Aeterna Civitas III

[AGRICOLA]

I don't know how to do it, but it doesn't sound too complicated

Indeed . . . . it took me only an hour to find the one %!@)%? byte that needed changing in a 632 kb file.


I ran a series of tests to determine what was possible.

The following parameters were used for the tests:

Unit = Merchant
Home City = Carni (On landmass #2. Carni is approximately twice as far from Roma as from Syracusae but a Merchant can reach either one in one turn
Commodity = Dye (the least valuable)
Delivered to:
1. Roma2 (Roma on landmass #2 . . . . as in scen)
2. Roma34 (edited Roma on landmass #34)
3. Syracusae (On landmass #54)
Trade arrows in Roma:
1. 152 (As in scen)
2. 665 (Marble terrain changed from 6 to 50 trade arrows in rules . . . Roma has 6 within its ZOC)


TEST I . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 152
Carni => Roma2 = 122 gold
Carni => Roma34 = 184 gold
Carni => Syracusae = 292 gold

Comment: Changing Roma's landmass increases payout by 50% but it is still smaller than from Syracusae.


TEST II . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 665
Carni => Roma2 = 536 gold
Carni => Roma34 = 804 gold
Carni => Syracusae = 292 gold

Comment: Probably similar to what McMonkey wants. However, as the following tests show, there is always a fly in the ointment.


TEST III . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 152
Roma2 => Syracusae = 1,026 gold
Roma34 => Syracusae = 1,026 gold
Taxes @80% in Roma = 260 gold

Comment: It's a well balanced scen with theses numbers.


TEST IV . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 665
Roma2 => Syracusae = 4,074 gold
Roma34 => Syracusae = 4,074 gold
Taxes @80% in Roma = 1,082 gold

Comment: The fly in the ointment. The happy inhabitants of Roma will be churning out Merchants as fast as they can, sending them to Syracusae and living very well of the proceeds. Why bother working hard to train Legions and build Catapults.

To designers, these numbers may be a bit excessive; to players they are absolutely perfect.



@Harry Tuttle
There are other good "trading" cities on Sicily.

@McMonkey
As you can extrapolate from the above results, increasing Roma's trade arrows from 152 to 201 (only 1 square increased from 50 to 99), will not do the trick.

I can do any hexediting of landmasses that you need. If you want to try it yourself, Roma's landmass number (02) is at offset 371,427 in the .scn and all .sav files. I picked landmass=34 (22 in hex) because it is used for only one single-square island.

You absolutely, definitely need the house rule that forbids re-homing Merchants.

[McMonkey]

Thanks a million Agri. I'm useless at working this sort of stuff out so this is a big help! I will have a good think about which combination works best but I think I can use this system as long as I ban re-homing of traders. This is a pretty standard house rule for most scenarios so it shouldn't be a problem.

[McMonkey]

Agricola
I have been experimenting with this and I tend to agree with you that Test II's results work best. I have made two special resources on marble squares 99 trade each (pity that seems to be the maximum) but this only gets Rome up to about 220 trade in total, still not enough to make it the premier destination. I may have to take your advice and use the marble terrain to boost the trade output but I would like to avoid this if at all possible as I want to use marble to make key cities around the map more productive.

By giving Rome Superhighways, the Colossus and three OK trade routes I can get the output up to 280 arrows. If you wouldn't mind changing Rome to landmass #35 the additional 50% should get output up to 420 arrows, which I think will beat Syracuse by a fair margin, certainly early on in the game. I don't necessarily want every single trader to go to Rome. If there is a decent size city that demands a product then why not trade there. I just want the majority of trade to flow back to the heart of the Empire.

I'm going to have to raise the tech paradigm to compensate for all that extra trade output in Rome. It has already gone from a tech every 10 turns to one every 3 turns at the start of the scenario. This is the side of scenario design I don't enjoy so much, all the number crunching and balancing. I'm much happier building maps and placing cities!

I'm afraid I don't know where to begin with hex editing and I have too many other things to sort out for this scenario to start learning right now. Would you mind doing the honours?

I had to post the save in post #125 of this thread: ACIII save

I could not work out how the hell you upload attachments here nowadays!

[AGRICOLA]

I fell asleep at the switch on this one. Just checked this thread for the first time since Jan 22.

File has been hexedited and e-mailed to you.

[McMonkey]

Thanks Agri, that's appreciated. I'm really busy this week anyway so I'm just doing little bits to the scenario here and there. I can't wait for a day or two off so I can just relax and do some scenario design!