Alteration to Political Science

[Shadowood]

Oh, I don't think it would work like that, Nelson. I think a 1% increase would mean that when you choose "build up port", the population increase resulting from your investment is increased by 1%. Is that not what you meant, Meliva?

yes that is what I meant. say you invest 100K gold in a port, it increases by 980 population at the moment. but with this change, it would increase it by 1% per level. so level 1 would be 990.
this would have no change in transport immigrants.

So currently it is .0098 or .98% when you build up a port. With this suggestion then at a lvl 1 research you now get 1.98%? So at lvl 20 you get 20.98%??

If this is what you are saying then at lvl 20 (20.98%), if one donates $100k population goes up 20,980. $1mil = 209,800, $10mil = 2,098,000.

I think this is very fair and a great suggestion Mel!

[Meliva]

So currently it is .0098 or .98% when you build up a port. With this suggestion then at a lvl 1 research you now get 1.98%? So at lvl 20 you get 20.98%??

If this is what you are saying then at lvl 20 (20.98%), if one donates $100k population goes up 20,980. $1mil = 209,800, $10mil = 2,098,000.

I think this is very fair and a great suggestion Mel!

no that isn't quite what I meant, i meant it as in a 1% bonus.
so 100K invested with no research-980. level 1- +1% so 990, level 10 +10% so 1078, level 20 1176.
i think if it worked like you said it might be too powerful. but I'm open to suggestions, i just think it should have an increase to population in some way.

[Haron]

Oh, that would be far too powerful, Shadowood. I think Mel's original idea has merit, though. A small extra bonus to population growth, in addition to the influence bonus from this technology.

[Shadowood]

I DON'T MATH! LOL. So please check these numbers.

Taking the average port population of 200 million.
A Transport Immigrant card give you a 1% increase in population
Currently a T.I. sells for above 7 credits. So say $700,000 gc

So $700,000 gc will get you 1% increase. On a port with 200 million that is 2 Million People. ($700k for 2 Million people)

In my thought of what Mel was purposing, at lvl 20. If you donate $700,000 you get 148,860. $700k for 148,860 people
700,000 x 20.98% = 148,860
How is this Over Powered? Is my math wrong...

Thanks guys/gals

[Meliva]

but you need to remember not all ports have the same population. take Pania which is currently at 21M.
1% to that with TI would be a increase of 210K. so that would make using an immigrant on it, barely any better then investing through the 20.98% method, and would be far better to just invest tons of gold then use an immigrant. not to mention using your example shadow
700K gets an increase of 148,860 population,
but it would only increase your influence by about 100K. and I don't think population should grow faster then your influence when investing.

[Shadowood]

T.I. for the money is the best and fastest way to build Population. We can all agree on that point.
But really the person who invests in this research will most likely already have several million influence points. If they get to lvl 20, I am sure they will have 10s of millions of influence points. Adding on a fraction of port population I think is a great benefit to this suggestion.

Even if Phoenix drops $100,000,000 on Aiora in his secret quest to steal all of SHM rum (its true, I know he wants to), and he had this at lvl 20, he will take over the port yes, but he will only add 20mil in population doing it. A nice, but small bonus to this research. Because ultimately he will have 120mil in influence which is what he will want more in doing this Rum Stealing Take Over.

[Shadowood]

but you need to remember not all ports have the same population. take Pania which is currently at 21M.
1% to that with TI would be a increase of 210K. so that would make using an immigrant on it, barely any better then investing through the 20.98% method, and would be far better to just invest tons of gold then use an immigrant. not to mention using your example shadow
700K gets an increase of 148,860 population,
but it would only increase your influence by about 100K. and I don't think population should grow faster then your influence when investing.

I disagree on this point. If your objective is to gain POPULATION that investing a ton of gold using this 20.98% formula is way wrong. Even at 21mil in Pania, using T.I. is way better and a lot better the higher in population you go. So turn your gold into Credits and buy T.I.

And the population gain vs influence gain is not the same as influence goes up 2% at a time. 40% vs 20.98% at lvl 20

[Haron]

OK, the most important point why Shadowoods suggestion is too much, is simply that a tech which increases something by a factor of 21 is too much. This would give people with this tech an ability others don't have (increase population in a serious manner without voodoo) which others don't.

So IF an ability to increase population in a meaningful way were to be added, it should be as a new port option, rather than as a technology.

Other reasons: Sometimes, people decide to "nuke" cities to almost zero population. Pania was reduced to 5M not long ago. Such tactics become less interesting if the port can be raised to decent numbers without voodoo. Also, remember that the main reason for spending gold on a port is usually to gain influence. The extra population is just a bonus (oh, and it lets you recruit in the port, of course). So spending money should be compared to Charity Donation cards AND Transport Immigrants together. Another thing is that although TIs cost only 700k in the market right now, such prices might change. And the price is one thing, the availability is another. Getting enough TIs to actually build up a port probably requires buying boost packs, since there are too few available on the market. Which, in turn, brings money to the devs and affect the economy in the voodoo market, since buying such packs also brings along lots of other cards.

Summary: Such a change could have significant effects. And IF an option to increase population by spending gold were to be introduced, it should NOT be through a tech that enhances this option by a factor of 21 (that is, 100% pr level!), but through a separate option. Which, in turn, might have a separate tech to boost it, but preferrably only by 2% pr level, like "Political Science" boosts influence increase.

[Cdv]

+1 to Shadowood's suggestion

[Shadowood]

OK, the most important point why Shadowoods suggestion is too much, is simply that a tech which increases something by a factor of 21 is too much.

What about the techs that already at a factor of 40%? Like officer contracts, storage, political science...

You like Mel's original suggestion, it's a good one, I like it to. But it's very minimal. What about .5% per lvl for a max of 10.98% at lvl 20?