Possibly some refreshing news for SSC freights

[solo]

After looking over the log of samson’s 16 AD game, I was really impressed by how many times his SSC was able to produce commodities for trade. Having this happen was almost as effective as using the rehoming exploit to maximize delivery payoffs. If a reliable way could be found to refresh an SSC’s commodities, very early landings may be possible even with larger maps, by trading more intensively. Doing this would increase income needed to build spaceship parts and would provide more opportunities of netting two techs per turn in the latter half of a game.

So I’ve taken a break from EU2, and have been running some tests on a city which is a hides repeater (which I believe is quite similar to samson’s SSC in his game), and while doing so may have stumbled upon what appears to be the surprisingly simple mechanism for refreshing freight commodities. It is simply timely deliveries. Each time a freight commodity was delivered in my tests, the supply was refreshed. In my tests with this city, I was delivering to an adjacent city, and was able to refresh the supply once a turn, and countless times. In samson’s game, where airports permitted very rapid delivery, I’m betting he was able to refresh supply in his SSC so quickly and so often for the same reason.

Next door deliveries, such as in my tests, are not worth while, even though they reliably refresh supply, because the payoffs are minimal, but airports add the bonuses of distance, separate continents, and possibly delivery to a foreign civ. When the airport bonus is added in, payoffs can be substantial, as was seen in samson’s game. More tesing is needed, but if timely delivery of freight commodities turns out to be the key in refreshing supply, intensive trading between airports may lead to some really interesting results in future games.

Another reason I have been experimenting with a city that repeats hides is that if a SSC happens to be one of these, hides can refresh itself enough to keep the SSC trading profitably until freights and airports are available to keep things moving nicely later on.

Looking into how a hides repeater behaves could also provide insight into how the refresh mechanism works, because I have already observed some interesting and unexpected things while running tests. For example, in some tests hides stops repeating after awhile, but in others, it lasts all the way up until the regular freight commodities kick in and take over. I want to figure out why.

Rehoming got me a 776 AD landing on a standard sized map, so I believe that refreshing an SSC’s supplies puts a 500 AD landing well within range, but for now it’s back to make some more tests.

[Scouse Gits]

Yes I realised this aspect in one game when my SSC had nothing to build but food freights. These were stored for building Apollo. I noticed commodities became available when I built the wonder. Ever since I have always used SSC food freights immediately. A handy technique is to use a useless wonder like Women's Suffrage to start things going in another city -then convert to Apollo when Space Flight arrives. Thus avoiding any SSC freights hanging around.

City size is important for gaining new commodities. A growing city never seems to be short of supply items. When growth stagnates it seems that supply commodities follow suit.

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SG(2)

[solo]

SG,

Yes, I noticed that about storing caravans and freights, too! Using them in some way often opens up the supply again. I used to be reluctant to use up commodity caravans when building wonders, until I noticed that they were immediately re-supplied afterwards.

I very much like your idea about city size being a supply stimulant and will be testing that soon. So far, in tests with tiny cities, those without hides are only supplying the initial 3 commodities, but so far, those with hides have all been hides repeaters.

Something new to me about trading hides is that they take away the supply of one commodity of the city they are sent to. If you send 3 hides to a city before it builds any of its own caravans, all it will be able to make is food, UNLESS it also supplies hides itself.

So far, I am not noticing the 10 tech correlations samson spoke about, but my tests may not be reproducing enough of the similar conditions that develop in an actual game.

[samson]

Solo,

You are exactly right about the importance of understanding commodity resupply. If you can assure your SSC of available commodities, it is nearly as effective as rehoming, without the stigma. While I don't understand the algorithm involved yet, I am convinced it is non-random. In my opinion, the factors operating on both the supply and demand of cities can be determined with some clever test design and careful observation. Here are some ideas, in no particular order.

1) Hides is a special case. You never see "(Hides)". I believe this is a programming glitch. Thus, while Hides is an important factor in gameplay, it may be misleading in trying to understand the operation of supply and demand with other commodities.

2) The commodities supplied by a city (and perhaps its demanded ones) are determined by a number of factors: terrain, location, size, number of acquired techs, others???. How these factors combine to determine which commodities are supplied, I don't know.

3) In addition to the factors that determine what is supplied, there may exist 'trigger' events which actually intiate the changes by forcing the game to recalculate them. I suspect these trigger events are trade-related, such as building a freight, delivering a freight, receiving a freight.

4) There are tactics which can make unavailable commodities, i.e. those listed in "()"s, available again. Key to this is getting a fourth commodity. By understanding the order in which existing trade routes are replaced by new delivered commodities, you can target those routes which are tying up a commodity in your supply list. Replacing that route, makes its commodity available again. I used this tactic repeatedly in my 16AD game.

5) Yes, using freights in Wonder building, even food freights, often frees up commodities. In one case, I observed that it actually freed all three commodities for resupply.

I'll post other ideas and discoveries to this thread as I come across them.

[solo]

I'm working on SG's city size idea, and this is hot stuff, I think, in solving the refreshing problem.

Working with a non-hides city, I've done some preliminary testing of the relationship between a city's size and the refreshing of commodities, and have some preliminary, but repeatable results:

1) The first three commodity caravans can be built any time, but if they are all delivered before the city size thresholds are reached, the city sizes that allow a new commodity do not seem to work.

2) The three city size thresholds are size 7, 10 and 13.

3) When a city reaches size 7, the fourth commodity will be available right after delivering one of the first three.

4) Likewise, at size 10, if one of the earlier caravans is saved for a delivery then, the fifth commodity is released.

5) So in both cases, the city size allows the new commodity, but the new commodity only shows up after a previous caravan made in the city is delivered. (By the way, the caravan will also trigger the next commodity's appearance if it is added to a wonder being built.)

6) Size 13 is when things really get to be fun, because if one of the first 5 caravans from the city is delivered now, it triggers the alternating commodity effect, when the 6th commodity becomes available. Immediately after this one is delivered, the seventh becomes available, which when delivered, refreshes another copy of the sixth, which in turn, leads to the next copy of the seventh. This is similar to the effect by which freights are resupplied, as described in my first post above.

Now I'm guessing that this rotating effect is not allowed to go on for caravans, indefinitely, but if it can be sustained for any length of time, this means reaching size 13 in the SSC ASAP may become a bigger priority.

samson,

I am also well convinced that resupply is NOT a random event. For caravans, city size seems to be the key. Timely deliveries (or use in wonders) seem trigger the resupply of both caravans and freights. I have also oberserved that food deliveries will act as a trigger in cases where all the commodity caravans or freights have been used or delivered too soon.

City locations, and maybe the civ type, itself, probably help determine the particular commodities that appear in the supply and demand categories, and since commodities can vary quite a bit in inherent value, it may be worth running tests in trying to predict this aspect, too, but for now, I'm focused on the resupply issue.

The supply (or loss of it) of commodities in target cities can also be affected at the time a delivery is made to them. I have also observed that a delivery sometimes alters the supply list in the targeted city. You are right on the money with those observations.

What I haven't noticed yet is any effect of tech acquisition on supply, except for shortly after the transition is made from caravans to freights.

[solo]

Some more of my tests result in a few more notes:

1) When a city reaches size 13, it may be necessary to deliver all caravans associated with it to enable the re-supply of the 6th commodity and get access to it and start the rotation with the 7th going.

2) I am now almost convinced that a caravan or freight delivery (or using one up for a wonder) is the only way to trigger commodities that have been enabled for re-supply. Many times a city is in the enabled state, only waiting for a caravan to be used up in order to display, and make available, a fresh commodity.

3) I am also convinced that there are other conditions, in addition to city size, that can enable a city for re-supply, even after all its own caravans have been delivered or used up. Even in these situations, another caravan has to be used up to clear the way for the next re-supply of another commodity. Sometimes the trigger for a city is right after it receives a commodity from another city. Sometimes the enabled city has to build and use a food commodity first. Which trigger to use is not yet obvious or predictable.

4) Unfortunately, and I have verified this with repeated reloads and tests, there does seem to be a random factor involved, in situations where it is NOT an enabled city’s own COMMODITY caravan being delivered or used up. For example, many times I was able to send a commodity caravan from one city to another and get different results after reloading and repeating the process, i.e. the target city would re-supply on some attempts and wouldn’t on others. It may be possible that reloads do not perfectly save the state of cities which have become enabled, too, making different results of the exact same delivery seem like they are randomized. However, if randomization of re-supply is being done purposely, this throws a monkey wrench into attempts at unraveling the re-supply puzzle.

5) After some tests, my suspicion about hides is that their unusual behavior may not be a programming glitch. Each time I have delivered hides a parenthesis has gone around one of the target city’s supplied commodities, to replace the one that should have been around hides. This may actually be on purpose to make the supply and re-supply issues more convoluted and harder to unravel, much in the way that “joker” techs drove Oedo nuts when he was trying to unravel tech tree progressions. Hides may be the “joker” commodity.

6) Building and delivering food commodities will enable a city, but the catch here is that a valuable caravan is used up just to give another city a full food box. In addition, doing this does not always trigger the fresh commodity. Sometimes another delivery to or from the city is needed to trigger the actual re-supply. Sometimes a brand new food commodity will act as a trigger if used to help build a wonder, too. However, a food put into a wonder does not seem to enable a city.

7) So in conclusion, there seems to be a two step process in getting a city to re-supply a commodity. First, it has to be enabled in some way, and this may often occur at random. Once a city is enabled, the re-supply is always triggered by using up a caravan or freight.

[rah]

From experience in mp games i have noticed that what a city supplies and demands can change when other civs complete researching or acquire certain techs.
Trade being one of them. I've seen my sup/dem change when waiting in between turns. When this has occured, i've asked if any of the other players has just aquired trade. the answer is usually "yes". There are other techs that trigger the same thing later, but I haven't verified which ones yet.

Rich

[samson]

Rah,

I believe there are distinct 'causative' and 'trigger' events involved here that may explain what you have observed.

A 'causative' event is one which changes one of the base factors on which the supply/demand of a city is calculated. Possibly: city size, terrain, # of techs. But the change in supply/demand does not become visible until a 'trigger' event occurs.

A 'trigger' event is one directly related to the Trade system: delivery, production, or receipt of a caravan or, possibly, the use of the Trade Advisor to investigate supply/demand.

If this hypothesis is true, then the acquistion of Trade by your opponents and their immediate use of the Trade Advisor to gain intelligence about foreign cities, would explain why you see updates to the supply/demand of your cities on the same turn. The changes to supply/demand were latent, but unmanifest, caused ultimately by other factors, but made visible by an opponents discovery of Trade.

[rah]

It happened once, when I was the first to trade. When the second civ got trade, I saw one change that turn while looking at it. He had not built a cavaran yet, and had not checked the demand advisor, So just him getting trade triggered it.

RIch

[samson]

Okay.
The cause/trigger hypothesis still holds though. Acquiring Trade must update the supply/demand displays of cities immediately, making any latent changes appear.

I'm not saying this is how it works, mind you, just a theory to be investigated. I'll test it out some.

[rah]

Agreed. Testing is always good. There are so many factors sometimes that it's hard to isolate every piece.

[Scouse Gits]

Trade Testing

The 2.42 Deity/Hordes/Large World game below has a trade start at 4000BC so allowing commodity monitoring from the outset.

Try building a capital on different tiles and see the variation in supply and demand.

-------------------------

SG(2)

[Elephant]

solo, you are my kinda person! Your first post on the 16th at 13:53 was pretty meaty, but you must have kept on plugging all day cause your second post at 20:30 was filet minion!

samson, I'm trying to work on the commodity supply/demand changes, and what you commented was right along things I am suspecting. There seems to be either a GameTurn or TechNumber component, and there also seems to be either a CivilizationNumber or ContinentNumber component as well. There seem to be "trigger" techs for the two highest commodities, oil and uranium. The city size trigger is a new one for me, so I'll have to go back and retry some test games to see if that affects the changes. There is definitely a repeating nature to some cities, and it seems to be initially indicated by Hides being one of the three. I have not played enough tests to verify, but it seems at some point a repeating demand can be satisfied. Perhaps a random number is generated as to how many repeaters are accepted? And there is the whole issue of reciprocal trade, that when a demanded caravan is delivered from city A to city B, one of city A's demands may be satisfied at the same time.

I wish I could spend as much time on this as solo!

[solo]

My internet connection has been down for a few days, which may be a good thing, since I like to jump to conclusions based on little or flimsy evidence!

So I now have a few corrections to some previous observations.

1) The city sizes of 7, 10 and 13 are not magical numbers, but very often a change in city size causes a re-supply to occur. However, once re-supply starts at one size, a change is likely to occur when the city gains another 3 citizens, and again after another 3, since I have just seen a consistent pattern in many tests between just two cities, with supply changes occurring at sizes 5, 8 and 11.

2) Previously, I believed that re-supply could only be triggered by using up a caravan, but this is not always the case. As I have seen by altering city sizes, sometimes just doing this is enough to act as a trigger. As samson indicated, there definitely seem to be different trigger events. rah's experience confirms this, as one would expect the discovery of Trade by another civ to be a significant event, likely to cause changes in the supply mechanism.

3) Sadly, and I say this because I, like samson, was looking for an underlying set of firm rules governing commodity supply; I have seen some strange things occur, but in spite of duplicating the exact same conditions (as far as I could see), I could not repeat certain re-supply events. However, even though there is some sort of random factor involved, I still am seeing certain repeatable patterns, and enough of them to be encouraged to conclude that the random effect may be minimal.

4) Since the variables (including some chance) that have an effect on re-supply are hard to isolate, it is hard to know how to set up tests that duplicate enough of the vital game conditions to produce reliable information. So when reporting further "results", I will provide the parameters that were in effect while conducting them. For example, in my tests so far, I have been changing city sizes with the cheat menu to save time, after an initial run where I allowed cities to grow naturally, as they would in an actual game.

5) While playing a bit with terrain changes in cheat mode, I noticed that changing terrain often changes one of the commodities on the supply list. I fooled with this for enough minutes to conclude that figuring out how it actually works might become another major project! However, if terraforming were to allow one to secure the most valuable supply commodities, it would be worth knowing what to tell your engineers to do.

6) Previously I noted that hides would rob a supply from a target city when delivered, but this is not a special property of hides, since all commodities do the same thing. This may help explain why the AI hardly ever trades commodities. Their cities are robbed of another supply for every cargo delivered by the human player. I'm guessing that by the time they can trade actively, many of their cities can only make food. The AI also like to use the caravans that they do bother to make for scouting purposes or as lookouts on isolated islets! They seem to be programmed to disregard trade as a proftiable activity.

7) Currently, I am testing a small two-city trading system, to see what happens before any of the AI know or are involved in Trade. I'm hoping that simple tests in a small, closed system can reveal some useful info, which I hope to add in my next post here.

[solo]

I think some definitions are in order, to avoid confusion in results being reported by different testers, as I see that others are looking into certain aspects of this fascinating topic:

1) A supply will be defined as a commodity in a city’s supply list not surrounded by parentheses, in other words, a commodity other than food that can be assigned to a new caravan or freight.

2) A trigger will be defined as an event that reveals a new supply in a city.

3) A cause will be defined as an event that enables, but may not reveal, a new supply in a city.

4) An enabled city will be defined as one having a new supply due to a cause, but not yet revealed by a trigger.

5) A block will be defined as an event that reduces the number of supplies in a city. For example, a delivery of a commodity to a city having supplies, often ends up blocking one of them. A block results in a set of parenthesis being put around a commodity in a city that was previously in supply. Just the act of building a commodity caravan or freight, is another example of a block.

In limited testing so far, I have noticed some events seem to combine the functions of a cause and a trigger. Also, some events may act as causes in certain situations and as triggers in others. Maybe these events should get special names, too, but for now, 5 definitions are probably plenty!

I have finished a round of testing the effects of city size changes and will post the results when they are ready.


Elephant,

Welcome, and good to see another contributer!

Number of turns and techs are bound to be involved, I think. Oil and Uranium certainly seem to be tech dependent, as I have never seen either before freights are available. In my tests so far, I have seen many cases of what I will now define as alternating supply. For example, a city may supply just gold, but after that is built and delivered, dye may become available, which when built and delivered frees up a new supply of gold. Of course, alternating supply can be vary lucrative, so finding ways to initiate and sustain it would become quite valuable.