Idea about elephants and horses

[SOV]

Hi! first of all, thanks to Xyth everybody who made this mod possible, Im a big fan of your work!, I played civ since mid 90's and this is by far the verison I have enjoyed the most. Thanks!

I also have a suggestion regarding elephants and horses for your consideration. I think Elephants and horses should have a cap (kinda like national units) that is related to the amount of resources you own and the amount of stables you build. Both Elephant and horses are long lived animals that need to be captured (until you have stables), that can only grow so fast and need to be trained. So in order to make it more logistically realistic, my suggestion would be that for every elephant/horse resource you own, you are allowed X amount of horse/elephant based units (say 4 for horse 2 for elephants since they are slower breeders), and for every stable you build you get extra 4 and 2. This would encourage acquiring more resources if possible, (under the current scheme logistically doesnt make much difference if you have 1 or 5 horse/elephant resources) and would be a big incentive to build stables. And will further require a diversification of the army as you can only produce so many units of one type.

I don't know if this is possible with programing or if it would mess up the AI too much, but just a thought.

Again thanks and looking forward for version 1.21!!

 

[Xyth]

I would love to add something like this, not just for Horses and Elephants, but for most of the strategic resources. Unfortunately, at this time I cannot I think of a way that it could be implemented that the AI would understand.

 

[Absolution]

So what?
In reality, people are a limited resource as well.
According to your idea about realistic resources, you'll also have to relate the number of soldiers to the poppulation...

It is actually less logical to make these resources limited, because a tile with horses in the game represents an area in which horses are common, not a single flock of horses.
So realistically, when you use them several times they are not "done" - horse will remain living in that tile (which can be a big region in earth standards).
Maybe a mechanic of animal extinction in the industrial era can be implemented (like the global warming...), along with other resources.

Anyway, I think that resources are of those issues in which complete reality should be given up in the first place, because the game needs to be far more intensive in order to make them work like in reality.
But if you are just looking for a trigger to capture more resources of the same kind - some other simple benefits can be used for that purpose:
Maybe a simple reduce in the production of mounted units if you have several horse tiles or something. If you have a more creative idea it can be nice.

 

[SOV]

So what?
In reality, people are a limited resource as well.
According to your idea about realistic resources, you'll also have to relate the number of soldiers to the poppulation...

That wouldn’t be too far of settlers or workers, altrought it would have to be a small fraction of the cost of settlers and workers for it to work but I think it is a viable idea.

t is actually less logical to make these resources limited, because a tile with horses in the game represents an area in which horses are common, not a single flock of horses.
So realistically, when you use them several times they are not "done" - horse will remain living in that tile (which can be a big region in earth standards).
Maybe a mechanic of animal extinction in the industrial era can be implemented (like the global warming...), along with other resources.

I agree that don’t they dont represent a single herd, but I disagree with the second part. They do represent a population which, as every population, has a limited ability to reproduce and if the extraction of the resource is higher than the supply rate it would lead to depletion. But depletion would be no fun in the game. So by putting a cap on it you are assuming the extraction is occurring at maximum rate without leading to depletion.

Extinction of local or entire populations of large game such as wild horses, camels elephants and cows has happened WAY before industrial age. Read following links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski's_Horse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_elephant
Had early civilizations not domesticated and moved stock to stables we would only see horses and Asian elephants in museums today, as the consumption of them would have exceeded restocking of natural occurring herds long ago.

Anyway, I think that resources are of those issues in which complete reality should be given up in the first place, because the game needs to be far more intensive in order to make them work like in reality.
But if you are just looking for a trigger to capture more resources of the same kind - some other simple benefits can be used for that purpose:

You are missing the point its not just a trigger to get more resources, that would be one thing, but the main thing is to diversify armies thus limiting the growth of “stacks of death”. and to add more logistical constrains to army growth and more consequences to disrupt supply of strategic resources. whereas your idea would support creation of single-type unit armies and "stacks of death" And as Xhyth mentioned it can be applied to almost all strategic resources (you can only support X many tanks with X amount of oil wells or rubber etc…).

Maybe a simple reduce in the production of mounted units if you have several horse tiles or something. If you have a more creative idea it can be nice.

If you have a more creative idea I would love to hear it.

 

[platyping]

Creativity comes at the price of stupidity.

Without altering the dll, there is nothing much you can do to teach the AI new concepts.
Or for instance, edit the trade screen such that you can trade for more horses or iron when you already have some, unless due to corporation benefits.

Although limiting units via resources can be easily done via pure python, the result is stupid AI which cannot understand why they cannot build more units, while humans understand they need to get new resource sites.
Result? Dumber AI

Thus, less creative ideas such as reduction in production cost, or simply XP boost for every extra copy of resource are both manageable for AI.
Although they won't sought to find more resource sites to benefit from these, at least it will not hamper them from building a decent army without knowing why they cannot.

 

[The_Athenian]

I like the idea of turning some units into limited national units, so knights & elephants are more like priests. and You need to build stables to unlock more.

However, that kind of drastic change could give some gamers a stroke.

Wasn't there a mechanic in one of the mods that came with BTS, that allowed for resources to be depleted over time, particularly in the modern era?

 

[SOV]

Thanks so much for your replies, very appreciated. I thought about what you said and maybe a mixed approach could be used to coherence the AI?

Creativity comes at the price of stupidity.Thus, less creative ideas such as reduction in production cost, or simply XP boost for every extra copy of resource are both manageable for AI.
Although they won't sought to find more resource sites to benefit from these, at least it will not hamper them from building a decent army without knowing why they cannot.

If bonus are enough to convince the AI that is a good idea to build stables/ Factories / Or another resource based building and using The_Athenian idea of turning resource dependent units as national units (X),( I know this sound scary but still would be plenty). Maybe there is a way of limiting units without confusing or hampering the AI.

Say each resource you own would give you a production bonus (Absolution Idea) AND rise X to X2. And EACH stable you own would give you a production bonus AND rise the cap by Y.

Say AI has 1 horse and 10 stables it would get to build: 1X+ 10Y

If the AI gets 2 horses and has 10 stables it would be 2X + 10Y

The cap would be more related to the amount of stables and not to the amount of horses, So even if the AI doenst realize that getting more horses is a good idea it still can build an army by building stables, which it will build because it "wants" the production bonus, but incidentally it would also allow it to build more of the resource dependent unit. , is this right? does it make sense?
If you own multiple resources it can rise the cap AND give you a production bonus (which would make sense as you have less of a bottle neck in your supply line), but the main limiting factor would be set by how many stables you own (or refineries/forge etc).

It would cap small to medium empires, once you have a lot of cities with a lot of stables the cap can be so high it wouldnt change things by much, (but its only fair to amass huge armies when you own 20+ cities).

Would this cap how many resource dependent units of each type you can build, but without messing the AI too much?. I used horses, but could be applied to Elephants, Iron, Oil etc.. I realize it would get more complicated with units that require 2 or more resources, or buildings that use 2 resources (like stables) and balancing X and Y can be tricky. And I am sure there are programing limits I might not aware of, but its cool to discuss ideas. Thoughts?

 

[platyping]

Anything to do with python, does not come with A.I. because A.I. does not read english.

For instance, a simple wonder that causes anarchy to all other players when built, sounds simple enough for us to understand.
But A.I. does not see this at all, and may build it only based on whatever XML values you give to that wonder in BuildingInfos, such as cost, culture, great people points, flavour etc.

However, for wonders it is not such a big deal as "bluffing" A.I. to build via high flavour points can be done, and the worst thing that can happen is that the python effects are not useful for the A.I. at that point of time and it is just a waste of hammers.

As such, anything that is causing limitations via python is not advisable unless you have ways to tell the A.I. why and give it solutions.

For instance, this "production bonus" is via python, so A.I. will NOT understand that building stables grant that bonus.

Similarly, I never do any python civics and is against it, because having civic A prevent you from getting civic B. Humans can understand and judge which is better, not for A.I.

 

[Xyth]

As platy says, it is possible to trick the AI but only using existing XML-based bonuses, and none of those stack with multiple versions of the same resource. Corporations do have such mechanics, but then they lack most everything thing else we need. Civ4 has been built around 1 resource supplying all connected cities and as a result most of the functionality available us is binary: "has resource" and "doesn't have resource", but no "how many of that resource?". Not impossible to work around for human players, but very challenging for the AI.

A more insurmountable problem is diplomacy. This is an area that we have very limited access to for changes. So while we can potentially trick the AI into building things that increase their supplies of a resource, we can't prevent it from trading them away.

I don't mean to sound discouraging, as I'm all for creative discussion on this topic. But better to know the technical limitations before getting too involved.

 

[SOV]

Hi, Not discouraging at all, in fact thanks for the reply. I imagined there was technical aspects I wasnt aware off and as you say better to know the technical limitations before getting too involved. After months of reading this forum as a guest, I joined because it is such a cool project and the discussions seem to always be creative and constructive, will keep reading and posting. Thanks!

 

[Alexej]

This mod is good looking, has some great but simple enough features and i like it this way more.

 

[stoferb]

Wouldn't it be possible to highjack the corporation function for resources, in a similar way as tenets have highjacked the civic functions in the newest version? Without touching the dll I mean. Because that could open up all kinds of possibilities with multiple resources. And it could add some logistics of manpower to the game. For example when you build a barrack in a city, say you gain a resource "military recruit". Having only one of these will be sufficient for some empire wide bonus, say +20% production for military units. Also some kind of 'corporation' bonus for having more than one recruit, say one hammer in the city (With the military 'corporation' present) for every X number of recruits. But in addition multiples of recruits could also add some minor bonuses that makes sense to humans but not the AI because the AI would strive for more recruits and have a decent idea about their value anyway.

A bunch of more ideas follow from this first idea, diplomatically that you can trade for manpower and thus help allies/colonies/vassals that need to get some military production going. Another is that going for a military "corporation" could be it's own thing. Instead of having 10 identical military corporations to make it relatively safe for the player and most of the AI to get one on higher difficulties and crowded maps they could be slightly different, focused on different strategies. Also some minor HQ bonus in espionage points would be appropriate to encourage their spread outside national borders. Finally, by tying other typically military resources like iron and horses into the mix the real corporations will compete with your military, and you'll have to decide wether a city should be devoted to producing military or other things.

 

[Xyth]

Military corporations are something I'm considering, as a late-game feature. Only a vague idea at this point, many technical challenges to work through before I can detail anything. Probably not in 1.23 either.