Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[Yudishtira]

Can you share your CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml to see if I can give you a patch that is compatible for your version?

Well that was rather silly of me. I checked every land and sea worker unit I could think of, but didn't notice the Submerged Town Platform unit on the same tech.

Thank you so much @KaTiON_PT and @raxo2222 for your help.

 

[Thunderbrd]

What would be the opposite of Duality?

2 ways exist to answer this. The answer depends on what is meant by Duality since it has a few applications as a term and concept. The opposite of a duality in harmony would be excess or imbalance. The absence of duality itself is void. If something is, it has a definable opposite because nothing can be created without creating it's inverse mirroring essence.

You either have two legs and you can walk by alternating or using them in harmony or you have one leg and may be able to use it to move ineffectively or you have none and you aren't getting to move at all without use of non-leg appendages.

Even snakes and snails must use an alternating current or wave pattern to move forward.

Perhaps that would be possible, but it still requires a way to provide for fair competition between the systems, even with one of them being sponsored by the government. That could be hard to achieve. And you need clear accountability for certain decisions, which is often less clear in the public sector. I have heard of enough examples where a "pawn" is sacrificed when a decision is revealed to be a mistake, but when it succeeds it's suddenly all the "fault" of the chairperson. So any decision should have a real "culprit" and that needs to be hammered down before it's clear if it's right or not.

The government shouldn't have motive to put competition out of business because their existence diminishes the required effort to fulfill their role. If they cannot provide enough value to be useful at a zero sum profit, then that's probably a program that won't need to exist. The governmental program would naturally fill a role of simply keeping businesses from gouging the market. Again, our mail service is a great example of this. A 'way' doesn't need to be found - it's just a naturally built in benefit of having both private and state service options in an industry. Balance is found easily in this sort of scenario so long as selfish machinations are not corrupting the scenario, which is always going to be a problem to try to protect a system against no matter what the system is.

Politicians only have to answer to the public when there are elections, whereas business owners can get very quick "answers" by the public when they decide to buy elsewhere. And there is less incentive for politicians to cater to more than a (slight) majority - business owners often try for a greater coverage. And in the - admittedly unlikely - case of said business still being a private organization, instead of e.g. a corporation, the business owner doesn't have "derived" powers, but is the source of the power (s)he wields. At least one form of corruption (acting against the source of your power) cannot happen here.

If politicians aren't beholden to their voters throughout the times between elections, they aren't going to do well when elections come up. Profit cannot be the only motive in a system or the system will immediately begin to find ways to profit from all possible strategies and many of those do not concern the wellbeing of the consumer, the nation, the world. All means nothing if you do not profit to the fullest extent in a completely free market controlled system and that WILL eventually undermine and collapse the system. A profit-driven health industry cannot truly succeed in its role when the health of their clients is not profitable.

His personal assets were greater than the entire assets of China should have been - the poverty outside of his palace must have been on an unimaginable scale. And sadly there are proven ways to keep even such a system stable - just offer the soldiers better living conditions (give them slightly better living conditions than the rest of the people "enjoys", and perhaps allow them to mistreat the people in their own name as well - in a country as large as China, make sure that they always operate a 1000 miles away from home, so that they don't know the people they mistreat). And most revolutions don't come into being when the people are lying on the ground, but when they start getting better and want more than that (regardless of such a desire being justified or not). So such an emperor's policy would be clear: Keep them lying on the ground. It's terrible how well that seems to work to prevent revolutions.

Slavery is pretty much the end result of an out of check free market policy, as history shows. When it begins to cost more to live than you can earn in your life, if you don't have an option to sell yourself into indentured servitude, you just end up dying an early and avoidable death. It's important to understand that we're headed in that direction for so many if we do not demand a system that keeps the right to live from becoming prohibitively costly. I realize it's been worse for a lot of folks in the past. But we're trying to find a way to have a system where all people can remain free here. And to do so we cannot allow for such drastic wealth imbalance. I don't deny it can get, and probably has in the past been, much worse. My comment of how it's never been this bad would need to be taken to mean in recent history.

also, why is it that i cant build a fort/ something in enemy territory ?? pic 2

You cannot improve plots you don't own or are at least neutral. It looks like you're finding one of the problem spots we know we have in the current culture system - that large amounts of territory may be un-developable due to lingering old culture that won't go away. DH and I have discussed some solutions and I thought I'd tried one of those but maybe it's not working as well as hoped or maybe I just never got around to it. Regardless, it's an easy place to try to fix but end up breaking it badly in the process so it takes a lot of careful evaluation of a very complex maze of coding. Not a minor project unfortunately. Maybe there are some other ways to address it, such as enabling the building of forts in enemy territory, but I promise that's opening up cans of worms you probably haven't imagined yet.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

also, why is it that i cant build a fort/ something in enemy territory ?? pic 2

You cannot improve plots you don't own or are at least neutral. It looks like you're finding one of the problem spots we know we have in the current culture system - that large amounts of territory may be un-developable due to lingering old culture that won't go away. DH and I have discussed some solutions and I thought I'd tried one of those but maybe it's not working as well as hoped or maybe I just never got around to it. Regardless, it's an easy place to try to fix but end up breaking it badly in the process so it takes a lot of careful evaluation of a very complex maze of coding. Not a minor project unfortunately. Maybe there are some other ways to address it, such as enabling the building of forts in enemy territory, but I promise that's opening up cans of worms you probably haven't imagined yet.

I am not sure why fortifications stopped being able to be built in enemy territory. They are the only improvement you can build in neutral territory besides routes.

There are problems with having fortifications, including watch towers, in neutral territory. The main one being that if you raze the fort you still get to keep the land which allows you a safe place to sit and heal as no animal or barbarian will bother you there.

It may simply be something to do with the minimum distance between fortifications. The algorithm may not take the ownership into account. I know that before we introduced Super Forts you could build a fort right next to an enemy city to siege it properly.
.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I know that before we introduced Super Forts you could build a fort right next to an enemy city to siege it properly.

Are you sure? IIRC, you've never been able to build any improvement, including a fort, within enemy territory.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Are you sure? IIRC, you've never been able to build any improvement, including a fort, within enemy territory.

Yep. I used it often to siege a city. But not sure when it was available. It may have been after Super Forts were introduced!

However I do rememer that if we allowed forts near cities then the AI would spend all its time building a fort, then upgrading it to a farm or mine or whatever, then replace that with a fort in an infinite loop.

 

[Yudishtira]

Could it have been after using the mission to claim the tile?

 

[tmv]

The answer depends on what is meant by Duality since it has a few applications as a term and concept.

What I meant: If the concept of duality is pretty much universal (as I think you claimed), what happens when that concept is applied on itself? This is a bit like someone saying "There is no absolute truth." and a second person responding "Is that true?"

The government shouldn't have motive to put competition out of business because their existence diminishes the required effort to fulfill their role. If they cannot provide enough value to be useful at a zero sum profit, then that's probably a program that won't need to exist. The governmental program would naturally fill a role of simply keeping businesses from gouging the market. Again, our mail service is a great example of this. A 'way' doesn't need to be found - it's just a naturally built in benefit of having both private and state service options in an industry. Balance is found easily in this sort of scenario so long as selfish machinations are not corrupting the scenario, which is always going to be a problem to try to protect a system against no matter what the system is.

As long as selfishness is part of being human, it will be there - on both sides. And as good as "checks and balances" are, such a system ends up either with an ultimate checker who is not checked (in politics this is often the high court), or a "circle" with several institutions checking the next one until the circle is closed. The first can corrupt very quickly, unless you are lucky enough to have supreme judges that are completely beyond reproach , and the second can also corrupt, although it should take a bit more time until every institution in that "circle" has been corrupted. Since the people cannot do the checking by themselves, there doesn't seem to be a third option.

There are two particularly strong reasons why I'm especially distrustful of the politicians in this: First, because they can directly wield the kind of power that private interest groups can "only" try to influence, and second, because other people seem to be much less aware of untrustworthy politicians compared to untrustworthy business leaders, even today. They way some people talk you would think that elected politicians were (by their very nature) completely incorruptible - I don't think I really need to address this here, anyone still believing that should take a good look at the current state of the "sphere" we are on.

If politicians aren't beholden to their voters throughout the times between elections, they aren't going to do well when elections come up. Profit cannot be the only motive in a system or the system will immediately begin to find ways to profit from all possible strategies and many of those do not concern the wellbeing of the consumer, the nation, the world. All means nothing if you do not profit to the fullest extent in a completely free market controlled system and that WILL eventually undermine and collapse the system. A profit-driven health industry cannot truly succeed in its role when the health of their clients is not profitable.

You vastly overestimate the memory of many voters, I think. And yes, making the actual health of the patients profitable would be a very good thing - like the doctors becoming some kind of "health insurance" themselves and you pay them as long as you are healthy (one of them, whom you picked to "guarantee" your health). And when you are sick, you notify this doctor and immediately stop your payments - this way you will get an appointment quickly , and this doctor will give their best to restore your health quickly as well. You even remove any motivation to hold back effective medication, because "your" doctor is just as interested in you being healthy as you are yourself.

Find out what people should want, and turn that into their own best interest.

Slavery is pretty much the end result of an out of check free market policy, as history shows. When it begins to cost more to live than you can earn in your life, if you don't have an option to sell yourself into indentured servitude, you just end up dying an early and avoidable death. It's important to understand that we're headed in that direction for so many if we do not demand a system that keeps the right to live from becoming prohibitively costly. I realize it's been worse for a lot of folks in the past. But we're trying to find a way to have a system where all people can remain free here. And to do so we cannot allow for such drastic wealth imbalance. I don't deny it can get, and probably has in the past been, much worse. My comment of how it's never been this bad would need to be taken to mean in recent history.

Sorry, but history is something you really cannot argue from. There are so few examples of a true free market in history that it cannot serve as any kind of proof. And I certainly agree that extreme poverty needs to be dealt with. I just don't think that wealth (im)balance is a particularly good standard - I would much prefer checking the level of living of the poorest, say, 1 %. That way, you can call anything that improves the standard of living of the poorest (whoever that may be) a good thing, even if rich people happen to profit from that development as well. And (even more importantly) any development that ruins the poor even further can be called a bad development even if the rich suffer as well (like: bombing the entire country into the stone age - that certainly reduces the gap ).

The last example is also the reason why you should never want your paramount desire to be that people you hate are destroyed - the "best way" to achieve that might hurt many, many innocent people.

OTOH it is certainly correct that the gap has never been this wide ever since the end of the Second World War.

It could be necessary to reconsider a few points if automation really ends up removing most of the jobs, but I am a bit sceptical. It still remains to be seen if "strong AI" becomes possible one day, and there are strong reasons to believe it won't happen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice's_theorem could be Computer Science's Second Law of Thermodynamics, with strong AI being like a perpetuum mobile). Without strong AI, jobs that require human reasoning won't vanish, and having a sufficient number of jobs could end up depending on the quality of education, making sure that the remaining (and by nature very demanding with respect to intelligence) jobs can be done by the people that are there.

 

[Thunderbrd]

What I meant: If the concept of duality is pretty much universal (as I think you claimed), what happens when that concept is applied on itself? This is a bit like someone saying "There is no absolute truth." and a second person responding "Is that true?"

That's where you find the paradox of the universe that makes the universe possible. It both is and it isn't.

And yes, making the actual health of the patients profitable would be a very good thing

But completely impossible being that health is the default state and is also easily deteriorated by choice. If an individual can save money by being unhealthy, they can usually find a way.

Find out what people should want, and turn that into their own best interest.

How do you do this without further regulation?

The last example is also the reason why you should never want your paramount desire to be that people you hate are destroyed - the "best way" to achieve that might hurt many, many innocent people.

I'm not advocating the destruction or tearing down of anyone. Rather, the implementation of a more fair system that respects that wealth begets wealth and poverty begets poverty and action must be taken to oppose those forces or they will naturally gravitationally tear asunder any society that has not created a way to keep that force in check.

It could be necessary to reconsider a few points if automation really ends up removing most of the jobs, but I am a bit sceptical. It still remains to be seen if "strong AI" becomes possible one day, and there are strong reasons to believe it won't happen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice's_theorem could be Computer Science's Second Law of Thermodynamics, with strong AI being like a perpetuum mobile). Without strong AI, jobs that require human reasoning won't vanish, and having a sufficient number of jobs could end up depending on the quality of education, making sure that the remaining (and by nature very demanding with respect to intelligence) jobs can be done by the people that are there.

This is certainly one big thing that's driving the need to advance economic theory further today. More people needing to find more endeavors upon which they might earn their right to survive whilst at the same time less and less must be accomplished to provide for all needs and wants and yet costs continue to skyrocket and all it goes towards is the profits in the pockets of those who invested into the automation necessary to cut costs by removing more of the expensive human element in bringing something to market. There's probably going to be need for human thought in guiding things forever but a little is going a lot further every year. We, as human laborers are a resource that is growing more and more obsolete and yet the demand for work is enhancing all the time.

 

[dummy1929]

A bunch of things:
first, let me express my continued appreciation for this mod. I just started playing a game again after a long while and made it all the way through to the Information Age; this game is awesome. With this in mind, here are some things I noticed (playing v38.5 on a giant map).

- AI doesn't some things that would seem simple, such as disbanding or upgrading old units (150+ battering rams in industrial era). Another thing is breaking out of pockets or using surrounding and destroy when attacking. (A stack with 150 skirmishers and 200 trebuchets that could have taken down any of my cities was stopped by putting a bunch of bowmen in its path - the AI would not attack them. It seems that each individual battle against the bowmen entrenched in forests and hills would have seem a loss to the AI, even though a few attacks in a row could have easily overpowered them. That is, the AI should be able to sacrifice a few units if it has overwhelming numbers. It knows how to do that when attacking a city, but it seems not to know it when it's pathing to that city or when surrounded. The AI also never seems to use generals in its dooms tacks, although it sends out plenty of generals with only a single unit to protect them. Generals though are some of the most powerful units in the game.)
- Skilled Workers Only immigration seems incredibly powerful with its 100% production bonus from trade routes. Building all the trade buildings increased my capital's production output from 3000/turn to 12000. With 200 cities on the map, there are always enough trading partners (playing on giant map, deity.)
- Mine warfare units are still not implemented. These would be more important if the AI was more aggressive attacking (and succeeding) with massed stacks. But cool anyway.
- Diplomacy trading: it's too easy to trade a useless outdated tech away in exchange for a massive army of siege and police units and ships. This in effect makes it unnecessary for me to seriously put any resources into the military.
- The ability to put cities in the ocean would be awesome! Maybe the ocean floor map and resources could be revealed with the right tech. As long as there are not enough maps for space colonization yet, this would keep the game going in the information/nanotech era.
- Maps for space colonization: eagerly awaited. I know it's technically difficult, but I would love to see a "Test of Time" solution with switching between maps.
- Also, some maps and scripts for starting the game on the Moon, Mars, etc would be a great way to get to play with the new buildings and units.
- Although I played with "Peace among NPCs" and "Raging Barbarians", (but without barbarian civs), barbarians were somehow never a challenge -- no massed raids, no barbarian invasions.
- There seem to be fewer events in my current game, although some quests and key events (such as free power) still trigger.
- I have the dreaded "crime" and "disease" stats under control easily, on a deity level game. This is part due to the negative score they can accumulate over a long time. It would be much more interesting, if the score could not go below 0; this way any excess policing would be lost, and any growth or tech change would create new challenges. A certain persistent low level of crime and disease would add an interesting flavor to the game.

Thank you again for an amazing mod!

 

[raxo2222]

- Maps for space colonization: eagerly awaited. I know it's technically difficult, but I would love to see a "Test of Time" solution with switching between maps.
- Also, some maps and scripts for starting the game on the Moon, Mars, etc would be a great way to get to play with the new buildings and units.

There are some space maps in maps subforum - try Kation's Large Earth Map.
In SVN there are 3 space maps now.
We won't have multimaps in this decade.
As for map scrips generating space maps like those in SVN or in maps subforum we don't have one yet.

Main AI problem with space is that AI never builds NASA and/or its prereqs.

 

[KaTiON_PT]

@dummy1929 thank you for your suggestions/complains!

For your first and third point, I can tell you that this kind of issue is in the .DLL side of things. At the moment there aren't active people with the know how to deal with that.

For your second point, I agree that it's a too powerful a civic. A nerf is probably required but I'm not sure how much it should be.

For.your forth point, a "band-aid" method would be to disable the Advanced Diplomacy option, which is the one that allows you to trade units and such.

For your fifth point, I wonder how hard it would be to do that. The mod is old enough that this idea has probably been thrown around before, so I'm unsure why it never got implemented. We already have the code to allow cities to be built in mountains, so what's keeping it from doing the same with ocean plots?

For your sixth and seventh points, see raxo2222's reply above.

For your eight point, the closest thing we have is the event that triggers one barbarian invasion. I remember getting a Huns invasion once where about a dozen of mounted units attacked. Barbarians do pose a threat if you keep pockets of terra incognita for them to spawn in later eras, as I've seen barbs one or two eras ahead of me.

For your ninth point, probably because their mean time to happen have been increased, as in the past there were complaints of events or missions spamming the player.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The Surround and Destroy option should only be used in multi-player games. There is little or no AI so that the non human players can't use it.

Cities in the oceans has not been implemented because of graphics. There are not any suitable. Existing ones look like they are on the surface. Then there is the problem with horses being able to invade a city from the surface, but I think that bit was fixed.

 

[Yudishtira]

Would it be possible to write a new basic "game", consisting of maps for all possible offworld locations, and with the ability to 'populate' them with 'clones' of C2C units (and cities/bases and improvements)?

Couldn't you then call this "game" like a Python popup, passing it the parameters of the offworld location you wanted to access?

Also, since it's a new module, couldn't you write it in any language you like, rather than being limited to C and Python?

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Speaking of civics, I don't know if I can fully agree with how the immigration civics work. Implying that leaving the borders open or non-existent brings in diseases and crimes, is kind of yikes. Also, aren't the disease and crime mechanics already linked to population count, anyway?

I feel the only things the immigration civics should affect, are nationalism and how other players view yours.

 

[KaTiON_PT]

That's what education does atm. Unless you are suggesting to move the opinion boosts/maluses to Immigration civics?

 

[Yudishtira]

Speaking of civics, I don't know if I can fully agree with how the immigration civics work. Implying that leaving the borders open or non-existent brings in diseases and crimes, is kind of yikes. Also, aren't the disease and crime mechanics already linked to population count, anyway?

I feel the only things the immigration civics should affect, are nationalism and how other players view yours.

It makes sense to me. If you don't screen immigrants, criminals and people with infectious diseases will be able to enter your nation.

General population size is already factored into disease and crime, yes. But it's fair enough that failing to vet immigrants adds a 'hit' on top of that.

As for open borders giving a benefit to relations, I don't have a strong opinion, but it occurs to me that countries often object strongly to their fugitives etc. being able to find safe haven just across a neighbour's border, so perhaps it's swings and roundabouts (an archaic expression that means the positives and negatives cancel each other out).

 

[BackseatTyrant]

That's what education does atm. Unless you are suggesting to move the opinion boosts/maluses to Immigration civics?

Probably. What I mean is that the mechanics should be designed so that civs enforce their borders mainly as a mean to boost army morale and intimidate potential rivals

 

[tmv]

That's where you find the paradox of the universe that makes the universe possible. It both is and it isn't.

Sorry, but if you replace "universe" in that sentence with anything else, you can see that that makes no sense. In the end, you are saying that you are both right and wrong - at the same time.

But completely impossible being that health is the default state and is also easily deteriorated by choice. If an individual can save money by being unhealthy, they can usually find a way.

People spend money to get healthy, if they can. There are so many ways that your ability to live your life is lessened if you are sick that most people would see their health as a very high priority - after all, you cannot eat your money, you cannot drive your money, and burning your money for the heat isn't a good return on your investment, either. Money you don't intend to spend is lost to you, but you can choose how to spend it. There is very little you benefit more from than health.

Then there is the fact that for most time in human history health was anything but the default state. You just get used to certain diseases after a while, and try to get by while still being sick.

Third, you should want to point the desires of the people around you in the same direction where your desires are. The more you do that, the less you need to watch what the others are doing. And while health was not the default state, we might reach a point in the future when diseases are indeed a thing of the past - as long as that doesn't mean that the researchers have to destroy their livelihood with that development. Since that outcome would be the best thing for humanity, we must find a way to make it the best thing for those researchers as well. This isn't even about fairness - this is about making such a future possible in the first place.

How do you do this without further regulation?

Regulation means a third party invades a negotiation and tells both sides what's good for them. A free society can - mostly - avoid that (disregarding the criminal code) by trying to find ways how both sides can benefit. A lot of ways how such agreements could become harmful to one side are already ruled out by the criminal code (see above, especially my reasoning why fraud wouldn't run rampant), which is not regulation simply because it is a negative list (which allows people to be creative, not to mention that a negative list can never forbid as many things as a positive list).

wealth begets wealth and poverty begets poverty and action must be taken to oppose those forces or they will naturally gravitationally tear asunder any society that has not created a way to keep that force in check.

For that to be - literally - true, there would need to be a zero-point where you are naturally pushed away from. Otherwise, wealth could still beget wealth, but poverty is not "an opposing force" but just the absence of wealth. The economy is not a zero-sum-game (especially if you take technological progress into account - that's why this question is a thing: https://waitbutwhy.com/table/1700s-monarch-vs-modern-person), so nobody has to get poorer for someone to get richer (just invent cold fusion, and you will quickly get a few trillion $ while the lack of an energy crisis will, on average, increase the wealth of your fellow humans).

This is certainly one big thing that's driving the need to advance economic theory further today. More people needing to find more endeavors upon which they might earn their right to survive whilst at the same time less and less must be accomplished to provide for all needs and wants and yet costs continue to skyrocket and all it goes towards is the profits in the pockets of those who invested into the automation necessary to cut costs by removing more of the expensive human element in bringing something to market. There's probably going to be need for human thought in guiding things forever but a little is going a lot further every year. We, as human laborers are a resource that is growing more and more obsolete and yet the demand for work is enhancing all the time.

Can we agree that society is an artificial construct? What state of living would anyone have without it? There is certainly something about a "right to survive", but we are earning it from nature by living in a society that we didn't create. We benefit from what our ancestors did, and have a much better life than anyone did a few millennia ago. Compared to the stone age we are the "nobility of time" and compared to people living in the Sahel zone we are the "nobility of place", and we didn't do anything to belong to either group - anymore than a French noble before 1789 or a rich kid of today did to have those parents. You need to blend out a big part of humanity to consider anyone living in the Western world as poor, and it's a bit like a "regular" billionaire pointing to Zuckerberg or Gates and saying that he isn't all that rich. How do you think it would look to someone from a really poor part of the world or perhaps to an English serf from 1300 to see someone from a modern western country calling him-/herself poor?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

You need to blend out a big part of humanity to consider anyone living in the Western world as poor,

There are individuals in the West living below the UN poverty line. A value that is set based on the world not a country. The poverty line in any country is based on the richness of that country.

As an example of the disparity of what poor means, take me. I am a pensioner in Australia. My income puts me in the bottom 20% of Australians, but I am by no means poor. If I wanted to I could afford a trip to Europe every three years for 3-6 months! I have friends who do so, every year, Europe or US/Canada for 3-4 months at a time. (It is cheaper for two to travel together than it is for one alone. Most places charge for two even when there is only one.)

Having said that there are people in the lowest 10% of Australians by income who are living below the UN poverty line.

 

[Yudishtira]

You need to blend out a big part of humanity to consider anyone living in the Western world as poor, and it's a bit like a "regular" billionaire pointing to Zuckerberg or Gates and saying that he isn't all that rich. How do you think it would look to someone from a really poor part of the world or perhaps to an English serf from 1300 to see someone from a modern western country calling him-/herself poor?

The minarchists (as you call them) in the US have this hidden message: "government exists to look after us (the upper middle) - all others can die slowly provided they keep maintaining our standard of living".

When you say something like this, it makes me wonder whether 'minarchy' is the same over there. Are you saying that we are not allowed to call inequity a problem until the historical and global depths of poverty have been plumbed? I hope not, but then where are you going with this?