Trade Caravans and Freights

Dancing Hoskuld · Mar 25, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13133695 said:
What a nice surprise, part of the code was already there, unused.
With some small changes, hurrying food will be in my next update.

Edit: I've also decided to not include any sea-trading-unit for the moment. After all, you can always load a trade caravan or a freight on your ship, can't you?

Afforess added it when I wanted it but it does not quite work properly. For one it says it is adding 0 food to the target city. I can't remember if it actually adds the correct amount but just says zero or it does add zero.

he also added the AI for automated trade/freight for both normal and food caravans. IIRC both work well with food going to starving cities first and production caravans sent to the city that it can best help in hurrying building stuff.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 25, 2014

Dancing Hoskuld said:
Afforess added it when I wanted it but it does not quite work properly. For one it says it is adding 0 food to the target city. I can't remember if it actually adds the correct amount but just says zero or it does add zero.

he also added the AI for automated trade/freight for both normal and food caravans. IIRC both work well with food going to starving cities first and production caravans sent to the city that it can best help in hurrying building stuff.

Thank you DH, I didn't know it. I've seen food getting added but I haven't noticed that thing about saying it's adding 0 food. I'll have a look and see if I can fix this if it still occurs.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 25, 2014

Dancing Hoskuld said:
Afforess added it when I wanted it but it does not quite work properly. For one it says it is adding 0 food to the target city. I can't remember if it actually adds the correct amount but just says zero or it does add zero.

Checked and it looks like it's working properly although I'll tune it down because right now Freight gives way too much food.

Dancing Hoskuld · Mar 25, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13135501 said:
Checked and it looks like it's working properly although I'll tune it down because right now Freight gives way too much food.

iirc it is made with food so it should be giving as much as it costs or nearly.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 25, 2014

Dancing Hoskuld said:
iirc it is made with food so it should be giving as much as it costs or nearly.

Right now it's made with hammers although I could look for a way to make it with food. And I can set via xml how much food I want it to add to the target city.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 25, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13135501 said:
Checked and it looks like it's working properly

On a second look you might be right DH, there is some problem with food displayed as a tooltip when adding food to a city. I'll see what's happening.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 26, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13135789 said:
On a second look you might be right DH, there is some problem with food displayed as a tooltip when adding food to a city. I'll see what's happening.

Ok, I think I've fixed it, it will be in the next revision. Code was wrongly displaying number of :hammers:

instead of food.

Dancing Hoskuld · Mar 26, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13136304 said:
Ok, I think I've fixed it, it will be in the next revision. Code was wrongly displaying number of instead of food.

Now all I need to do is to get the C2C dll programmers to copy the work you just did.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 26, 2014

I'll send the changes to alberts2 or TB.

Afforess · Mar 26, 2014

Dancing Hoskuld said:
Afforess added it when I wanted it but it does not quite work properly. For one it says it is adding 0 food to the target city. I can't remember if it actually adds the correct amount but just says zero or it does add zero.

he also added the AI for automated trade/freight for both normal and food caravans. IIRC both work well with food going to starving cities first and production caravans sent to the city that it can best help in hurrying building stuff.

Yes ... I am pretty sure I coded the trade/freight stuff. I think the XML feature for hurrying was partially in the vanilla BTS originally but never used, and I added AI for it. Been a long time though.

I have no idea how well the AI would handle a unit able to provide food OR production though. Never considered that possibility...

Rezca · Mar 27, 2014

Coming into this conversation a bit late, but I'll post my thoughts I would have posted earlier had I been able to.

I've never seen the AI use caravans or Treasure(s) before. If they get Trade first and the free caravan that comes with it, they just hustle it around their territory and sometimes send it scouting - but never send it on a Trade Mission or add production. As for Treasure(s), I've seen them hole up in cities and hoard them, but they again never use them. I saw an AI with a dozen of them in one city and another group of them in another - and it'd shuffle them about now and then but never use them.

If the player can speed up building or add food to a city but the AI can't (Because they don't know how or just don't want to), I think that'd be unfair in the player's favor. If the AI can be shown how to use them, then this would be a fantastic idea

As it is I only use caravans for trying to get an early wonder I want, or for helping me get money during expansion times. I've never once used the modern 'caravans' though and neither has the AI to my knowledge.

As for food providing caravans, I think they should yes be built with food. Makes sense to me

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 27, 2014

I agree about food caravans being made with food but I think that requires additional coding and I'm not sure how AI can handle it.

<Nexus> · Mar 27, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13137932 said:
I agree about food caravans being made with food but I think that requires additional coding and I'm not sure how AI can handle it.

Isn't that only an XML switch in Civ4UnitInfos.xml? :confused:

Modiki says:

bFood The unit is produced with food as well as hammers; a city does not generate food while building this unit.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 27, 2014

Sogroon said:
Isn't that only an XML switch in Civ4UnitInfos.xml?
Modiki says:

bFood The unit is produced with food as well as hammers; a city does not generate food while building this unit.

Food and hammers, I thought we were talking about making it food only.

<Nexus> · Mar 27, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13138057 said:
Food and hammers, I thought we were talking about making it food only.

Why would that make any sense?
We still need some wood and hammers for the cart to build

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 27, 2014

Sogroon said:
Why would that make any sense?
We still need some wood and hammers for the cart to build

My original idea was to make a separate "food caravan" unit because I don't know how AI handles caravans.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 27, 2014

Problem with caravans produced with hammer but adding food is that you could produce them in a city that's starving but that has a lot of :hammers:

and use them to save the same city from starvation. Not very realistic producing food from hammers to save the very same city that hasn't enough food to survive. I haven't found another solution for the moment anyway, so it will stay like this for now.

aggri1 · Mar 27, 2014

I'm not sure whether this is possible in Civ IV, but in Civ 2, a food caravan provided a small (was it 1 piece of food) constant supply in the target city and a -1 in the source city. Using a caravan in this constant-supply mode would eliminate the problem mentioned above: a city with hammers and no food building itself to a large population.

Is it possible to apply a -X food at the instant when a food caravan is built (in the city in which it's built), and then do a +X food in the destination city when the 'Deliver food' action button is pressed?

I presume one would have to keep track of these +- food modifiers so that they could be eliminated when a city was captured. Perhaps with some new 'building'...?

I'd much prefer this mechanism rather than an instantaneous 'dump' of food in the manner in which hammers are currently done.

45°38'N-13°47'E · Mar 28, 2014

aggri1 said:
I'm not sure whether this is possible in Civ IV, but in Civ 2, a food caravan provided a small (was it 1 piece of food) constant supply in the target city and a -1 in the source city. Using a caravan in this constant-supply mode would eliminate the problem mentioned above: a city with hammers and no food building itself to a large population.

Is it possible to apply a -X food at the instant when a food caravan is built (in the city in which it's built), and then do a +X food in the destination city when the 'Deliver food' action button is pressed?

I presume one would have to keep track of these +- food modifiers so that they could be eliminated when a city was captured. Perhaps with some new 'building'...?

I'd much prefer this mechanism rather than an instantaneous 'dump' of food in the manner in which hammers are currently done.

It's possible I think but I'd prefer not to change game mechanics for the moment. We've spent months on solving bugs and crashes so I'm a bit uncomfortable in changing things that aren't causing troubles for now. But I'm considering your idea because I'd also prefer it that way.

<Nexus> · Mar 28, 2014

45°38'N-13°47'E;13138093 said:
My original idea was to make a separate "food caravan" unit because I don't know how AI handles caravans.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13138727 said:
Problem with caravans produced with hammer but adding food is that you could produce them in a city that's starving but that has a lot of and use them to save the same city from starvation. Not very realistic producing food from hammers to save the very same city that hasn't enough food to survive. I haven't found another solution for the moment anyway, so it will stay like this for now.

Ohh! You are right, I han't thought of that.

Trade Caravans and Freights

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