Health Overhaul [IMPLEMENTED]

[raystuttgart]

Hi guys,

as some of you might have noticed here I started to introduce several new "Food Bonus Ressources", "Terrains" also "Terrain Features".

They are intended to be used in "Health Overhaul".
(It is basically just an expansion of the existing Health System.)

To simplify it:

• We will have more "Bonus Ressources", more "Terrains" and more "Terrain Features".
• Those will now impact Health of a City directly.

Checks being done for City Radius:

• Some Bonus Ressources (e.g. Banana, Pumpkins, Apples, ... Wine, Salt, Red Pepper, Coca, ...) will get a flat positive bonus on Health. (Normally +2)
• Some Terrains (e.g. Marsh, Wetland, ...) will get a negative modifier on Health. (Normally -1)
• Some Terrains (e.g. Desert, Coast, ...) will get a positive modifier on Health. (Normally +1)
• Some Terrain Features (e.g. Swamp, Fog, Sandstorm, ...) will get negative Modifier for Health. (Normally -1)
• Some Terrain Features (e.g. Light Forrest, Corral Reef, ...) will get a positive modifier on Health. (Normally +1)
• Some Buildings (e.g. for Tobacco Trader's House, Tanner's House, ...) will get negative Modifier for Health. (Depending on the Upgrade Level.)
• Some Buildings (e.g. Well, Corn Chamber, Medics House, Pier ...) already have a flat positive bonus on Health. (Depending on the Upgrade Level.)
• ...

Additional checks on City Center Plot:

• City Plot being "isCoastal"*: positive modifier on Health. (Normally +2)
  
• City Plot being "isRiver"**: positive modifier on Health. (Normally +2)
• City Plot being "isHill": positive modifier on Health. (Normally +2)

* checks for both: Ocean Coast and Lake Coast
**checks for both: "normal Rivers" and "Large Rivers"

Visualization Concept:

• Of course that will be nicely visualized / summarized in Mouse Over of Health in City Screen.
• Mouse Over of the single Terrain / Terrain Feautres / Bonus Ressources / Buildings will also nicely show their impact on Health.
• Pedia for those Terrain / Terrain Feautres / Bonus Ressources / Buildings will also show that information.
• Game Concept for Health will also explain.

To summarize:

The logic will check the City Radius of a City and calculate "Health Bonus / Malus" of the Natural Environment.
Additionally the "City Buildings" will get more influence on "Health" as well.

Gameplay Effect:

It will matter where you settle, how you interact with natur and how you build your infrastructure.
Generally I will try to balance all regions in a fair way though. (But it will be "asymmetric balancing".)

• Settling near "Food Ressources" (also giving Health) or "Money Ressources" (giving more money) will become strategic decisions.
• "Cutting down Terrain Features" or "Draining Wetland / Marshes" will become strategic decisions.
• Constructing Buildings that may impact the Health of your Settlers will become a strategic decision.

----

It thus replaces the old concept, because this new concept:

• is better for gameplay
• is more immersive
• will also add more eyecandy
• is easier to understand
• is easy to teach to AI
• is more performant
• is less effort to implement
• is less prone to errors

 

[raystuttgart]

Before anybody asks I will answer right away:

I was also considering to add "Improvements" to this concept.
But I purposely left that out, because I felt it would make it too complicated.
Also considering gameplay it just did not feel right.

The old concept was considering to use "Domestic Market Sales".
But that is difficult to visualize / understand, not performant and hard to teach AI.
Thus it is simply replaced by the "Terrain Checks" which can do all of that better.

The idea "Fruit Farmer" Profession is dead. (Although it sounded immersive first.)
For gameplay it was a bad workaround to generate "Health" from these Bonus Ressources.
The current concept is simply much better and feels less articifical.

 

[raystuttgart]

Comparing "old concept" vs. "new concept":

Old concept was trying too hard to be "immersive and realistic".
Thus gameplay, AI, understandability, visualization, ... suffered.

Looking back "Fruit Farmer" and "Domestic Market Consumption" were simply too much realism and not actually adding more gameplay.
The new concept just adds gameplay without adding "immersion overhead".

New concept puts much more focus on gameplay and simplifies.
It thus e.g. is able to streamline UI and allowing AI to understand.

----

Lesson Learned again:
Gameplay needs to stay proirity #1.

 

[historix69]

If you check the Giant Americas map there are huge areas in South America just having marsh and jungle tiles. In the new concept they would all sum up to huge negative health until converted to savannah.
So placing a colony there will result in a -25% on everything malus due to bad health until environment is improved? That would make early (big) colonies there less likely.

Will health affect natives and slaves? Natives were probably well adapted to their environment until europeans brought lots of new disease including malaria.
This lead to import of african black slaves who were more resistant to malaria and so could work in environments where european and natives could not and quickly perished.

What about negative health effect by environment / city on military troops? In the New World probably more soldiers died from disease then from combat injuries.

 

[raystuttgart]

In the new concept they would all sum up to huge negative health until converted to savannah.

Not if we add the new Bonus Ressouces and new Terrain Features there properly.
And also not if we rework the map a bit considering the new Terrains.

It is all just a question of balancing the new stuff with the old stuff.
I am aware of those dependencies though - it is not the first time that I add new Terrains / Terrain Features / Bonus Ressources ...

You can not measure this concept by what you already have.
You can only judge this concept by what you will get in the end.

Will health affect natives and slaves?

It affects the whole City (several bonus modifiers and other features) and not single Units.
Health mechanics itself will not change by this concept.

What about negative health effect by environment / city on military troops?

As i said: Health mechanics itself will not change by this concept.
But there already is a bonus on "Healing" for Troops stationed in Cities with high Health.

-----

Let us please stop discussing 10 concepts at once again.
We need to discuss and implement changes step by step.

My time to mod new features is limited ...
And at some point I also need to actually finish stuff for a release.

 

[Nightinggale]

Will having two marshes within the city range count as one or two for health?

Will working a plot affect health?

 

[Derek Brown]

Will having two marshes within the city range count as one or two for health?

Will working a plot affect health?

Should it be based on distance? 1st row of tiles surrounding city has more impact than if in 2nd row. Maybe no impact for 2nd row. Also would the negative impact from this be capped?

I think the changes will be good. It does make draining swamps more important

Lastly, hopefully the AI can learn to improve settlement health. When I conquer settlements they are all -25, so the AI is handicapping its production

 

[historix69]

Some more thoughts :
- Negative Health for buildings is controversial if buildings cannot be removed. It would be better if only worked buildings would generate negative health.
- Adding lots of +Health bonus resources on swamps and jungle may lead to a health paradise when players transform all those tiles to savannah.
- There are 2 game modes with 1 and 2 tiles radius for settlements. A 2 tile settlement can have up to 24 tiles besides the base tile which is three times the number of the 8 tiles for 1 tile radius. After constructing certain buildings, the colony radius will expand automatically after a certain time, independant of the number of colonists in the settlement. From a simulation point of view the base tile and to some degree the surounding 8 tiles, maybe as average, should count for the settlement health, while other tiles should only count if colonists work them, producing new additional types of yield : "positve health" or "negative health".
The base tile should be more important than other tiles if most colonists are assumed to live and meet there while they only work outside.
- 2 tile radius settlements can have 50-100 colonists and those colonists may work only 24 outside tiles, so the majority of the colonists will work inside in (unhealthy) buildings like factories. If there is more negative health produced in big cities, there is a need for additional buildings like public aqueducts, sewers, hydro power plant and a recycling center to reduce health impacts from environment, overpopulation and industrial pollution. (see Civ series) Otherwise the benefit of 2 tiles radius may mostly be neutralized by high negative health if the player cannot use the full potential of a huge city without causing a health disaster.

 

[raystuttgart]

Will having two marshes within the city range count as one or two for health?

Actually a good question I have asked myself as well.

Simple answer:

I am not sure yet.
I need to test this first and then optimize balancing.
(Either I just count the "Types" I find or I count the actual Plots / Terrain Instances / Bonus Instances.)

I current tend to counting Types:

It does not matter if there are two Terrains "Marsh" in City Radius or one. --> You just have Terrain "Marsh". (-1 Health, not 2)
It does not matter if there are two Terrain Features "Swamp"in City Radius or one --> You just have Terrain Feature "Swamp". (-1 Health, not 2)
It does not matter if there are two Terrain Bonus Ressources "Apples" in City Radius or one --> You just have access to "Apples" (+2 Health, not 4)

Reason:

Bonus Ressources could not balance it anymore.
(They could not counter Terrains + Buildings.)

Will working a plot affect health?

No, it will just check the "Natural Environment" not if somebody is actually working on it or not.
(I want to keep this simple and easy to understand.)

Should it be based on distance?

No, it will just be "City Radius" summing these things up and displaying it:
(Otherwise it gets too difficult to understand and visualize.)

• Listing each modifier from Citiy Plot
  
• Listing each modifiers from Terrain Types
  
• Listing each modifiers from Terrain Features Types
  
• Listing each modifiers from from Bonus Ressources Types

..., so the AI is handicapping its production

No, it is not.

It is just negative modifies because you "as Human Player" now own the City.
While AI owns it, it plays by "easy AI rules" and Health never gets negative.

You "as Human Players" simply do not see the "easy AI rules" it gets ...
(We will teach AI how to use this feature at some point though ...)

 

[raystuttgart]

@historix:
I will make this feature simple, streamlined for UI and easy to understand.

This feature is going to be implemented. I already work on it.
I will create it and balance it as good as I can.

Once I am finished I will let the team and supporters test it and they can decide if they like it or not. :dunnp:
By doing so, we will see if it is going to become part of WTP or not.

---

And once this is done and released, we can discuss about adding further sub-features / improvements.
There is absolutely no point in discussing balancing changes about something that does not even fully exist.
I need to work step by step ...

---

Summary:

I will implement it, once it is working team and supporters will test, then we decide if it is integrated or not,
then (if the featue shall be integrated) we improve and then we release.
After we released we will potentially implement further additions and improvements as needed.

Normal iterative working.
Have some patience until you see what I implemented.

 

[raystuttgart]

@Nightinggale

I did first calculations.
(Different cases of City Size / Environment Scenarios.)

I am now pretty sure that I need to work with counting "Types" and not actual instance counts.
It will also be fairer for the different region starts.

I current tend to counting Types:

It does not matter if there are two Terrains "Marsh" in City Radius or one. --> You just have Terrain "Marsh". (-1 Health, not -2)
It does not matter if there are two Terrain Features "Swamp"in City Radius or one --> You just have Terrain Feature "Swamp". (-1 Health, not -2)
It does not matter if there are two Terrain Bonus Ressources "Apples" in City Radius or one --> You just have access to "Apples" (+2 Health, not +4)

-----

Once we have "Connection System" the Cities can even share access to different "Health Bonus Ressouces"...
That would make this concept here also a lot more interesting ...
(But I can only consider it in my concepts, once it is implemented.)

 

[ConjurerDragon]

In my opinion the penatly for swamps should be cumulative.
There is a reason that no large cities were founded directly in swamps. Swamps before the 19th century were a source of malaria, even in Europe, e.g. Italy
http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/3340992

Nowadays we may protect swamps for their value as wildlifehabitats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dismal_Swamp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_swamps
but those same swamps never saw a large settlement, only lot´s of small villages and single huts for fled slaves and criminals.

So small native villages or small settlements harvesting lumber or other resouces in swamps - sure.
But a large city in the middle of swamps with more than 1 square being swamp without heavy health problems in the population and constand spawning of alligators? No way before ready access to quinine, vaccination and better pest control.

 

[raystuttgart]

In my opinion the penatly for swamps should be cumulative.
There is a reason that no large cities were founded directly in swamps.

Everytime I want to create a simple game concept, somebody comes with immersion and realism ...
But ok, I can mix the way I count things ...

For Terrains (like e.g. Marsh): I only check if they exist in City Radius. (It will be fairer for starting Regions.)
For Terrain Features (like e.g. Swamp): I will count every single instance. (They can be cut down later by Pioneers.)
For Bonus Ressources (like e.g. Apples): I will count every single instance. (Which is positive for the player anyways.)

 

[historix69]

For Terrains (like e.g. Marsh): I only check if they exist in City Radius. (It will be fairer for starting Regions.)
For Terrain Features (like e.g. Swamp): I will count every single instance. (They can be cut down later by Pioneers.)
For Bonus Ressources (like e.g. Apples): I will count every single instance. (Which is positive for the player anyways.)

Why not use something like :

Colony Base Health = Health Base Tile + Sum of Health for 8 surrounding Tiles / N
with N > 0
If you set N = 8 you just take the average of the surrounding tiles

Then you count every tile, but the effect is reduced if you use N > 1.

 

[raystuttgart]

Why not use something like :

Because of the way the DLL functions work.
(Effort, performance, stability, ...)

Please let us modders take care of designing and implementing the algorithms and UI.
We know how to do these things in ways that allow good visualization, reduce our effort, are still performant and are still stable.

 

[modmod]

Basically I like the concept (includes the features/ bonus res. which true for multiple cases).

Except some minor things:

Some Terrain Features (e.g. Swamp, Fog, Sandstorm, ...) will get negative Modifier for Health. (Normally -1)

Swamp is evident.
But fog/ sandstorm as I get are temporary - not always present on the plots (like clouds/ storms at sea).
Or not?

Tobacconist house/ levels I join for the ones who disaggree that can carry negative health.

 

[Tugboatspotter]

Why is the simple formula of population = bad health so unacceptably simple, that we keep getting new proposals to overhaul it?

I don't actually mind the terrains and terrain features ideas, and the positive effects of buildings already exist and make sense. My problem is this:

Some Buildings (e.g. for Tobacco Trader's House, Tanner's House, ...) will get negative Modifier for Health. (Depending on the Upgrade Level.)

This is NOT the industrial era, so if anything the wealth and employment would be more beneficial to overall city health - instead this proposal punishes the player for improving infrastructure. Unhealthiness through population makes more sense than unhealthiness through deciding to expand your cigar shop.

 

[raystuttgart]

Why is the simple formula of population = bad health so unacceptably simple, that we keep getting new proposals to overhaul it?

Simple answer:
1. It was requested to overhaul it. ---> Request: Check
2. I liked that request and offered to implement. --> Responsible: Check
3. Community and Team agreed that they want an overhaul. --> Decision: Check

Or to formulate it differently:
I am still a free modder that can decide for himself for which features he invests his time.
After that I can offer it to the rest of the team and supporters and then they need to decide if they like it.

---------

This is NOT the industrial era, ...

That is correct, but even in medieval times, some production places / jobs were extremely unhealthy.
(Tanning, Dying, Distilling, ... all of these production places / jobs were really unhealthy.)

And as I said:

(Depending on the Upgrade Level.)

(The rest I will see, once I do tests for balancing.)

---------

... instead this proposal punishes the player for improving infrastructure

It does not intend to "punish" anything, it just wants you to consider a bit more and make managing Health a bit more interesting and challenging.
With your argumentation we could say "Happiness", "Health", "Food Consumption" ... is all "punishment", because the player has to think.

"Punishment" and "Having to Think" / "Challenge" is a thin line in gameplay.
What you consider "Punishment" I might consider "Challenge".
This is simply personal taste.

But again:

I have promissed that I invest my effort to implement a "Health Overhaul".
This is exactly what I will do.

Then I give it to team and supporters to test it and then we decide together.
If team and supporters do not like it, it will not become part of WTP.

 

[raystuttgart]

But fog/ sandstorm as I get are temporary - not always present on the plots (like clouds/ storms at sea).

Yes, that is the plan.
But what is the issue with having a temporary negative Health modifier?
(The Health from Enviroment needs to be calculated every turn anyways.)

 

[Tugboatspotter]

It does not intend to "punish" anything, it just wants you to consider a bit more and make managing Health a bit more interesting and challenging.

With your argumentation we could say "Happiness", "Health", "Food Consumption" ... is all "punishment", because the player has to think when he grows his Population.

"Punishment" and "Having to Think" / "Challenge" is a thin line in gameplay.
What you consider "Punishment" I might consider "Challenge".

When I say punish, I think you are misunderstanding that I am referring to a specific context.

I think investing in infrastructure should always be good, but with this proposal it introduces a 'gamey' consideration that "I don't want to build that because even though there will be no material change in my output - my health will be decreased simply because I built it"

More simply put, why are these industries having a negative effect on health? Population should be the driving force behind unhealthiness, and advanced infrastructure should, if anything, be a positive force.