offworld trade and resources

Deliverator said:

I have civ unique National Wonders called Atreides Landing Stage, Harkonnen Landing Stage that provide an imported good (e.g. Caladanian Wine) from the relevant homeworld. I am adding House Ecaz with the idea that they have an advantage in number and quantity of imported goods, Sapho, Semuta, etc. I don't want to have three separate buildings for them, Sapho Suppliers, Semuta Suppliers, which is the way I have to do it now - the best way would be to have a single Ecaz Landing Stage that provides all the Ecaz bonus resources, just like the FFH2 palaces provide 3 bonuses.

My idea in (2) is that with the Space Ports tech you can build a Space Port that provides more of your civs unique resource (the Landing Stages available at Off World Trade provides some), but also two other resources from other homeworlds. Having a pool of buildings was an implementation idea I had to achieve this. If Koma's Homeworld proof-of-concept goes well, then we could build in an element of true inter-planetary trade.

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So your concept is that each civ would have 2 resources, and when a civ builds this building, it randomly gets 2 of the other civs' resources. Is that right? It may be possible to accomplish this in onBuildingBuilt, and just "stick the resources in the ground" underneath the city where it is built. Does it matter if the civs are at war when the building is built? What if they go to war later or get killed by a third party?

This is roughly what is going to be present in 1.3.8, which is my starting point for the off world goods idea.

Key: Building -> Bonus Good provided

Atreides:
Atreides Landing Stage -> Caladanian Wine (3 Units), +1 happy (increased with Banqueting Hall)

Harkonnen:
Harkonnen Landing Stage -> Inkvine (3 Units), some change to Slave Pit

Corrino:
Corrino Landing Stage -> Shigawire (3 Units), strategic resource for Sardukaar

Ix:
Ix Landing Stage -> Thinking Machines (3 Units), strategic resource for some units

Tleilaxu:
Tleilaxu -> Slig (3 Units), +1 happy (increased with Banqueting Hall)

Ordos:
Ordos Landing Stage -> Opafire (3 Units)

Bene Gesserit:
BG Landing Stage -> Meta-Cyanide (3 Units)

Fenring:
Fenring Landing Stage -> Kindjal (3 Units)

Fremen/Sietch Tabr:
Stillsuit Maker -> Fremen Stillsuits (3 Units), +1 health

Ecaz:
Sapho Suppliers -> Sapho Juice (4 Units), strategic resource for Mentats
Semuta Suppliers -> Semuta (4 Units), +2 happy

One problem with making imported goods a strategic requirement for some special units (I think mainstream units should be buildable with just Arrakis bonus resources) is that if Ecaz aren't in the game you won't be able to trade for Sapho Juice and make Mentats. So there has to be a way you can get Sapho Juice even if Ecaz aren't in the game which brings us to my Space Ports idea that you have quoted in the OP.

Why should you get the homeworld goods of other factions?

Wouldn't it be much better that when you build the thing, you get say 3 copies of your homeworld resource, and then if you want anyone else's homeworld resource you have to trade for it through the in-game diplomacy engine? So you can only get the resource if you have good relations.

I like the idea of encouraging trade more; trade is pretty low here since there aren't a ton of luxury goods around.

And it will make the homeworld goods feel more special if the only way you can get them is by trading for them.

Wouldn't it be much better that when you build the thing, you get say 3 copies of your homeworld resource, and then if you want anyone else's homeworld resource you have to trade for it through the in-game diplomacy engine? So you can only get the resource if you have good relations.

I like the idea of encouraging trade more; trade is pretty low here since there aren't a ton of luxury goods around.

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What you said is precisely the idea. Atreides Landing Stage provides 3 units of Caladanian Wine and so on. The only reason to allow access to other factions bonuses is if they aren't in the game since some of the bonuses have strategic benefit (which is, in itself, an experiment).

I like it, and I like how it can also add to faction differentiation; some factions could have more or better trade-good imports if their faction is more trade-good oriented.

And I like the idea of tying it into specific units with strategic resources; you can only build battlemechs if you can trade with the ixians to get thinking machines.

Also, it increases the value of diplomacy; and so heightens the rift between the terraformers and the spicers. You could also add a weakness for Fremen; no imported goods. They can get some nice unique buildings (sietch, deathstills, fremen windtrap), but no trade goods.

You could get rid of the imported nutrients, incense and silk if you implement these.

I would make the Harkonnen import slaves.
I think you need to think of something else for BGs - maybe Soostone, if that is no longer a dune resource? I don't really see them trading meta-cyanide to outsiders.

Glad you like the idea. Yes, Imported Silk, etc will be gone.

The Fremen will actually have Fremen Stillsuits (+1 health) as their unique bonus resource. My rationale is while every faction can emulate the Stillsuit, Fremen Stillsuits are still the best.

If you check out this CSV you'll see the units associated with each resource. I'll be turning this into XML in the next couple of evenings as I finalize patch 1.3.8.

I'll think of something else for BG.

Ahriman said:

You could get rid of the imported nutrients, incense and silk if you implement these.

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Perhaps this is the whole point of the bonus rebalancing, but I have a huge problem with limited health now, which I can only solve by getting nutrients as early as possible. So I hope that there will be enough other health bonuses to support getting rid of nutrients.

deliverator,
i think, you should make civs, to have 2 quantities of their imported resource -
so they will be able to trade it to other factions.


***
oh haven't noticed thats exactly what david wrote...

Perhaps this is the whole point of the bonus rebalancing, but I have a huge problem with limited health now, which I can only solve by getting nutrients as early as possible. So I hope that there will be enough other health bonuses to support getting rid of nutrients.

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Health is high on my list to address with this patch. Hopefully, the changed Water Cache and Food Processing buildings will address that...

Deliverator said:

The only reason to allow access to other factions bonuses is if they aren't in the game since some of the bonuses have strategic benefit (which is, in itself, an experiment).

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Having a strategic resource which can only be obtained from another civ sounds like an interesting experiment. One problem is if you are at war with them. Another problem is if they aren't even in the game. Both of these make me a little nervous.

I suppose your suggestion is to make a pool of the resources belonging to civs not in the game, and each spaceport built has a random chance of getting 3 units of one of those, in addition to the regular one. For strategic resources, this makes the random pick really important.

Maybe the first version should stay away from strategic resources which work this way, and just give health/happiness. A requirement for your own UU seems fine, like you proposed for Corrino, but it also seems "self-canceling". It is the same as giving the UU a required building and/or required tech.

There's always nervousness when you try an experiment! The thing about strategic resources is that you only need them to build a unit. You don't lose the unit if you lose access to the resources. So you could just do a deal with someone to get a resource to build some units, and then break the deal, and even go to war with the civ that traded you the resource. I want to start with at least one real test case, probably Sapho -> Mentat which can be a superior fighter for now, and Thinking Machines for some of the Ix units.

The random pick could either be exciting or (more likely) frustrating. It would probably be better to allow you to choose the other two bonuses you would like on completion of the Space Port, if that was possible. This would represent obtaining a source of the goods from the black market or smugglers.

An imported requirement for your own UU is self-cancelling as you say. It only works for non-unique units, but we can make some of the current UUs available to anyone who can get the required resources to build them.

Deliverator said:

The random pick could either be exciting or (more likely) frustrating. It would probably be better to allow you to choose the other two bonuses you would like on completion of the Space Port, if that was possible.

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That may be possible. Suppose we have a popup which comes when the building is complete, that allows you to pick *one* of the available bonuses. You get three units of it, one to keep and 2 to maybe trade. You can either pick one of your unique ones, or one of the public ones, but you have to pick. The public ones have a limit so that only, say 2-3 players can pick them. This adds some pressure. But I think you would want to build multiple of the buildings, so you could get multiple picks.

Maybe the spacer guild unique ability could be to cause some cramps in the availability of these resources.

From the implementation side, I am not sure how to grant *three* copies of a bonus. I can certainly grant one by burying it under the city, so I will have to study that also.

From the implementation side, I am not sure how to grant *three* copies of a bonus. I can certainly grant one by burying it under the city, so I will have to study that also.

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That's why I'm doing it with buildings because they can produces multiple units of a bonus already.

Perhaps this is the whole point of the bonus rebalancing, but I have a huge problem with limited health now, which I can only solve by getting nutrients as early as possible.

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I don't see limited health as a problem. Do you have limited city growth? I actually see this as a balancing device; given the explosive growth given by windtraps and wells, health helps keep the city size down a little.

There's nothing that says it should always be easy to have no health problems.

Having a strategic resource which can only be obtained from another civ sounds like an interesting experiment.

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Such a strategic resource would either:
a) only be used for a handful of specialized units (like Ixian battlebots; basically, Ixian UUs that might be available to other civs if they trade for the resource. So they won't actually be UUs because all civs can build them with the resource, but in practice they'll function like a UU).
AND/OR
b) Be a resource that gives builds X% faster with resource Y, rather than requires resource Y.

The random pick could either be exciting or (more likely) frustrating

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I hate the idea of a random pick. It could also lead to frustrating nonsense, like somehow getting free resource access to the homeworld resource of your archenemy.

My suggestion would basically be to not have any of the resources be important enough that it matters if they aren't in the game, to make the building a national wonder that is retained on city-conquest (so if you capture another civ, you also get their imported good), and then have each civ only able to build their own national wonder (which gives only their resource).

Suppose we have N number of potential bonuses. N will be relatively large, if each potential civ has two unique and there are several generic. Say it is 20. One possibility is to define 20 buildings. Some of them could be UU national wonders, and some could be World Wonders to limit the number available. This may work. The only problem I can think of is making the civ-specific resources available to all, when that civ does not happen to be in the game.

So I was thinking of a popup picklist somehow, but I cannot quite see how the mechanics could work. For now, we can certainly try with buildings and just overlook what happens when a particular civ is not in the game.

Ahriman said:

I don't see limited health as a problem. Do you have limited city growth?

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I wrote my experience in this post. Is your experience in the early game different from mine?

I have never had early game growth problems; cities grow much faster in this mod than in vanilla, because you can get a massive water income from working only 3-4 tiles (wells + windtraps). To compare to vanilla; for 6 food you'll have to work 2 tiles, but here you can get that from 1 tile, leaving the other citizen free to be a specialist.

So, yeah, you don't have full health in the early game, but that is a good thing, otherwise population growth (and slavery whipping) could get really out of control. It also makes the early game health buildings more valuable, which is nice; you can invest in infrastructure to increase your pop-growth rate, but these benefits shrink with time as you get more health resources.

On this note: the civic that gives +3 beakers per specialist needs a nerf; getting 6 income from a merchant or scientist specialist is generatnig way more income than you get from working most tiles, so its way too easy to run a specialist economy.

The fact that cottage tiles don't give any food makes them even weaker compared to running specialists.

With help from other modders, I have gotten the trade list popup to work. See this post and its thread for internal details. You can see a screenshot of the prototype at this link.

Basically each offworld resource we want should be a building of its own buildingclass. We have the four convoy buildings like this already, which I used for my prototype.

I added a new building, "Contract", which you can build when you have space ports technology. When you complete it, you get a popup as shown in the attachment. The python can control which possible contracts show up here, so we can limit the number, and include civ-specific ones which can be given to other civs if the normal owner is not played in this game. When you select one of the choices, the appropriate building appears in your city. You can build the contract building any number of times; it never actually stays in your city. There is one bug; if you build the building and there are no contracts available, then the generic contract building sits there. Once we have the mechanics worked out I think this will never happen; there will be some resources which can be contracted any number of times.

I propose that deliverator should add whatever buildingclasses he feels, to represent all these resources; then in a following patch such as 1.3.10, I will add the generic contract building.

This implementation uses random events. So I also completely emptied out the event triggers and event files. To use this feature we will have to have random events turned on. Later, we can add more random events.

This looks cool david, good work. I am aiming to have patch 1.3.8 released in around 24 hours time hopefully. Once we get some playtest feedback on what I've implemented we can decide how to evolve it using this code.

looks cool david - im eager to see more

how about the possibility to buy units from offworld - they will be more expensive and will be perhaps a bit stronger or weaker,
just like in the space port in dune games -
perhaps you can make something in the python,
that you build a space port that will alow to "order" units that will arrive a few turns later, and they will cost money(using my gold cost code).