Limiting Knowledge....Can this be done?

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hi guys. One thing I feel makes explorers, scouts and spies slightly useless is that TOO MUCH information is recieved for free. For instance, knowledge of resource placement and foreign troop numbers is just way to easy to come by. So my suggestion is-if possible-to try and limit the amount of info you recieve without any effort.
For instance if you explore another part of the map, then leave it unexplored and outside your cultural borders, then ALL knowledge of that area should be lost-existing resources and, more particularly, resources associated with new techs should be 'invisible' to the player until he re-explores the area. Same goes with troops and cities of foreign nations (though having a trade route to a city should give you an insight into the immediate surroundings of said city).
At its most extreme, certain resources-such as coal, iron, copper, oil and marble-might NEVER become visible unless a certain condition is met. The more conditions which are met, the more likely said resource is to become visible. Such conditions might be (a) within line of sight of a unit, (b) within your cultural borders, (c) within your city radius and (d) plot is currently being worked and/or already has a terrain improvement on it.
My question is this: such a change would clearly require changes to the SDK-but can it be done AT ALL? Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated .

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Gerikes]

Hi guys. One thing I feel makes explorers, scouts and spies slightly useless is that TOO MUCH information is recieved for free. For instance, knowledge of resource placement and foreign troop numbers is just way to easy to come by. So my suggestion is-if possible-to try and limit the amount of info you recieve without any effort.
For instance if you explore another part of the map, then leave it unexplored and outside your cultural borders, then ALL knowledge of that area should be lost-existing resources and, more particularly, resources associated with new techs should be 'invisible' to the player until he re-explores the area. Same goes with troops and cities of foreign nations (though having a trade route to a city should give you an insight into the immediate surroundings of said city).
At its most extreme, certain resources-such as coal, iron, copper, oil and marble-might NEVER become visible unless a certain condition is met. The more conditions which are met, the more likely said resource is to become visible. Such conditions might be (a) within line of sight of a unit, (b) within your cultural borders, (c) within your city radius and (d) plot is currently being worked and/or already has a terrain improvement on it.
My question is this: such a change would clearly require changes to the SDK-but can it be done AT ALL? Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated .

Aussie_Lurker.

I would think so. The bonuses are shown per-team, using the getBonusType function.

BonusTypes CvPlot::getBonusType(TeamTypes eTeam) const
{
	if (eTeam != NO_TEAM)
	{
		if (m_eBonusType != NO_BONUS)
		{
			if (!(GET_TEAM(eTeam).isHasTech((TechTypes)(GC.getBonusInfo((BonusTypes)m_eBonusType).getTechReveal()))))
			{
				return NO_BONUS;
			}
		}
	}

	return (BonusTypes)m_eBonusType;
}

So, as you can see, a bonus theoretically only exists on a plot if the team can see it. You can probably just change this function so that in addition to having the tech required to see the plot, all your other ideas have to be true. For the idea of having to have recently seen the plot to get the bonus info, you can probably do this by adding a an array of booleans (one for each team) that has "seen" the bonus (layed eyes on it since they discovered the prerequistite tech). Those can be set to false to start with, and set to true during CvPlot::changeVisibilityCount (although, truthfully, I'm not sure how team visibility works, other than knowing it has something to do with changeStolenVisibilityCount, so you might have to take that into affect as well).

 

[The Great Apple]

I can see the reasoning behind new resources being hidden, but IMO the plots themselves and old resources should be kept - removing knowledge that the player once had is silly, as it will lead to people just noting it down on a bit of paper.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, I am flexible in that regard, TGA. Just so long as resources which are not visible REMAIN not visible. I would, however, prefer a system where resources need to be 'discovered' through ownership. So the thing is, can this latter system be achieved?

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Vehem]

I can see the reasoning behind new resources being hidden, but IMO the plots themselves and old resources should be kept - removing knowledge that the player once had is silly, as it will lead to people just noting it down on a bit of paper.

Hmm - I can kinda see it working well though...

==
A warrior returns from the wilds to report to the chief

Warrior: Chief! I found silver!
Chief: Excellent. Where is it?
Warrior: In a hill to the North.
Chief: Which hill?
Warrior: Err... It's a big one.
Chief: Hmm - a big one?
Warrior: Err... yes. With trees on it!
Chief: Anything else you can tell us about it?
Warrior: Yes. It's very steep - I fell over as I was coming down it and landed right on my...

Chief: Enough. Send out the scouts to do some proper recon and map the area.

==
Another (probably easier way) to boost the usefulness of scouts would be to increase the chances of military units angering tribal villages, and the chances of scouts getting a positive result.
==
Perhaps allowing them to create "lookout towers" or "beacons" in neutral territory, allowing line of sight in the area? Similar principle to the RealFort with improved LoS, so that if buit on a hill, you can see for a large number of tiles.
==
An increase in types of "ruin" (such as the ancient temple in SevoMod) which scouts can explore? Or even allow them to search the remains of city ruins for further gold or survivors to join your empire (either as slaves or grateful workers).
==
A late-game upgrade to make them into "surveyors" would also make for an interesting twist. A unit that spends 10-20 turns (based on terrain type) surveying the area to discover new resources. The chance of success is small (1-3% dependant on terrain type/resource types) but if a player is desperate for oil for instance, they can spend time hunting for it in the deserts. It could even be used to represent "prospectors", hunting for gold in the hills. Plots would need to be flagged as they were checked however. Further depth could be added if you allowed a 30% chance that a plot that has been checked is *not* flagged as such - meaning it can be checked again with a chance of success. The player has no idea whether the plot is actually flagged empty, or may still contain a resource that he has not found. By the time he has checked it 3 times however, the plot is down to around a 2.7% chance of being unflagged (0.3^3).

To be fair, I'm tempted to have a go at coding that one myself if no-one quicker fancies it.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

This reminds me a bit of Imperialism which used a Prospector unit to discover mineral resorces (agriculture resorces are visible without special work). A small red X apeared on searched plots to indicate nothing was their. A similar system needs to be used to keep the player sane.

I propose creating a "surveyed" resorces wich will act as such a marker, it can be set visible individualy for each team as they explore. Upon a new resorce revealing tech being discovered it can be globaly wiped for that team to allow the prospecting process to start all over.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

This reminds me of some of the brainstorming I was doing about a year ago... one of the things that kind of frustrated me was the lack of representation of telecommunications, arguably one of the most important technological developments in human history. But of course it's not really represented? How could it be?

From the very beginning, you have instant visibility of everything within your domain. You see what's going on as it's happening. So then I started to think of ways to simulate the change of the times... I came up with some fairly silly ideas.

One was to make it so that in the beginning, with the exception of a ring of visible squares around the a leader unit, everything else would be covered in the fog of war... units sent out would just go into the great beyond. And basically, all changes to the map would lag a turn or two behind depending on the distance from the leader. So if you were the victim of a sneak attack, you wouldn't find out about it for another turn or two if it happened on the periphery of your empire. And if you lost a city, again, there would be a delay. And you'd have to conduct campaigns either at the head of your troops, which is risky since losing the leader unit means instant death and game over, or you could send them out giving them an abstract idea what to do and they'd either succeed or fail.

For obvious reasons, this is not only completely unfeasible but also not any fun. It would be cumbersome, computer resource intensive, and highly frustrating.

So something like what you're talking about is a better solution and definitely workable. So it would be cool if, over time, you could acquire technologies such as telegraph/telephone, that might decrease the penalty of the fog of war as you've suggested.

 

[Vehem]

This reminds me a bit of Imperialism which used a Prospector unit to discover mineral resorces (agriculture resorces are visible without special work). A small red X apeared on searched plots to indicate nothing was their. A similar system needs to be used to keep the player sane.

Heh - I was deliberately keeping that side of it secret so that a player never knows if the plot is *really* empty, or holding some vital, undiscovered resource. I have been accused of being evil however.

Still - it does add another decision to the gameplay - how much time and how many resources do you allocate to hunting for new, valuable resource deposits. If you were certain that a plot was empty once you'd surveyed it, you would know fairly quickly that x units and y turns allows you to sweep z tiles. Without that certainty, you have to choose just how sure you want to be before moving on. For instance, over the course of a game, I may sweep city-radius tiles 4 times (to have a less than 1% chance of having missed anything), whilst the rest of the territory gets a more casual 1-2 checks in terrain types that have what I'm looking for.

I have a feeling this is getting away from the original subject of the post however and branching off into another ModComp entirely...