Roaming fur trappers

[OzzyKP]

A radical suggestion: we should use the whaling boat mechanic on trappers. Let them wander the wilderness and bring back furs. More accurate than trapping one spot of beaver for 200 years right next to a major city. I think it would be fun and unique.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

A radical suggestion: we should use the whaling boat mechanic on trappers. Let them wander the wilderness and bring back furs. More accurate than trapping one spot of beaver for 200 years right next to a major city. I think it would be fun and unique.

The map is - even in the largest variant - not large enough to simulate reality. One square on the map would be, scaled to reality, resemble half of the state of New York.
So yes, "a trapper" could be hunting that one square for 200 years (notice that reality is not really there when that unit exists for hundreds of turns/years?) without even making a dent in animal population.

"Wandering the wilderness" on the other hand sounds realistic at first (yes, trappers did travel back and forth between hunting grounds and places to sell off their animal hides) but not if a square is so large - trappers did travel e.g. between New England cities and the Appalachians but not hunt in the Rockies and sell in New England. Most of the travels done by a trapper would be *within* a handful of squares on the largest map size.

In addition it would be rare to have high quality roads connecting all hunting grounds with cities - which means that the trapper unit would be running between his hunting ground/fur specialty yield square and his sales point for a DECADE sometimes until he would have unloaded his load of furs. If we go to that level of accurately simulating reality the game needs to have much, much more than 300 turns/years - better quadruple that number and have 4 turns / year for each season.

If it would be allowed that trappers (and in logical conclusion hunters and everyone else who gathers something) could work special yield squares outside cities, then the whole civilization point of colonization (in that you have to establish and expand settlements to move your borders forward and so could claim an area your own) would become less valuable. And it would raise the question, if a fur trapper can do that, then why not a bison hunter, a deer hunter - hell, even a farmer (yes that patch of land over the hill looks perfect for planting corn. Sure it’s far from any city but why not allow every colonist to set up shop in the middle of the wilderness instead of creating cities at all...

 

[raystuttgart]

I don't like it either.

 

[OzzyKP]

Conjurer, you seem to be arguing against some straw men. If you hate the idea of harvesting crops away from the teach of civilization then should we eliminate fishing boats and whaling boats?

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Conjurer, you seem to be arguing against some straw men. If you hate the idea of harvesting crops away from the teach of civilization then should we eliminate fishing boats and whaling boats?

No, Fishing and Whaling Boats are displayed well. Those actually did sail out and catch their prey far, far from home, later whaling boats like in Melvilles "Moby Dick" around the whole globe. Or english fishers in icelandic waters that caused the Cod Wars. Fishing and Whaling are enterprises where in reality and ingame units go far out and come home to port, over distances that a comparably rather local trapper on foot could only dream about.

And ingame and historically ships were far, far faster than a trapper on foot or with a mule for his furs. Where a real trapper might spend a year catching animals in a valley in the mountains and then come down to the next fur trader to load off his furs, the trapper ingame would take a year to go from one square to the next without doing anything, then another square and suddenly the same trapper unit spent a decade just travelling between a port city and a fur specialty square to catch what amount of fur? 10? Would he carry 10 years worth of furs back to the city? Or build a cache that a wagon train would have come to load up?
The time needed for overland travel of footunits is far too long to simulate travelling times and trapping or hunting that usually took seasons and not years. Having a trapper unit sitting on a fur specialty square within a cities borders simulates the ongoing business (trapping, collecting, drying, transporting to the city) well enough for me.

 

[Nightinggale]

I have already mentioned something like this before. Well instead of roaming, allowing units to harvest bonuses out of reach of colonies. It seems people back then like the idea, but in addition to actually creating it, it comes with the issue of game balance. How can you prevent players from using units like that to get around food requirements? How do you prevent player A from harvesting bonuses from player B? How do you make it good enough to be attractive, but still worse than founding a colony? WOuld it make the game more enjoyable? Can we be sure it won't backfire and turn the game into something we don't want?

We need proper answers for all those questions before really considering if we want to create something like this.

If you are really thinking of roaming fur trappers as in they explore the area around you, then I will add that Medieval Conquest has hunters. They can be automated to roam around your colonies to locate animals, which they will attack. They have storage for luxury food, which they can then bring back to your cities and luxury food will be able to provide a different growth unit. None of those mechanics are in WTP and quite honestly I'm not sure they would really fit either.

 

[raystuttgart]

... but in addition to actually creating it, it comes with the issue of game balance.

Exactly.

Would it make the game more enjoyable?

Not for me.

Can we be sure it won't backfire and turn the game into something we don't want?

That is actually the most important question.

... quite honestly I'm not sure they would really fit either.

I personally don't think so.

But yes, this is - I will not try to claim anything else - personal taste.
Other people might love it.

 

[Schmiddie]

I voted "yes" in the first instance because such feature would be generally more realistic - for sure. Nevertheless I did not have in mind the scale of the map at that time. I think only in the "gigantic" map scale it could work. This game has a lot of "scaling" issues. It starts with the size of the colonies having names of cities and ends with the king who is always the same person for centuries.

We always tried to make it more historically correct. However, we must not be so strict in regard of a lot of thinks in this game. We should maybe see the trapper hut as the homestead of trappers in that area wandering around and hunting animals - a kind of rendezvous place for trappers where they bring together their furs for goods and gold. You can find an interpretation also for the current system.

 

[raystuttgart]

... the sending out trapper concept really resonated with me too.

Hi rah, as you see, this concept is pretty much dead.
(80% of votes are against it.)

Neither community nor team want to have it.
(I personally do not like it either.)

 

[ConjurerDragon]

As I argued against roaming Trappers in part because of map size and on-foot-travel speed a late question: Is the overland speed of units modified by mapsize?
e.g. On a tiny map going 1 square in 1 turn would be like going from New England to the Missisipi in one year but on a gigantic map 1 square in 1 turn would be more like going from New York to the Appalachians in 1 year.

So - are units a bit faster the larger the mapsize?

 

[OzzyKP]

As I argued against roaming Trappers in part because of map size and on-foot-travel speed a late question: Is the overland speed of units modified by mapsize?
e.g. On a tiny map going 1 square in 1 turn would be like going from New England to the Missisipi in one year but on a gigantic map 1 square in 1 turn would be more like going from New York to the Appalachians in 1 year.

So - are units a bit faster the larger the mapsize?

It also doesn't make sense to spend a year marching your troops from New York to the Appalachians to try and attack the next tile over.

 

[rah]

Hi rah, as you see, this concept is pretty much dead.
(80% of votes are against it.)

Neither community nor team want to have it.
(I personally do not like it either.)

That's too bad. I really liked it but understand that everyone has different tastes and priorities.
The fact that we're still discussing things is just one more reason why this mod is special.
And I wouldn't want to discourage it. So we move on. BUT I REALLY liked it.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

That's too bad. I really liked it but understand that everyone has different tastes and priorities.
The fact that we're still discussing things is just one more reason why this mod is special.
And I wouldn't want to discourage it. So we move on. BUT I REALLY liked it.

Do not misunderstand me - I liked the idea too. But not on maps of the current sizes where a trapper would travel for centuries overland with the speed of 1 square / turn. On a gigantic map that features only e. g. the 13 colonies, which would mean that a square would be far less squaremiles, there it could start to make sense to have trappers travelling from the 1-plot city to a fur resource square.

 

[rah]

Give trappers woody II and they really wouldn't move any slower than fishing boats. If it takes a bit longer to get to the woods, so be it.

 

[OzzyKP]

Give trappers woody II and they really wouldn't move any slower than fishing boats. If it takes a bit longer to get to the woods, so be it.

Agreed.

The time/movement scale is always going to be off. It is all an abstraction.

 

[rah]

I think we're fighting a losing battle OZ. We gave it a try, and I really liked the concept.

 

[Benjocaron]

How about some kind of fur trading post? It would work like the monastery, but the natives passing by would drop furs for a couple coins or something like that.

 

[orlanth]

As an alternate idea, is it possible to make a UnitInfos.xml tag so that killing a unit will drop x units of a certain Yield? This could be a nice way to enable hunting animals (was done in the M:C mod, not sure if it's been attempted/discussed for this one yet).

 

[raystuttgart]

As an alternate idea, is it possible to make a UnitInfos.xml tag so that killing a unit will drop x units of a certain Yield?

In RaR/WTP you directly get a small amount of gold when you kill Wild Animals.
It was much easier to implement (because there was no need for cargo slots).

It is also more "comfortable" for players because they do not always have to carry the Yields back to their cities.
Especially on "Gigantic" Maps that would really be annoying.

So there is already a small incentive to "hunt Wild Animals".