Increasing "Range of Vision" on Ocean? [CANCELED]

[Mr. ZorG]

It is always the same.

and I will tell you why it is so: without trying it you don’t understand how it works. I played with the sub-mod for a long time and therefore was able to appreciate its changes.
some are afraid of the ship price change))) but please believe me (if you never played long with this change) it is very interesting. adds delicious complexity to the game.
and I repeat: without trying, you won't understand)

 

[raystuttgart]

some are afraid of the ship price change but please believe me

Trust me, I am not afraid of the Ship price change itself.

I have actually always felt that ship prices are too low.
I was also fully convinced that higher ship prices make the game more challenging and more fun for Hardcore Players.

But trust me as well:
High Ship prices are really bad for AI - since it would not get enough ships to transport colonists and goods.
(At least if we leave everything else in balancing of WTP as it is)

In V's SubMod it only does because he made many other questionable changes that make the game much easier for players and AI
(But many team members and community members would probably reject those.)

This can be countered though by e.g.

• giving Players and AIs a lot more ships to start with (as @Vaeringjar did) --> many players would reject that
  
• removing price increases (as @Vaeringjar did) --> many players would reject that
  
• having AI play by easier rules (which I would do) --> many players would reject that
• ...

Summary:

Considering "High Ship Prices" in itself you do not need to discuss with me about fun.
You need to give me a solution that allows AI to compete with Human Players (getting enough Ships to transport its Units) without introducing too many other questionable changes that team and community would reject.

When looking at a change as a modder you can not judge it independently.
You need to look at all the side effects and impact chains it triggers. (Including AI, techical, gameplay, efforts, ...)

Only if the sum of all impats and consequences is positive a change is really good ...

 

[Fürstbischof]

Although being late to the party I don't like expanding the viewing range of ships. Not only it's highly unrealistic because of the size of the plots but also you can not spot beyond the horizon. As a means to improve naval exploration in the mod it's not well suited. Although the increased viewing range would make naval exploration less tedious it would make it also even less important. And it has a tendency to weaken the importance of minor warships and your navy in general. OTOH during war time it would make spying on the ai even easier as it's now giving the player just another advantage over it.

 

[raystuttgart]

Not only it's highly unrealistic because of the size of the plots but also you can not spot beyond the horizon.

We have the same case for Peaks.

Default vision range on Peaks - without Promotions - is 2 Plots.
If you get both vision range Promotions (Explorer 1 and Force March 1) it is 4.

That is why I thought we would / should do the same for Ocean.
(Everybody who has ever been on the Ocean knows how far you can see there.)

So is the Peak then viewing beyond the Horizon?
If no, why would it then be viewing beyond the Horizon on the Ocean?

----

But again, I accept the "No".

There is no point in discussing about personal taste.
There simply never is a "right" or a "wrong" in modding.

Let us thus stop here and forget about this change.
My question has been answered.

And it is so easy to change that I can always do it in my private play version which is highly customized anyways.

 

[Fürstbischof]

We need a full revision of the naval side of the mod. This includes promotions which follow its ancestor CIV4 too closely. A good part of them should be removed, including those that give additional vision range.

Even the largest ships with the highest masts offered way less vision range than a small hill. You might spot land or peaks from a larger distance from the sea, which is perfectly fine for me, but not another tiny ship.

 

[raystuttgart]

We need a full revision of the naval side of the mod. This includes promotions ...

See here.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

but I would suggest keeping only one promotion for naval units, which gives +1 to the view. telescopes allowed to see far

 

[raystuttgart]

but I would suggest keeping only one promotion for naval units, which gives +1 to the view. telescopes allowed to see far

Since we can not get any consense there will not be any changes for base vision range on Ocean.
(Everybody who actively contributes - which @Fürstbischof does - has a veto right to my opinion that I will accept.)

I had to ask a last time, since it came up for the discussion of "Integrating V's Sub mod".
I got an answer: "No, we will not integrate the suggested change".

Everything stays as it is.
(more or less - the rebuild of the "Naval Promotion System" will change some things)

• base vision on Ocean is 1
• 2 Promotions for +1 vision (however not every UnitCombatType in the new "Naval Promotion System" will get both)
  
• thus max vision range on ocean 3 (only for some UnitCombatTypes like "Interception Ships" and "Pirates")

---

Let us then stop the discussion here.
We would just turn in circles without ever getting a consense anyways.

And since it is just a single XML tag everybody can easily change it in his private version.
(There is programming knowledge and almost no modding skill involed.)

 

[devolution]

The problem with increasing base vision is the number of promotions that increase vision. It my view the max vision should probably be a maximum of 2 plots, that leaves only a single promotion available (and it should be a high-level one!)


We have to take a step back and reconsider what the purpose of increasing vision is. In my view, ships should actively be patrolling and not remain stationary. I suspect the reason this is not happening is that it is currently rather cumbersome to manually move ships in this manner since we lack a specific automation for patrolling .

However, patrolling is on my list AI TODO list we could expose this behavior to players as well when we get around to implementing it.

Edit: I forgot to mention it, but the lower the max vision range is the faster the game will run. It has a significant runtime cost, in particular for larger maps.

 

[devolution]

Regarding promotions:

Please stop batching too much stuff into a single promotion. Promotions should allow a ship to specialize so they should probably only have a single effect

@Marla_Singer et. al. have some interesting ideas on how to make ships a bit more diverse:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a-little-bit-about-ships.624470/page-2#post-14998904

 

[Nightinggale]

Speaking of making ships move more, I have ideas regarding a traderoute overhaul or adding a new system. This will make one route list colonies and the unit will then visit those in that order. Each stop can then have multiple yield orders. More on that later.

Why it matters here is that I want a "stop" to be waypoints as it can have the order "go to this plot" to order transports to take the safe route rather than the shortest. This system can then be used to create a route exclusively of waypoints and then assign warships to it. Using the "quit automation when spotting hostile", this will create an automated patrol using a patrol route set by the player. Routes are separate from units meaning multiple units can be assigned to the same one.

It could be an interesting idea to expand on this idea and let stops be skipped (checkbox, not default) if there is nothing to load/unload. Another checkbox for "stop until healed". A patrol route can then have a colony with unload all and heal, which is allowed to be skipped. This way once combat is done, resuming the same route will make the ship go to the colony, unload plunder and then wait until it's healed. Once healed, it will return to the patrol route. Don't like this level of automation? Easy solution: don't use it. It's optional.

This is on the idea stage at the moment. No idea if or when this will make it into the game.

 

[Hibernian]

Hi guys,

in my games I have often felt that the range of vision on Ocean is too low.
(E.g. if you compare it to range of vision on Peaks.)

Thus I suggest to increase (base) range of vision on Ocean by +1.
(Not on Coast Plots though, to ensure that Ships can not look too deep into the land.)

Considering Immersion:

Basically there are no obstacles - except maybe Storms - that should prevent a ship to see quite far.
(e.g. Enemy Ships or Land should be relatively easy to spot.)

Considering Gameplay:

Would it play quite differently than now?
Of course it would, otherwise the change would be pointless.

• Spotting Land would become easier.
• Spotting and hunting other Ships would become easier for Pirates.
• But at the same time it would become easier for Combat Ships to hunt Pirates as well.
• Storms would become more useful as "hiding places".
• Finding good Fishing / Whaling places for Fishing Boats / Whaling Ships would become easier.
• Scouting for Water Goodies would become a bit easier.
• Navigating through Storms and Unfavourable Winds would become a bit easier.

Considering AI:

• AI should actually also really profit from this.

Considering Effort and Risk:

• Basically almost 0.

-----

Actually I wonder why we have not yet already done that.
(I currently can not find a good reason that speaks against it.)

Especially for "Gigantic Maps" this seems to be quite reasonable.

-----

Feedback?

Could you not, instead of generally increasing the range of vision for ships, add an action (call it for example "Crow's nest") to a ship that allows you to see +1 as a once off for that moment at a cost of 1 movement point ?

That way the impact is not too massive, ships that only sail from A to B in a hurry do not profit from it, however if you are in exploration mood you still get the chance to spot land (or anything else of interest) easier and then you can sail into that direction. It would also make the aspect of spotting other ships a bit more interesting as they don't necessarily spot you at the same time as you spot them. You would basically pay a movement point to have an advantage of sneaking up.

It's probably too complicated from the programming point of view to implement something like "sail ho" in Sid Meier's Pirates!. You could use a movement point to have a once off +2 vision range but the outer visible circle does not tell you type or nationality of a ship, just "unknown ship" (or "unknown type of land" without telling you what type of land or if any AI units are on it).

 

[ConjurerDragon]

We have the same case for Peaks.

Default vision range on Peaks - without Promotions - is 2 Plots.
If you get both vision range Promotions (Explorer 1 and Force March 1) it is 4.

That is why I thought we would / should do the same for Ocean.
(Everybody who has ever been on the Ocean knows how far you can see there.)

So is the Peak then viewing beyond the Horizon?
If no, why would it then be viewing beyond the Horizon on the Ocean?

You can´t physically look beyond the horizon on either water or land. However the higher up you are due to earth curvature let´s you look farther.

So it would be an unfair comparison to take a spotter on top of a peak (which resembles a mountain - let´s ignore asian 8000érs but say 4000 metres high) with a spotter who sits in the crows nest on top of the mast of a ship (30 metres?). Naturally the unobstructed vision of the guy on peak would be potentially (with a good spyglass which would not be available before the 16th century) farther than on the ocean where the spotter would be more likely to be right on top of the surface.

So even the difference between a guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dany de Vito would mean a (small) difference in how far they can see, because Arnold would use a different angle to look at the curves of earth.

Hypotheticallly if you are high enough (MIR /ISS) then you can see half of the globe..
https://science.howstuffworks.com/question198.htm

So, from a physical point of view, no unit, either on land or sea,should at the start of the game be able to observe more than the 1 square they are standing / floating in and have to march / sail into the darkness of the fog of war to see what is in the next square. And that would be - physically - true for all current mapsizes. Only if a square would be less than 10 Kilometres wide, then .... but such large maps are impossible.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Could you not, instead of generally increasing the range of vision for ships, add an action (call it for example "Crow's nest") to a ship that allows you to see +1 as a once off for that moment at a cost of 1 movement point ?

That way the impact is not too massive, ships that only sail from A to B in a hurry do not profit from it, however if you are in exploration mood you still get the chance to spot land (or anything else of interest) easier and then you can sail into that direction. It would also make the aspect of spotting other ships a bit more interesting as they don't necessarily spot you at the same time as you spot them. You would basically pay a movement point to have an advantage of sneaking up.

Panzer General 3D (german name) which was Panzer General III? in english had something like that. Scout units, both on land and planes (Aufklärer) had a wider vision but only when standing still. While driving / flying they were limited to 1 square on each side.

 

[raystuttgart]

See, we could do a lot, if we had enough interested modders.
But we do not have those and thus there are 2 very simple questions to answer everytime:

• Is it worth the effort considering gameplay at all?
• Is there another topic that has higher priority ?

-----

Apart from that we would have the same problems to clarify and handle as always:
Do we get a consense?

• Gameplay and Balancing (Personal taste)
  
• Technical side effects (Performance, AI, impact on other features, ...)
  
• Risk / Bugs
• ...

-----

The Action you talk about would not be worth it for me to invest several weeks of programming into it.
What you describe is extremely difficult to implement.

• temporary increase of vision range by exchange of movement points
  
• not seeing nationality or unit details in that increased vision range
• somehow teaching AI to eventually be able to use it as well
• ...

In contrary to this the idea I had suggested is easy - basically 0 effort - to implement because it can be changed so easily in XML.

-----

The good thing:

I have about 100 other topics / ideas that I am really interested in implementing - many of them massive topics I would need to invest months of modding.
My potential todo-list is full until eternity. Realistically I will not even implement 20% within the next years.
I will definitely not get bored because I run out of features to mod.

-----

Let us simply close the topic "changes to vision range on Ocean".
I figured that we will not find a consense anyways, because our personal tastes are so different - which is perfectly normal though.

Community and team will get the things they want me to give them.
And I am confident that we will find something else again that majority likes.
The rest I can simply implement in my private version for myself.

The only important thing is that the team finds enough consense to continue modding together.
Thus there will be enough progress in the mod to keep team members and community happy.
That is currently the case because we still have enough common vision.

Everybody is happy in the end.

 

[Nightinggale]

Could you not, instead of generally increasing the range of vision for ships, add an action (call it for example "Crow's nest") to a ship that allows you to see +1 as a once off for that moment at a cost of 1 movement point ?

Apart from coding issues (which are likely more severe than you realize), how would that be intuitive or historically accurate? Ships placed a guy or two in the crow's nest and they stayed there until replaced. They looked around at all time regardless of the speed of the ship. I imagine them coming down during storms, but in normal windy conditions they stayed up there.

See, we could do a lot, if we had enough interested modders.
But we do not have those and thus there are 2 very simple questions to answer everytime:

That's the main reason why I try to plan for only two major features. Taking on more isn't extra, but postponing what I/we already decided to add. Obviously postponing due to other tasks like bugfixing (like OOS hunting) might be unavoidable, but that's not the kind of "other task" we are talking about in this thread.

 

[raystuttgart]

@Nightinggale

I fully agree with you.
We have enough topics and this topic is not worth further discussing.

• It is not impactful enough to make a big difference and thus not worth to continue discussing for weeks
• It is so easy to change that everybody can change it for himself in his private version
  
• We had tried to find a consense for this twice and could not do so

----

My todo-list is full now anyways.
Those are the only things I really care about right now:

• "Large Rivers" needs to finally get published (of course after Integration into "Big Merge")
• I want to do the Naval Promotion System properly (which should keep me busy while I wait for Integration of "Large Rivers")

If there are some "long hanging fruits" on the way, like this small XML balancing change we discussed in this thread, I will take them with me on the way.
But other big changes or new features are currently not possible. (My health does not allow it.)

 

[Hibernian]

Apart from coding issues (which are likely more severe than you realize), how would that be intuitive or historically accurate? Ships placed a guy or two in the crow's nest and they stayed there until replaced. They looked around at all time regardless of the speed of the ship. I imagine them coming down during storms, but in normal windy conditions they stayed up there.

I would take the historic accuracy from explorers taking more time when they explore rather than just rush from A to B. You might have a cartographer who sails into each bay to have more details for a map he creates or waits a few hours to watch the sunset in order to determine the latitude of his position for his map or he would sail towards birds that the crow's nest has spotted in the hope he would find land in that direction. Someone like Columbus would have landed on different islands and therefore gain knowledge of the land rather than just rushing on. All could be considered information about the area at the expense of movement speed.