Idea: storage space in europe/africa/PR

[CptBadger]

I have zero clue if this would be desired or how much labor is involved.

The convo elsewhere on ship cost involving materials/material cost made me think...

Any reason you couldn't purchase storage space in Europe (and other markets)?

A reasonable balanced limit, and you'd have to buy or rent said space. Surely colonial companies held storage space and warehouses in Europe. Could be used for buying goods at good price, or saving goods for better market conditions (combine this with more dramatic market fluctuations, like fads and market conditions evolving constantly IE Pirates and Traders 2 on android)

This also could be used to augment the building/buying of ships or equipping of pioneers/settlers/troops. You may produce some goods needed for ships or equipped units, take it to Europe and store it. When you buy/commission a ship, using what materials you store there could lower price because they wouldn't have to procure resources. When a colonist is ready to emigrate, if you have goods to equip stored in Europe you don't have to spend the gold, nor carry them to a colony first, you can just equip them out of your Europe warehouse and load them in a ship headed to wherever you want to send troops or start a new colony.

I think its a neat idea and one I would use if implemented. Not in my current (nonexistent) skill range and like I said, no clue how hard it would be to put in motion.

I mean, you can have a screen full of people or ships just sitting there forever. Why not goods?

Alternate thought, could have extra ships docked in Europe to hold materials, works for market angle. Maybe if we could equip colonists/commission ships from materials stored on ships, it would suit all my ideas above instead of separate warehouse mechanic

 

[raystuttgart]

Pure human logic implementation itself in DLL is not that difficult.
(Basically creating a storage and considering it for equipping Professions or buying Units.)

But there are 2 huge issues that make this an extremely big and difficult project:

1. How to teach this to AI ? (Almost impossible)
2. How to visualize it nicely ? (Would need a new "Sub-Screen" ine Europe / Africa / Port Royal to manage this.)

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The idea is not that bad but there are currently maybe 3 Civ4Col modders at most that could implement it.
(Because you need to know DLL, Python, XML-Schema, AI, ...)

And only if 3 additional conditions apply it could become really good quality:

1. They would work together to share the efforts (e.g. Base Feature / Python Screen / AI)
2. A modder with graphical skills would massively support with graphics for backgrounds, buttons, ...
3. Additional supporters would help to write the Game Concept and other texts in Colopedia.

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It is a nice idea, but it would need a coordinated team to assemble lots of different skills.
And even then it would be massive effort considered other projects with much higher gameplay value.

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The idea itsef is not bad and I would like to see somebody implement it.
If somebody skilled enough to get this done would start this and take responsibility for it I would also support.

 

[CptBadger]

I could totally take on the colopedia text, but thats the most microscopic facet lol.

As far as visual, my thought was kinda a simple toggle button for switching views between Europe price, and warehouse stock. I mean, we could make it more fancy but simple is great for me.

And I know we have decidedly higher priorities, labor vs reward payout and all. Lol just wanted to put this down while it came to mind

 

[modmod]

Basically logical.

Possible issues what I see:
1. What happens when you do a fur, sugar, etc party?
You no longer can trade that good with Europe.

2. During WOI obvously get sized.
Probably not an issue.

When you buy/commission a ship, using what materials you store there could lower price because they wouldn't have to procure resources

Europe/ elsewhere you buy ships for money - no materials included.
Well right now -> that can be changed in the future.

Alternate thought, could have extra ships docked in Europe to hold materials

As for me I always do that, just becames non suitable if there are more than 3 ships docking constantly for that.
Storage would be better.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

This is not Hanse where you would buy and maintain Kontors / storage space in all cities of the Hanseatic League to buy up at low prices and ship away to a lucrative other harbour and to store and sell later at high prices.

Especially as our game turns are not seasons where in winter food might sell at a premium while it would be essentially worthless in autumn after a plentiful harvest and the storage rotten after a few years.

I play Marathon game speed because I would like the game turns to be seasons instead of years - but the standard game is still a whole year in which dozens of price variations during the course of the year are subsumized in one price.

Using ships as storage in Europe should be a futile task because having the ship run back and forth between the colony and Europe to sell goods should be far more profitable than waiting several years or even a decade doing nothing in a european port and waiting that the price of a specific good goes up again - especially if the price is dependent on the actions of the other AI players too and a huge shipload of a rival AI could plummet the price even lower.

IF ships are mooring in e.g. the Pool of London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_London
for several years -have the harbour authoritys charge ever increasing harbour fees after the first year that eat up the profit from their cargo.

Storage costs money. Storing goods should cost money. Simply sitting on a huge stack of goods and waiting for the perfect price for decades should cost so much that it would not be worth it.

Ships bring the trade of the world to the european capitals. Noone there is interested to have the same ship mooring there and not selling their cargo for a long time. Sell, move or pay.

And storage on land should be even more expensive - if any colonial player worth his salt would even want to hand over valuable goods into the hands of the authorities of the home country without having received payment and risking "spoilage", theft, rodents, corrupt officials etc. that are not under your command but your Kings.

 

[modmod]

Well as for me my ships store tools, weapons, stone, sometimes trade goods, luxury, gold, silver.
So nothing will rot away.

And while in other games like port royale ( 1-2 ) ships/ crews have maintance cost also done the same, even when had storage houses in the same city. Playstyle.
But yes that game counted days, hardly any playtrought were more than 3 years.

To play seasons instead of years off course better.
You right on that in reality ships are not parking for years in ports.

 

[devolution]

I think that a feature like this would quickly turn into yet another exploit. At the very least the player would have to be required to pay a significant storage fee. To make it balanced we should also implement a way for the price / tax event to trigger while you were selling to avoid the player selling an ungodly amount of silver, all at peak price!

Besides, you can already to this with ships (it was a popular semi-exploit in the original colonization). The advantage of requiring a ship is that it will impose a natural cost by keeping that particular ship from performing other duties,

 

[raystuttgart]

I think that a feature like this would quickly turn into yet another exploit.

Basically what you call "exploit" is more or less what the players want.

... to avoid the player selling an ungodly amount of silver, all at peak price!

That is exactly the reason why players request it.
Withouth that possibility the feature would not really be fun.

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The difference between "exploit" and feature is balancing basically.
So yes, we would need to have configuration / balancing options like this:

At the very least the player would have to be required to pay a significant storage fee.

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Summary:

This is again more or less a feature that is highly "personal taste".

• Some would call it exploit.
• Some would call it a fun feature.

It would definitely need balancing options e.g.

• XML setting for balancing storage fee per turn (calculated by actual yields stored)
  
• XML setting for balancing costs to buy / expand storage space
• XML setting for goods being stolen per turn (similar to overflow)

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However we are discussing about a feature that nobody has yet volunteered to take responsibility.
It is thus a purely hypothetical discussion at the moment.