New Profession Ideas

[Nightinggale]

The problem with the current system is that it somewhat clashes with consumption multiplier feeding. If you have to supply 10 of 3 different yields, the currently automated unit is very inefficient.

I have been thinking of setting fully automated units to use a DoaNE like system. The max capacity is reduced, but at the same time it can make fully automated transports more efficient since we expect them to have lots of frequent transports of a low amount of yields of each type. If the player takes over, the GUI could be reduced to just dumping the entire content in the city and the vanilla slot system is restored.

Not ideal, but it would be far easier to code than a full blown system where humans can use it too.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

but that is just the other reason to upgrade to your best transports, to have the needed 5-6 slots to allow for good transport.

If we could tie in consumption with the trade route system, so it perhaps shows consumption paths, so that you can assign trasports to say feed 1 or 2 goods to 4 or 5 citys, a bit like how we have the list of city/yield routes now, like wood from london to birmingham, etc. that would help keep it partially efficient, in the time before you can beef up transportation.

 

[Nightinggale]

The problem with setting up routes like that is that AI players will never do that

RaR have tried to make such a route system. I think it takes too long to set up to be really useful.

When I came up with the concept of feeder service, what I originally wanted was a col1 style trade route system. Back then I knew too little of the code to do that (the code, not C++) and I basically made an addon hack with feeder service.

Today I would likely be able to make such a system. It would be a class containing a list of classes, each of those containing a city and two yield boolArrays (load and unload). The transport would then have an index for how far it is in the route and it would be able to calculate what yields it can pick up as well as what yields it can drop off until it is back to the current city (current city, not starting position. That way an 8 shaped route works better).

It would still benefit greatly from being able to move 10 of each yield though.

 

[Kailric]

I am putting this idea here even though it isn't a Profession, it deals with professions.

Mansa Musa just asked me to declare war on the Ostrogoths. The Ostros are ahead of me in points by nearly 500 so I figured it was a good time, so I declared war.

I start to mobilize my military and I have all these weapons and armor scattered around my Realm and it is a bit of a pain getting the gear to my men-at-arms. So, I had this idea where we could have the ability to use Plotgroups to share Military Equipment between cities.

It could be a Tech, Building, or Civic, or combination perhaps. Perhaps Barracks would allow connected Cities to share their arms. Perhaps there would be a maximum distance requirement, that could also be modified by Buildings, Techs, Civics.

I don't see this as being overpowered as even now I can load a wagon or caravan up with gear and shuffle them around to where it is needed in order to equip my men, but it is a pain to do so. There could also be restrictions for this, like if a City is under siege or attack then the Arms Sharing isn't allowed. Or if the City is covered by an Enemy Zone of Control no sharing then. Also, the auto equip ability that Units can do when attacked in Cities would still only use gear from that city.

I have equipped my Nobles, Commanders, and such for this war campaign. Its nice to have these guys so you don't have to recruit your Experts and Masters. I want to add a new Profession Type perhaps or Unit in the form of a Mercenary that is for military only that you can hire. Anyway, the war is on and I won my first battle by defeating an outlying infantryman of Theodoric's. I am afraid though that since I don't have the tech to build any siege engines yet that all I'll be able to do is devastate his countryside. Which would be a hard blow none the less, but we should look into siege engines and how soon you can gain them.

 

[Nightinggale]

I don't like that idea. You should have planned ahead. However I have considered something for the AI where it stockpiles such yields in city A until it's full, then city B and so on. The current code will happily store 20 weapons in each city and that is not particular useful. Like some of the other AI features I plan, they could be useful for human player assistance/automation.

I just haven't figured out how to do it, partly because there is always something else, which has higher priority.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I quite like the idea.

Rather than having to hunt through all your cities and send this guy here and that guy there and on and on, having the plotgroup share it is a time save.

I think the restrictions you mentioned would be pretty essential though, to avoid this 'assistance' becoming a cheat.

Like moving all your weapons from the left side of your empire 30 squares to the east side. That would be OP.

But the ability to have a central stockpile of weapons that you can then 'grab' from any town within like 6 squares might just be helpful.

Or perhaps it could be a special ability for a building (like only being available to castle towns).

To get it balanced to the point where it is not a 'magical power' of instant transportation, but more of an evolving structure that you have to design into your empire.

So obviously you need the road network, but also castles spaced out within 'reasonable' distance, increasing their power over time with tecnology, etc. so that one castle can be more effective at defending a borderland later into the game, because it allows for militia to be called up from across the towns, rather than having to send the weapons or gather the people in every time.

You still have to have the fore thought to stockpile the weapons around your empire in strategic places, you just don't have to make it quite the faff of sending some everywhere.

It's the ability to transition from a micro to macro management as your empire evolves and grows larger.

 

[Nightinggale]

I just had another idea. We should be able to assign professions regardless of yields available. If there aren't enough yields, the unit will get a special version of fortify where it waits for the yields to arrive and will change profession once they are present.

When a city has one of more units waiting for yields like that, it will start importing and it will multiply the value of the move by 10 or something else rather big. This will make automated transports pick up whatever they can find and move it there before going back to their normal tasks.

Perhaps we could set a new threshold for export where a city imports to maintain 100 and exports at 120, but if it is for profession or another "emergency" it can accept going down to 50 or even 0. That will allow us to stockpile weapons and similar stuff and spread it across multiple warehouses to exploit the capacity better. When it is needed, the automated transports will fetch most of it within 2-3 turns or something.

No cheating and yet avoids the need to search your cities for yields when you need them. Maybe we should cache yields in plotgroups and only allow units to enter this wait state if there are enough yields available. Otherwise they could be stuck for a long time.

 

[Kailric]

I don't like that idea.

Of course you wouldn't, you and your wagon empire

You should have planned ahead.

You are probably right there. I am lazy sometimes. I could have been a bit more patient and used the tools I had to equip my Units. Like checking the Domestic Adviser, and doing a little more coordination.

I quite like the idea.

Of course you would, you're lazy like me It would as you say, need to have all the checks and balances. Your Wagons can move up to three spaces on roads, some up to 6 spaces so the ability shouldn't be much more than that. But, perhaps there is other means. More playtesting....

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yes, I was thinking 6 spaces would be about right, this would then make a castle capable of taking care of about 8 full spread cities, plus some smaller satellite villages.

Which would(at least to me) bring quite a fun empire design aspect, where you ideally want to have a castle between 2 towns to service your empire. Especially if we could eventually communicate the 'range' of this ability in a similar way to how it displays the border size when you found a new city. so you can see the catchment area of castles when you go to found a new castle.

This would be useful for creating less spammy trade routes, it would be made even more useful (if it was limited to castles) that when you set up transport routes you can filter by city type, so you can quickly see a list of all your castles and assign them all for 'weapon collection' then connect the route (or a seperate one) to your city that has a weapons production.

 

[Nightinggale]

I still think mass teleporting yields for equipment is wrong. However the concept of the castle and supporting cities is interesting. One thing, which cross my mind is to add a profession+building, which provides the "yield" transport. A satellite can then transport the amount of YIELD_TRANSPORT yields to the castle each turn, which it will automatically do each turn. It can transport the same amount back, which it will do to supply construction or similar if needed. Food is also a very valid yield to transport this way.

This will allow mining colonies in locations with little or no food production as well as production of wool in one satellite and cloth production in another. The point here is that those short range transports will happen each turn and not rely on the unsteady wagon supply. The background transport isn't unlimited meaning we can't move 40 yields/turn without actually using wagons.

Castles can then be able to gain much larger warehouse capacity than other city types (they store for multiple cities). I would say that castles would need a range and possibly a max amount of satellites. Both numbers can be affected by buildings and CivEffects.

The real wagons will then for the most part travel between castles. This will reduce the huge number of inefficient moves with 10 lumber and whatever, which can occur frequently right now.

Domestic marked should be moved to be a castle marked instead. The demands will then be the castle+all satellites. Only the castle calculates the effect of how well supplied the marked is, while the satellites applies the result from the castle.

Units will have an easier time changing profession at castles as that is where the yields are stockpiled. Not spread out across the cities in the area.


I still like the idea of a "wait for equipment" command for units. I think the AI could benefit hugely from it.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

That seems like a valid move, we have already talked in the past about making wagons and the like into professions rather than constructed units, so having a building that can do short stop transportation seems valid, something similar to the domestic market system where we could turn on/off what yields were auto sold, and the quantity and number of yields was increased by the number of employees and size of the building.

This seems like a solid compromise, where a transporter type profession(including maybe an Expert Porter or some such) then has the application of being a 'short hauler' internal worker, or a 'long hauler' external unit. The short Hauler has a maximum range/number of cities(or whatever limits become necessary/sensible) and the long hauler acts as a normal transport unit that can move things further or in mass quantities(which might be beneficial on much larger productive areas).

I for one hate having to set up the same route across the majority of my cities, and this could be a nice way of removing that tiresome burden.

 

[Nightinggale]

I for one hate having to set up the same route across the majority of my cities, and this could be a nice way of removing that tiresome burden.

I have plenty of ideas to get around that. I just haven't implemented any of them yet

 

[orlanth]

I start to mobilize my military and I have all these weapons and armor scattered around my Realm and it is a bit of a pain getting the gear to my men-at-arms. So, I had this idea where we could have the ability to use Plotgroups to share Military Equipment between cities.

It could be a Tech, Building, or Civic, or combination perhaps. Perhaps Barracks would allow connected Cities to share their arms. Perhaps there would be a maximum distance requirement, that could also be modified by Buildings, Techs, Civics.

Hmmm well I quite like this original idea of Kailrics, especially because it could start to solve one of the main problems of the vanilla AI (totally unable to plan or foresee what it will need to equip a Profession or finish constructing a Unit or Building; where the Unit/Building part may be improved by the recent construction yield proposal).

Also maybe it's because I'm a bit lazy too but I always found the Wagon Train Dispatcher part of the game to be the most tedious and least interesting strategically. I just can't picture John Adams or Offa spending their time closely scrutinizing Wagontrain or Peddler schedules, they were more about the strategic big picture looking at how production was going and who should be propagandized or invaded.

So I could actually find it quite appealing to have more of the transport / traderoute scheduling burden abstracted to a higher level through letting some Plotgroup transport mechanism represent local trade going on within the Plotgroup. Actually a really good example of this working out well is the economic modeling in Victoria and Victoria 2, where there is quite realistic modeling of different goods being produced, transported, and consumed but this takes place on the free market without direct interventions by the player in individual transactions.

As alternate possibilities having everything based around a central castle and satellites seems very context dependent, in that there are many situations where you or the AI wouldn't have this setup, or the AI couldn't plan out how to arrange it very effectively. Having a wait for equipment command seems like it would be a start to addressing the poor ability of the AI to foresee equipment needs, but inevitabiy could still be worse for the AI than humans (humans would never set units to do nothing and wait losing valuable production, they would plan in advance which AI can't do worth &*^).

The idea of an abstract YIELD_TRANSPORT however is interesting. Does this mean that based on how much YIELD_TRANSPORT you were generating, this would set how much volume of Yields could be transported/shared within a Plotgroup? This could actually be really interesting in that it would enable some Plotgroup sharing but this would not necessarily be unfair or "for free" as the transport costs could be represented. It could also allow all kinds of new CivEffects magic, such as a Laissez Faire civic enabling more flexible trade between cities without intervention by the player.

Overall the idea of using plotgroup supply (for Profession equipment or Demands) seems like it would be reasonable modeling of local trade and would give the lagging vanilla AI a good shot in the arm. I would be totally fine with this & wouldn't see this as that unfair. (I guess as a 2071 player I am in favor of mass teleporting yields) Anyway, perhaps as a substitute for the current cheating in Handicapinfos, maybe at higher difficulty levels, the AI could be able to do this. (This would be wayy less cheat-ey and more fair than vanilla which just gives it tons and tons of free bonuses, which still aren't enough given its hilariously bad vanilla planning).

 

[Nightinggale]

Just for the record, I have plenty of yield plans. Some of them are related to AI stockpiling and it should make it easier for the AI to place all the needed yields for strong expensive professions in the same city, which in turn makes it possible for the AI to actually use those professions. This should really make a difference if some of the yields are in short supply.

It's a good point that the AI would have a hard time figuring out good castle/satellite placement

I just came up with another distribution idea. Each city in a plotgroup should generate a list of cities in that plotgroup sorted by distance. If the cities start to take yields from each other, it would try the nearest cities first. It's possible that the list should only contain cities, which are max X plots away.

I'm still not sure if invisible transports are the way to go or to improve the existing trade units. I'm aiming for the latter.

 

[Kailric]

Also maybe it's because I'm a bit lazy too but I always found the Wagon Train Dispatcher part of the game to be the most tedious and least interesting strategically.

Yeah, it does get tedious, partly because there isn't a very good interface for it and it is had to tell which Wagons are doing what, which routes have been filled, and you can't really manage it from the DA because of the bugs there. If all that is fixed then maybe, or If the mentioned ideas are done correctly, I believe the two transports systems could compliment each other very well.

The proposed YIELD_TRANSPORT sounds interesting. It is similar to how I have set up the Trading Posts and Markets with Professionals that sell stuff each turn, however, it isn't really that useful sense you can manual sell all at once instead of a little at a time and now with AI Traders it can be done in a couple clicks.

I'm still not sure if invisible transports are the way to go or to improve the existing trade units. I'm aiming for the latter.

Some of us hope you miss No, seriously, if something is added that makes it less tedious so you can concentrate on the more fun parts of the game then I'm all for it. One of the Civs (maybe a few) had it so you could "Beam" units around your airports, so beaming things isn't new to the Civ engine.

Anyway, I will be play testing some more and thinking of ideas...

 

[Kailric]

We are talking about what military professions should be in the game and these are my current suggestions. This list replaces Scale armor with Shields...

Light Archer(Tools), Archer (Tools, Leather)
Light Crossbowman(Weapon), Crossbowman (Weapon, Mail)
Light Longbowman(Weapon), Longbowman (Weapon, Leather)

Light Skirmisher (Weapon, Leather), Skirmisher (Weapon, Mail, Shield)
Heavy Skirmisher (Weapon, Shield, Plate)
Pikeman(Mail), Heavy Pikeman(Plate)

(All these require horses obviously)
Scout
Light Horseman(Tools), Horseman(Tools, Leather)
Calvary (Weapon, Leather, Shield), Heavy Calvary (Weapon, Mail, Shield)
Knight (Shield, Weapon, Mail), Heavy Knight (Shield, Weapon, Plate)

Peasant Militia(Tools)

Light Infantry (Weapon), Infantry (Weapon, Shield or Leather)
Heavy Infantry(Weapon, Shield, Mail)

 

[heroicfort]

hi kailric,
is it possible to have classes that have certain professions under them? for example, here are some professions and the classes they belong to:

 

[Nightinggale]

Professions can have subprofessions. The idea is that the main profession is read and then it is overwritten by the data from the subprofession. This mean you can make a leather armor infantry and then add a chain mail infantry and only change yield requirements and some combat stats. Naturally each subprofession will have to have unique names and graphics.

The game groups the subprofessions in the menu. This mean you get one infantry item in the list and if you click it, you get a list containing only infantry.

I think that is what we have for profession grouping, at least for now.

 

[Kailric]

To answer heroicfort, yes, you can have professions under classes, if I understand your question correctly. We have added the ability to allow and disallow professions based on unit type and promotions. Like a serf cannot be a peddler, and you can only take on the Knight profession if you have the knight promotion. These are all editable in the XML.