Wasted Food

[JosEPh_II]

I wish I had some of your modding skills DH.

I would Mod RoM1.03 and take it in a different direction that RoM eventual went to. Adding in the base K-Mod would be starters. No BBAI or REV would be in it. But the new DCM would. And your Subdued critters would be a must have. Although it might be trimmed a wee bit.

JosEPh

 

[MMX5000]

Well not sure about anyone else of course but personally I like the changes you propose to wasted food. It does make more sense that 100 ppl can make more use of food than 10 ppl plus if you say that early cities wont have much of a difference it looks like it still solves the original problem it was meant to.

You know between this mod and AND, I'm just never gonna get a chance to go back to Civ5.

 

[BlueTemplar]

I play on Epic level so my eXperiences Are different than a player that uses Snail. On Epic level City Limits are unnecessary as are fixed borders. The Pop growth restrictions coupled with the food wasteage modifiers make it so that you have to really push to exceed the Number of cities that City Limits set. So for Epic games they become redundant and not needed. And I AM a city spammer. I will push my economy to the breaking point to place a city I deem necessary for resources or border locking. Then I backfill like mad.

I don't understand what you are talking about. Neither pop growth restrictions, nor the food wastage affect the building of settlers, so these settings should encourage you to spam even more cities... especially since close-placed cities will allow you to use all the food from farms without much wastage.

Its nice that the game can be played in so many different play styles. This is one of the best parts of C2C. It actually has some wiggle room so there is no "right" choice because there are so many possible paths you can follow when playing the game.

On the contrary, that's my main gripe with food wastage : it makes cities harder to grow fast, so strategies based on food and fast city growth are hindered. It also means that rule all, partly because of the numerous production bonuses available.
Whipping, Drafting, and farm cities filled with specialists fade before the power of the Mine (a whopping 7-10 with forest, road, Caste and Slavery) supported with a few farms, just enough to get 32 extra (half wasted) after which the waste becomes too crippling to add more farms.
Furthermore you need Guilds to get rid with Agricultural Guilds of the last significant hindrance to growth , and Slavery carries a growth penalty too, so early whipping is even more hindered.
A cottage economy doesn't seem that great either because :
- By the point cottages start to grow you'll have Conscription which nicely makes use of all the extra farms you have. Canal systems is not far.
- You could remove forests to place cottages but Lumbermill is not that far away. Let's see: Lumbermill + Caste/Proletariat is +3 , but you'll have around +95% production at that point so that makes +5.85 (and EVEN MORE for buildings and especially military units) that you can ALSO convert to 5.85 or 4.68 / / . Village + Coinage is +1 +5 but villages need to GROW first, unlike lumbermills which you can just build; bonuses for , and are fewer and mainly limited to your capital, furthermore converting to is a LOT more expensive than the other way around. For rush-building something you have the supply trains and the like that provide a better bargain.
- I don't know how is it in C2C, but in late game in AND towns (unlike in regular Civ 4) are not worth it compared to farms and factories, so why bother with cottages at all?
It's true that I haven't tried to play in a different way (and only went until the start of middle ages so far), since it's my first game I just went the path of the least resistance and did what seemed more effective. I'm going to try these other strategies if I get around to finishing this game and see how it goes...

 

[Epona222]

You know between this mod and AND, I'm just never gonna get a chance to go back to Civ5.

You say that like it is a bad thing I only came to AND and then C2C because Civ 5 was such a disappointment to me Thanks to C2C it's as if I have a new version of Civ every month

Back on the topic of food (and specifically early pop growth) - although I have now got to grips with growing cities in the early game, I am not sure whether the AI is prioritising it (or building tribes to settle new cities for that matter) as their cities seem to be growing a lot slower. I am keen to take out Arabia because I want Middle Eastern culture (a new reason to go to war in CIV ) but their only city has been at size 1 forever and if I go against them now it will just be razed, I have enough espionage points against them to see they are building a bandits hideout rather than food buildings/gatherers - they have a lot of terrain and even resources with no improvements at all - so wondering if the AI needs tweaking to take account of how much slower it is to grow now we need a lot of extra food required to grow cities with the various different early civics.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Thanks to C2C it's as if I have a new version of Civ every month

That should be our slogan...

"Caveman to Cosmos: A new version of Civ every month."

 

[Koshling]

I don't understand what you are talking about. Neither pop growth restrictions, nor the food wastage affect the building of settlers, so these settings should encourage you to spam even more cities... especially since close-placed cities will allow you to use all the food from farms without much wastage.


On the contrary, that's my main gripe with food wastage : it makes cities harder to grow fast, so strategies based on food and fast city growth are hindered. It also means that rule all, partly because of the numerous production bonuses available.
Whipping, Drafting, and farm cities filled with specialists fade before the power of the Mine (a whopping 7-10 with forest, road, Caste and Slavery) supported with a few farms, just enough to get 32 extra (half wasted) after which the waste becomes too crippling to add more farms.
Furthermore you need Guilds to get rid with Agricultural Guilds of the last significant hindrance to growth , and Slavery carries a growth penalty too, so early whipping is even more hindered.
A cottage economy doesn't seem that great either because :
- By the point cottages start to grow you'll have Conscription which nicely makes use of all the extra farms you have. Canal systems is not far.
- You could remove forests to place cottages but Lumbermill is not that far away. Let's see: Lumbermill + Caste/Proletariat is +3 , but you'll have around +95% production at that point so that makes +5.85 (and EVEN MORE for buildings and especially military units) that you can ALSO convert to 5.85 or 4.68 / / . Village + Coinage is +1 +5 but villages need to GROW first, unlike lumbermills which you can just build; bonuses for , and are fewer and mainly limited to your capital, furthermore converting to is a LOT more expensive than the other way around. For rush-building something you have the supply trains and the like that provide a better bargain.
- I don't know how is it in C2C, but in late game in AND towns (unlike in regular Civ 4) are not worth it compared to farms and factories, so why bother with cottages at all?
It's true that I haven't tried to play in a different way (and only went until the start of middle ages so far), since it's my first game I just went the path of the least resistance and did what seemed more effective. I'm going to try these other strategies if I get around to finishing this game and see how it goes...

Totally agree with you on cottage line. IMO it needs boosting. I also agree that whipping (in slavery) isn't really of much use, though even without wastage I don't think it would be, just because the growth rate at the time slavery is a good option is just so low anyway (so wastage makes that situation worse, but isn't really the root of it, unless you are still usin slavery in the industtrial era!). Personally:

1) I'd definately like to see the cottage line get boosts from various techs (in line with the amount of boosting farms get)

2) I'm wondering if we should consider a change to the whipping mechanic that, instead of using population directly, uses an amount of stored food, killing a pop each time that amount takes you through 0, and that killed pop itself counting (for hurry purposes) as a fixed amount of stored food. That way a small hurry would (usually assuming you hadn't just grown with low stored food after growth) typically just cost you a bunch of stored food, whereas laregr ones would cost that as well as some population.

 

[Koshling]

By the way, to answer some general questions:

1) The specific formula for food wastage is (use a spreadsheet to model this if you want to see the effect in a tabular manner):

Waste(0)=0
Waste(S) = Waste(S-1) + ((float)1 - ((float)0.05 + pow((float)0.95, surplass))/(float)1.05)

where S is the raw surplass

2) It doesn't address the same need as unhealth for 2 reasons:
2.1) Unhealth sets an effective limit on population size, wastage on growth rate. They are not the same thing
2.2) Unhealth is pretty seriously unbalanced in C2C. You can basically ignore it from mid prehistoric (cooking or so) until sometime in the industrial period. IMO this needs some attention, but that's a different matter (and happyness even more so)

Here is what I am going to do, which I hope will satisfy everyone:

I am going to move the food wastage parameters into XML (global defines). I wil define 2 values:

i) Percentage of consumption at which waste starts (currently 0 but I think I'm going to change it to 100). This means the zero point of wastage can be moved from 0 surplass to some multiple of the city's consumption (which is for most purposes 3 * population). With a default of 100 this will effectively be saying 'the population can handle a surplass that equals what they need to get by without wastage, but after that they start to waste). Setting this param to a large number will effectively turn waste off. I'll also allow -1 as an explicit off switch.

ii) Wastage growth factor - this is the 0.05 (and impicit 0.05 in the 0.95 and 1.05) in the above formula. Default will be left at 0.05. Larger numbers cause wastage to grow faster with more surplass, lower ones less.

 

[AIAndy]

Totally agree with you on cottage line. IMO it needs boosting. I also agree that whipping (in slavery) isn't really of much use, though even without wastage I don't think it would be, just because the growth rate at the time slavery is a good option is just so low anyway (so wastage makes that situation worse, but isn't really the root of it, unless you are still usin slavery in the industtrial era!). Personally:

1) I'd definately like to see the cottage line get boosts from various techs (in line with the amount of boosting farms get)

2) I'm wondering if we should consider a change to the whipping mechanic that, instead of using population directly, uses an amount of stored food, killing a pop each time that amount takes you through 0, and that killed pop itself counting (for hurry purposes) as a fixed amount of stored food. That way a small hurry would (usually assuming you hadn't just grown with low stored food after growth) typically just cost you a bunch of stored food, whereas laregr ones would cost that as well as some population.

That is certainly a viable option.
An alternative: What about if whipping would force you to use X population as slave specialists and weakens it by Y hammers, both for Z turns.

 

[Koshling]

Parameterised version pushed to SVN. Parameters may be found in assets\xml\A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.xml:

WASTAGE_START_CONSUMPTION_PERCENT - integer, sets the percentage of consumption that the surplass must reach before ANY wastage starts (i.e. - the start of the curve). I was going to set this to 100 (previous unparameterised version was 0 effectively) but I hated the results on my current game (all my large cities were going to grow every 2-3 turns for some time), so I compromised on 50. If set negative all wastage is turned off.

WASTAGE_GROWTH_FACTOR - float, set to 0.05. Changing this will change the steepness of the curve (lower numbers will lead to a flatter curve)

 

[JosEPh_II]

This sounds good. Will start a new game this evening to test.

JosEPh

 

[BlueTemplar]

2) I'm wondering if we should consider a change to the whipping mechanic that, instead of using population directly, uses an amount of stored food, killing a pop each time that amount takes you through 0, and that killed pop itself counting (for hurry purposes) as a fixed amount of stored food. That way a small hurry would (usually assuming you hadn't just grown with low stored food after growth) typically just cost you a bunch of stored food, whereas laregr ones would cost that as well as some population.

That's a great idea! Use directly food instead of population, and like I suggested for allow the player to choose the amount of to spend with the default being just enough to finish building the item accounting for the city production.

Waste(0)=0
Waste(S) = Waste(S-1) + ((float)1 - ((float)0.05 + pow((float)0.95, surplass))/(float)1.05)

Why an iterative formula? I guess pow(...) means 0.95^S ?

2.2) Unhealth is pretty seriously unbalanced in C2C. You can basically ignore it from mid prehistoric (cooking or so) until sometime in the industrial period. IMO this needs some attention, but that's a different matter (and happyness even more so)

I was going to make a thread about that. Health and happiness have too many possible positive enhancements and too few negative ones. One consequence is that city limits can be almost ignored until you get about the double of cities, and that cities grow too fast.
Think also about and : in basic Civ 4 you need 2 per citizen, plus one will be wasted by if you don't have enough . An irrigated farm on a plains/tundra gives 2 (until Biology). There are NO civics that give extra food from farms. (The city itself provides 2 .) So you need 1 per citizen, and all citizens except the first one working farms just not to starve the city, unless you have extra food from grasslands, flood plains or food resources. With so few extra food health is important.
In C2C at Guilds/Crop Rotation a plains/tundra/marsh/muddy irrigated farm with Caste and Slavery produces a whopping 10 ! And with the many bonuses, you won't have any in your cities, and I guess wouldn't really matter anyway because how food wastage is calculated... (- from is subtracted BEFORE the food wastage is calculated, right?). A citizen consumes 3 . So the result is a farm-working citizen produces 7 (!) extra instead of consuming 1 extra like in basic Civ4. And you're wondering that cities are growing too fast! (I'm not even counting all the -producing buildings...) Why even bother with health when you've got so much extra food?

 

[Koshling]

That's a great idea! Use directly food instead of population, and like I suggested for allow the player to choose the amount of to spend with the default being just enough to finish building the item accounting for the city production.


Why an iterative formula? I guess pow(...) means 0.95^S ?


I was going to make a thread about that. Health and happiness have too many possible positive enhancements and too few negative ones. One consequence is that city limits can be almost ignored until you get about the double of cities, and that cities grow too fast.
Think also about and : in basic Civ 4 you need 2 per citizen, plus one will be wasted by if you don't have enough . An irrigated farm on a plains/tundra gives 2 (until Biology). There are NO civics that give extra food from farms. (The city itself provides 2 .) So you need 1 per citizen, and all citizens except the first one working farms just not to starve the city, unless you have extra food from grasslands, flood plains or food resources. With so few extra food health is important.
In C2C at Guilds/Crop Rotation a plains/tundra/marsh/muddy irrigated farm with Caste and Slavery produces a whopping 10 ! And with the many bonuses, you won't have any in your cities, and I guess wouldn't really matter anyway because how food wastage is calculated... (- from is subtracted BEFORE the food wastage is calculated, right?). A citizen consumes 3 . So the result is a farm-working citizen produces 7 (!) extra instead of consuming 1 extra like in basic Civ4. And you're wondering that cities are growing too fast! (I'm not even counting all the -producing buildings...) Why even bother with health when you've got so much extra food?

I think the health/happyness balance issues should be moved to another thread. I will start one...

PS - iterative formula just because it was the simplest way I found to give the asymptotic behaviour I wanted. Just pragmatism is all.

 

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, it's interesting because it IS asymptotic, but the further you go, the more time it takes to get there, so you're at 90% wasted food at 333 extra food, but only 93% wasted food at 1000 extra food!

 

[Koshling]

Yeah, it's interesting because it IS asymptotic, but the further you go, the more time it takes to get there, so you're at 90% wasted food at 333 extra food, but only 93% wasted food at 1000 extra food!

That's deliberate. I wanted diminishing returns, but never NO return.

 

[DRJ]

Why even bother with health when you've got so much extra food?

I would like to see having that having gives more instability to the empire - so ignoring it and having like -10 in a city in industrial age would produce as well as less

These effects should begin to kick in at late renaissance, like with Invention because in early game unhealthyness is balanced ok, I think...

Btw. interesting twist to overcome the unhappyness by unhealthyness would be to be able to produce for whole nation, like if you set 1 city with minimum of size 25 to producing all other cities in the empire will get 1 /turn as long as the size-25-city continues to produce /turn

What you guys think of that? Producing could be enabled by medicine, mabye, as it is around that time the factories' start to kick in...

 

[BlueTemplar]

IIRC there's already a city -generated instability, but it's effect isn't that great (in AND)... would come from eventual revolts, but why less ?

IMHO is broken by mid-Classical. Otherwise I'm about to research invention and the median of my cities is +33!

 

[DRJ]

IIRC there's already a city -generated instability, but it's effect isn't that great (in AND)... would come from eventual revolts, but why less ?

Yes, but the effects of instability must become more visible (instability created by =10-times higher?), not from beginning of game but with certain techs like Invention, which shows the people of your empire that their doesn't really have to be - if the ruling class would spend more for their wellbeing.

Less of course because ill people tend to work less often and less effective
even if they are slaves and whiped. So a city with 10 should lose at least 10% , in my opinion.

IMHO is broken by mid-Classical.

You may be right but the unhealthiness=unhappyness should not kick in then, I think, maybe for this time the unhealthyness=unproductivity could solve the balancing issues... as long as giving many classical civics more based on city size maybe... as I think you want to say there is too much health around, which of course is not true for every game, especially for deity players starting on england, for example ;-)

 

[Koshling]

Yes, but the effects of instability must become more visible (instability created by =10-times higher?), not from beginning of game but with certain techs like Invention, which shows the people of your empire that their doesn't really have to be - if the ruling class would spend more for their wellbeing.

Less of course because ill people tend to work less often and less effective
even if they are slaves and whiped. So a city with 10 should lose at least 10% , in my opinion.



You may be right but the unhealthiness=unhappyness should not kick in then, I think, maybe for this time the unhealthyness=unproductivity could solve the balancing issues... as long as giving many classical civics more based on city size maybe... as I think you want to say there is too much health around, which of course is not true for every game, especially for deity players starting on england, for example ;-)

Not offering a value-judgement on whether we WANT to have a health->instablity mechanic, but two observations on it:

1) It would only be meaningful with REV on, which is a game option

2) I think any such instability should arise not from absolute values of unhealth, but from divergence of unhealth from the national average (normalised for pop in each city) feeding into local instability; and by divergence of your national average from the worlwdide average (leading to national instability)

That seems more natural (people don't know it's bad for them unless they see someone else better off), and also allows the mechanic to flow both ways (we are way more healthy than those goes so it makes us like the status quo better), though we'd probably want to equilibrium point to be set on the negative side slightly.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Having a disease system that actually reduces your population if you get to much unhealthiness might be an answer. Should be possible with the new property system if I could just get my head around the "jargon".

 

[BlueTemplar]

I think he wants to add a new kind of "instability" completely different from REV.

Also I'm currently at deity.

Why england would have less health?