Oil Supplies

[Jethro83]

Originally posted by Ijuin
This is a little complicated. How about instead, units cannot heal when the necessary resource is unavailable, representing that the resource is needed to produce replacement parts?

I don't find it that complicated. But that's just me. I guess what I mentioned should be a selectable option at the beginning of the game, and what you mentioned about the inability to heal when the resource is unavailable should be in place otherwise. Or maybe in both cases.

I like this part. Also, if a resource gets cut off, then production on any units or improvements needing it under construction gets suspended? Currently, you only need the resource to START producton, and can finish the unit or improvement even if the resource gets cut off halfway through.

Yeah. Feels like too much of an exploit to be able to build tanks when you don't have oil or rubber. Definitely add the option to suspend production when the prerequisite resource is unavailable.

[Panag]

Re: Oil Supplies

Originally posted by wrylachlan
I was just reading another thread about naval supply lines and was thinking about how the supply chain is not really represented in the game.

Specifically I was thinking about how tanks can run forever even if they are not connected to oil. Once you build the tank (or anything else which requires oil) you can totally loose your oil supply and they still work.

My proposal is that oil-burning vehicles have a grace period of say 2 turns where they can be disconnected from an oil source without penalty. After that, for each turn they remain unconnected their stats decrease by 20% (obviously the exact percentage need not be hardcoded, you could set it in the editor). To be connected you must have a solid road or RR from the unit to the resource.

This would do a couple of neat things:

1.) Air superiority would be much more important since bombers can cut you off from your resources.
2.) Marines would become much more important since to do a tank invasion overseas you would first have to take a city with a harbor using your marines before your tanks arrive or else the tanks would be useless.

As a side note, ships would have a much much longer grace period before they need oil, maybe 10 or 20 turns.

hi ,

well a solution to that will not be possible in the game , ....
however they could put in the editor an upkeep for resources , like one gold and one oil or so , ....

have a nice day

[wrylachlan]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Oil Supplies

Originally posted by Zachriel


One clue is that map size is directly related to lag.

I'm sorry, I know that path-finding is difficult, but the fact that a larger map leads to longer lag does not necessarily mean it is the pathfinding algorithm that is slowing things down. The larger the map the more units you have. Have you compared lag times between a huge map with 20 cities and 20 units total and a small map with the same? That would be comparing apples to apples.

And even if you had the same number of units and cities, a larger map will always take longer for the AI to make strategic decisions on since it has more territory to defend, more potential places to go.

What takes so long about the path algorithm isn't that running it any one time takes a long time, but that for each unit you have to run it multiple times so the AI can decide which path to take. Adding a run or two of the algorithm to figure out supply lines shouldn't be that difficult.

Also it could be done with a "supplied" flag in the tile. If you have 32 civs then that would be 4 bytes of info per tile. On a 100x100 map that's 10KB total to store the supply info of every tile. That shouldn't break the bank memory-wise. Then you would only have to run the pathfinding algorithmn when a road or RR is destroyed, not for every unit.

[Captain]

how about this:

no oil, you have ten turns remaining for your mechanized units to move. after that, they lose all mvt points (so you'd better make use of them quick and get that supply back, or move them into good positions where you want to keep them for a while). just put a counter on the side of the screen counting down.

this would also put infantry and other foot units back in the game. makes them worthwhile again.

[zulu9812]

Whatever the outcome of this, there needs to be an easy-to-follow on-screen reminder, and we don't want to clutter up the screen.

[Zachriel]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Oil Supplies

Originally posted by wrylachlan

a larger map will always take longer for the AI to make strategic decisions on since it has more territory to defend, more potential places to go.
. . . .
What takes so long about the path algorithm isn't that running it any one time takes a long time, but that for each unit you have to run it multiple times so the AI can decide which path to take.

"More potential places to go," is exactly the problem with pathfinding algorithms. Not only does the AI have to calculate each path for every potential move, but then it would have to calculate what the supply situation would be after each potential move and what the supply situation would be after each potential enemy move. Otherwise, the AI would be very vulnerable to having its supply cut off.

[Catt]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Oil Supplies

Originally posted by wrylachlan


I'm not sure that I agree that it is the shortest path algorithm that is slowing things down. Did someone at Firaxis make this statement? Do you have some figures as to what percentage of the lag is from this algorithm vs. AI deciding where to go strategically?

Wrylachlan and Zachriel -- from the Apolyton 1.21f chat with Firaxis:

[[m]ike] Are there any efforts at making the larger maps more playable? I have heard it is something in the culture routine that slows down turns on huge maps.
[Soren_Johnson_Firaxis] mike: it is the pathfinding which slows down the larger maps...

Best excerpts from the chat can be found here .

Catt

[Zachriel]

Re: Oil Supplies

Originally posted by Catt

[Soren_Johnson_Firaxis] mike: it is the pathfinding which slows down the larger maps... [/B]

Catt

Thanks Catt.

But we have hope! Computers are improving so rapidly, that what may seem impractical today, may be easy with tomorrow's machine. So, it is still worth while passing ideas back and forth.

[Panag]

Re: Re: Oil Supplies

Originally posted by Zachriel


Thanks Catt.

But we have hope! Computers are improving so rapidly, that what may seem impractical today, may be easy with tomorrow's machine. So, it is still worth while passing ideas back and forth.

hi ,

if it was only to do one thing , .....to keep us on track , .....

have a nice day

[Willem]

Re: Oil Supplies

Originally posted by wrylachlan

My proposal is that oil-burning vehicles have a grace period of say 2 turns where they can be disconnected from an oil source without penalty. After that, for each turn they remain unconnected their stats decrease by 20% (obviously the exact percentage need not be hardcoded, you could set it in the editor). To be connected you must have a solid road or RR from the unit to the resource.

It's not a bad idea in principle, but there's already so many things for the game to take care of that the turns at that point, figuratively speaking, take forever. By adding yet another calculation to the mix, it would slow things down even more. Maybe in a few years, when we all have 1.6 ghz machines sitting in our livingroooms, it might be an idea to consider.

[Willem]

Originally posted by zulu9812
Perhaps if cities could be besieged? i.e. if all 8 squares are occupied by enemy units then that city loses all resources (excluding the resource in the square the city was built on, if any)...

Isn't that called Pillaging at the moment? Just blow the roads, no more oil going to city.

[zulu9812]

what about airports?

[Lonestar]

Dear Lord, I was hoping this would be a thread wondering why there wasn't any oil off shore....

carry on....

[Willem]

Originally posted by zulu9812
what about airports?

Bring in Artillery.

[KrazyHorse]

This is going a bit far; if we're going to do this then we may as well actually implement some sort of supply requirement to all units.