[Religion and Revolution]: Horses Produced on Plots

Robert Surcouf · Jan 15, 2012

Sorry! But I'm completely lost :eek:

What are we going to do?
1 - Are we going to add a percentage growth feature or not?
2 - Are we going to "consume" horses in order to build improvements or not?

raystuttgart · Jan 15, 2012

Robert Surcouf said:
1 - Are we going to add a percentage growth feature or not?
2 - Are we going to "consume" horses in order to build improvements or not?

There is no decision yet.

(Thus I am not working on this feature currently but on "New Native Nations" instead.)

My opinion:

I would not like to do either of those 2 points.

We would have:

A) Higher efforts and risks
B) A lot of AI problems to solve
C) Complexity that will make it more difficult to understand for players

I can give you a stable and atmospheric feature with reasonable effort by implementing this variant
I think I personally would not like to implement it any other more complex way. :dunno:

(The concept is not important enough for me to spend many many days fixing and improving AI, sorry.)

Let us wait what Androrc says.

Maybe he has already considered all AI problems and wants to implement this.

Androrc the Orc · Jan 15, 2012

My opinion:

ray is right that percentage production would require change in AI coding (not so much because of the production of percentages itself, since that would already be automatically done since the AI calls getProfessionOutput() and similar functions to calculate the worth of a profession, so it would already get the final percentaged value in it's calculations, but mostly because of the changes that would be necessary for the AI to understand that it shouldn't take all horses out of a settlement - that it should keep at least 100 horses within the settlement. Honestly, it shouldn't be too complicated - all that would be needed is telling the unit AI to not equip or load horses from a settlement if under 100 is stored.

I think an essential aspect of horse production is that you need to actually have horses stored (in the original Col as a requirement for the percentage production, and in Civ4Col as a requirement for building Stables), so I don't like the idea of having horse production on plots without horses being actually required in some form, as I find it not as atmospheric as even the vanilla Civ4Col system. But, if the team decides on that, I'm ok with it in any case.

agaro · Jan 15, 2012

Since this seems to be now an issue about AI and horse production:

- What about if we let AI cheat and generate horses without needing horses to create its improvement? I know we don't like cheats, but I have never seen AI exploit horse production very much so giving them a cheat may resolve the significant learning issues, without unbalancing too much.

- Also something that was mentioned earlier (possibly by KJ) - that we need to stop AI using too many of its plots for horse production and unbalancing themselves. Can we limit horse plots to 1 per settlement, or do we need to do more than this?

raystuttgart · Jan 16, 2012

Androrc the Orc said:
My opinion:

ray is right that percentage production would require change in AI coding (not so much because of the production of percentages itself, since that would already be automatically done since the AI calls getProfessionOutput() and similar functions to calculate the worth of a profession, so it would already get the final percentaged value in it's calculations, but mostly because of the changes that would be necessary for the AI to understand that it shouldn't take all horses out of a settlement - that it should keep at least 100 horses within the settlement. Honestly, it shouldn't be too complicated - all that would be needed is telling the unit AI to not equip or load horses from a settlement if under 100 is stored.

I think an essential aspect of horse production is that you need to actually have horses stored (in the original Col as a requirement for the percentage production, and in Civ4Col as a requirement for building Stables), so I don't like the idea of having horse production on plots without horses being actually required in some form, as I find it not as atmospheric as even the vanilla Civ4Col system. But, if the team decides on that, I'm ok with it in any case.

Hi Androrc,

simply telling AI "always leave at least 100 horses" in city is not a good idea.

There are cases, when AI should use the horses:
For example when equipping Dragoons in "War Of Independence".

Also, we would need to make sure, that the 100 Horses will be in the cities that really need them. (Having Improvement "Horse Ranch".)
If they have horses lying around in cities that cannot use them, it is a waste of ressources.

If the logic we create is too simple, than it will lead to bad AI-decisions.
If it is complicated, it will be a lot of work.
(But of course, if you would like to do this, I am fine with it.)

raystuttgart · Jan 16, 2012

Ok guys, I have changed my mind, because I see you really want to have "horses required to work in profession rancher" and "percentual breeding".

(Please let us forget "Horses required to build Horse Ranch".)

I summarize the concept, as I understand it:

Spoiler :

@Team:
Agree ?

@Androrc:
Let us do this together then. :thumbsup:

Spoiler :

KJ Jansson · Jan 16, 2012

raystuttgart said:
I summarize the concept, as I understand it:

Rebuild of Breeding Horses

1. Natives will still use Building instead of Plot-Breeding, because they cannot build Improvements. (I would leave it as it is.)

2. For Europeans and Kings, City Buildings for horse production are removed, because they won't be needed anymore.

3. For Europeans and Kings, Profession Rancher will become a "Plot"-Profession requiring horses to be stored in City.
(So we wil have 2 Horse-Professions: One in Building for Natives and one on Plot for Europeans and Kings.)

3. Breeding of horses on plot will be calculated by percent of existing horses with min and max values.

4. Specialist "Experienced Rancher" and all other units stay as they are.
(Considering Boni and Mail on Horse Production.)

5. You can build an Improvement "Horse Ranch" on terrains Plains, Grassland and Savannah.
(Without Improvement, there is no horse production on plot.)

6. There will be a Bonus Horses which will give also give increase (maybe 100%) on horse production.
It will be generated on Plains, Grassland and Savannah (only flatlands).

7. River will give another percentual increase (maybe 50%).

8. All important factors can be balanced in XML.

@Team:
Agree ?

I agree.

Your proposal is much more complex than I develop in my own mod, however, I hope you and Andre could create a better variant and improve AI. Good luck in your modding, guys!

raystuttgart · Jan 16, 2012

KJ Jansson said:
Your proposal is much more complex ...

Yes it is complex.

But if the concept sounds good and we are investing some effort to do good AI ...

KJ Jansson said:
Good luck in your modding, guys!

First the complete team needs to agree.

Especially Androrc needs to like the concept of course, if he agrees to take lead of implementation.
I would support in creating / improving AI then, if Androrc would like me to do that.

I simply think it is important that 2 DLL-Modders at least take a look at AI, because everybody could forget or oversee something.
(Production of horses is something important to my opinion.)

Gomer_Pyle · Jan 16, 2012

I am ok with whatever the rest of the team decides. But I would have to say that lots of features is not working good at all. If this was just down to me I would finalize those features in there and make them perfecto then add more. We got issues like "battles being faught" without screen center on the battle. I lost an entire stack to indians without knowing. Very bad and I would class this as a important bug to fix. Actually makes game unplayable if you ask me I am afraid. And we need to balance the firing from stockade features. We simply need to polish all these basic things we have added before adding more. Release 1 seems to be getting bigger and bigger by the minute. :S

Androrc the Orc · Jan 16, 2012

Nice

I agree with implementing the horse plot percentage production part, of course, as well as cooperating in the AI coding. So I take the team is ok with how this feature is conceived as per ray's latest post?

raystuttgart · Jan 16, 2012

Androrc the Orc said:
I agree with implementing the horse plot percentage production part, of course, as well as cooperating in the AI coding.

Great.

Robert Surcouf · Jan 16, 2012

raystuttgart said:
I summarize the concept, as I understand it:

Spoiler :

Rebuild of Breeding Horses

1. Natives will still use Building instead of Plot-Breeding, because they cannot build Improvements. (I would leave it as it is.)

2. For Europeans and Kings, City Buildings for horse production are removed, because they won't be needed anymore.

3. For Europeans and Kings, Profession Rancher will become a "Plot"-Profession requiring horses to be stored in City.
(So we wil have 2 Horse-Professions: One in Building for Natives and one on Plot for Europeans and Kings.)

3. Breeding of horses on plot will be calculated by percent of existing horses with min and max values.

4. Specialist "Experienced Rancher" and all other units stay as they are.
(Considering Boni and Mail on Horse Production.)

5. You can build an Improvement "Horse Ranch" on terrains Plains, Grassland and Savannah.
(Without Improvement, there is no horse production on plot.)

6. There will be a Bonus Horses which will give also give increase (maybe 100%) on horse production.
It will be generated on Plains, Grassland and Savannah (only flatlands).

7. River will give another percentual increase (maybe 50%).

8. All important factors can be balanced in XML.

@Team:
Agree ?

I agree. Has everyone agreed? Finally I like this feature, especially with the percentage growth. However, I'm not sure I understand item number three (the first number three

):

3. For Europeans and Kings, Profession Rancher will become a "Plot"-Profession requiring horses to be stored in City.
(So we wil have 2 Horse-Professions: One in Building for Natives and one on Plot for Europeans and Kings.)

What does "requiring horses to be stored in City" mean ? Of course, we would need horses to be stored, since we use a percentage growth... But do you mean a rancher would "consume" temporarily some horses?
If so I don't like that part, but I would agree if the rest of the team really wants this. But, if you need 50 horses, and you only have 50 horses, you won't be able to produce anything... :lol:

Actually, I really like the idea of the percentage growth because it avoids consuming horses to build improvements and/or buildings (=killing them) or consuming them ("vanishing" horses, I want one!

) with a profession.

Again, Is that what team wants or not? KJ and Agaro seem to like this idea, but I'm not sure. Who's wants what?

raystuttgart said:
Ok guys, I have changed my mind, because I see you really want to have "horses required to work in profession rancher" and "percentual breeding".
(Please let us forget "Horses required to build Horse Ranch".)

What about you, Ray? What do you want? Or, even better what do you like? And when you say "you", who's "you"?
Is it Anrorc and me on one hand and KJ and Agrao on another? Or, does everyone want both? I'm a little lost sorry! :eek:

raystuttgart · Jan 16, 2012

Robert Surcouf said:
Has everyone agreed?

No, agaro and colonialfan haven't explicitely agreed to the new concept.

(Everybody else has.)

Robert Surcouf said:
Finally I like this feature, especially with the percentage growth.

Great.

Robert Surcouf said:
What does "requiring horses to be stored in City" mean ?

It simply means canHaveProfession() will return false, if there are no horses in city.
It does not mean, that horses are consumed or temporarily consumed.

(I wouldn't like that either.)

Robert Surcouf said:
What about you, Ray? What do you want?

I simply want to create a great mod and that the team is having fun.

I think the new concept is good. :thumbsup:

However, it will take a lot of work to get it "perfect".

But I can tell you:
If we implement this (and spend lots of effort into AI) and some team member will say later on
"Oh, I think I have changed my mind and would like the old system back.",
I will go crazy. :trouble:

agaro · Jan 16, 2012

I was happy with Ray's original idea of plot based production; I didn't have any great desire to move to percent production.

I was just contributing to discussion try and find a proposal everyone was happy with. But I will agree to anything that has plot based production and the coders want to build.

With the current proposal (post #52), I too have questions about the two number 3s.

- If the plot + rancher generates %increase of warehouse horses, what happens if AI moves horses from warehouse? Will the AI, or human (or human with automated settlement) realise that the rancher is now useless and reallocate him? Will the mod generate a warning (e.g "Rancher has no horses")?

- I would be interested to hear what percentage mins and maxes people are thinking about.

- Are converted natives still getting a bonus of some sort like the river.

raystuttgart · Jan 17, 2012

agaro said:
- If the plot + rancher generates %increase of warehouse horses, what happens if AI moves horses from warehouse? Will the AI, or human (or human with automated settlement) realise that the rancher is now useless and reallocate him? Will the mod generate a warning (e.g "Rancher has no horses")?

We will take care of AI / Automization (which is basically the same). :thumbsup:

agaro said:
I would be interested to hear what percentage mins and maxes people are thinking about.

These will be XML-settings.
Let us discuss balancing, once the feature is implemented.

agaro said:
Are converted natives still getting a bonus of some sort like the river.

Units will not be changed considering ther Boni and Mali.

Androrc the Orc · Jan 17, 2012

In regards to the Horse Rancher, the profession would be impossible if there were no horses (professions with 0 production become unavailable).

raystuttgart · Jan 17, 2012

Androrc the Orc said:
In regards to the Horse Rancher, the profession would be impossible if there were no horses (professions with 0 production become unavailable).

Exactly.

(But only for the new Profession for Europeans and Kings, of course.)

Karl-Heinz · Jan 18, 2012

I like this feature.

raystuttgart said:
About Natives:
You are right.
(Natives cannot build improvements.)

But that is very easy to solve:
Natives are still using the old system (with buildings).

Did you ever see the indios use the stable-building? They too seldom had horses. Mainly from trade or conquest.

colonialfan · Jan 18, 2012

Sorry for the delay. I am happy to go along with team consensus with this feature.

raystuttgart · Jan 19, 2012

Ok great, all teammembers have agreed.

[Religion and Revolution]: Horses Produced on Plots

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