Goody Hut limitations and usefulness.

[klesh]

Greetings, been thinking about goody huts here and the possibilities of fine tuning them more so we might be able to use them more effectively in our scenarios.

What are the possibly outcomes for tripping a goody hut:

• You receieve an undiscovered technology.
• You recieve a settler 'wandering nomads' unit.
• You recieve an 'advanced tribe' and are granted a city.
• You recieve a sum of money.
• You recieve a military unit which changes through the ages.
• You recieve an abandoned village, ie nothing.

Any more I am forgetting?


Okay, so now lets see how we can go about fiddling with them such that we could limit the outcomes of a hut to something desireable.

• You can counter the technology outcome by giving a civ Invention. No more technologies from huts. Removing Invention altogether from the scenario I assume would allow for infinite techs from huts?
  
• I know no way of reducing the appearance of settler (slot?) units. I assume it is settler slot and of course not any unit with the settler ability.
  
• 255 preplaced cities is about all I can think of to limit the appearance of an instant city via the 'advanced tribe' outcome.
  
• I know of no way of eliminating the outcome of money given from a goody hut.
  
• I know of no way to limit the appearance of military units except that they have a pattern to their lineage in the first place. They change I assume with the triggering civ's technology level, or perhaps the overall game's technology level. The Barbarian Paper has excellent info about barbarian outcomes from huts and their corresponding tech levels, so I figure their might be a connection to what a player's units might be if the Barbs are toggled off in a scenario. No Barbs means only player controlled mercenaries, but there has to be a pattern.
  
• I know of no way to eliminate the appearance of an abandoned village outcome from a hut.

Henrik has told me that the huts have a 'seed' like resource specials. This effect s their placement on the map. He was sucessful in eliminating most huts that gave anything except settlers for a scenario about the New World. Apart form deleting those huts whos likely outcome is not desireable (he seemed to find a pattern, not a perfect one though), is there a way to limit the outcomes of all huts?

Seeing as huts are placed on the .MP file at the very start of the mapmaking process before any techs are involved, perhaps their location or something about their pattern regulates the outcomes.

Perhaps the outcomes are a revolving thing simmilar to odeo years whereby the list of total outcomes order revolves based on the game year.

Year 1->A,B,C,D,E,F
Year 2-> B,C,D,E,F,A
etc.

EDIT: By this I mean that in year one you trip the first hut giving you outcome A-> Technology, Hut #2-> outcome B 'nomads', Hut #3 -> outcome C 'advanced tribe'.

Perhaps Year 2 would have the first hut being tripped starting with outcome B, hut #2 ->outcome C and so on in a revolving fashion to give the appearance of randomness.

Just an idea there. Anyone know more about this?
Thoughts?

-FMK.

[Prometeus]

Re: Goody Hut limitations and usefulness.

As always, nice question...

Originally posted by Field Marshal Klesh
Any more I am forgetting?

-FMK.

• You recieve a huge amount of troubles by making them goin' mad into a barbarian horde.

[ravagon]

Re: Goody Hut limitations and usefulness.

Originally posted by Field Marshal Klesh

Henrik has told me that the huts have a 'seed' like resource specials. This effect s their placement on the map. He was sucessful in eliminating most huts that gave anything except settlers for a scenario about the New World. Apart form deleting those huts whos likely outcome is not desireable (he seemed to find a pattern, not a perfect one though), is there a way to limit the outcomes of all huts?

Seeing as huts are placed on the .MP file at the very start of the mapmaking process before any techs are involved, perhaps their location or something about their pattern regulates the outcomes.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. The placement is certainly not randomised but does that have any bearing on the possible outcome upon tipping?
I used to play on a slow p33 that often crashed on getting various messages - including opening goodie huts - and the results on replaying from a previous save, even after opening said huts in the same order, were never repeatable IIRC, and didn't seem to follow any pattern I could detect ...
It has been a while since I've played a scenario or otherwise with huts included though.

[Henrik]

All I said was that when testing a scenario of mine with huts a while ago, I almost allways got the same result (ie either a unit (I then changed this unit slot to a settler to confuse things even more ) or money, never a settler and very uncommonly a city).
This however was entirely different to another civ with another tech level.
It's clear that while the results are random there are stuff that affects them (though no seed per se as far as I can tell, that thing only affects the placement of the huts).

[fairline]

This sounds interesting - if you have only settlers appear from goody huts you can dictate where the player builds new cities (if there's a house rule to use them immediately for city creation, of course).

Don't tell me - goody huts are like resourses in that they are randomly placed on a map. I'd like to be able to place them manually in the correct locations for new cities...

[klesh]

Originally posted by fairline
Don't tell me - goody huts are like resourses in that they are randomly placed on a map. I'd like to be able to place them manually in the correct locations for new cities...

Nope, they are not placeable. You simple have to let the computer place them, and then you remove, by tipping, the ones you dont want around. I suggest using a helicopter unit, as they make huts dissapear rather then tipping them.

It's clear that while the results are random there are stuff that affects them

I was hoping that a combo of stuff could be devised to *almost* guarentee what you might get from huts.

-FMK.

[LDiCesare]

I never saw a village give a city on a mountain, only settlers (nomads), so there may be a connection between terrain and advanced tribe?

[Mercator]

Yes... I guess the method used to prevent AI's from building cities by setting all terrain fertility to 0 would also affect the advanced tribes.
Do advanced tribes appear only on grassland/plains in a regular game?

[Henrik]

Yes, though I haven't tested it to check for that effect per se, when I tested huts for that scenario that was the impression I got.

[Boco]

I almost allways got the same result (ie either a unit (I then changed this unit slot to a settler to confuse things even more ) or money, never a settler and very uncommonly a city).

Never barbs? It'd be nice to stack the odds towards or against barbarian hordes.

[techumseh]

William Keenan's barbarian paper may be of some interest. http://coc.apolyton.net/guides/barbarian_paper.shtml

[Henrik]

I did get barbs, not a lot of the times though (this might be affected of the barb level as well I guess...)

[Boco]

There's an excellent thread closely related to this one on the strategy forum.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=69873

[Kull]

Originally posted by Boco

It'd be nice to stack the odds towards or against barbarian hordes.

To clarify the "Barbarian Outcome" a bit:

1) The Quantity of Barbarians generated by a hut is always 1 or 8 ("Barbarian Wrath" Size Hordes of 80+ Units never come from Goody Huts).

2) You will always get 1 Barb until at some point the huts begin to generate 8 - and from then on it never goes back to 1.

3) I think the change from 1 to 8 is based on one of the civs discovering a particular tech, but it might be based on turn#. (This would be a nice research project for anyone who wants to expand our "Barb Knowledge!)

[Boco]

From the Samson's thread in the strategy forum, it appears that the odds can be tweaked.

Invention Rule

Once a Civ acquires Invention, the Scrolls outcome is suppressed and its chance is added to Gold. The outcome ratio becomes 1:2:1:0:1 in TGMSB order.

Explosives Rule

After any Civ acquires Explosives, the Nomad result is suppressed and its chance is added to Gold. Thus, on Nomad-suited terrain, the outcome ratio becomes 0:2:1:1:1.

Together then, these techs should be able to adjust the odds to 0:3:1:0:1 (Friendly Tribe:Gold:Friendly Mercenary:Scroll of knowledge:Barbarian horde. AFAIK, that's the most it can be stacked towards Barbs and Mercs. Samson et al. love to research this kind of stuff in regular Civ2, but currently are focused on other Goody Hut outcomes. Samson does claim that WK's group A and B Mercs appear in 1:1 ratio. These guys don't usually post unless they're sure, since others on the forum love to debunk posted "AI rules".

Kull, I'll try a test of these two techs on the 1 or 8 outcome, but it won't likely be a rigorous one.