With the new residence already in the previews, it made me think it would be nice if it was more interesting than just yet another passive block of graphics that increases max population. Here's what I came up with, feel free to develop it further, adjust numbers as necessary etc.
Large Residence [pick a better name]
size: 2x3
provides: 30/50/80/125/200 max population (depending on level) BUT only while it's producing. If production stops, you lose the max pop too.
production cycle length: 120 minutes
consumption:
25 bread
10 clothes
production:
1 settlers
1 coin (taxes!)
Plenty of differences to regular residences:
- it takes more space
- max pop it provides scales up with level properly, so it might actually be worth paying to get it to L5
- it comes with its own production cycle
So, it produces settlers with bread at the familiar 25 bread to 1 settler ratio we get in provision house. At level 1 it would only produce 12 settlers per day, but this is no village school: you can upgrade it to the usual L3 or L5 and get 36/50 settlers per day. And let's not forget, this is residence, so you'd likely to have lots of them. The real gimmick is that you have to keep feeding your settlers or you start to lose them (well, you just lose max pop, but in the end it costs you settlers).
I'm sure you also noticed the consumption of 10 clothes, getting converted into gold coins. Where does one get cloth then? Well, first you build sheep farm (graphics are already in the game). That gets you wool. Then you build tailor and turn the wool into clothes. Here are the details with numbers that would keep things balanced:
Sheep farm
size: 2x2
production cycle length: 4 minutes + walking/preparation
consumption:
1 wheat
1 water
production:
1 wool
Tailor
size: 2x2
production cycle length: 6 minutes + walking/preparation
consumption:
3 wool
production:
1 clothes
overall: 30 wheat + 30 water => 30 wool => 10 clothes => 1 gold coin
- materials spent are worth around 0.6 gold coins, so there's profit to be made in exchange of building licences spent.
- 1 tailor can provide enough clothes for 2 large residences if both are of equal level, not considering buffs
- 2 sheep farms provide enough wool for 1 tailor if both are of equal level, not considering buffs
- ratio for those running everything with no buffs: 2 sheep farms : 1 tailor : 2 large residences
- ratio for those running everything 24/7 with 2x buffs: 1 sheep farm : 1 tailor : 4 large residences
Further notes:
- It may not be possible for one production cycle to have 2 different outputs. In that case dump the wool/clothes/goldcoin chain and just go with simple bread-to-settler converting residence.