at full capacity, then as long as you retain 500 educated people, no matter your global education percentage, that university's production will be the same. You could have diminishing returns when an university gets over capacity. For example, 500 educated people in 1 university will give you 500 RP and 1500 in 1 will give you 1000 RP. If you wanted to be optimal, you would need 3 universities to get 1500 RP.


It seems illogical to have universities produce research points without any workers. With your method, you can have 0% education level, build universities on all your land and pump out research points. That makes no sense to me.

It seems illogical to have universities produce research points without any workers. With your method, you can have 0% education level, build universities on all your land and pump out research points. That makes no sense to me.

You are right, what I wrote make no sense... My goal was to made buildings based economy where all production comes from buildings and population pay only tax and do not operate buildings (like Reunion). But then I tried to tie together population and buildings by introducing bonus from population to universities efficiency, which basicly make population produce something. And if they produce one thing then why should not they produce another one? Which makes it all shift to population based economy.

It could work (as building based economy) only if I made these separate, like buildings produce things and population pay tax + provide research points; therefore there can be no universities (research points come from population, not from buildings)...

Have I overlooked anything? Is my thought correct?