Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[alberts8]

They do build the improvement with a worker when the only change is that the worker is not used up. So as I mentioned with the work boat improvements it is the "using up" of the unit that is making the cost of the improvement to high.

I understand what you mean but i just can't find anything in the code confirming it. There must be something else causing this, whatever it is.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

OK. I just had not had my coffee so thought I was not being clear.

 

[Thunderbrd]

hmm... ok, no easy solutions then... Sounds like it will take some much deeper evaluations to figure out.

 

[MacCoise]

Very disappointing AI expansion on latest SVN game.

3 is the maximum (I have 6) and many haven't expnaded at all despite having space

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@TB How about this for the entertainer units? Once they have reached their "fortify limit" they have a chance of building one of the dance or story buildings. This chance increases until they succeed but the higher the change the lower the chance they get exp for doing it. When they succeed, if there are any dance or story buildings available to be built the player gets a pop-up asking which one to build. The AI uses its usual build decision routines to choose but the cost is 0.

With that I would make the story buildings able to be built only by the entertainer line and the subdued animal.

The stories buildings are pseudo wonders so I think leaving them as able to be built normally is OK.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@TB How about this for the entertainer units? Once they have reached their "fortify limit" they have a chance of building one of the dance or story buildings. This chance increases until they succeed but the higher the change the lower the chance they get exp for doing it. When they succeed, if there are any dance or story buildings available to be built the player gets a pop-up asking which one to build. The AI uses its usual build decision routines to choose but the cost is 0.

With that I would make the story buildings able to be built only by the entertainer line and the subdued animal.

The stories buildings are pseudo wonders so I think leaving them as able to be built normally is OK.

I get the concept is to reduce some of the micromanagement there.

There's a few issues and conflicts in this approach though.

• The buildup promotions are rather OP at first and thus will need to be staged out with tech access points for each increasing level, thereby limiting them to only be able to get so far with buildups depending on the era they are in. (Establishing these tech limits is still on my immediate to-do list.)
  
  
• I was really wanting to implement a new Entertainment property so as to split the focus for Entertainers between specialization in Education and specialization in Entertainment. In many cases, the buildings you're referring to are divided between these or a hybrid of both as well so I'm not sure how we would sort those out between the two or what.
  
  
• I do still plan to implement the Ideas project which will give us tracking as to the percentage of the city that has been taught or adopted a song, dance, story, language, religion, culture, or whatever else we want to include as an Idea. Autobuildings can be spawned based on these percentages. I was thinking that storyteller units would be able to enact a 'learn' mission which can undermine their other educational and entertaining roles BUT allow them to pick up knowledge of the stories, songs, dances and so on in one city (measured in % of mastery since units will be able to track their % adoption of an idea as well) then after a time, be taken to another city to purposefully spread ideas they've been exposed to in another with a 'teach idea' mission that allows them to gradually enhance the % of their carried ideas in the new city they are stationed in. Once the % of the idea has gone over a degree defined by the building itself, the building representing the idea is automatically added (or removed if the idea % has decreased below the established threshold) to the city... I suppose it's kinda like the property mechanism but it's more a contained within the confines of 0-100% structure and without much of the mathematical processes that take place in the properties.
  
  
• Of course, this means that Entertainer line units would slowly gain XP over time doing anything they generally do and would have promos that would help them further specialize their function. And this will take some AI work - not terribly difficult AI work but as roles differentiate the easiest way to help the AI understand this is to teach them to build a unit to fill that specific role and then guide the unit in fulfilling it directly.

Ultimately, my point is that while I haven't been able to find the priority to put the ideas project into focus yet, whatever we do in the meantime should be a patch until then so keeping it fairly simple at the moment is probably best.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I get the concept is to reduce some of the micromanagement there.

Not really. You still have to make the decisions and you will still be able to use the entertainer line unit to build those buildings that you need in a hurry.

I have no problem with having two lines for the entertainer units. In fact we do have two promotion lines for the entertainers one is just in its preliminary stages. The current Entertain City mission can give the entertainer a promotion making it better at that mission later. It is used in cities in anarchy through conquest or revolution. It is a one use mission like the spy missions. If they succeed they may get some exp/promotion and they always go back home for a rest. If they fail they die in the riot.

We would need some way to identify which building belongs to which category. Currently the list is just from their build list. I would assume if the building provides education it was an education building otherwise it is an entertainment building.

How it actually works with the promotions need to be worked out. Maybe they just have a probability per turn based on their current promotions and they get exp if they succeed.

I do not like the idea of an entertainment property at the moment. Or at least as it has been explained so far. We have happiness and it is difficult to get unhappiness in a city. We also have Cultureculture which could also be used instead. It is in a big need of enhancement.

edit The reason I have been going on about criminals and police buildings etc, is because I am looking at the WLBO (White Lies, Black Ops) mod and trying to fit it's ideas in with C2C. I have a couple of questions to start discussion

1) Why are the barbarians acting like a nation? Why aren't they building criminal units and the like to harass players?

2) Why are the crimes not causing barbarian criminal units to spawn in your city rather than just reducing income? It is easy enough to have units spawn every x turns when building y is in the city. We do in with King Richard's Crusade.

3) why don't crime fighting units have a chance to expel or kill any criminals (including your own) in the city? I suggest a mechanism similar to the one I suggested for the entertainer line of units.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The Entertainment property is something I've been considering in hopes of making happiness a more challenging affair. Many times culture producing buildings get overlooked because they also present happiness which is not something the player is well challenged to obtain. But if Entertainment works much like Education where the people demand an increasing degree based on their growing population, unhappiness from negative Entertainment would be a huge potential problem to keep at bay. There's quite a bit that could be done here, including making it more likely that people will get upset when they get accustomed to a particular lifestyle and they start feeling it slipping away.

I'll discuss the criminal stuff in a bit here - I'm about to go out.

BTW, did we ever sort out how to get the actual Entertainer unit to act more like storytellers and bards by gaining access to promos?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

No great person gets promotions, nor should they.

Or do you mean the entertainer unit? I am am having no problems with it. It goes Story Teller -> Bard -> Entertainer -> Celebrity. They are getting exp and promos from buildings when built. They only have one mission which is "Entertain City" that they can get exp from. Building stuff with them uses them up. That is what the tag is about. Basically you are settling the story teller line unit as a building.

 

[Thunderbrd]

No great person gets promotions, nor should they.

Or do you mean the entertainer unit? I am am having no problems with it. It goes Story Teller -> Bard -> Entertainer -> Celebrity. They are getting exp and promos from buildings when built. They only have one mission which is "Entertain City" that they can get exp from. Building stuff with them uses them up. That is what the tag is about. Basically you are settling the story teller line unit as a building.

1) I meant the Entertainer Unit - it was my understanding that they were a blank spot in the upgrade chain for being able to get xp and promos but if I'm wrong that's good - just one less thing on the list of things to worry about.

2) I'm in agreement with No Great People get strength nor promos (though I think with what we did with the Master Hunter line we've only scratched the surface regarding upgrades into powerful units that can - this is really quite a cool idea and there's MUCH more that can be done along those lines since we're basically developing standard unit lines that operate like standard types of what those great people we have represent.)

3) I should probably make it possible for some buildups to give +.01 xp per round, primarily for the property control ones.

4) I'll have to take a look at how the current entertain city mission works to review that for clarity for myself.

5) The buildings - the way they work suits the AI right now and is probably what we need to keep for a while but once the Ideas project is complete I think we can improve on it to really help with the concept of these units being able to maintain ongoing xp/promotions and development.

1) Why are the barbarians acting like a nation? Why aren't they building criminal units and the like to harass players?

They've not been told to yet. Probably wouldn't be too terribly difficult to GET them to. It makes sense. It might be easiest to make an autobuilding that all barbarian cities get that reflects the tech level of the barbarians that operates as your next suggestion. They don't get crime levels - no barb cities have any property tracking for numerous reasons. And it would take some interesting hard-coding to teach them to build the units, and build the buildings that enable them - this kind of concern is beyond the simplicity of the standard barbarian AI. I'm not sure if we can already specify an autobuilding specifically for barbarian cities already but its worth taking a look at from that angle and if we must build out the ability to generically specify barbarian cities for autobuildings then it could have further applications beyond just this.

2) Why are the crimes not causing barbarian criminal units to spawn in your city rather than just reducing income? It is easy enough to have units spawn every x turns when building y is in the city. We do in with King Richard's Crusade.

That's a fantastic idea I think! Absolutely fantastic! Sounds like a new line of crime autobuildings should be developed that specify faster and faster spawn rates and replace each other as the crimes deepen. Culture of Crime I through X... I really like this concept! (Only problem is we need to differentiate the mechanism from the Biodome and King Richard's Crusade in what player to assign ownership to the new spawned unit while still assigning to the new unit the amount of XP that the city would normally give such a unit.)

3) why don't crime fighting units have a chance to expel or kill any criminals (including your own) in the city? I suggest a mechanism similar to the one I suggested for the entertainer line of units.

Purely because there's been a shtload of stuff to do before I can get to this! lol

 

[Harrier]

2) Why are the crimes not causing barbarian criminal units to spawn in your city rather than just reducing income? It is easy enough to have units spawn every x turns when building y is in the city. We do in with King Richard's Crusade.

That's a fantastic idea I think! Sounds like a new line of crime autobuildings should be developed that specify faster and faster spawn rates and replace each other as the crimes deepen. Culture of Crime I through X... I really like this concept!

I like the idea - but: Please do not spawn to many new criminal units. More units mean more memory usage.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The barbs do spawn Rogues and sometimes ambushers (but those seem to be more rare). And if the barbs are still around by the time assassins are available I've encountered a couple of them. But I don't ever see any thieves.

Some players on Eternity gamespeed keep reporting gatherers not being used or the AI expanding (McCoise in particular). But I can say that that is not the case on Marathon.

I started my current game from SVN 8141 and it is updated to 8195 as of yesterday. Fully 1/3 of my empire is captured barb cities (currently have 35 cities on Huge PM map). During the early game not much interaction with barbs, but between tribalism and Sed Life the barbs started showing up in mass. By mid ancient when i heard ~7-10 cities I started finding barb cities and barb SoD started finding me. 1st it was 10-11 archers with 20 dogs and one stack had 52 rams with only 2 axe. I had just gotten Horsemen and elephant riders and was building them as fast as I could. I lost 2 cities (that I later took back) before I got a sizable force of mounted units and archers together to start pushing back.

It's 500BC I have 35 cities and I'm still finding and eradicating barbs cities. But by now I've met 10 of the AI too and they have sucked up barb cities I couldn't get to.

I normally don't play marathon as before there were time I'd almost run out of things to build or I should add could "afford" to build. I switched to Mercenary Civic to get better XP for my Mil and I'm down to 70% research to run about 50 Gold/turn. If I up it to 75% I lose 107+/turn. I've had TD kick in several times now especially when I dropped to 60% research and 5% Esp.

The next biggest AI Empire is 28 cities and the lowest the List displays sits at 9 cities. But I don't know if that is accurate. 5 of the AI have 20 or more cities and there rest range down from there to the 9 city empire (Ragnar of the Vikings).

This has been one of my better (more entertaining and fun) games in a while.

But back to the AI not expanding, I really believe it's game speed related.

JosEPh

 

[Faustmouse]

They've not been told to yet. Probably wouldn't be too terribly difficult to GET them to. It makes sense. It might be easiest to make an autobuilding that all barbarian cities get that reflects the tech level of the barbarians that operates as your next suggestion. They don't get crime levels - no barb cities have any property tracking for numerous reasons. And it would take some interesting hard-coding to teach them to build the units, and build the buildings that enable them - this kind of concern is beyond the simplicity of the standard barbarian AI. I'm not sure if we can already specify an autobuilding specifically for barbarian cities already but its worth taking a look at from that angle and if we must build out the ability to generically specify barbarian cities for autobuildings then it could have further applications beyond just this.

It should be possible. Autobuildings obey the same buildings requirements then normal buildings. I think there is a Culture (Barbarian) in game right now, which could be one of the prereqs for them, so the player can't get them.
If not, then I think Barbarian cities don't have any culture. So we could use the "not" tag to make the Autobuilding only buildable if none of the others (European, South American...) cultures is around. It shouldn't be too hard actually.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The only reason that the Biodome and King Richard's Crusade don't give exp from the city to the unit is because of a 0 where a 1 could be.

The code for both is in python and so would be the code for generating the barbarian criminal. Just create it for the player with the exp and then reassign it to the barbarian nation. Should work.

Although this is where the "Bad Boys" mod may be more useful and instead of adding criminal units we could add criminal specialists.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Can we allow the units spawned from KR's Crusade to also gain XP then? That's always been really annoying it doesn't get the city's training xp!

How are we going to work the spawning odds? Are we talking static or random? I'd imagine it would get to be more often this takes place the more crime is out of control... I presume you've got methods in mind for handling all of that?

 

[Faustmouse]

I remember that KR's Crusade used to give XP to units based on the city, so I'm pretty sure it's possible.

An easy way to adjust spawn rates were different spawnrates for some crimes. So crime X, that requires x crime, will spwan a unit ever 5 turns. Crime y, that requires y crime spawns one every 3 turns.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

OK, I have looked at the code for both Biodome and KRC and I think they could be merged a bit. One adjusts for game speed but it is currently hard coded so it would be nice to change that a bit. The other is a bit cleaner but doesn't adjust for game speed. I think I need a new module for all spawns of this type.

Giving city exp to the unit is trivial, as I said it is just changing a 0 to a 1.

With the crimes I was just thinking that the unit would spawn when the crime was built, every time. If it was a specialist then a new would be created every time the crime is built. Both of these would require a way to get rid of the specialist or unit before I would build it. Also there is the Great Wall problem for units.

 

[Faustmouse]

If you are going for the specialist, then you could simply add a new criminal specialist, only assigned by crime buildings. For the great wall problem...

- We could give the Wonder a completely different effect

- If possible, the wonder only denies access for units outside your boarders, not kicking those inside out. Animals can't enter your boarders, but if culture expands on top of them, they will stay inside it.

- Your could assign the units to the next civilization in line. Criminals spanwed from player 1 are controlled by player 2, those for player two are controlled by player three...

- We could add a new civilization, a clone of barbarians so to say, that handles all criminals. I think you discussed a civ for animals, or even for predators and prey, earlier.

- Maybe instead the great wall should give a bonus against barbarians instead of kicking them out?

 

[DocBuchanan]

I had some thoughts regarding a fun and realistic way to implement criminal units. I play C2C far less often than the rest of you, so apologize if some of these things are implemented.

1. Spawn criminal units randomly in one of the cities workable tiles. Maybe set this so they spawn in the tile that produces the most crime (or gold). Take into account the terrain, improvements, and culture of the tile when determining what unit to spawn. For example, a hill that was mostly Scottish would likely spawn highlander bandits

2. Indeed it may be a good idea to implement this as a civ, with the same goal of founding it's own cities, etc. But instead of making it one global civ, integrate it with the barbarian civ mod, or use CivRev for inspiration.

2.1 Perhaps lower crime level units would only pillage and such, but as crime level increased the stakes would get higher. For example, at higher crime levels emigration could be simulated by dropping the city size by 1 and spawning a criminal settler and high quality defense unit or two, who then beeline for the nearest and best spot to build a new city.

3. I think someone mentioned this, but units would spawn when the crime level changes and a new crime building is constructed. This would eliminate over spawning and I don't know much about coding, but it's probably easier to code and easier on resources than setting a spawn rate.

4. Implement different AI's for different units, giving them unique goals. Simpler earlier units would simply pillage and hide. Higher level units would become more aggressive, and if conditions were right units would spawn in the manner I mentioned in #2, with the intent to break away.

5. Implement a number of different criminal units based on era, culture group, and crime level. It would allow for more difficulty and awesome flavor. I see 20's USA having a problem with the mob, and 14th century Japan having a problem with Ronin.

5.1 Perhaps when cultures in a city compete, there would be a chance that a unit from either of the culture types would spawn.

6. Vary the size and quality of criminal units as well as the type. Makes for more flavor and less coding? On a side note this could be done for barbarians and animals too. Think a Memory (herd) of elephants vs elephant (group size), pack alpha vs wolf (quality). For criminals think merry band vs. criminal organization (group), ruffian thieves vs. triad syndicate (quality). I don't know much about AI and overhead, but I feel like if animals, barbs and criminals combined into larger groups and used quality promotions, it might actually reduce overhead by lowering the amount of units required to move on their turns.

7. Adjustments to crime fighting promotions? Available to more unit types at earlier tech levels.

8. There are buildings that increase the visibility range of a city, but maybe add the ability to see invisible units within a certain radius for some buildings. Additionally, consider allowing certain defensive improvements (like the watch tower) to be built on top of other tile improvements. Their visibility range could be reduced, but they could help to reduce crime in the tile.

9. Great Criminals and Great Lawmen (Al Capone / Wyatt Earp)

10. Implement a system that allows civs to use gold to pay off these criminal units and then employ them similarly to privateers. Make them employable for a certain amount of turns, after which they go back up for hire at a steeper price. This would introduce a mercenary element to the game (something prevalent in history but missing from every civ).

11. Replace the pillage system. Make it more like the espionage system. Make new missions for criminal units and other harassers like the rogue. These missions would allow units to syphon off other yields from the tile they're on. They could hijack a train to steal production, raid estates to steal culture, commit highway robbery to steal wealth or interdict trade, observe movements to increase espionage or raid supply convoys to deny a resource. They could steal these resources and send them to their nearest city, gaining experience and working towards a great person.

12. Make new types of law enforcement units and increase their prevalence outside the city walls. They would have counter-missions to the ones I mentioned above, as well as a few unique ones. They could protect a trade route (increase trade income), guard a mining operation (increase wealth or production), run checkpoints (counterespionage), or interdict immigration (cultural influence). In a city these same units could fight specific types of crime (violent crime, drugs, maybe even truancy). In addition to reducing the overall crime level, each mission would have a unique positive effect. For example fighting violent crime would increase happiness, fighting drug crime would reduce disease or increase health, enforcing truancy laws would increase education, and investigating white collar crime would increase culture.

11 and 12 would be incredibly cool, allowing the player a greater deal of customization over their cities and important tiles. It also creates a sort of cold war effect, allowing two civs to exchange blows for years without ever being at war. And of course, the same system would also allow the implementation of a fun and unique crime system. Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Thunderbrd]

OK, I have looked at the code for both Biodome and KRC and I think they could be merged a bit. One adjusts for game speed but it is currently hard coded so it would be nice to change that a bit. The other is a bit cleaner but doesn't adjust for game speed. I think I need a new module for all spawns of this type.

Giving city exp to the unit is trivial, as I said it is just changing a 0 to a 1.

With the crimes I was just thinking that the unit would spawn when the crime was built, every time. If it was a specialist then a new would be created every time the crime is built. Both of these would require a way to get rid of the specialist or unit before I would build it. Also there is the Great Wall problem for units.

Since crime rates can fluctuate, perhaps it's best if we have 10 unique crime buildings specifically for spawning criminal units and give each one an increasing rate. Something like 1% per round for each level perhaps? Then what would spawn would be the strongest criminal type the city could build if it chose to. Certainly becomes more of a problem when you've built the buildings that have enabled criminal units in the city so perhaps it should ignore building prerequisites somehow.

If you are going for the specialist, then you could simply add a new criminal specialist, only assigned by crime buildings. For the great wall problem...

- We could give the Wonder a completely different effect

- If possible, the wonder only denies access for units outside your boarders, not kicking those inside out. Animals can't enter your boarders, but if culture expands on top of them, they will stay inside it.

- Your could assign the units to the next civilization in line. Criminals spanwed from player 1 are controlled by player 2, those for player two are controlled by player three...

- We could add a new civilization, a clone of barbarians so to say, that handles all criminals. I think you discussed a civ for animals, or even for predators and prey, earlier.

- Maybe instead the great wall should give a bonus against barbarians instead of kicking them out?

I thought about the Great Wall too earlier today. We do need something to change there. I like the idea of keeping them from entering but not hindering them if they're already inside.

Specialists? meh... imo it'd be cooler and more functional if it were a unit. So these are MY two tasks - fix the great wall to only bar entry and sort out the anti-criminal process for crime fighters.

I had some thoughts regarding a fun and realistic way to implement criminal units. I play C2C far less often than the rest of you, so apologize if some of these things are implemented.

1. Spawn criminal units randomly in one of the cities workable tiles. Maybe set this so they spawn in the tile that produces the most crime (or gold). Take into account the terrain, improvements, and culture of the tile when determining what unit to spawn. For example, a hill that was mostly Scottish would likely spawn highlander bandits

2. Indeed it may be a good idea to implement this as a civ, with the same goal of founding it's own cities, etc. But instead of making it one global civ, integrate it with the barbarian civ mod, or use CivRev for inspiration.

2.1 Perhaps lower crime level units would only pillage and such, but as crime level increased the stakes would get higher. For example, at higher crime levels emigration could be simulated by dropping the city size by 1 and spawning a criminal settler and high quality defense unit or two, who then beeline for the nearest and best spot to build a new city.

3. I think someone mentioned this, but units would spawn when the crime level changes and a new crime building is constructed. This would eliminate over spawning and I don't know much about coding, but it's probably easier to code and easier on resources than setting a spawn rate.

4. Implement different AI's for different units, giving them unique goals. Simpler earlier units would simply pillage and hide. Higher level units would become more aggressive, and if conditions were right units would spawn in the manner I mentioned in #2, with the intent to break away.

5. Implement a number of different criminal units based on era, culture group, and crime level. It would allow for more difficulty and awesome flavor. I see 20's USA having a problem with the mob, and 14th century Japan having a problem with Ronin.

5.1 Perhaps when cultures in a city compete, there would be a chance that a unit from either of the culture types would spawn.

6. Vary the size and quality of criminal units as well as the type. Makes for more flavor and less coding? On a side note this could be done for barbarians and animals too. Think a Memory (herd) of elephants vs elephant (group size), pack alpha vs wolf (quality). For criminals think merry band vs. criminal organization (group), ruffian thieves vs. triad syndicate (quality). I don't know much about AI and overhead, but I feel like if animals, barbs and criminals combined into larger groups and used quality promotions, it might actually reduce overhead by lowering the amount of units required to move on their turns.

7. Adjustments to crime fighting promotions? Available to more unit types at earlier tech levels.

8. There are buildings that increase the visibility range of a city, but maybe add the ability to see invisible units within a certain radius for some buildings. Additionally, consider allowing certain defensive improvements (like the watch tower) to be built on top of other tile improvements. Their visibility range could be reduced, but they could help to reduce crime in the tile.

9. Great Criminals and Great Lawmen (Al Capone / Wyatt Earp)

10. Implement a system that allows civs to use gold to pay off these criminal units and then employ them similarly to privateers. Make them employable for a certain amount of turns, after which they go back up for hire at a steeper price. This would introduce a mercenary element to the game (something prevalent in history but missing from every civ).

11. Replace the pillage system. Make it more like the espionage system. Make new missions for criminal units and other harassers like the rogue. These missions would allow units to syphon off other yields from the tile they're on. They could hijack a train to steal production, raid estates to steal culture, commit highway robbery to steal wealth or interdict trade, observe movements to increase espionage or raid supply convoys to deny a resource. They could steal these resources and send them to their nearest city, gaining experience and working towards a great person.

12. Make new types of law enforcement units and increase their prevalence outside the city walls. They would have counter-missions to the ones I mentioned above, as well as a few unique ones. They could protect a trade route (increase trade income), guard a mining operation (increase wealth or production), run checkpoints (counterespionage), or interdict immigration (cultural influence). In a city these same units could fight specific types of crime (violent crime, drugs, maybe even truancy). In addition to reducing the overall crime level, each mission would have a unique positive effect. For example fighting violent crime would increase happiness, fighting drug crime would reduce disease or increase health, enforcing truancy laws would increase education, and investigating white collar crime would increase culture.

11 and 12 would be incredibly cool, allowing the player a greater deal of customization over their cities and important tiles. It also creates a sort of cold war effect, allowing two civs to exchange blows for years without ever being at war. And of course, the same system would also allow the implementation of a fun and unique crime system. Let me know what you guys think.

A lot of those are great ideas, many of which we'll be morphing the system to eventually include consideration of. Great Criminals are planned. Criminal Organizations are planned. Lots of stuff. Just nothing can be done overnight here.