City Development

[Ahriman]

people are asking for the GPP generation to be higher in order to put down more great person tiles? Long term investment for long term gain vs short term investment for short term gains essentially?

Yes. Reduce the resource yields from specialists.
Reduce the specialist slots (which I think Thal has done in the latest patch).
Increase the gpp yield.

This isn't a "counter argument to specialist economy", it is an argument that a specialist economy should be different to a tile-yield economy.

 

[Ahriman]

Not sure quite where this belongs:
One of the things about the zone-based resource allocation system, at least with the continents mapscript, is that in almost every game I find that nearly every oil resource is an ocean-based one, and so is not available until Refrigeration.

This really messes up the late-game.

My understanding is that this is happening because oil only shows up on desert, tundra or coast, and that each zone is guaranteed X oil, so if the zone doesn't have desert or tundra, it ends up on coast. This means that it is inaccessible until Refrigeration tech, even from city states.

I wonder if it is possible to tweak this? I think it is very bad for gameplay for nearly all of the oil to be offshore. It means that oil comes very late in the game (so you can't just beeline for combustion), it means that tanks and battleships aren't seen much, and it means that it is too easy to mess up the AI's resource access for these units by using hit and run destroyers to pillage offshore rigs.

Also, from a realism perspective, the first commercial oil developments were in western Pennsylvania (grassland biome) and then in Texas (arguably plains). There is also considerable oil in Canada and Mexico (arguably plains), in Kazakstan and Azerbaijan (plains), in Nigeria (grassland), in Malaysia, etc.
Oil isn't just in Alaska, Arabia and coastal zones.

So, for both gameplay and realism, is it possible to tweak the distribution somehow so that some oil can show up on grassland or plains tiles? Even only 1 oil-resource tiles would be fine, but it would be nice if it were possible to get 1-3 oil without needing a big patch of terrible terrain or waiting for offshore rigs.

 

[Txurce]

I've had the same results for a while now. It's definitely limited my use of tanks.

 

[Ahriman]

I've had the same results for a while now. It's definitely limited my use of tanks.

Do you agree that shifting some minor oil deposits to grassland or plains would be good for the game?

 

[Txurce]

Do you agree that shifting some minor oil deposits to grassland or plains would be good for the game?

Yeah - sorry for not being more explicit. I agreed with the whole post, actually.

 

[Atlas627]

Oil is found in desert and tundra because it is easy to collect. Humans don't already live on top of it, so we can evict everybody and build a bunch of oil wells.

Oil exists in plenty of places around the world. There can certainly be oil in grasslands or plains.

Also, from a gameplay perspective, I agree. I agree with the above posts.

 

[Ahriman]

As a species, "we" evict people living above oil wells too (and most people are very happy if they find oil on their property, because it makes them rich). About the only places we don't go for oil are in a handful of ecologically sensitive areas.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'll simply move the unlock of the offshore oil platform to Biology. We're always looking for ways to increase the importance of coastlines, after all!

 

[Txurce]

Works for me. There's no perfect solution, but that one accomplishes a couple of our aims.

 

[Ahriman]

I'll just move the unlock of the offshore oil platform to Biology. We're always looking for ways to increase the importance of coastlines, after all!

I dislike this as a solution. It still fails the logical/realism test - it feels bizarre for most oil to come from offshore.

It also fails the "easy to pillage AI oil" problem.

 

[Txurce]

While I agree that oil can be found in a lot of places, including the center of Los Angeles, I think the preponderance comes from desert, Arctic regions, and the ocean. That seems to fit the present VEM layout.

I'm not sure what you mean about failing the "easy to pillage AI oil problem."

 

[Thalassicus]

From a gameplay perspective I like oil in harder-to-reach places: desert, tundra, and oceans. It's a challenging to acquire, but important, resource. I might be able to somehow make oil rigs unpillagable.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the preponderance comes from desert, Arctic regions, and the ocean

This is not true, particularly in the sense of all the oil there has ever been. [Oil extraction today has a selection bias towards offshore, because the easy oil is already gone.]

Yes, there is a lot of oil in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the other gulf states. But not in any other desert areas. I think people are generalizing too much from Arabia; most deserts have no oil.

But there is also a lot of oil in the continental US, Mexico, Nigeria, the Caucasus, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, which are not in desert zones.

Very little oil comes from arctic areas.

I'm not sure what you mean about failing the "easy to pillage AI oil problem."

I mean: it is very easy to use a destroyer to run into AI territory, pillage an offshore rig improvement, then run out again, without taking any damage, thus removing AI oil access when you are at war and sending their tanks into resource penalty.
The AI doesn't defend naval resources.

It is much harder to do this with a land-based oil resource.

 

[Txurce]

I mean: it is very easy to use a destroyer to run into AI territory, pillage an offshore rig improvement, then run out again, without taking any damage, thus removing AI oil access when you are at war and sending their tanks into resource penalty.
The AI doesn't defend naval resources.

It is much harder to do this with a land-based oil resource.

Very true. Let's see what Thal can do.

Now that I'm focusing on it... is the AI as likely to build platforms as much as it does derricks?

 

[Sneaks]

See, I don't really like the pillage reasoning, because I can replace Destroyer with any higher movement unit and oil with any resource at all and we have the same problem.

 

[Ahriman]

See, I don't really like the pillage reasoning, because I can replace Destroyer with any higher movement unit and oil with any resource at all and we have the same problem.

No we don't. For land resources, there are ZoC issues that make it much harder to run a unit into enemy territory to get to a resource, and even harder to get it out again alive.

Also, land units have much lower movement than destroyers (maximum of 4 or 5), and on land there is rough terrain, so you could only do this to a resource a couple of tiles away. Whereas destroyer movement can end up being much higher (7-11) so it is easy to approach the enemy in open ocean, move in pillage, move out again, and the AI won't respond.

The AI is also better at attacking your units on land than it is on sea.

 

[Sneaks]

No we don't. For land resources, there are ZoC issues that make it much harder to run a unit into enemy territory to get to a resource, and even harder to get it out again alive.

Also, land units have much lower movement than destroyers (maximum of 4 or 5), and on land there is rough terrain, so you could only do this to a resource a couple of tiles away. Whereas destroyer movement can end up being much higher (7-11) so it is easy to approach the enemy in open ocean, move in pillage, move out again, and the AI won't respond.

The AI is also better at attacking your units on land than it is on sea.

I agree that it is less extremely and blatantly easy to pillage AI resources on land, and is only really easy. The only smart way to program around this is to have the AI keeping troops on resources when in defensive posture, or rely on the fact that AI civilian priority #1 is repair so resources won't be down long. As per the issue of sea resources favoring the player, I will look into the AI tables to see if there is a separate instance for sea pillaging and if it cannot be boosted for the sake of the AI.

 

[Ahriman]

and is only really easy

I'm not sure that it is really easy to pillage non-frontline resources on land without risking losing your unit, particularly if they're in the middle of a continent surrounded by cities, or they're in tundra areas (with lots of rough terrain) or desert areas (with slow movement).

The only smart way to program around this is to have the AI keeping troops on resources when in defensive posture

This is blunt, but is likely to be effective. It could also work on naval resources. The AI can at least fire back when you're in direct range without it moving.

or rely on the fact that AI civilian priority #1 is repair so resources won't be down long

I have had games where every turn the AI built/bought a workboat, used it to build an oil rig, and then every turn I moved in, pillaged, moved away again.
The AI does seem better about repairing land improvements than it was on vanilla day 1 release.

As per the issue of sea resources favoring the player, I will look into the AI tables to see if there is a separate instance for sea pillaging and if it cannot be boosted for the sake of the AI.

This still wouldn't fix the issue, because they AI doesn't understand hit and run. Even if it really tries to pillage your naval stuff, it wouldn't get out of the way again.
The Naval AI is just weak all round; it doesn't look for enemies in a big enough area, and it doesn't use its naval units to support its land units very well, and it doesn't know how to use naval units to harass.

 

[Sneaks]

The solution I would love to implement would simply be changing Work Boats to naval workers. Let them build sea resources over the course of X turns and repair them.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't think naval workers are a good solution when there are so few naval improvements to build. In many games I will have ~4 naval improvements, total.