Health

[Guynemer]

Are there any plans to expand the health aspect of the game? Right now, near as I can tell, your colonies start to accrue negative health at certain city sizes, and you have to employ medics to counteract that. This isn't bad so much as just kind of dull.

It feels like it would be more interesting to have certain buildings or improvements or workers cause negative health--all plantations (especially sugar) were notorious for the way they helped to breed mosquitoes, and therefore mosquito-borne illness, especially malaria and yellow fever. Distilleries certainly added to that, with large pools of standing water. While the tobacco industry itself wasn't as bad for those employed in it, the users obviously suffered health effects; not sure how this could be modeled in game, maybe a drop in health once a certain number of cigars are sold on the domestic market?

Likewise, positive health could be provided not just by the medic profession, but also by perhaps having a varied diet--+1 health if both a farmer and a fisherman is employed, a second +1 if red pepper is grown, a third if you have salt, etc. Now that I type this out, this goes against the shipping goods between colonies ethos; maybe a bonus just for having red pepper and salt and grapes in the warehouse, since food from farms and fish aren't separated out (or the butcher, for that matter).

 

[raystuttgart]

Are there any plans to expand the health aspect of the game?

Currently I have not seen anything for that in our issues.
However when I originally implemented Health I had planned to further expand it.

But I realized soon that most of it was not adding to gameplay and many players would hate it.

Introducing 4 different specific Food Yieds: Corn, Fish, Meat and Fruits - which would affect Health
(To keep up Health you would need to provide all of those in bigger cities.)

* It would have been just tedious micromanagement even to me.
* We already now have no more space for in the 2 rows of goods in City Screen.
* It would have increcible side effects (e.g. to recode Food Supply and Growth)
...

Health being affected by Terrain, Improvements and Buildings
(e.g. Rivers, Ocean, Forrests / Jungles, Swamps / Tundra, Tanneries / Butcheries / Distilleries /... , Mining / Lumbercamps ...)

* It is bacially just a background calculation that most players would hardly notice
* It would have made settling in certain areas like Jungles and Swamps too unattractive
* It would add a punishment for building specific Buildings and Improvements without any positive compensation
* It would become a very consufing system too hard to explain for most players
* It would unbalanance the game
* It would negatively affect performance
...

Right now, near as I can tell, your colonies start to accrue negative health at certain city sizes, and you have to employ medics to counteract that.
This isn't bad so much as just kind of dull.

Well, just as dull as most other professions in the game. (Taken on their own.)
Health is currently just one of them that affects however production modifiers and is not just another Cash Yield.

It feels like it would be more interesting to have ...

That is what I first thought as well.
But then I considered again and realized it was a really bad idea considering gameplay and balancing effort.

Summary:

I personally do not like to ruin gameplay and performance for immersion only.
Also efforts and potential side effects to other game mechanics need to be carefully considered.

This old concept of mine would not even be fun to myself - even though I like micro-managing.
We really need to think very carefully about gameplay first. (But still discuss and consider all the many other aspects.)

But who knows maybe somebody else does come up with a better concept.

 

[raystuttgart]

By the way:
Although I currently feel that "Heatlh" itself does not necessarily need to be made more complex,
it could be used to make other future features and overhauls more interesting.

One example would be City Needs but others might be possible as well.
(Some specific City Needs could be related to Medical Care / Health.)

 

[Guynemer]

I'm going to push back a little on this.

Decisions make interesting gameplay. As it is, the only reason not to build certain improvements or industries is the opportunity cost of not building others.

If (for example) each distiller added 0.5 negative health, it forces you to make a decision: do I want to sacrifice a worker on the medic job for that extra cash? The prices of goods that are associated with negative health could be raised to compensate.

Secondly, I agree, we can't separate the different food items. BUT, we do already have food items (grapes, salt, peppers) that are not counted as food. Even beer or wine could be counted for this, given how drinking water wasn't always particularly safe. The presence of each of those non-food food items could add +0.25 health.

(These numbers are just examples, based on the assumption that the engine can handle non-integers, which it very well might not. I know nothing of programming or code.)

As it currently stands, I don't think the health system adds any fun or thought. I honestly think it should be made more meaningful in some way, or abandoned.

 

[raystuttgart]

I honestly think it should be made more meaningful in some way, ...

Generally agree.
There just needs to be a good concept we like and somebody willing to invest the effort.

Currently it does not seem to me like that is yet the case.
But let us see where discussion and brainstorming will lead us to.

Currently the main purpose for Health is to counterbalance "Gigantic Cities" a little.
But there is also a little decision making in them because you can get both positive and negative effects of using or not using it enough.
(Which will cost you money to build the buildings and experts or not.)

And while I fully agree that this not yet that much there might be more coming to this.

... abandoned.

Absolutely disagree, because it is not broken and there are other concepts discussed currently that might make use of it as well.
We simply need to work step by step.

A mod is a progressive effort that can take long to reach its full potential and thus needs time and patience.
But we must start somewhere and build base features, improve them and then later have them fleshed out or build other features on top.

Throwing out featues and rebuilding them later needlessly - if they are not broken and simply not yet fleshed out to full potential - will just waste our efforts.
This has already happened to e.g. "Town Guards" and I am actually quite annoyed that we need to invest effort to put them back in again. (Which will happen though looking at the current feedback.)

 

[Nightinggale]

(These numbers are just examples, based on the assumption that the engine can handle non-integers, which it very well might not. I know nothing of programming or code.)

It can't and that's one of the reasons I'm not happy with the current implementation of health. 3 bells/turn -1% = 2 bells/turn. Or rather I would say I'm not happy with the current implementation of modifiers in general for this very reason.

I do have a plan regarding how to make the engine work with units of 1/100 rather than whole numbers and done in a way, which won't be bug prone or hurting performance, but so far other tasks have been more urgent. I think being able to handle 1/100 of a yield has to be supported before considering any expansion of anything regarding modifying yield production.

 

[rah]

While currently kind of dull, it serves the purpose without too much micro.
Not really too much counter for large cities since the a couple of medics with the one building cover pretty big.

I think events could add the necessary flavor without adding complexity, A few plagues or less baby mortality leading to faster increases in population would be just a few examples. If you have some sickness killing off some specialists, it would get your attention.

 

[raystuttgart]

While currently kind of dull, it serves the purpose without too much micro.

True, the feature itselfs works without being too tedious.

Not really too much counter for large cities since the a couple of medics with the one building cover pretty big.

Yes, but at least you need to invest money and ressources to have the Buildings and employ Medics.
The current balancing is of course still very forgiving.

I think events could add the necessary flavor without adding complexity.

There already exist a few considering Health. (e.g. "Sick Immigrants", "Disease in Native Village")
But more events are always nice and add flavour.

While we do have ideas for many new events, they are currently not our main priority.
The currently work load is already pretty heavy for our team - we are still only a few continuously contributing team members.

Basically Python Events are still easy enough that supporters could also give a try.
If we find a supporter or team members wanting to work on more events it would be great.

 

[Nightinggale]

If we find a supporter or team members wanting to work on * it would be great.

* being graphics, events, translations or anything else, then it would be great. Our progress is mainly limited by the amount of hours we can put into programming. In order to work faster, we need more hours and we can gain those either by adding more programmers or reducing the non-programming workload currently done by programmers because there is currently nobody else to do those tasks.

 

[rah]

Less than 40 days to my retirement.

 

[Guynemer]

Less than 40 days to my retirement.

have you never watched a cop movie before

 

[rah]

But I'm not a cop and that chicken wing doesn't seem quite as dangerous.
But yeah, point taken.

 

[raystuttgart]

Health already adds additional production bonus/malus;

Health needs to be improved as well - I agree.

Currently "Health" does not take over "Production Bonusses" of "Revolutionary Rate".
It just adds / substracts a bit on top of current Production Bonusses.

And we already have rough ideas for improving Health as well.
(e.g. Health also affecting Population Growth and triggering more events.)

But everything step by step.
The concept is simply not fully ready yet.

 

[orlanth]

Sorry for my WTP modding ignorance, but what are the current mechanics of the effects applied by high or low Health in this mod? Is there a local non-stored YIELD_HEALTH in each city, and does negative local Health apply a negative % modifier to local Food yield growth as in Civ6?

 

[raystuttgart]

... but what are the current mechanics of the effects applied by high or low Health in this mod?

Health currently has the following gameplay effects:

A) It affects local Production Bonus (on all Yields, including Food)
B) It affects local Growth Threshold (Food needed for Growth)
C) It affects Heal Rate of (Military) Units stationed in the City (when hurt by combat)

Is there a local non-stored YIELD_HEALTH in each city, ...

The YIELD_HEALTH is technically stored in each city by computing "City Health" (displayed in Screen).