New and Modified Scenarios

[Mark_Everson]

Econ XML!

l'm now about half way through getting the economic model hooked to to use xml for initialization. Its very straightforward the way Gary set up the xml parser, but of course in changing it I'm sure to run into bugs due to previous econ startup assumptions being violated.

When I'm done there will be a lot more freedom in things like econ/tech hookups, adding special commodities to scenarios at will, and other toys for the scenario designers! I hope to be done tomorrow, but no guarantees. . .

[Richard Bruns]

I have never seen any europe map in any testbeds I have. I´d like to use it, if you could upload it somewhere or e-mail it to me.

That sounds great, Mark. I´ll experiment with it, if it is well documented. But I´m not sure how much I want to mess with it; the economics.xml file is complicated and scary and I don´t know much about the model. Before I dig into it, could you point me to a good, concise summary and explanation of the current economics model?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
I have never seen any europe map in any testbeds I have. I´d like to use it, if you could upload it somewhere or e-mail it to me.

If you get to the stage where you want to do something, demo 4 had a vaguely decent Europe map that might be of some help. But you would need to transcribe it by hand since it was originally done in a different coordinate system, and I transformed it on the fly in the demo code. To see the map zoomed out just set the square size to 20.

That sounds great, Mark. I´ll experiment with it, if it is well documented. But I´m not sure how much I want to mess with it; the economics.xml file is complicated and scary and I don´t know much about the model. Before I dig into it, could you point me to a good, concise summary and explanation of the current economics model?

I'll give you info on what docs I've got when I release it. That will be a combination of existing econ documentation and the javadoc code documentation. After that I'd just have to answer questions as they come up, and then add those discussions to the documentation.

[Martin the Dane]

I'm having some trouble with adding population to a square via the <square> tag in the scenario files. The code i'm using is the following:

<square>
  <location>Ebla</location>
  <province>Ebla</province>
  <people>
    <ethnicity>Arab Tribesmen</ethnicity>
    <population>500</population>
  </people>
</square>

I have defined both province and ethnicity, so what am I missing?
The game stops somewhere in this code with the message "Dublicate setters for population in game.population.PopulationElement"

[LDiCesare]

I see where this population bug comes from and will fix it.

[Martin the Dane]

Thank's Laurent

I jus noticed another pequliar thing, when population is added in the scenario-file the number of farms changes to a number relative to the population added.
At the first glance this seems logical. But as the number of farms does not increase when the population grow, even when investing heavely in building farms, it is not such a good an idea. In fact it efectively limits the population a square can support.

IMO each square should have a fixed number of potential farm-sites depending on the type of terrain and the number of farms should be relative to the number of farmers.

The farm output should be relative to the number of farmers, but the efectiveness of the farmers should fall as the number of farmers/farm increased while the efectiveness of the farmes increased so at some point adding more farmers would not contribute to the food-output. Naturally the farming-tech-level should influence it all.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
I jus noticed another pequliar thing, when population is added in the scenario-file the number of farms changes to a number relative to the population added.

Hi Martin, yes you have found a kludge I put in to get the delenda scenario to work. Otherwise the standard numbers of farm sites, combined with the population levels Gary put in the scenario, would result in calamatous population decline. It will work mostly as you say it should in the future.

One thing I should make clear. Farm sites = Land. Whereas building farms with the economy is investing in Improving the farms on that land. Improving means everything from making/buying tools, to ensuring proper field care and drainage, etc. At a given tech level there is only so much improvement you can make before diminishing returns sets in. Farm productivity is a function of all of: arable land (farm sites); investment (Build farm); and Labor. Look at "production function" on the econ page on the web site if you want more details.

Unfortunately setting it as it should be right now will ruin the Delenda and Attila scenarios. One thing I could do is put in a special tag that says to cheat on the farm sites, and use that for only those scenarios where the effect is necessary.

How does that sound?

[Martin the Dane]

Hmm. sure better than the way it is now, but wouldn't it be just as easy to add a terrain section to the scenario-file, where it's possible to specify alterations to terrains?

Ex.:

 <terrain>
   <name>plain</name>
   <farmes>80&lt/farms>
   <resources>6</resources>
 </terrain>

This would result in all plains in the scenario having 80 farm-sites and 6 resource sites.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
Hmm. sure better than the way it is now, but wouldn't it be just as easy to add a terrain section to the scenario-file, where it's possible to specify alterations to terrains?

Ex.:

 <terrain>
   <name>plain</name>
   <farmes>80&lt/farms>
   <resources>6</resources>
 </terrain>

This would result in all plains in the scenario having 80 farm-sites and 6 resource sites.

But all plains are not equally populated in the scenario now, so this solution wouldn't work. The low-population squares would start to shoot up rapidly in population. Maybe we should just revisit delenda, but I don't want to take that on right now.

Frankly I had been hoping that we could wait for a map editor before doing things like farm site changes. But if its determined to be really important, we could do it now using a grid approach like for population. It'd take maybe an hour for everything but the detailed data entry.

[Martin the Dane]

Hmm. Well then I guess I'd go for the cheat-tag. It's not that important.
What I was trying to do was scatter a few minor tribes around the map in Dawn, to add some pop to make a higher pop-goal possible. But I guess I'll just give the player a little extra pop to start with for now.

Btw. Is there a target-date for the next release?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
Hmm. Well then I guess I'd go for the cheat-tag. It's not that important.
What I was trying to do was scatter a few minor tribes around the map in Dawn, to add some pop to make a higher pop-goal possible. But I guess I'll just give the player a little extra pop to start with for now.

That sounds better to me anyway. Don't want to make Dawn too complicated.

Btw. Is there a target-date for the next release?

Not really. I'd like to have had something out already. But improvements are coming from so many directions its hard to know what critical number of features will come together in which area and when! Areas where significant accomplishments may (or may not) come soon are: Scenarios (especially one that has lots of tech per the D7.3 plan); AI improvements; Diplomacy; and the new econ gui, among others. But because RL can sideline anyone at any time its hard to make a firm plan.

As soon as we have significant new stuff for a demo, I'll set a date. However with all the changes we will need a testing period of a week or so between that time and the release so that there's enough time to ensure any big bugs are handled. It could be 7.3 or we could skip right to 8 depending on what we get. My current guess is it will be at least 2-3 weeks before the demo is out. Hope that helps. . .

[Martin the Dane]

That sounds better to me anyway. Don't want to make Dawn too complicated.

I had more plans for those minor tribes. Originally I wanted them to be nomadic tribes that showed up at some point during the game, and were "persuaded" to settle and become part of the players civ. But as that's not really part of the game I soon dismissed the idea and started to think of them as possible minor settlements, that could be used to demontrate conquest, first of unguarded land then of guarded land. (What better way to learn the importance of defence than to accidentally take over an unprotected square )

But I'll leave that to a later date, and concentrate on making my version of Dawn use the standard units etc.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
I had more plans for those minor tribes. Originally I wanted them to be nomadic tribes that showed up at some point during the game, and were "persuaded" to settle and become part of the players civ. But as that's not really part of the game I soon dismissed the idea and started to think of them as possible minor settlements, that could be used to demontrate conquest, first of unguarded land then of guarded land. (What better way to learn the importance of defence than to accidentally take over an unprotected square )

But I'll leave that to a later date, and concentrate on making my version of Dawn use the standard units etc.

Hi Martin: Your plan sounds decent to me. There is really no reason why you can't put in such tribes. At least the farm sites issue shouldn't be an obstacle. Just put in people in the square roughly equal to ~700x the number of farm sites in the square, and the farm site issue won't come up! (of course this may have to wait for that xml fix, but we may have that in today's new release).

[Martin the Dane]

I want the tribes to be less than 5000 at the time they are discovered by the player, so they take up only one square. My plan was to put 5-800 people in each of these small settlements. I made a tent icon for them, to denote their semi-nomadic state. (I'm not much of an artist so it's preaty ugly)

Btw. is it possible to add population to a square in an event?

(of course this may have to wait for that xml fix, but we may have that in today's new release).

While we are at it, I have noticed quite a few discrepancies between the .xml and the description in "dataformat.html"

I'll write them down as I find them. The only ones I can remember right now is in that it's not possible to have a civilization sub-tag in <unit>, and several events can't be contained within <eventjoin>, <eventunion>, etc.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
I want the tribes to be less than 5000 at the time they are discovered by the player, so they take up only one square. My plan was to put 5-800 people in each of these small settlements. I made a tent icon for them, to denote their semi-nomadic state. (I'm not much of an artist so it's preaty ugly)

A few quick ideas: Start them with like 100 population. It will take a loooong time to grow large since the max growth rate per turn is 4%. Just figure when you want the player to find them, and what size they should be at that point. Then you can check it. If they have an army, make sure to give the civ bonus army supplies so that the troops don't eat the people out of all their food.

Btw. is it possible to add population to a square in an event?

I really know embarassingly little about events. Hopefully Laurent can answer this quickly.

While we are at it, I have noticed quite a few discrepancies between the .xml and the description in "dataformat.html"

I'll write them down as I find them.

Then we'll have to figure out which are bugs and which are features and either fix or update the manual as appropriate.