[MOD PROJECT / DEV DIARY] - 1st of Genuary 2000 "The next Millenium"

[cFccFc]

How is it going? Any progress ww2commander?

I have been thinking about this issue and have always been abit dissapointet in the game, there is never a real need for oil except for on smaller maps, but then you just get some unlucky civs that doesn't have oil and is stuck in the past.

 

[ww2commander]

I have not heard from Duke176 so I can only assume he has been busy on other things.

Speaking on his behalf, I managed to include the mod he currently has available and it seems to work ok. I have yet to playtest fully, so from the initial tests I can only say that it does work fine and units will not have any movement points if you do not have any oil.

I dont know much about the trade/diplomacy side of things as my scenario is fixed with the Germans and Soviets having a main source of oil on the map. I have yet to work out how the allies and Finns will get access to oil but hopefully the AI knows how to use it.

 

[Duke176]

all right what I was thinking of, for AI, was to modify the heavyness (importance) that some units has in Army building based on the ammount of oil owned.
If I'm not wrong there should be a function, or a part of XML (I've never studied AI structure), that assigns to AI behaviours an heavyness value - the highest it is, more importance will have that behaviour for AI. So this way we could make game calculate the % ammount of oil owned by a civ; for ex. (Total produced - total used) / the number of units the civ owns that uses OIL; or the total OIL max usage for that turn (considering max movement for each unit - total OIL produced and if negative Total Oil owned - Total OIL usage uncover with reserves) than if the OIL is enough to move everything for ex. 10 turns Ok; if not the AI will have to start thinking about building others units that don't need OIL.

hope i've been clear.

 

[Duke176]

How is it going? Any progress ww2commander?

I have been thinking about this issue and have always been abit dissapointet in the game, there is never a real need for oil except for on smaller maps, but then you just get some unlucky civs that doesn't have oil and is stuck in the past.

well this is true.
But the big prb of this little part of mod I've introduced is that it's needed a BIG BIG part to be modded in whole structure of game to give it a sense.

for ex. think about this:

- you own only 1 pump that extract for you 250 barrels / turn of OIL and 1000 barrels of reserve;
- you have an Army with 150 units (huge map) that need OIL to move: let's make a consideration. To move the whole of your army of ex. 3 tails you need 450 barrels and to support your industries and production (with your industrial capacity) you need 350 barrels / turn. That makes a consumption of 800 barrels / turn vs a production of 250 barrels + 40% bacuase you own raffinery so other 100 barrels - 350 barrels/turn.
Resoult = -450 barrels / turn.
- you develope the wonder "Strategic Reserve" - you recive a 20% of your total production to add to your total ammout (+ 70 barrels/turn)
- you buy the remaining needs of OIL barrels + 100 from your allie (+ 480 barrels)

Your nearest Civ owns a city with an OIL bonus + and offshore extraction point.

HOW MANY CHANCES YOU HAVE TO CONQUER IT'S CITY? a lot
HOW MANY CHANCES YOU HAVE TO SURVIVE A WAR ON VAST SCALE? depends
HOW MANY CHANCES YOU HAVE TO WIN THE WAR ON LONG TIME? depends
DO YOU WANT YOUR CIV TO DECREASE IT'S POWER AND DEVELOPE? no!

So you strategy will have to be perfect!


I hope i've been enough clear to show my vision. the only prb is the long way...

PS.
What would it happen if on Markets OIL exchange price get higher and higher becuase the WORLD total ammount of OIL is decreased (for wars) vs an increase of oil needed for production?

And what if a CIV (maybe little and less rich) develope OIL INDIPENDENCE (for ex. 40 turns needed for dev) technology?
Wouldn't it become the most powerfull soon?

And what if you cannot support costs for OIL INDIPENDECE tech develope and a big army too? Will you choose for the Army (and the risks I show you before) or you will choose for future tech (with risks of invasion/espionage/sabotage if someone understand that you are developing that tech)? - with new uses for spyes...


And (last one) what would it happens with the same things applied to URANIUM - with a UN Resolution that makes you unable to officialy sell or buy Uranioum? And what if, from your Atomic Research Military (A.R.M.Y?) where you store Uranium, someone steal you enough URANIUM to build a little atomic bomb???

Just imagine. Hard thinking, big project, long work, short time.
But the path it's this, I think.
Thx for attention.

 

[cFccFc]

Mate, it sounds awesome. If we could match this with the Airforce mod and perhaps the moderwarfare it would be sweet. I hope you can get it going soon, cause I am really interrested in this one. Count me as a fan

 

[ww2commander]

I like your ideas Duke176

The only thing that confuses me is that I thought the oil counter had identical functionality to the gold counter in everyway. Thus I thought the AI should have the same ability to not over produce units if it knows it will go into 'oil' bankruptcy. The AI obviously would not know what oil is and just thinks of the counter as Gold2.

Maybe the inclusion of several other counters that are used to maintain a large limitary force would be useful to get the mod expanding. The primary resources I would suggest would be oil, food (supplies), steel (could be converted from iron with The Lopez Building Resource Convertor Mod and in the later years uraninium. At a simplistic level these have been the four resources that have predominantly allowed nations to build and maintain huge military forces.

Anymore counters than the above becomes a nightmare to manage and the complexity starts to outway the benefit.....for example I woul not want to be tracking how many bananas and gems I have as there is no real point.

Overall, your ideas are awesome and your mod will make both random games and scenarios kick ass

 

[Duke176]

all right.
1st of all I'll start working on
City - General consumption of OIL (for ex. a city within 1-5 will consume 1 x num of inhabitant - city within 6-10 will consume 2 x num - city within 11-15 will consume 3 x num and over 15 will consume 4 x num)

Obviously we will have to test it and maybe modify the ammount consumed each inhabitant.

Than I'll move on buildings that uses OIL to work - ex. factories and all other existent buildings - than I'll move on buildings that reduce consumes like nuclear power (ex. -20% to consumption from that city) and so on.

 

[ww2commander]

Probably only modifying the buildings would be the answer as the cities consumption is in proportion to the buildings they would have...cities with less factories and so on would use less oil then mass production centers. Thats atleast how I think of it in game terms.

Things population use oil for would be represented in infrastructure such as oil refineries, electric utilities and so on....the population probably would not see the end result of oil itself.

 

[Duke176]

for that value I intended all th other uses of OIL cities need.
for ex. for roads, for objects like everything with plastic........

all the things not mentioned with a building for it.

Than if = 0 chance of riots.
What about it?

 

[ww2commander]

Just keep in mind you dont want to outstrip oil production with its uses....and as you mentioned... you need to confirm the AI understands all these additional needs for oil otherwise the human may have an advantage over the AI if it uses the oil system better

EDIT: Have you considered how the oil refinery improvement plays a role in this process? Sorry if I just made things more complicated

 

[Duke176]

1st of all really don't warry about discussing about my ideas.

About your post.
Well consider, 1st of all, that the more variables you add to mod that want to recreate reality the more realistic will become.
About adding so many little things - true it's getting little more complicated but that's the better part , to be serius for sure some buildings will have different impact to oil production and consumption, but I wouldn't get so deep into different resouces processes (I mean OIL - Petroleum - Plastic / Refined OIL ...).
The reason it's quite simple - while oyu add more passages to your system you are not implementing something new (really) you are just modifing balance. I mean if you have to build a rafinery to have worked OIL you will have to extract enough OIL from pumps to compensate the part lost in transformation....
So you will have the obstacle of building a rafinery (little one if you consider the turn to build any building in modern age) and afer building it the things will be exactly how would have been without building it. In the end I mean that is a metter of balance between EXTRACTED and USED oil (doesn't metter if refined or not) - the prb will be to have it and to build varius buildings in other to increase extraction rate (for ex.), lower user rate (for ex. nuclear plant or ecology tech / form of gov).

I hope I've been good with English, I'm really in a harry and I want to test this little mod I made to check if work before going to sleep.

 

[Duke176]

anyway I've finished testing it and it works
if you want it I can give it to you.

 

[ww2commander]

Cool. I would love to test it when I get home from work. By then you will be sleeping so probably best to give me some steps on how to install and what things I should test

 

[Duke176]

it's really a lot easy to install it.
I'll be at home for dinner at 13.00 GTM+1 so I'll send you a PM with the DLL, just one thing: are upadating your SDK with other mods? or you just use the .dll file? (so I know if you need the code or just the finished file)

 

[ww2commander]

So far I am only using your DLL.

I dont know how to modify the SDK so forgive my lack of knowledge in that area

 

[Duke176]

all right,
OIL
atm it works perfectly (I corrected a little bug that was making the ammount of oil going negave with a lot of inaspected prbs (like -10 is < of 0 so where -10 is oilreserve and 0 oilmovecost - if you don't put a value in XML game assign 0 - no unit was able to move with a negative ammount of oil... DOH!

corrected and working properly - i'm adding also a text like:
"You run out of Oil, your mechanised troops are stooping moving and soon some of your buildings will stop working" - when you go under "0".

I'm finding also some prb to create the correct function to check which buildings are inside a city and so lower or increase ammount of Oil spent by cities for ordiary life.

URANIUM
I was also thinking about a way to rappresent the difficoulty of getting plotonium or enriched uranim used for bombs and for nuclear plants; so for ex. should be like 0.001 extraction rate each turn and bombs may need 5 to be produced; the same for nuclear plants (that lowers Oil needs from cities) may require 3...

Prbs of balancing........

 

[cFccFc]

What about Thorium taking over as an alternative recource? Let people reveal it with Future Tech 1 or 2 and make boats and city buldings use them. Planes and ground units should not be able though.
It can remove the chances at thoose nuclear power stations (forgot the name) from melting down as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

 

[CaptainMidnight]

This sounds really cool and I'd been thinking about this sort of mod for a while but alas I'm not a good enough modder yet.

I glanced through the comments but may of missed the odd point so forgive me if I go over something explained or discussed previously.

1. Instead of having the oil comsumed randomly there should be a finite ammount per well and offshore platform. However, this should be only acessed by a certain ammount of barrels a turn, as you said.

2. Oil should be more plentiful to begin with so initially will impact little on the game only growing in real importance later in the game. The late game should be about either working with mother nature to find an alternative energy source or by conquering oil rich lands to glut your ever growing war machine.

3. Workers, rather than specific units, should be given another function at some point allowing them to search for oil. You can therefore leave them on automatic and let them seek out new sources.

4. Finally, if you were to extend comsumption to coal at some point Windmills should play a part, each one reducing coal comsumption by a certain percent. In regards for alternative fuels, wheat and corn resources, for example, should reduce oil consumption when a certain tech is discovered. I'm generally against putting extra buildings such as refineries into the game as it comsumes turns when weaponary could be built.

Anyway, I'm excited about this mod!

 

[ww2commander]

CaptainMidnight, I know with relation to point 2, Duke is trying to represent this by making buildings and cities consume a certain amount of oil per turn in addition to units. This will hopefully allow you to represent the growing importance of oil and newer buildings consume more.

 

[Duke176]

on this point I'm still waiting to know from Dale if he can find what's wrong in my code. Seems everythig should work but the game returns me an error.