Animal Behaviour

Actually there are team spawn variation values to help with balance between NON-Peace Among NPCs and Peace Among NPC options. The idea is that spawns are set individually for the frequency with which they are ideal to show up on a Peace Among NPCs game and then the NON-peace game applies these modifiers. The modifiers are setup a little opposite to what one would assume though - less is more frequent and more is less frequent. But it still works nicely for balancing between those options. Currently, Alphas, the most dangerous and thus the most consuming, are the least frequent. Beasts are in between because generally they aren't as dominant. And Prey tend to be very frequent. There is a little bit of a str vs str assumption here that assumes that Prey are more likely to be taken out by the opponent teams of animals and barbs so need to be more frequent to be encountered and to benefit the player that keeps his hunting territory clear of competing predators. My point is that it IS an influencing factor that the balance of power between the animal groups will determine more or less need for frequency of spawns on a sweeping level.
I know of the sweeping team spawn adjusters, but each animal still need their individual spawn adjustments based primarily on their strength and secondarily on their likelihood of getting offed by units in other NPC teams.
Peace among NPC (PaNPC) option then apply the sweeping adjustment to calm down the spawn of all animal teams. The power of that adjustment should be based on the teams average strength; so "creatures" spawn calm down the most under PaNPC. It could of course be done completely opposite so that each animal spawn rate is individually balanced for the PaNPC option instead of without it.
Unless we put elephants, buffaloes, bulls, bison, hippo and other high strength creature animals into the beast category; and weak animals like foxes into the creature category, the sweeping adjuster would never do the job properly; if we want a similar animal population balance for both with and without the PaNPC option it would actually be better to have replacement spawn for each animal that is used under PaNPC.

So maybe we just keep the polar bear as an alpha. The rest could be beasts and it would work.
I feel the Grizzly and, for some consistency, the brown bear should also be predators; the rest could be beast. In other words, the only ursine I want to change the team for in the SVN right now is the cave bear.

Problem with this is that their prey is just waiting to come into the game and I don't think I can be ok envisioning a predator in the Creature category. We really need more lesser prey critters to flesh this out properly. Mice, rats, rabbits, squirrels, etc... Obviously, foxes are on the lower end of the predator category but that's what beasts are about really. Most other canines probably won't go after foxes too often. And foxes don't breed with the rate you'd expect of a prey creature. The others are pretty core concept Beast imo.
I feel the mod doesn't need more low strength animals, I would actually like to see all critter type animals gone. The most important reason for having an animal is IMO that they are tied to important resources (pig, elephant, horse, sheep, livestock in general, and poisons) or that they can pose a threat to player units in early game, then secondarily for the food, hammers, culture they bring in through hunting them which make the early game quite interesting.

But whales and such should be on the same 'team' as well, which suits the mid-level beasts. No dolphin is going to hunt or have to defend itself against a whale of just about any kind (except for perhaps an orca.) I think we could have a few more fish types too. We also have crab in the prey sector.
I still feel all whales and dolphins should be on the creature team; almost all animals we have in game eats or confront some other animal that is in the game or an animal similar to what we got.

Hopefully, this discussion helps us gell our perspectives. Another reason for some of the adjustments were overall counts of each team and trying to balance that out a bit more. I do want to state that I'm not terribly attached to any opinions here... just hoping that some of the design intents can be on the same page here.
Discussions like these are healthy for the mod. ^^
 
I feel the Grizzly and, for some consistency, the brown bear should also be predators
These bears aren't much different than the others except in temperament. Grizzlies are a bit more hair-trigger aggressive. If we're going to make bears beasts as a rule, I don't see any reason for Grizzlies and Browns not to be. Only the polar bear really differs enough in this regard... and I don't know what kind of interaction you'd have if a polar bear encountered a grizzly... it very well might be a fight - for dominance in the territory if not for food.

I know of the sweeping team spawn adjusters, but each animal still need their individual spawn adjustments based primarily on their strength and secondarily on their likelihood of getting offed by units in other NPC teams.
Peace among NPC (PaNPC) option then apply the sweeping adjustment to calm down the spawn of all animal teams. The power of that adjustment should be based on the teams average strength; so "creatures" spawn calm down the most under PaNPC. It could of course be done completely opposite so that each animal spawn rate is individually balanced for the PaNPC option instead of without it.
Unless we put elephants, buffaloes, bulls, bison, hippo and other high strength creature animals into the beast category; and weak animals like foxes into the creature category, the sweeping adjuster would never do the job properly; if we want a similar animal population balance for both with and without the PaNPC option it would actually be better to have replacement spawn for each animal that is used under PaNPC.
For guys like you and I, I would say you're right. So far it appears that most play without it. Also, I think it's easier to make a proper sense of balance under the Non-PaNPC option and then adjust for them trying to kill each other. You make a strong point about the big creatures but with the way the system is always 1 chance out of however much the total chances are, I think it easier to expect a more rare creature to stay more rare when sweeping calibrations are applied rather than the other way around.

Time will tell if either of us are wrong here. I can't guess at everything quite yet. Perhaps it will prove necessary to have differing spawn rates for PaNPC off or on by each creature. Here we get into it getting much more complex to adjust.

I feel the mod doesn't need more low strength animals, I would actually like to see all critter type animals gone. The most important reason for having an animal is IMO that they are tied to important resources (pig, elephant, horse, sheep, livestock in general, and poisons) or that they can pose a threat to player units in early game, then secondarily for the food, hammers, culture they bring in through hunting them which make the early game quite interesting.
I'm thinking more long term here. Small game hunting should be highly desirable for early hunters in a Nomadic Start game, making it very valuable to kill off the larger predators just to get them out of the way so that small game can appear more often to help really drive development of the tribe.
Let's also keep in mind that Rabbits are a resource we don't have a creature for, as are Guinea Pigs, and Beavers would be good to connect with Furs.
I'd also like to add some food controls to help with spawn rates - with carnivorous animals being able to starve off if they can't hunt successfully enough basically. Or at least just toy around with the concept some to help prepare some things regarding Nomadic Start.




Anyhow, it sounds like we're MORE onboard with similar vision at least so from here, feel free to adjust to refine what we've come up with as a consensus. I don't think we really have much more disagreement remaining.
 
These bears aren't much different than the others except in temperament. Grizzlies are a bit more hair-trigger aggressive. If we're going to make bears beasts as a rule, I don't see any reason for Grizzlies and Browns not to be. Only the polar bear really differs enough in this regard... and I don't know what kind of interaction you'd have if a polar bear encountered a grizzly... it very well might be a fight - for dominance in the territory if not for food.
Main reason for putting grizzly as a predator would be because they often prey on black bears, while they never prey on polar bears. Some populations of brown bear are quite similar to the grizzly in behavior, and I'm thinking it might have been far more similar 200-500 years back, at the time before brown bears were extensively hunted for killing livestock; only the most placid brown bears survived that; just a personal theory though.

Anyhow, it sounds like we're MORE onboard with similar vision at least so from here, feel free to adjust to refine what we've come up with as a consensus. I don't think we really have much more disagreement remaining.
I'll commit a compromiser to the SVN soonish.
 
Main reason for putting grizzly as a predator would be because they often prey on black bears, while they never prey on polar bears. Some populations of brown bear are quite similar to the grizzly in behavior, and I'm thinking it might have been far more similar 200-500 years back, at the time before brown bears were extensively hunted for killing livestock; only the most placid brown bears survived that; just a personal theory though.
Fair 'nuff. I can see the logic here then.
 
Could the critters at least be made defensive only? I am thinking of a possible epitaph for a worker that was killed by a mouse. :crazyeye:
 
Could the critters at least be made defensive only? I am thinking of a possible epitaph for a worker that was killed by a mouse. :crazyeye:

Moose are aggressive. So are Musk Ox. Well they have been in the past anyway.

JosEPh ;)
 
Moose are aggressive. So are Musk Ox. Well they have been in the past anyway.

JosEPh ;)
And that's to show some critter animals should be aggressive - to an unreliable extent. The idea is to have them behave as they tend to in nature. It's been noticed that Musk Oxes seem a little too aggressive to some though. But this COULD be due to a player on the aggressive animals option noting that the musk ox stood out on the critter team as attacking whenever it could.
 
Moose are aggressive

Even if a mouse is aggressive, humans shouldn't have problems handling it. I know that mice are not in right now, but TB mentioned that some additional critters are going to be inserted, and he explicitly mentioned mice.

Edit: All right, I haven't tested this in a while. I didn't know that e.g. pigeons couldn't attack any more. That's certainly a good change.

Edit2: Does this make "Combat Workers" unnecessary? I mean, they wouldn't be really strong anyway, and with this change the weak animals are not a threat to workers any more.
 
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Edit2: Does this make "Combat Workers" unnecessary? I mean, they wouldn't be really strong anyway, and with this change the weak animals are not a threat to workers any more.
I think the idea wasn't just to make workers capable of handling animal attacks but also to give them a fighting chance if you sent them to the front to build forts etc... That said, there are still some core AI issues I'm going to look to resolve in the next cycle I expect that will allow us to give just about every unit type SOME strength as if a Pigeon is to have a small amount of STR, then I would expect a missionary should as well. Even if it's just enough to warrant getting them some withdrawal ability to give them a chance of escaping capture etc...
Part of what would need adjusting is the core capture mechanism but I'm pretty familiar with that system now so that helps when going to modify it. Anyhow, the goal of all units having some strength (unless they are simply ideas or stories travelling about on the wind or something else other than a normal unit in concept) is still worthy and approaches closer to completion.
 
What about an extremely cheap and weak unit that cannot be upgraded, like a unit leader/protector? Perhaps the following is just possible with SM (because of fractional strength), but a unit with a very weak strength that just simulates the fighting capability of a single unarmed human could be grouped with a worker/missionary/...
 
What about an extremely cheap and weak unit that cannot be upgraded, like a unit leader/protector? Perhaps the following is just possible with SM (because of fractional strength), but a unit with a very weak strength that just simulates the fighting capability of a single unarmed human could be grouped with a worker/missionary/...
Falls within the brackets that the new defensive promotion is supposed to reflect. IF I'm understanding your idea here. As far as offering a dedicated singular guard unit, I'm not sure why we'd do that as opposed to simply making it possible for such units to have some strength themselves. Is it not odd that they don't as it stands now?
 
Currently the AI can assign combat units to escort duty and have unarmed units request an escort before moving into danger. The human players do not get this functionality.
 
Currently the AI can assign combat units to escort duty and have unarmed units request an escort before moving into danger. The human players do not get this functionality.
But they can choose to do the same thing. Once the escort is there, just group with the unit.
 
Yeah, if a combatant is grouped with a worker and the worker is automated then the combatant will move around with the worker.

DH might have just meant that it would be nice if the automated workers on its own accord ask for escorts when needed and get it automatically. But we would all hate experiencing that soldiers leave their perhaps important post without the player knowing.
 
But we would all hate experiencing that soldiers leave their perhaps important post without the player knowing.
And if our cities suddenly started building a unit we didn't queue up for them, which is how it works for the AI if the AI can't find an available escort without a current mission task.
 
I'm not sure why we'd do that as opposed to simply making it possible for such units to have some strength themselves

From what I have read here so far, I'm not sure that "simply" is the right word here. If you can do that, that would be very good. But if it was as hard to make as, say, viewports (from what I have read here), I don't think it would be worth it.
 
And yet we have an action button on units which says something like "act as escort" or is it "not act as escort"; so in theory we human players could have a set of units we have built sitting around waiting for that worker, missionary, migrant or corporate exec on automatic that needs them when they want to cross dangerous places.
 
From what I have read here so far, I'm not sure that "simply" is the right word here. If you can do that, that would be very good. But if it was as hard to make as, say, viewports (from what I have read here), I don't think it would be worth it.
It's not that hard. Just a lot to it and it's one of the many projects on 'the biglist'. Probably not much harder than making whole new unitlines to fill in. The idea isn't to make things safer for what are currently 0 str units as much as it is to make them behave as if they were actual creatures/people on the board rather than just concepts. Even with low str, they will still need protection.

And yet we have an action button on units which says something like "act as escort" or is it "not act as escort"; so in theory we human players could have a set of units we have built sitting around waiting for that worker, missionary, migrant or corporate exec on automatic that needs them when they want to cross dangerous places.
Shadow unit or something like that right? And it's never worked so far as I know. Next cycle I get to look at how well it's working for the AI as well, as it is critical for the AI. It's supposed to have a target unit and for the player, there's never really cause for that as you can just group the units together. AKA, it's the same thing but inside the AI code it's important to distinguish because a group will act under a unified AI whereas a unit shadowing is LIKE grouped but thinks of its own actions independently.
If you want an automation setting that does that I agree it would be cool. I plan to have an AI that acts this way as a dedicated escort AI (there currently isn't one and it's handled purely by the brokerage system in the AI coding) so once I complete that AI programming I could take an extra step to adapt it.
 
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