Hunter/Gathering Nomadic start at Game Open project

[RidetheSpiral23]

Thanks for listing those out for me Andy. Question for you. Did you set up the types of properties for the nomad demo? I was curious why fruit and hunts are separated and not just under the same category of food.

So it would probably make more sense to change it to this (below) if I wanted a type of terrain to have a limit of how much of that property it could hold.

        <PropertySource>
          <PropertySourceType>PROPERTYSOURCE_CONSTANT_LIMITED</PropertySourceType>
          <PropertyType>PROPERTY_FRUIT</PropertyType>
          <iAmountPerTurn>2</iAmountPerTurn>
          <iLimit>50</iLimit>
        </PropertySource>

Also does anyone know where you can edit the options for the defeat message trigger. I would like to play test some of the nomad start stuff with the AI not being able to build cities until later. If I turn bFound off on the band unit then I immediately get defeated once I end my first turn. If it is possible I would like to know where/how I could add it so that you are also defeated when you have below 1 band unit and obviously are not defeated if you have at least one.

 

[AIAndy]

Thanks for listing those out for me Andy. Question for you. Did you set up the types of properties for the nomad demo? I was curious why fruit and hunts are separated and not just under the same category of food.

There has not been a lot of consideration put into that kind of thing. It was mainly a tech demo. Iirc the main reason for the separate fruit and hunts was to make it clear that you are hunting and gathering and not harvesting and to make it different from the normal food you get with cities later.

 

[strategyonly]

There has not been a lot of consideration put into that kind of thing. It was mainly a tech demo. Iirc the main reason for the separate fruit and hunts was to make it clear that you are hunting and gathering and not harvesting and to make it different from the normal food you get with cities later.

So how do "we" get it to run in C2C, correctly, or even a good start would help??

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

So how do "we" get it to run in C2C, correctly, or even a good start would help??

I'm working on balancing the nomad yields out. Currently the yields get out of hand quickly after 40 turns or so. I'm adding property limits to the terrains currently to stop that. I also plan on adding nomad property "yields" to features and bonuses. I really need to figure out how to get the game to not trigger defeat after disabling bfound on the band unit so I can get the AI not to settle.

List of things that I think would need done after that:

• Editing the tech tree a small amount
• change a lot of the early buildings
• figure out how switch buildings from promos and vice versa
• figure out the mechanic for "campsites"

I'm sure there is more but that's a good start. I personally don't think I currently possess the ability to do some of those. Also I think hydro might be opposed to some of the building changes.

EDIT
Nomad Property Yields
Food
Materials
Lore

How to Gain Yields
The band unit will gather the nomad yields from terrain, features and bonuses as it moves across the map. As they stay in an area the yields will deplete and they will need to move on to a more fruitful area.

Additionally the band unit can gather yields from an animal carcass. Once a hunter (or other unit) kills an animal (before subdued) it will place a carcass on the map. I believe the most effect way to do this is as an improvement that expires after so many turns. If the band unit is within one tile of the carcass it will begin to gather the yields from the carcass. Possibly a mechanism for carcasses to attract predatory/scavenging animals?

Campsites/Cavesites
After researching shelter building the band unit can place campsites and cavesites. This action will use a fair amount of materials as to limit the number of sites available. Using this action will place a permanent (unless destroyed) improvement on the map. While the band unit is on the same tile as the campsite it has the option of taking the action “Take Shelter”. This will transition the band unit into a temporary “settlement” of sorts. While in this mode the player would have the ability to produce buildings/units. Any of this actions will consume appropriate nomad yields and render the band immovable until its completion. Once the band unit decides to travel again they move off and the campsite improvement remains there for future use.

Buildings as Promotions
One of the other concepts discussed was buildings as promotions. Basically when settled you would produce a building and then when you moved it would transfer into a promotion and then back into a building once settled again. I currently have basically no idea how anyone would get that to work. I’m not sure I see too much of a need for this personally though. I’m not sure how many “buildings” belong in the period of history though. Most of the early buildings are random food and production increases which could easily be simulated by allowing the band unit to be able to gather more of a yield type per turn based upon a tech.

Research
In the current nomad demo you research technology by accumulating lore yields. Once you reach enough you can complete the “research” mission to gain 30 science beakers towards the selected technology. I feel like it would be best to have the lore points automatically turn into science beakers towards research as you accumulate them. Avoiding the need to select the button.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Also does anyone know where you can edit the options for the defeat message trigger. I would like to play test some of the nomad start stuff with the AI not being able to build cities until later. If I turn bFound off on the band unit then I immediately get defeated once I end my first turn. If it is possible I would like to know where/how I could add it so that you are also defeated when you have below 1 band unit and obviously are not defeated if you have at least one.

It is probably an end of turn check. Any civ who does not have a city or a unit that can make a city has been defeated. It is why in the later game excess units of a civ disappear when they have no more cities or settlers.

Additionally the band unit can gather yields from an animal carcass. Once a hunter (or other unit) kills an animal (before subdued) it will place a carcass on the map. I believe the most effect way to do this is as an improvement that expires after so many turns. If the band unit is within one tile of the carcass it will begin to gather the yields from the carcass. Possibly a mechanism for carcasses to attract predatory/scavenging animals?

There is no mechanism for a feature/improvement to upgrade or downgrade outside cultural borders. We have discussed this elsewhere as it has so interesting applications.

Campsites/Cavesites
After researching shelter building the band unit can place campsites and cavesites. This action will use a fair amount of materials as to limit the number of sites available. Using this action will place a permanent (unless destroyed) improvement on the map. While the band unit is on the same tile as the campsite it has the option of taking the action “Take Shelter”. This will transition the band unit into a temporary “settlement” of sorts. While in this mode the player would have the ability to produce buildings/units. Any of this actions will consume appropriate nomad yields and render the band immovable until its completion. Once the band unit decides to travel again they move off and the campsite improvement remains there for future use.

Again we have discussed caves as temporary and not so temporary forts. A campsite could be something similar. The problem here is that most of the fort stuff we would like is hard coded in the dll rather than options in the XML. If they were in the XML we could have a lot more variety in our forts. Eg lookout posts that just extend your visibility range and early forts that only claim the tile not the area around it.

Research
In the current nomad demo you research technology by accumulating lore yields. Once you reach enough you can complete the “research” mission to gain 30 science beakers towards the selected technology. I feel like it would be best to have the lore points automatically turn into science beakers towards research as you accumulate them. Avoiding the need to select the button.

I agree with this.

Goody huts and Events

Both of these would need to change. What is the use of 200 gold when you can't use it.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

@DH

Would you like to help/guide me through some of the more complicated coding so we can begin to work on nomad start. I'm currently working on adding nomad yields to all terrain, features and bonuses. Do you know how to add a mechanism to create the carcass improvement (upgrading/downgradingimprovement outside of borders)? Also do you think it could be done in a different way? For example the hunting kill into a temporary feature? Would that be easier?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@DH

Would you like to help/guide me through some of the more complicated coding so we can begin to work on nomad start. I'm currently working on adding nomad yields to all terrain, features and bonuses. Do you know how to add a mechanism to create the carcass improvement (upgrading/downgradingimprovement outside of borders)? Also do you think it could be done in a different way? For example the hunting kill into a temporary feature? Would that be easier?

Animal kills

At the moment I don't know how to convert the kill/subdue animal functions to the nomadic properties rather than the sedentary yields. The function was moved out of python and into the dll plus XML. AIAndy may have put some stuff in the dll in preparation for this but I expect he was actually waiting for people to discuss it first.

What I was going to do was to have the yields returned from a kill change with technology. At first you get a very small return to reflect the difficulty in getting anything back to home. Then when you get baskets for example the yields go up. Skinning would mean that your yield would go up and so on.

Given the length of a turn is many years I don't think the carcass as improvement idea will work. Unless you are thinking about changing the time scale for nomads.​

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

I don't mind that idea but yeah my concern would be how to get the kills to return nomadic yields to the band unit. Hopefully Andy will have something to say about that.

About the carcass improvement. I was figuring that civ time isn't realistic anyhow. For example I don't think it would take several thousand years to build a fire pit. But yes it would be unrealistic I suppose. We could also entertain the possibility of a freeform time progression for the early period of the game. Just do days (possibly even day and night!) And switch it over to normal BCE dates at sedentary or something.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm resisting the urge to toss in a lot of feedback and opinions here and a lot of 'how we can do this' discussion because more and more its sounding like the way I wanted to program this but it's not simple nor light programming. I've mapped out HOW I could do a LOT of that and I still wonder if it would even be necessary to have properties as yields rather than simply use the natural yields the game already has.

It's going to take programming to make the transition from buildings to promotions/improvements possible and to make it possible for yields to collect from the unit to the nation (to make the unit somewhat like a city), to make it possible to have varying 'fort' mechanisms used independantly from forts, to empower food and production collections from animals to go to a holding on a unit then able to be brought back to the nomadic collective.

There's TONS of work here. And much as I REALLY want to dive in and make all this happen right away... oyvay. I'm really swamped trying to get the Combat Mod/Equipment stuff into play, which I see as a precursor to properly doing this project as many of the 'building conversions' would be equipments for the tribe.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

Well I would very much like to see what your input is on nomad start. How about I just stop being quite so impatient with getting nomad/my modmod going and just help you with the combatmod. When I get the chance I'll start filling in your Google doc sheet with combat classes and then I can help with a lot of the XML grunt work. That's what you currently need right?

I want to get started on nomad as soon as humanely possible but I'm sure it will go much faster with your help/guidance. Once you can. I still want to create my modmod to really start balancing the game but I can't really "finish" the prehistoric until I have nomad start. And I also would like to see how awesome the combatmod stuff is.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Cool. I'm doing a lot of planning on there right now but I switched over to a non-google doc for a lot of it when the internet was giving me trouble. I'll show those updates soon.

I'll post elsewhere my actual request for planning and application help there for anyone who wishes to assist. I can certainly use it!

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@RidetheSpiral23 did you try Nomadic Start with your units that can't settle with the "Requires complete kills" on? Does it allow play to go for more than one turn?

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

@RidetheSpiral23 did you try Nomadic Start with your units that can't settle with the "Requires complete kills" on? Does it allow play to go for more than one turn?

Yes i double checked to make sure the game option was on. It ends the game every time as soon as you end the first turn.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Rats!

 

[Nerdman3000]

How far is the Nomadic Start feature coming along? I really can't wait for this feature, this and the galactic era features are the two which really catch my interest.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

We are not sure how to proceed at the moment.

 

[strategyonly]

I wish this was a high high high priority for some

 

[Faustmouse]

Me too... even though the few cities + necessary hunting + myths + animals are dangerous etc makes the PH era very special even now! Compared to Medival/Industrial/Modern/TH...
Specializing Eras is something we should really work on in the future.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have figured out that in theory we could have a special screen for the nomadic unit which would allow us to mirror some of the functions of the city screen. Eg we could assign members of the population to gatherers to work the plot and neighbouring plots as the unit moves around, and allowing specialists like the fire carrier etc. However it is still theory.

 

[strategyonly]

I have figured out that in theory we could have a special screen for the nomadic unit which would allow us to mirror some of the functions of the city screen. Eg we could assign members of the population to gatherers to work the plot and neighbouring plots as the unit moves around, and allowing specialists like the fire carrier etc. However it is still theory.

Something is better than nothing . . . .