Calculating Caravan and Freight Delivery Payments

[samson]

What I did next was to enter cheatmode giving myself 100 future techs to increase the research cost but it didn't move, is there a maximum research cost?

Not that I know of, but using "Edit Technology" to give yourself 100 Future Techs doesn't work, it increments the # of the Future Tech but not the cost. You'll need to do SHIFT-F6 to give yourself one tech advance. Do this one hundred times, or however many techs you need to raise the cost higher than the payment.

I don't know if there is a maximum integer beyond which the Civ2 math breaks down. Probably not within the legimate context of the game.

[Thoddy]

Link to an attachment frome mine at another Apolyton Trade thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52337&perpage=20&pagenumber=2

attachment: Preq: Fantastic worlds
(damn link doesnt work) look for cab_4000.sav


I saw some things depending from the "optimal Path" and the distance, but my focus was not the 1 time payment - I checked only the trade routes.

[Elephant]

Originally posted by samson

There is only one city improvement and one wonder that affect base trade: Superhighways and Colossus...

There's only two (city improvements) that affect trade bonuses: Superhighways and Airports, and neither of these appear early in the game. You only need to estimate the destination city's base trade.

My apologies, samson. Fuzzy thinking and rushing to make my bus home. I was confusing trade arrows with Gold/Lux/Beakers, which are significantly increased by city improvements and wonders.

Seems like the AI often roads and irrigates a few plains early in the game, but I cannot tell which square each citizen is actually working. In a game I was playing recently, the AI mined hills due east of the city and neglected mining the Wine/Hills to the north, which would have given them the extra base trade from the same citizen working the mines. AI seems to go for food first, then shields, then trade.

Superhighways increases the trade of all squares which have roads or railroads by 50%. This is on a per square basis uses Civ2 integer math. Thus, a square with just one trade arrow is not improved by Superhighways, it must have at least two arrows to benefit. Also, remember that SH only effects squares with roads ... ocean squares or trade specials WITHOUT roads will not benefit.

So a road on Wine and Silk gets additional base trade in conjunction with SH, even though Hills and Forest do not normally get trade benefits from roading, right?

[Elephant]

Originally posted by samson

I don't know if there is a maximum integer beyond which the Civ2 math breaks down. Probably not within the legimate context of the game.

Integer math tends to be two-byte functions, which gives you either 0->64K or -32K->+32K. Isn't the max amount of gold around 32K?

[William Keenan]

Excellent work samson, on a truely herculean task! As one who has reseached this topic deeply I can well imagine the hours of work you must have invested. My hat is off to you.

**** deep bow *****

Were there a Nobel prise for Civ research you would be more than worthy of it.

About the Map size factor. What about non-standard map sizes? Is there a formula for this?

What other reseach have you done?

[solo]

Elephant,

You are right about the gold maxing out around 32,000. The maximum number of cities is near another common integer storage limit of 128.

Civ II seems to do a good job of preventing the player from causing integer overflows, unlike some other games, such as SimCity 3000, where the variable keeping track of the quality of the buildings in your city is allowed to overflow. If you have too many buildings with the best rating ("astronomical"), the threshold is crossed, and your income drops to a level commensurate with having all your buildings rated at the lowest level! Not a lot of fun after spending so much time building a rich city!

[Chofritz]

Originally posted by solo
Elephant,

You are right about the gold maxing out around 32,000. The maximum number of cities is near another common integer storage limit of 128.

I'm pretty sure that you ment 256, not 128 The maximum number of cities is 255 but usually you can't have more than 254 since the AI will have at least one. You can however "catch" the ai settler before he is able to build a city. This will let you have 255 cities of your own.

[solo]

I'm afraid I really meant 128! I was just wrong and apologize for my faulty memory. Is having been away from the game for over a year a good enough excuse?

[Elephant]

256 is a single-byte number (2 raised to the 8th power). Makes sense.

Wonder what else has byte-integer limitations?

[Chofritz]

Originally posted by solo
Is having been away from the game for over a year a good enough excuse?

Well only reason I know it is because I play the game of the month at www.civfanatics.com, I usually build a good number of cities every game (had 197 last time, all of them at size 2 or somewhere around there, hehe). Well I guess your reason is ok,

[Chofritz]

BTW, get over there and play you (you as in all of you) too.

[Elephant]

Originally posted by Chofritz
BTW, get over there and play you (you as in all of you) too.

I love to - I'm OCCing GOTM21 right now, but I'm also testing city demand changes and trying to keep a home life going too! What ever happened to MWHC (MyWifeHatesCiv)?

Interestingly, my daughter is getting into Civ2. She was doing some ancient history studies and I introduced her - now we talk about parallels between Civ and real history, tech development, struggles with Rep/Dem governments, military issues, etc. She's ony 10...

[Elephant]

Samson: Railroading increases a square's Shield production by half again, rounded down, but does not SEEM to effect the "Base Trade". Yet they are mentioned together as having 50% bonus in either the manual or the help files (cant remember which). Please confirm my understanding that you are saying that the only benefit the Railroad has is to the Transportation Bonus, never to the Base Trade.

[samson]

Elephant,

A railroad on the "optimal path" (ie, the "go to" route) from Source City to Destination City increases trade routes by 100%. A railroad on the Destination-to-Source path (usuallyt different from the Source-to-Destination) increases the delivery payment by 100%. Neither of these are considered part of the Base Trade of a city, which is the amount shown in the City Display, minus the trade routes.

Roads and Rails do not effect Base Trade except in conjunction with the Superhighways improvement.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by samson
Roads and Rails do not effect Base Trade except in conjunction with the Superhighways improvement.

Sorry Samson, either I didn't understand what you meant or you were typing too fast : the roads of course effect Base Trade (by adding 1 trade on many types of terrain)! And I don't get the relation between roads/rails and Superhighways...