Goods Simplification Proposal

[Ramstormp]

How effective was the standard collection of lumber, though? If you can get plenty of lumber via the city-screen then why would you need so much more.

My low effort googling seems to imply that exporting lumber was a major reason for establishing James Town: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lumber_industry_in_the_United_States

I'm not suggesting logging being a huge sustainable industry comparable with plantation cotton or processed cloth, but an early game decision point.
More generally though, I know that Lots of towns and settlements in my area (Australia, not America) were first founded for logging reasons, and that isn't supported by the current game design. It annoys me that gold rushes aren't really supported either. Or they weren't (I haven't played much of the recent versions of WtP).

And as I bang on about all the time, it incentivises expansion and interacting with the map. It's a good thing imo if you take note of the forests while exploring so you can factor that into later 'exploitation'.


Edit: regarding the AI, I assume it is easier to program the AI to apportion its lumber among cities after it gets a lot from chopping than to program it to decide in a long-term strategic manner whether it should chop them now, later or never, and for what reasons.
I have no idea whether the AI supports big chops currently.

Sweet woode! Some fun quotes in there too.

So, what would be a reasonable amount per chop and at what sell price? Adding a zero per chop was the quickest way to change it in Civ4BuildInfos.xml, and also gave me a nice, drastic overview of what might happen. I have a feeling human players will take advantage of it more than the AI at that rate. I didn't play much myself. The AI was still using 2 lumberjacks with lodges per city. The AI also is being overly cautious about sending out pioneers... at least as of the non-development version. Also, the AI already magically redistributes a certain amount of all its goods among its settlements... I think.

There may be a question of how long it should take to clear the forest and if it should cost something; and maybe there should be two different types of forest removal... The other being a quick slash and burn method which could provide boosts to the soil.

 

[Brosso B.]

Sweet woode! Some fun quotes in there too.

We have the goodliest tall trees, don't we folks. Your meddowes will be so faire you'll be saying "Please, please mister president, we can't take it anymore, enough with the sweet woode!" But we're going to have a big, beautiful faire meddowe, all along the southern border. Believe me.

So, what would be a reasonable amount per chop and at what sell price? Adding a zero per chop was the quickest way to change it in Civ4BuildInfos.xml, and also gave me a nice, drastic overview of what might happen. I have a feeling human players will take advantage of it more than the AI at that rate. I didn't play much myself. The AI was still using 2 lumberjacks with lodges per city. The AI also is being overly cautious about sending out pioneers... at least as of the non-development version. Also, the AI already magically redistributes a certain amount of all its goods among its settlements... I think.

There may be a question of how long it should take to clear the forest and if it should cost something; and maybe there should be two different types of forest removal... The other being a quick slash and burn method which could provide boosts to the soil.

I don't remember what the prices are like and the system may have since changed. It all depends on how many hammers buildings cost, what are the standard prices for other things etc. In unmodded CivCol it's about 5 for cotton, 10 for cloth. I'd say lumber 4/6 buy sell, and maybe you get like 200 for a chop. Probably more though, 800g for a chop doesn't seem like a big incentive.

Back when I played the AI generally chopped all forests unless it had a lumber bonus on it. Then it would spend 500+ coins on a lumber camp, and the bugged (or just really badly designed) event would trigger EVERY SINGLE TIME "kids were playing in the forest and burnt the whole thing down", which would remove the forest and really penalise the AI.
From memory the AI would never even replace that lumber camp so it became a dead tile.

I agree it should take a while to chop, and a slash and burn option could get you a bit of lumber but open the tile up much faster, in case you really want the resource underneath. The boost to soil sounds too fiddly to me.

 

[OzzyKP]

Looks like the reduced complexity fork is popular. Might be time to get bolder with my simplification proposal.

My Redesign Goals:

1. Reduce overall number of goods so they can fit on two rows instead of three
2. Reduce number of buildings/professions
3. Combine parallel goods
4. Simplify vertical supply chains
5. Remove or modify goods that only have one use
6. Add more uses for some goods
7. Connect different supply chains for high value goods instead of just adding more steps to a vertical supply chain silo
8. Add goods that can only be purchased overseas to enhance triangle trade and balance out excess gold supplies

Spoiler Explanations :

1. Reduce overall number of goods so they can fit on two rows instead of three
2. Reduce number of buildings/professions

I think a lot of complaints about complexity is that there are just so many goods, so many professions to keep track of. Sometimes less is more. Especially for new players it is a bit overwhelming to that grid of 99 different goods when opening up the city screen.

3. Combine parallel goods

I consider some goods to be parallel goods if they serve the same design space, but just are found in different climates. The worst offenders are cassava/barley/rice and indigo/logwood/cochineal, but also goods like chickens & geese, or tobacco & yerba, or hemp & flax. I understand the thinking behind wanting to give players access to a broad range of raw and finished goods whether they end up in the Amazon rain forest or the shores of Greenland, but like @codiac mentioned in his great comment above, we can treat these goods like fruit that use a single good and a single profession, but have lots of flavorful resources found in diverse corners of the map. There is no need to take up space with goods that simply duplicate each other.

4. Simplify vertical supply chains

This is what I mean by a vertical supply chain:

By and large these supply chains don't interact with any other supply chains, they just add extra steps, each requiring their own building and own professions. Once again, it just seems like extra stuff for its own sake. Take peanuts for example. Do we really need a building and a professional peanut roaster? Have any of us ever paid 5 times as much to have our peanuts professionally roasted? Was there a thriving peanut roasting industry back during colonial times? Did it require a long apprenticeship to learn how to roast peanuts? Not at all. They could have at least gotten creative with it and required salt as an input, but alas, it is just an extra step added for no reason. My proposal treats peanuts, salt, and vanilla as consumable raw goods like maple syrup and coca leaves. Also, like my previous proposal, I knocked out one of the steps from making clothing. It is just too long and doesn't connect with other supply chains which makes it boring.

5. Remove or modify goods that only have one use
6. Add more uses for some goods

One problem with the vertical supply chains above is the creation of intermediate goods that only serve to lengthen the chain. Sure, you could create a new building/profession turning sugar into molasses as an intermediate good before another building/profession turns it into rum, but does that make the game more fun & interesting? I say no. I cut things like peat, charcoal, ropes and other goods that only had a single use. I tried to connect supply chains into more of a web so that goods can be used for different things. In the base mod, the only use for cloth was to turn it into clothes (with colored cloth as a stop along the way). In my proposal cloth can be used for upholstered furniture and for household goods (blankets, curtains, dolls, etc). I just think that adds a more enjoyable kind of complexity instead of tedious complexity.

7. Connect different supply chains for high value goods instead of just adding more steps to a vertical supply chain silo
8. Add goods that can only be purchased overseas to enhance triangle trade and balance out excess gold supplies

Related to the above point I made the most expensive and valuable goods have supply chains that connect to lots of different goods instead of one vertical chain. Household goods and upholstered furniture have the most robust and interconnected supply chains. Not only does this simulate the many different inputs that go into making complex items like this, it also intentionally makes them harder to produce domestically. The defining spirit of this time in history is the emerging globalized economy. The triangle trade shouldn't just be a neat feature, it should be a central part of the game. The whole purpose for having these colonies in the new world was to extract raw resources to be sent back to the mother country and then turned into manufactured goods. That is such a powerful force at the time I've always found it so discouraging that the game incentivizes establishing self-sufficient hermit kingdoms that produce all they need and sell their manufactured goods back to the motherland, the exact opposite of how it should work.

So to that end, I've added additional import only goods: silk, books, tea, and porcelain in addition to changing spices into an import only good and retaining luxury goods. To make fancy clothes now you need silk and dye. To put another barrier in the way of domestic heavy industry I (gasp) added an extra step to make tools (smelting the ore). It struck me as so strange that it required more steps and professions to make pig leather aprons than all the complicated metal goods that resulted in industrialization and mechanization.

So, without further ado, here is the flowchart showing all the goods and supply chains:

Key to the Flow Chart

The red goods can only be bought overseas.

The green goods are raw resources.
The yellow goods are intermediate goods.
The purple goods are finished goods.

The green/purple goods are raw goods that can be consumed without needing to turn them into something else.
The yellow/purple goods are intermediate goods that can be consumed without needing to turn them into something else.
The yellow/green good (feathers) can be procured from poultry or from wild birds, so counts as both raw & intermediate.

Goods List Comparison

Spoiler Good List Comparison :

Units

Since I got rid of provisions (provisionally... hah), blades, ropes and cannons, building ships and units are quite a bit easier. Household goods can be used in place of trade goods. Food can be used in place of provisions. I also created Tack that can be used for mounted units. I could potentially require cloth or clothes as an input when creating expert troops as well to represent their uniforms or other parts of their kit. That would be a way to differentiate more professional soldiers with the scrappier, less equipped militia.

Future Ideas

I really don't like Train Oil. It just wasn't used much during the bulk of the scope of this game, but whale hunting is fun. So I was thinking of reintroducing pigs and have whales and pigs both produce tallow (pigs would also make leather). Tallow can then be another required good for the nebulous household goods item (candles, heating oil, soap, lamp oil, etc). I was going to add it, but I couldn't figure out how to add it to my nice and neat flow chart without crossing lines, haha. But I'm currently at 63 goods, my target is 66 to fit neatly on 2 rows in the city. If I added pigs & tallow I could fit one more good. Maybe add blades back? I dunno. Thoughts?

 

[Voker57]

That's an interesting approach with lots of chains to collect.

1. There are still 5 imported goods that are identical other than by flavor. Luxury goods already serve this purpose and are well sufficient.
2. 5 cash crops that do not participate in this chain. Way more than necessary
3. The number of goods has to be divisible by 3 or city screen breaks in a weird way.
4. Including the previous point: the code that handles yields, professions, etc., is awful. There are tons of copypasting and menial labor needed for even the simplest changes and implementing large scale changes like this complete chain revision would be a nightmare ending in maintenance hell, like WTP is in now. I stuck as much as possible to removing code with BTP, and I would not add/change goods and their interactions without a very serious refactoring.

 

[OzzyKP]

1. Since happiness is derived from having needs met, having additional imported goods makes it more expensive to meet those needs (you have to stock up on six different imported goods instead of only one. Also, since demand for goods is determined by each unit, you can modify the demand for each good separately. Tea, for example, would be in much demand among middle classes, but they'd probably have less demand for silk or fancy clothing. The goal is to have colonies be less self-reliant and more dependent on trade.
2. Which cash crops are you talking about?
3. See my comments under Future Ideas.
4. I'd be happy to volunteer for any menial labor (especially to XML) to implement this.

 

[Voker57]

1. Since happiness is derived from having needs met, having additional imported goods makes it more expensive to meet those needs (you have to stock up on six different imported goods instead of only one. Also, since demand for goods is determined by each unit, you can modify the demand for each good separately. Tea, for example, would be in much demand among middle classes, but they'd probably have less demand for silk or fancy clothing. The goal is to have colonies be less self-reliant and more dependent on trade.

If these will be demanded by different classes, good, still it's too many. The problem with imbalanced happiness gain should be solved through yield-specific gain, not through pointless variety.

2. Which cash crops are you talking about?

The lowest row: maple syrup, peanuts, salt, vanilla, coca. They are all out of chains and are essentially the same yield.

3. See my comments under Future Ideas.
4. I'd be happy to volunteer for any menial labor (especially to XML) to implement this.

The problem is not even implementing this, but maintaining and modifying. Unless you are ready to jump at every modder's idea and modify the XMLs for them to their liking, it is still an issue. Ray is (was?) a very productive coder and the result is megabytes of copypasted XML which was hard to even remove, and I suspect he himself ended up not enjoying the maintenance too much.

 

[OzzyKP]

I don't understand your objections or your philosophy for the goods. I mean, you could say cigars and rum and wine are all the same yield.

What do you mean by yield-specific gain? "Imbalanced happiness gain" isn't the problem I am solving, the problem I'm solving is the fact that colonial powers have no need to buy anything from overseas. They can produce everything they need which is ahistorical and makes the trade component (i.e. a big part of the game) dull and uninteresting, and leads to problems where you work all game to get money and then once you get money you have nothing to use it for. My proposal solves all three of these problems.

 

[Voker57]

I don't understand your objections or your philosophy for the goods. I mean, you could say cigars and rum and wine are all the same yield.

Indeed, and maybe some of them should be changed to be more interesting or removed.

What do you mean by yield-specific gain? "Imbalanced happiness gain" isn't the problem I am solving, the problem I'm solving is the fact that colonial powers have no need to buy anything from overseas. They can produce everything they need which is ahistorical and makes the trade component (i.e. a big part of the game) dull and uninteresting, and leads to problems where you work all game to get money and then once you get money you have nothing to use it for. My proposal solves all three of these problems.

That's what I meant by imbalanced, locally producing goods for happiness is more optimal than importing luxuries. Import-only luxuries could bring more happiness, to make this strategy worth considering, instead of making more similar luxuries that just look different.

 

[Voker57]

Here's my 5m in paint, to further simplify and show what I like and not like about this tree

 

[OzzyKP]

Indeed, and maybe some of them should be changed to be more interesting or removed.

That's what I meant by imbalanced, locally producing goods for happiness is more optimal than importing luxuries. Import-only luxuries could bring more happiness, to make this strategy worth considering, instead of making more similar luxuries that just look different.

It is optimal because the game is structured to make it optimal. By creating more import only goods you shift that balance. Each good fulfilled creates one happiness point. So the more import-only goods there are the less optimal it is to rely only on domestic goods.

Tweaking how much happiness is given for each good seems like a more difficult task, but I did have an idea where goods would complement and enhance each other. Like peanuts are their own good and produce one happiness for being fulfilled. But if you also have salt in the colony, then suddenly peanuts are a more 'effective' good. So you get an extra happiness from having the combo. Coffee & tea would have a combo with sugar. But again, that complicates the mod.

As for your edits to my list, only 52 goods? If your goal is ultimate simplicity, then why not just revert to the original, vanilla list of goods?

But I'll defend some of my choices:

Hats - I find the Coats vs. Premium Coats distinction pretty weird, flavor wise. I suppose you could have Cigars and Premium (Cuban?) Cigars, or Basic Chocolate & Fancy Chocolate, but the distinction is rather boring. While Hats are mostly just a flavor difference, they are a historical choice. The chief driver of the fur trade during these years was for hats, not coats. Also, since it is a more premium good it was an opportunity to add another input good. I find connecting various goods to be more fun than just a linear A -> B chain. People put feathers in their hats as decoration, so I figured it'd be another good use for feathers.

Iron - This one cuts against the overall goal of simplifying things, I know, but it should be more difficult to produce iron goods. This is a very advanced and difficult metallurgical process. It seems so weird how easy it is to produce tools when processes that are simpler in the real world have more complex chains in the game. Back to my goal of enhancing the triangle trade mechanism, a big proportion of the imports to the colonies were metal goods. I add another step in the process to better simulate the complexity of the process.

Tack - Because of the importance of iron, I wanted to find more uses for it than just tools and guns. With my goal also of finding more uses for goods, I wanted something else to use leather for. Leather was a very important and useful good at the time. Of course the first thing we think of when we think of blacksmiths are horse shoes. Combining those with leather saddles, reins, bits, stirrups, creates a comprehensive good that makes good use of these two critical intermediate goods (leather & iron).

Sheep - I forgot that sheep produce cheese too. It messes up my pretty flow chart, but good call.

Provisions - I like your idea of combining food & salt into provisions. If we were to keep provisions as a good, then yea, that's a good way of doing it.

Dye/Pottery - Again, I hate linear/vertical supply chains. They are just boring. Dye should be used for more than just clothing. I don't have any strong attachment to pottery as a good, but I like having another use for clay. Being able to combine clay & dye to make pottery makes both clay & dye more interesting. But if we get rid of pottery then I recommend just getting rid of clay as well. As for upholstered furniture, I have it as one of the top tier goods that uses many different goods. Dye makes sense as an input there as well.

Silver - I don't have strong feelings about keeping it (or getting rid of gold instead), but it is one of the original goods from the game so unless we need the spot I'm inclined to keep it.

Footwear/Boots - Once again, I just want to find another use for leather to demonstrate its critical status. Leather was used for quite a lot. It is worth noting though that one of the top goods the colonists purchased from the natives was deer leather actually. It'd be nice if some natives had leather to trade. I figured boots or footwear would be more concrete good than "Leather Goods" as in WTP.

 

[Voker57]

It is optimal because the game is structured to make it optimal. By creating more import only goods you shift that balance. Each good fulfilled creates one happiness point. So the more import-only goods there are the less optimal it is to rely only on domestic goods.

Tweaking how much happiness is given for each good seems like a more difficult task, but I did have an idea where goods would complement and enhance each other. Like peanuts are their own good and produce one happiness for being fulfilled. But if you also have salt in the colony, then suddenly peanuts are a more 'effective' good. So you get an extra happiness from having the combo. Coffee & tea would have a combo with sugar. But again, that complicates the mod.

An interesting idea, and should not be hard to implement, if somebody desires it. But specific happiness values can solve the problem of undervalued imported goods better than making X goods.

As for your edits to my list, only 52 goods? If your goal is ultimate simplicity, then why not just revert to the original, vanilla list of goods?

Idk I never played vanilla. I am trying to improve WTP, and I like some of the added stuff. Cutting too much is also nearly as much labor as keeping it...

But I'll defend some of my choices:

Hats - I find the Coats vs. Premium Coats distinction pretty weird, flavor wise. I suppose you could have Cigars and Premium (Cuban?) Cigars, or Basic Chocolate & Fancy Chocolate, but the distinction is rather boring. While Hats are mostly just a flavor difference, they are a historical choice. The chief driver of the fur trade during these years was for hats, not coats. Also, since it is a more premium good it was an opportunity to add another input good. I find connecting various goods to be more fun than just a linear A -> B chain. People put feathers in their hats as decoration, so I figured it'd be another good use for feathers.

Hats seem to be an overly specific good. If they were indeed an important, different, commodity, could replace the prem coats but feathers seem to be not really used in industrial quantities.

Iron - This one cuts against the overall goal of simplifying things, I know, but it should be more difficult to produce iron goods. This is a very advanced and difficult metallurgical process. It seems so weird how easy it is to produce tools when processes that are simpler in the real world have more complex chains in the game. Back to my goal of enhancing the triangle trade mechanism, a big proportion of the imports to the colonies were metal goods. I add another step in the process to better simulate the complexity of the process.

Nice goal, but not worth adding a new good to the current system. I think ore + coal works well enough.

Tack - Because of the importance of iron, I wanted to find more uses for it than just tools and guns. With my goal also of finding more uses for goods, I wanted something else to use leather for. Leather was a very important and useful good at the time. Of course the first thing we think of when we think of blacksmiths are horse shoes. Combining those with leather saddles, reins, bits, stirrups, creates a comprehensive good that makes good use of these two critical intermediate goods (leather & iron).

Why not just use iron and leather for some units? Again -- can't afford adding goods for the sake of realism only with the current system. Each additional good makes the game, and its maintenance, worse, so tradeoffs should be carefully considered.

Sheep - I forgot that sheep produce cheese too. It messes up my pretty flow chart, but good call.

Provisions - I like your idea of combining food & salt into provisions. If we were to keep provisions as a good, then yea, that's a good way of doing it.

Dye/Pottery - Again, I hate linear/vertical supply chains. They are just boring. Dye should be used for more than just clothing. I don't have any strong attachment to pottery as a good, but I like having another use for clay. Being able to combine clay & dye to make pottery makes both clay & dye more interesting. But if we get rid of pottery then I recommend just getting rid of clay as well. As for upholstered furniture, I have it as one of the top tier goods that uses many different goods. Dye makes sense as an input there as well.

Clay works pretty well as a construction material you have to collect from otherwise hostile marshes/wetlands. Pottery imo is not worth it. I think i removed the link from upholstered furniture by mistake -- it's a good idea. However, dye is rather scarce in BTP at the moment -- might need to reintroduce something like cochineal/logwood (but without extra yield).

Silver - I don't have strong feelings about keeping it (or getting rid of gold instead), but it is one of the original goods from the game so unless we need the spot I'm inclined to keep it.

Silver just seemed to be a weird thing to have in absense of gold, so I decided to keep gold.

Footwear/Boots - Once again, I just want to find another use for leather to demonstrate its critical status. Leather was used for quite a lot. It is worth noting though that one of the top goods the colonists purchased from the natives was deer leather actually. It'd be nice if some natives had leather to trade. I figured boots or footwear would be more concrete good than "Leather Goods" as in WTP.

Leather goods is actually called "Leather" in the code so it's some weird mix of both. You can make padded leather coats from it, perhaps these should be changed to "leather goods" and leather goods to leather.