RFC DoC Atlas?

[sync_ronist]

Wow, this mod looks amazing. I played RFC almost a decade ago, and enjoyed it a lot. Stumbled upon a youtuber streaming DoC and wanted to check it out.

Back in the day, user Morff had made an atlas available at atlas.morf.cz, that included a analysis of each city location. It was rough and imperfect, but still useful at a glance when trying to decide where to settle a city. It was especially useful for someone like me who can get bogged down in trying to decide where to settle instead of just picking a spot and continuing on. It seems his site went down at some point over the years, sadly. Wayback machine doesn't work well enough unfortunately, but you can still see what he did: calculated a max total possible number for pop, food, commerce, and production (and total) for each tile if made into a city. Handy to be able to see this, at a glance..

I see a bunch of discussion of city placement but am frankly a bit lost since I don't know where names correspond with. I see a lot of atlases for RFC, but none that do the rough placement evaluation that Morff's old atlas did. Is there such a thing for DoC?

I see a new map is being worked on, so this whole question might be irrelevant.

 

[Leoreth]

Hey, welcome to the mod. Nothing like this exists (though I remember this page and found it very useful), and I don't think I will be hosting an entire website dedicated to the purpose (but I am open to help if anyone decides to take on that project). But I wonder if there is a more low tech way to provide the same information.

How would you calculate the maximum population, food, commerce, and production for a given tile?

 

[sync_ronist]

i've no idea how to calculate the max pop like Morff did, the others seem like I could do it in excel or something from the surrounding tiles, river adjacency + possible buildings, etc
seems like a fun puzzle, maybe I'll give it a go

 

[Leoreth]

All other values are a function of maximum population, are they not?

I am interested in this problem also because it would help balance the new map.

 

[need my speed]

This will get extremely complicated if you want one city to account for other cities as well (e.g. Greece should have both Athenai and Sparte, so we should make sure both of these are good city locations - but their BFCs overlap, and so a basic calculation of their maximum yields will be wrong, because it would depend on only one of the two cities being there). I really like this idea, though!

 

[phoenixfire7]

Whenever I see AI build Sparta, I call it bad city placement

 

[Leoreth]

This will get extremely complicated if you want one city to account for other cities as well (e.g. Greece should have both Athenai and Sparte, so we should make sure both of these are good city locations - but their BFCs overlap, and so a basic calculation of their maximum yields will be wrong, because it would depend on only one of the two cities being there). I really like this idea, though!

That's a different question, and you're right that it's almost impossible to answer. But it's still worthwhile to know how much population etc. a city location can reach if it has full control of its BFC. At the very least, we want historically prominent tiles to actually be preferable and not inferior to some other tile.

 

[Publicola]

Back in the day, user Morff had made an atlas available at atlas.morf.cz, that included a analysis of each city location. It was rough and imperfect, but still useful at a glance when trying to decide where to settle a city.

Holy cow, I remember that site -- this is the first time I've thought about it in years. I don't have much to contribute, except to say yes, that was a really useful tool, and I miss being able to use it. It'd be great to see a proper DOC Atlas take its place.

 

[merijn_v1]

A small python extension that calculates the estimated max yield of a tile shouldn't be that hard. I also have some ideas how to extend that tool with some additional options. I'll give it a shot.

 

[need my speed]

If I may suggest (I made this calculation for my own Civilization-esque game I was once developing):
- Calculate everything for the inner nine tiles and for the full eighteen tiles (don't forget to account for the city tile itself behaving differently!)
- Calculate the max yield based on unexploited terrain (one calculation)
- Calculate the max food, production, and commerce based on improvements and technology (these are three different calculations, e.g. a Town increases max commerce, but a Workshop increases max production)
- Calculate the max food, production, and commerce based on improvements, technology, and civics (i.e. everything except for random events)
- Calculate the max total yield (because optimising to get the max food above will of course not get you the max production)
- If you want to be very fancy, include the option for the user to designate the value of food, production, and commerce (e.g. two food is worth one commerce), and include this in the above formula

Have fun!

 

[Leoreth]

What do you mean, based on improvements, techs or civics? One universal value for a tile is much more useful than multiple ones based on many contingencies.

Advanced players usually optimise for max population on a given city first and then maximize either production or commerce. That said, some limitations should apply because if you maximize production you actually want to have mines instead of max food via windmills.

My first impulse would be to ignore tech and civic bonuses but otherwise do a simple "try all combinations" approach.

 

[need my speed]

What do you mean, based on improvements, techs or civics?

Because these can all influence the max possible yield of a tile. Not including this might give a mismatched idea of how good a city location is, e.g. rivers allow farms which allow food, but this effect would only show up as a few extra commerce when looking at basic terrain yields. Another example would be a city spot rich with resources, which would make this spot better than a similar spot without resources.

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, but:

One universal value for a tile is much more useful than multiple ones based on many contingencies.

 

[sync_ronist]

Well, this turned out to be too much for me, unfortunately. I really hunted to see if Morff published his code anywhere, but it looks like he didn't. Who knows how perfect his results were, but they were imo pretty good even if imperfect.

There are however two internet archive saves, that preserve his calculations, but not how he got them. I don't think his final version was saved, but via wayback machine, one of the two saves was functional-ish. Because it seems I can't directly post a link, if anyone wants to check it out, via wayback machine, morf dot cz slash map dot html. I was hoping viewing the source would let me see some of his code but it's not working for me.

I don't know what assumptions were made about tile improvements, but yeah it seems an impossibility to work out *exactly* the true max. At least, what users merijn and need my speed seems possible, but beyond what I personally can probably do. Thanks anyways y'all