Great Farmers and related

[TrippedOnACloud]

I've got a couple of questions regarding Great Farmers, their functionality, and their design intent, as well as the design intent for possible additional units with similar functions, for the team.

1. Where in the mod files is the resource planting handled? I'd like to take a look and see why it's apparently so troublesome. edit: Found them.
   
2. What's the design intent for the Great Farmer, assuming we don't run into limitations imposed by code?
3. My impression, based on assorted comments here and there, is that we'd like to have a Great Farmer that places agricultural and other plant-based resources, a Great Herdsman that places animal resources, a Great Geologist that places/discovers mineral resources, and possibly others. Once again, if there were no programming-based limitations, what would the desired effect be?

 

[Noriad2]

Eh Great Geologist "placing mineral resources"? That sounds like some high-powered Magic to me. Wrong universe.
Digging deep and accidentally discovering a random resource (like the random event that occasionally happens when you work a city tile with no resource) is the most you can do without massive suspension of disbelief.

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

Eh Great Geologist "placing mineral resources"? That sounds like some high-powered Magic to me. Wrong universe.
Digging deep and accidentally discovering a random resource (like the random event that occasionally happens when you work a city tile with no resource) is the most you can do without massive suspension of disbelief.

Sufficiently advanced technology

That said, my own thoughts regarding the Great Geologist would be that the player has very little control over either the resource that gets discovered or where exactly it gets placed. Basically, the Geologist would be prospecting/surveying, with the result being the discovery of a semi-random resource on a resource-free tile within a certain radius.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Would work for the last Eras, "Sufficiently advanced technology". No suspension of belief with that.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The code uses a function that does not pass the unit doing the action so as it is you can only use it for one unit type. We could replace it all with missions if missions could take more than one turn.

We don't need a Great Herdsman. With herds, I have started coding the subdued and tamed animals to be able to place resource or worked resource on the map. Your technology level is used to determine which plots become valid for that herd.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Would work for the last Eras, "Sufficiently advanced technology". No suspension of belief with that.

JosEPh

Yeah I'd still have a problem with it because if an advanced society could create a resource in such a manner it wouldn't need to then mine or quarry for it.

I had the desire to have prospector units for analyzing and discovering what mineral resource may be present. Not an automatic success unit either. Maybe a GREAT prospector could then be an automatic success. By the same concept, I was wanting minor farmers (to plant and test what is best to grow somewhere so it's not a 'pick what you want' kind of scenario).

I was also thinking of Foresters, Ranchers, and Fishermen. Pretty much all working along the same lines, a base unit to TRY to find what the land may best yield in terms of resources, and a GREAT unit for a more automatic or hand selected approach. I was thinking of having improvements, like farms and such, able to produce GP Points when worked to go along with that concept.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The code uses a function that does not pass the unit doing the action so as it is you can only use it for one unit type. We could replace it all with missions if missions could take more than one turn.

Is it done entirely in python or is there a dll factor to this? I might be able to fairly easily work this into a near term project to work it into an outcome mission capacity perhaps.

 

[Thunderbrd]

We don't need a Great Herdsman. With herds, I have started coding the subdued and tamed animals to be able to place resource or worked resource on the map. Your technology level is used to determine which plots become valid for that herd.

That's a cool idea. Liking that!

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Eh Great Geologist "placing mineral resources"? That sounds like some high-powered Magic to me. Wrong universe.
Digging deep and accidentally discovering a random resource (like the random event that occasionally happens when you work a city tile with no resource) is the most you can do without massive suspension of disbelief.

We already have a means of finding minerals on empty plots in game, just put a mine or quarry down and there is a random chance that a resource will "magically" appear.

Yeah I'd still have a problem with it because if an advanced society could create a resource in such a manner it wouldn't need to then mine or quarry for it.

I had the desire to have prospector units for analyzing and discovering what mineral resource may be present. Not an automatic success unit either. Maybe a GREAT prospector could then be an automatic success. By the same concept, I was wanting minor farmers (to plant and test what is best to grow somewhere so it's not a 'pick what you want' kind of scenario).

I was also thinking of Foresters, Ranchers, and Fishermen. Pretty much all working along the same lines, a base unit to TRY to find what the land may best yield in terms of resources, and a GREAT unit for a more automatic or hand selected approach. I was thinking of having improvements, like farms and such, able to produce GP Points when worked to go along with that concept.

We already have functions to plant forest/savanna/jungle and terriform land into better producing plots. I actually got the later set of planting to work properly. Although I think there is still a logic bug in there somewhere. @TrippedOnACloud if you want some more python work then a complete review of ModifiedA4 code and the terriforming code would be good. That or you can help with the herd stuff. After I started doing it Pepper2000 posted some code which may be a better way to go since it moves the Python out of the Random Event Manager code and into the XML.

Very little has been added to the work boat functionality, mostly because they would be reasonable only in the later eras.

Is it done entirely in python or is there a dll factor to this? I might be able to fairly easily work this into a near term project to work it into an outcome mission capacity perhaps.

Entirely in python.

 

[Thunderbrd]

We already have a means of finding minerals on empty plots in game, just put a mine or quarry down and there is a random chance that a resource will "magically" appear.

Same could be said for the farm based resources. Would be fun to have a unit to push the process along, with or without a particular improvement.

We already have functions to plant forest/savanna/jungle and terriform land into better producing plots

That would be for adding terrains, yes. This would be for resources... seems a clear differentiation to me.

Although I think there is still a logic bug in there somewhere.

Define it and I'll squash it! (if it's in the DLL anyhow )

Entirely in python.

Could be cool if it was Outcome Mission based eh?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The worker actions are for terrains and terrain features. It could do with a bit more expansion in places.

These worker actions are all in Python including the logic bug - I think the bug is somewhere between the XML and the Python.

Outcome Missions need to be extended to have a timer component like worker actions. At the moment they don't.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Outcome Missions need to be extended to have a timer component like worker actions. At the moment they don't.

A timer component or a build cost?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

A timer component or a build cost?

It already has a cost in missions/actions/outcomes. In fact it has 3 and trying to figure out which you should use is a pain especially as you may want the outcomes to have differing costs.

Therefore a timer between choosing the action and getting the outcome.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It already has a cost in missions/actions/outcomes. In fact it has 3 and trying to figure out which you should use is a pain especially as you may want the outcomes to have differing costs.

Therefore a timer between choosing the action and getting the outcome.

A timer ignores any boosts to worker speeds the workers may have though.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

A timer ignores any boosts to worker speeds the workers may have though.

There is an iCost which is money. There is no iWorkerCost which would be good as that would be the one affected by unit work speed.

We do need both a timer and a work cost since I want some "archaeologist" ones eventually. Kathy put out some graphics idea on that.

 

[Thunderbrd]

How would you want the archaeologist ones to work? I'm perhaps missing the idea of what you mean by a timer here.

 

[pepper2000]

I toyed with doing something similar to a Great Geologist at the Nanomining tech, but I decided it would be easier to procure resources through buildings (e.g. Asteroid Mine). By the future eras, I think that procurement of basic mineral resources on Earth should be a non-issue.

By putting python code in the XML for units, there are few limits as to what can be done with unit missions. Really, you can do anything that you can code with python.