Opportunities

[kc_bandit]

I am sorry if this idea has already been thrown out there, but if it has, then I just didn't read it properly.

Why do the events have to be pay X gold for THIS great deal, or pay X for THAT great deal, or paying nothing for a small freebie (although I would never consider +1 to Population a small deal)??

I totally get the whole opportunity cost argument, but isn't that missing the point a little? You are basically given an event that is going to give you something good or great no matter what. You choose between the great options. It is not like you are really giving up 6 culture for 6 hammers. You never had the culture in the first place - it's merely an option for you.

Why not have events like real life so that there is more strategy and cost/benefit involved?

For example - Workers at the local factory/mine/quarry have gone on strike.

Similar to the airline strike during Ronald Reagan's term as President, for example, you can:

1) Force them back to work imposing more production requirements resulting in +X hammers and -Y Happiness.
2) Embrace the strike and force the owners to meet the strikers' reduced work demands resulting in +X Happiness and -Y hammers.
3) Resolve the strike by having the government subsidize the pay for the workers but requiring higher production quotas resulting in -X gold per turn and +Y hammers.
OR
4) Do not intervene and let the parties involved handle it. NOTHING happens.

Another example -

Scientists have discovered a new medical process called "Stem Cell Research" (or Genetic Engineering or whatever you want). It has the potential to greatly increase your empire's research rate, but the public is very concerned and outraged about the moral implications.

You can:

1) Embrace the research and support it with government operating funds resulting in +2X beakers, -X gold and -X happiness.
2) Allow the research to happen, but do not support it with govt funds resulting in +X beakers and -X happiness.
3) Forbid the research and all similar lines of exisiting medical technology imposing criminal and civil penaties for anyone engaging in such research resulting in -X beakers and +Y happiness.
Or
4) Do nothing. NOTHING happens.


Another -

A new religion in your empire is gaining new followers, but it's teachings and some of it's followers believe that they should impose their beliefs on others even resulting in random attacks against those who do not follow their belief system. The majority of your citizens are afraid of the fanatical arm of the religion and tensions are rising across the land. You can:

1) Embrace the new religion under your preference for religious tolerance and Freedom of Religious beliefs across your empire resulting in +X culture and -X happiness (or possibly even -X population).
2) Outlaw the new religion making it a crime to practice it in any form resulting in -X culture and +X happiness.
3) Neither embrance nor denounce the practice of the new religion, but sponsor and pay for an ongoing a public awareness program regarding both religious tolerance and compliance with existing criminal laws resulting in +1/2X culture and -1/2X gold per turn.
OR
4) Do nothing. NOTHING happens.


The X and Y values are not my strengths. Thal would figure out the proper numbers. But isn't that much more of a cost/benefit relationship? Isn't that much more engaging in terms of "Wow, this is actually a real choice I have to make. What do I need? What is my primary goal for this city? Do I have enough income to support this decision?"

It also becomes much less of just a gold purchase issue. There are real ongoing costs associated with the decisions - not just foregone opportunities.

Anyway - thought I would throw that out there. It's just that the one time gold cost coupled with a lost opportunity (which was free anyway) seems a little weak to me for the benefit being gained for the rest of the game. I kind of like the idea of ongoing costs for ongoing benefits - just like real life.

Does any of that make sense??

 

[EmperorFool]

Yes, this is more along the lines of what I'm arguing for. A static gold cost for X or Y benefit just doesn't seem like much of a choice. "You get ice cream for $10! Do you want chocolate or vanilla? Or take strawberry for free."

 

[Thalassicus]

My thoughts on that got buried on page 3, so I'll move it up to the original post.

In short, we can make things realistic while also keeping a positive gameplay experience. This first iteration is not the final stage. I needed to complete a redesign of the framework underlying the opportunity system before creating new ones. I also need to fix some critical bugs brought up recently:

• Temple of Artemis effect not showing in tooltips.
• "unmet player" for citystate first-meeting, and city banner tooltip.
• Partisans not spawning
• Show production-from-food on settler production tooltip
• Reverse-engineer Korean trait bug
• Research agreements not giving per-turn science
• Perfect world rivers interrupted

I have a limited amount of time to work on this project each day, and more things on the todo list than are possible to accomplish, so I have to prioritize.

 

[kc_bandit]

Totally agree. Opportunities are clearly something that should be further down the list.

May I ask what the heck a Partisan is and what it does??

 

[Txurce]

Enemy units that start to appear in your territory when unhappiness hits -20.

 

[Seek]

Partisans are also units which appear in the Capital every time a city is conquered (to help mitigate steamrolling). The unit is usually (always?) a vanguard unit and the idea is that people flee the fallen city, regroup at the cap and arm themselves in defense of the empire!

 

[Txurce]

I forgot about that aspect of the mod, since I forget when I last saw it in action. It's probably one of the more effective changes in VEM. Steamrolling is a huge problem for the AI, because of how it conducts war. A decent fighting line that gives it time to rebuild would help it significantly.

 

[Seek]

It's funny because I forgot that the unhappiness warriors were called partisans also!

 

[Thalassicus]

Refugees flee from conquered cities to the capital. Some of these refugees form a partisan unit to defend the empire. The partisan is the highest-strength unit the capital can build without a strategic resource requirement. If you're interested in knowing exactly how it works, I've copied the details below. It's mostly self-explanatory.

Spoiler :

if lostCityPop >= 2 then
  popDead = Round(0.1 * lostCityPop) + 1
  lostCity:ChangePopulation(-popDead, true)
end
if lostCityPop >= 3 then
  popFlee = math.max(0, popDead - 1)
end

if capitalCity then
  if popFlee > 0 then
    capitalCity:ChangePopulation(popFlee, true)
  end

  local minTurnDelay = CiVUP.PARTISANS_MIN_CITY_OWNERSHIP_TURNS
                     * GameInfo.GameSpeeds[Game.GetGameSpeedType()].TrainPercent / 100
  if (Game.GetGameTurn() - lostCity:GetGameTurnAcquired()) > minTurnDelay then
    -- Create partisans
    ...
    ...

 

[Thalassicus]

Now that more complex opportunities are possible with the code rewrite, it's time to come up with new ones! I'm thinking we could have one opportunity targeting each of:

• Soldiers (iron units)
• Horses
• Vanguards
• Archers
• Siege
• Spears
• Light Ships
• Capital Ships
• Tanks
• Aircraft
• Each of the 10 policy tree finishers

Any thoughts? Each should have:

• Historical significance.
• A way to improve the unit.
• Ethical decisions.

Figuring out moral choices for the units should be easy enough:

• Offense
• Defense
• Let the commander decide.

 

[mitsho]

Cool, I did open the excel file and tried to write a few down. Just to be sure however I want to ask you wether these are how you imagine them or how else should they be written. F.e. you don't want explicit effects, right?

Also, can we have another column for time trigger (only from/until era x) or do they need to be written "vague"? They do need an object and add bonus or malus there (at this hex/building/unit), right? so some of my proposals don't work. And how do the social policies/finishers then work?

I wrote 4 for the moment and have them in red. Link

Is that ok that way?

 

[Thalassicus]

You can write explicit effects on the "trigger code" sheet in the file. I left that part off the first sheet because it's rather messy.

Also, can we have another column for time trigger (only from/until era x) or do they need to be written "vague"? They do need an object and add bonus or malus there (at this hex/building/unit), right? so some of my proposals don't work. And how do the social policies/finishers then work?

All of that is possible but I leave it off the spreadsheet. Opportunities basically come in two parts, triggers and outcomes:

Trigger

• Weight
• Prerequisite Tech
• Era
• Target (policy, player, etc)

Outcomes

• Condition
• Action
• AI preference

You can have the trigger target an era, tech, policy, anything you want. I like what you created! The citystate one is a great example of a fun opportunity. I really like how you reversed the normal gold-to-influence conversion to create a second option. In fact, we could pattern a lot of citystate opportunities off this. One option could give influence, while the other option gives another yield... gold, science, production, anything.

I revised the wording some to make it shorter. What do you think:

Target: City State
Name: City-State Politics
Description: A merchant with substantial business dealings in {2_city} was appointed leader of their home city-state, {3_player}.
Compassion: Send them congratulations and extravagant gifts. (Costs Gold, gives influence)
Ruthlessness: Confiscate the merchant's assets with allegations of corruption. (Costs influence, gets gold)
Local Decision: Send them congratulations. (a little influence, but free)

This should be easy to add and I can do so immediately. The Great General one also looks good and should be easy to create. What are your thoughts about the GG outcome with a pillage promotion? Would one nearby unit get that promotion?

 

[mitsho]

hehe yes, of course change the language. English is not my maternal language and I did struggle to find a few words (assets for example ). And I did write them down quite fast without even spell-checking them...

As for the Great General Opportunity, I really wasn't sure about the balance. You can't give the pillage promotion to the general since he himself doesn't pillage anything. And I guess you cannot give him one that will enlarge the pillage gains of the units around him. So either you give him all the existing units a pillage promotion*, and since you don't pillage often normally, it's not unbalanced, or you just give one or two units the promotion, then the gains can be higher. In the end, the decision should be between "better units" and "more gold after the combat" or "winning fights" and "guerilla style-warfare".

You see, I did struggle with that one

*that's the one the Sipahi has, right? or is that an ability of the unit itself?

So I guess I can go write a few more soon...

PS: Just to be sure, in post 130 you talk of Social Policies in regard to Opportunities, but what does that mean exactly. As a trigger is clear (if you have it, you can get the opportunity), but as a target it doesn't work. That's why I had the Farms vs. Plantation Opportunity, thinking of the Gracchian Brothers. Depending on where you start, it's mostly clear which choice you will make.

 

[Thalassicus]

Sipahis, Berserkers, and Vanguards can all get an effect which allows pillaging without a movement cost. "Trigger" and "target" are basically the same. The target is the main part of a trigger. Here's the farm trigger, and an example of how a policy trigger could look:

These triggers simply have a name and target. The target is what it checks to see if we can get the opportunity. If we have a farm we can get the "commercial farming" opportunity. If we have the honor finisher, we could get that policy opportunity (which does not exist - just an example). Does this answer your question?

 

[mitsho]

Yes and no. The Commercial Farming is triggered by having a farm and it enhances the farm. So far so simple.

But the honour_opportunity might be triggered if you have the honor finisher, but what does it enhance? Only the honor finisher itself, which is kinda difficult to do, because what additional effect do you give to +2 on colliseums? So then it can target - stupid hypothetical example - the fish tile in your capital, or the library building in the second city, or a great general, etc. ?

Because I really struggle to think of effects for the policies themselves.

 

[Thalassicus]

Ahh I understand the confusion. "Target" is a little ambiguous... in this case I'm referring to the trigger target. The effects of outcomes don't even have to target anything. The first two granary outcomes create new units, instead of modifying an existing item:

Trigger

• Target: Granary
• Name: Granary Population Boom
• Description: Improvements to the granary in {2_city} are attracting citizens to the city, creating a job shortage.

Outcomes

• Compassion: Provide funds for citizens to find a new place to live. (+1 settler)
• Ruthlessness: Hire citizens for a public works program. (+2 workers)
• Local Decision: Let the mayor handle this. (+1 population)

The trigger targets players who have a Granary. It does not affect the Granary itself.

Like...

Some trigger targets players who have Honor. It does not affect the Honor policy itself.

 

[Zaldron]

Partisans are also units which appear in the Capital every time a city is conquered (to help mitigate steamrolling). The unit is usually (always?) a vanguard unit and the idea is that people flee the fallen city, regroup at the cap and arm themselves in defense of the empire!

As I recall it's one of the best non-resource unit you can currently build (for example skirmisher or musketman). As I recall this can even occasionally be a ship if your capital is coastal.

 

[skodkim]

Hi Thal
Was looking at the 131.7 files earlier today and couldn't find the location of where you now store the opportunities (events). I've created two new improvements restricted to flood plains (replaces farms and villages) in my own little mod that I use in conjunction with VEM and wanted to chek if there was any clash.

Could you point to the location please?

\Skodkim

 

[Seek]

Events are stored in the Policies folder.

 

[Thalassicus]

In the code I use the word "triggers" and put them in the two /triggers folders. Using the word "event" in code would be ambiguous because it normally refers to the event-driven programming associated with the global Events and LuaEvents tables. Firaxis doesn't use the word "trigger" anywhere, and I'm used to the word from my time modding Blizzard games.