Monopolies and resource distribution by mapscripts

[ExpiredReign]

I usually(always) use Communitas as my map because of the way resources are distributed, I feel it makes a more realistic placement of both strategic and luxury resources.
In doing so though I have begun to notice that monopolies for certain resources are pretty easy to get and that the percentages of them are somewhat skewed in favour of some types of resources.
e.g. in my last game, my empire encompassed 7 tiles of Copper yet I only achieved 66% of the global market whereas my neighbour had only 4 tiles of Salt yet had 116% of that market.
Clearly 116% (not even sure how that is possible) is ALL the Salt in the game, which in this case is only 4 tiles, yet I'd need to find another 3 or 4 tiles to get 100% of the market for Copper.

So my questions are:

• How was the makeup of the monopolies formulated when it was designed?
• Was it based on one of the standard vanilla maps and therefore it is unfairly skewed in other maps?
• How can you have 116% of a market?
• Will Indonesia always have an advantage in getting 'Trader Sid's'?

 

[Funak]

I usually(always) use Communitas as my map because of the way resources are distributed, I feel it makes a more realistic placement of both strategic and luxury resources.
In doing so though I have begun to notice that monopolies for certain resources are pretty easy to get and that the percentages of them are somewhat skewed in favour of some types of resources.
e.g. in my last game, my empire encompassed 7 tiles of Copper yet I only achieved 66% of the global market whereas my neighbour had only 4 tiles of Salt yet had 116% of that market.
Clearly 116% (not even sure how that is possible) is ALL the Salt in the game, which in this case is only 4 tiles, yet I'd need to find another 3 or 4 tiles to get 100% of the market for Copper.

So my questions are:

• How was the makeup of the monopolies formulated when it was designed?
• Was it based on one of the standard vanilla maps and therefore it is unfairly skewed in other maps?
• How can you have 116% of a market?
• Will Indonesia always have an advantage in getting 'Trader Sid's'?

1. More luxuries place similar luxuries in the same area, basically every startinglocation have one unique luxury associated with it (the one you have 2 of near your startingcity).

2. It has nothing to do with map at all, however, certain mapoddities can spread the luxuries out, like a huge lake could push half the luxuries from one startinglocation into another one, it is fairly weird. Islandmaps also tend to get kinda twisted in this regard.

3. East india company provides extra copies of luxuries, these are added to the 'current' value, but not the the 'max available value' meaning that in theory 3 people can have a monopoly in the same resource by each having 33% of the luxury and building EIC.

4. Yes


I'm kinda surprised I have to explain this to you, I thought this was common knowledge

 

[ExpiredReign]

1. More luxuries place similar luxuries in the same area, basically every startinglocation have one unique luxury associated with it (the one you have 2 of near your startingcity).

2. It has nothing to do with map at all, however, certain mapoddities can spread the luxuries out, like a huge lake could push half the luxuries from one startinglocation into another one, it is fairly weird. Islandmaps also tend to get kinda twisted in this regard.

Not answering my question. I'm not concerned about the initial placement of the resources but rather the entire map's quantities. Which is used to determine monopolies I'd imagine.

3. East india company provides extra copies of luxuries, these are added to the 'current' value, but not the the 'max available value' meaning that in theory 3 people can have a monopoly in the same resource by each having 33% of the luxury and building EIC.

Again, not related. Later in-game improvements are not a determining factor on where, and how many, these resources are placed.

I'm kinda surprised I have to explain this to you, I thought this was common knowledge

Condescension is not necessary, and probably because your answers are not based on the questions I've asked!

Let me rephrase.
When the map is generated there are X number of each resource placed, although they are not revealed by default. So let's say there are 6 tiles of Salt and four of them are relatively close together, easy for one civ to get a monopoly on those.
In the same map there are 12 tiles of Olives, this is immediately harder to get a monopoly even if they are all on the same landmass.

The bonuses from each monopoly are fair enough, you can easily gain/lose those as play continues but for the building of the corporations that use them it is bit more lopsided. Four Salt inside an empire compared to 12 Olives spread out across the map and it is the luck of the draw who gets the corporation.

 

[Strigvir]

Again, not related. Later in-game improvements are not a determining factor on where, and how many, these resources are placed.

He literally answered your question about higher than 100% monopolies. EIC gives additional resources, but doesn't increase the maximum.

The bonuses from each monopoly are fair enough, you can easily gain/lose those as play continues but for the building of the corporations that use them it is bit more lopsided. Four Salt inside an empire compared to 12 Olives spread out across the map and it is the luck of the draw who gets the corporation.

4*2 = 8 which is more than 50% of the whole map, so it will still eligible for the corporation.

 

[ExpiredReign]

The entire question is about the map generation of resources and how this impacts on the monopolies.
To illustrate this further, if you use Communitas you will ONLY get tiles of strategics in quantities of 1,2 or 4. If you use Continents you may get tiles or 6 or 7 as well as 1, 2, 3 or 4. Clearly having one tile provide 6 or 7 of that resource makes it a hell of a lot easier to get X% of the entire maps quantity.

I just now generated several tiny maps and counted the tile number and quantity of each resource and examined how they compare.
Communitas produced one map with 12 tiles totalling 30 Coal. On the same map there are only 4 tiles of Oil totalling 9 resources and 3 tiles of Uranium giving 6 resources.
Now since Hexxon requires a monopoly on one of those just how hard do you expect it to be for the player with half the Coal tiles, which will be a feat in itself, compared to the player that only needs to get a majority of tiles of Uranium?

This is what I'm getting at, individual mapscripts place resources differently and this makes a huge difference in getting monopolies and therefore corporations.

4*2 = 8 which is more than 50% of the whole map, so it will still eligible for the corporation.

Exactly what point are you trying to make? The question is not about what constitutes a monopoly but how the differing numbers of each resource impact that ratio.
Sure 4 of the 6 Salt tiles make a monopoly but using the same ratio means 8 of the Olives tiles need to be improved to get the same corporation!
Distribution is not equal on any given map and some maps skew the numbers even more.

 

[Funak]

Not answering my question. I'm not concerned about the initial placement of the resources but rather the entire map's quantities. Which is used to determine monopolies I'd imagine.



Again, not related. Later in-game improvements are not a determining factor on where, and how many, these resources are placed.



Condescension is not necessary, and probably because your answers are not based on the questions I've asked!

No offense, but in that case you should probably formulate your questions better.

If you're wondering what combination of Y/X could make out 1.16 i would probably guess 7/6, but I'm again not sure why you didn't just check the ingame monopoly window instead guessing. it gives you the exact breakdown of how many of something there is an how many you have.

Also again if you're asking about map-generation I'm pretty sure that G didn't actually change that at all, it's all more luxuries (which he did not design)

 

[Gothic_Empire]

I'd love to have a discussion about possibly enhancing some of the community's favorite map scripts, though, bickering aside.

 

[ExpiredReign]

So my questions are:
How was the makeup of the monopolies formulated when it was designed?
Was it based on one of the standard vanilla maps and therefore it is unfairly skewed in other maps?

These need input from @Gazebo.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Not answering my question. I'm not concerned about the initial placement of the resources but rather the entire map's quantities. Which is used to determine monopolies I'd imagine.

In continent or pangea (standard size), there is always 8-9 of your starting luxury near your position, and no other sources on the map.
I think that every luxury ressources on the map are in approximatively 8 exemplaries.

Looking at communitas script, it seems that they use the default script for placing luxuries (so the MoreLuxury script), so communitas should also produce the same quantity of each luxury...

I also remark in AssignStartingPlot.lua (MoreLuxury version), in continent standard, you should have 6 of each luxury and not 8, so I deduce that I don't understand completely how AssignStartingPlot.lua works...

When you have 12 times the same luxury ressource, are they always in the same region, or are they in different regions ?
Because, contrary to vanilla script, MoreLuxury does not allow a luxury to be in multiple regions : there is no division by "assignment_split" when placing ressources.

So if a bug with communitas make that a same luxury is assigned to two regions, you will have two times more of that luxury.
(Whereas vanilla script would split the ressource in two little groups)

 

[Putmalk]

The monopoly system is a straight owned_quantity / total_quantity. How would you propose changing the system to accommodate for inequality resource generation?

 

[Xony]

Seeing the discussion it feels for me there is an interest for tweaked mapscripts for More Luxuries and Corporations instead.

 

[Moi Magnus]

The monopoly system is a straight owned_quantity / total_quantity. How would you propose changing the system to accommodate for inequality resource generation?

On classic maps and standard size, we have "total_quantity" is approximatively equal to "number_of_civs", so for luxury ressources, we could use "owned_quantity / number_of_civs". So you would have a monopole if you have stricly more ressources than half of the number of civ.
However, this method does not work in huge or tiny maps...

Another simple solution : monopoly on luxury ressource = 5 ressources of that type (or all of them, if less than 5).

A more complex solution :
N = number of players
Ncs = 3 (number of luxury ressources that are exclusive to CS, 3 by default)
R_1,...,R_p = quantity of each luxury ressources
To have a monopoly on the luxury "L", you should have either :
- R_L tiles of that luxury (so all of them)
- More than 0.5*(R_1+...+R_p)/(N+Ncs) tiles of that luxury
=> Should gives 5 in classic cases, but works better if the map is very different from classic maps.

 

[Opera]

If I understand this correctly the only problem is that some resources are generated more strictly in regards to their terrain & features requirements, leading to them being easier to get a monopoly of. That's a problem of mapscripts IMO, not of how monopolies are calculated - they are simple and that's fine.

There's frequently a few resources only available in tiny pockets while others (sea resources and marble are egregious examples) are spread far and wide.

I'm not sure there's really any more problem than there is when you spawn on desert flood plains rather than on grassland coast. It's just the risk factor of random maps.

 

[Charos]

On the other hand, with YNAEMP (Giant Earth) I have to conquer two continents to actually get a monopoly of anything at all. But maybe that's the settings I'm using.

 

[Gazebo]

These need input from @Gazebo.

~ooky spooky RNG, that's how we do it~

In all seriousness, I think Barathor was beta-ing a new version of More Luxuries to fix the clumping issue but died or got bored or something. Here's the link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=535333

Any lua-nauts wanna tackle this?

G

 

[Funak]

~ooky spooky RNG, that's how we do it~

In all seriousness, I think Barathor was beta-ing a new version of More Luxuries to fix the clumping issue but died or got bored or something. Here's the link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=535333

Any lua-nauts wanna tackle this?

I'm not sure we are talking about the same kind of clumping here, but I really like the clumping. It makes sense that the same luxuries are grouped up together I mean that is kinda how the world works. It is also kinda the thing holding the monopoly-system together.

 

[Strigvir]

On the other hand, with YNAEMP (Giant Earth) I have to conquer two continents to actually get a monopoly of anything at all. But maybe that's the settings I'm using.

More civs on a map = higher chances of duplicate luxuries.

 

[Gazebo]

I'm not sure we are talking about the same kind of clumping here, but I really like the clumping. It makes sense that the same luxuries are grouped up together I mean that is kinda how the world works. It is also kinda the thing holding the monopoly-system together.

Well, people were asking about clumping, and that's the answer: it is More Luxuries by design.

G

 

[Funak]

Well, people were asking about clumping, and that's the answer: it is More Luxuries by design.

Absolutely, I'm just saying I have no problem with the clumping at all, and I actually thought More Luxuries did that by design, but by mistake.

 

[shaglio]

~ooky spooky RNG, that's how we do it~

In all seriousness, I think Barathor was beta-ing a new version of More Luxuries to fix the clumping issue but died or got bored or something. Here's the link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=535333

Any lua-nauts wanna tackle this?

G

He mentioned to me that he has moved on from Civ5 to BE But he did update his old Naval Healing mod to include the Nau for me, so maybe he can be persuaded to work on MLD for you.