View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0004488 | Valley 1 | Gameplay Idea | Oct 2, 2011 7:47 am | Jan 27, 2012 3:40 pm | |
| Reporter | jerith | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Severity | feature | ||||
| Status | closed | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 0.511 | ||||
| Summary | 0004488: Settlement resource trading. | ||||
| Description | Currently, trading resources between settlements is annoying, but not hard. I'd like to either see an easier resource trading interface or some barriers to just picking up resources in one settlement and giving them to another. I'm guessing that there are some gameplay reasons to not just have a single global resource pool that all settlements use (like resources in AI War) or you'd have just done that. I have some vague ideas on the topic, but I'm sure you've thought about it harder than I have, so I won't put them here unless you want them. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Fix Before Major Release | ||||
| has duplicate | 0004758 | closed | Transfer all button for commodities |
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I also would like there to be some challenge to the transfer from settlement to settlement. Currently it's functionally a global stockpile and I don't want that. On the other hand, is it fun to have barriers to transfers? One idea is making certain resources non-transferable so you have to produce locally, though not sure how I feel about that. And the other resources stay "global" that way. I have thought about it for a while but I'm interested to hear your thoughts. If any system is going to solve this problem in a way that is fun and not excessively complex it's going to take a fair bit of refinement. |
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My thought was that any settlements connected by the wind shelter network would share a stockpile, and any that are isolated would have their own. Not sure how easy that would be to make, or if it is even desirable, though. |
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You could have NPCs carry resources from one place to another, with a TU (and possibly shard) cost. You'd have to disallow transferring resources from the settlement to the player for that, but I don't think that's really an issue. The only resources the player regularly carries around in quantity are logs and shards, and hacking down trees yourself is a fairly inefficient way to get wood. There's still a lot that we don't know about shards, but since the player is the primary source of those (and they now come in multiple colours), I'd make those a global stockpile attached to the player rather than per-settlement. That also removes the slight weirdness of having it matter which settlement you end your turn from. |
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Yea, I was thinking of shards as global (and possibly not even carried... only reason to have them carried is some Multiplayer considerations, and those may make it necessary), and having to set up "trade routes" between towns to transfer other resources, with some interesting challenges/costs therein. |
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Perhaps the cost of trading resources could be proportional to distance (either straight-line or along the road, although the latter adds complexity), so you aren't incentivised to build specialist settlements that need a lot of imports to survive. I'm thinking that resources should actually only arrive in the target settlement after the turn ends, because that limits micromanaging resources to optimise productivity, while still letting you shift materials around to bootstrap newer settlements and manage major construction projects. There might also be some utility in having a caravan depot (or maybe just using the warehouse for this purpose) that determines how much can be shipped out per turn. This could actually replace the NPCs having to carry the stuff and simplify it to something more like the way production works. (You can think of it as building disposable wagons, possibly destroying any that aren't used at the end of the turn or something.) |
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Keith, the thing is though. Does it really make sense to have to force settlements to produce locally? I mean if you're part of a civilization you're going to be helping each other out and trading resources. Isn't that one of the major highlights of being part of a civilization? |
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I kind of like what Colonization (the Civ IV variant, at least -- haven't played any others) did with resource trading. You had to have wagons to ship stuff in (which I'm not sure we really want here), but you could specify that particular settlements were importing or exporting certain resources and what minimum amount they would keep for themselves rather than exporting. This let you set up a trade network that operated mostly independently, as long as you had sufficient wagons. AVWW could do something similar with the logistics based on NPCs working in a building rather than caravans wandering around the map. |
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Dizzard: I like the idea of settlements having to be self-sufficient at least. The massively hostile landscape between settlements provides an in-game rationale for trading being somewhat expensive. A global resource pool would incentivise building a single settlement up to epic productivity and ignore all the others, which runs counter to the theme of rebuilding civilisation across the world. Also, it would make settlement management less interesting. |
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"Keith, the thing is though. Does it really make sense to have to force settlements to produce locally? I mean if you're part of a civilization you're going to be helping each other out and trading resources. Isn't that one of the major highlights of being part of a civilization?" I don't want to force complete self-sufficiency, no. But I also think that one of the key elements of an economic model of a civilization is that simply having the goods isn't enough. You also need the ability to get those goods where they're needed. And in a situation like post-shattering Environ, that's a pretty non-trivial endeavor. That said, I never ever want to track individual packets of goods moving here or there (i.e. the DF "Hauling Problem", which I jokingly compare to the Halting Problem), rather establishing challenges/costs to make the transfers possible ("infrastructure", you might say) and probably also costs on a per-transfer level. But the key will be having a system that's fun. In the end, if global stockpiles for all resources is the most fun we'll go with that, but I highly doubt that will be the best solution. |
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I'm all for global stockpile of shards. For some reason, that resource doesn't seem like one where a global stockpile would be unfun. Right now for shards, I keep all of my shards on me and hand them out to settlements in 100 shard intervals when they run out. This will likely become worse when things have different color shard costs, then I'd likely only hand out what is needed at a time. |
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Right, shards being global would be a good thing, I think. They're more reflective of your power to work with the Guardians to directly influence things. Ten tons of rock is a bit different. |
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"Currently it's functionally a global stockpile and I don't want that." Is this still a true statement? I've been trying to read through and find bugs/change notes featuring the word "turn" or "shard" to make sure I'm not bringing up a duplicate issue, but right now I've got a weird "problem" of sorts. I have 1 settlement showing 0 shards, and one showing 700. If I have the one with 0 shards selected I cannot advance turns, but if I have the other selected the turn advances and shards are removed. That doesn't seem global - it seems each settlement has their own cache. That's not necessarily bad on its own, but how I can advance a turn from one settlement and not another seems buggy. |
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The key phrase is "functionally global". You can take resources from a settlement and put them in your inventory, then give them to a different settlement. (Right-click on the resource counts to do this.) The only cost is the player's time operating the UI to do it. |
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It's functionally global in that you can simply take from one and give to the other without any kind of challenge or cost other than wall-clock-time. The shards I intend to make global-in-fact, and the others I'm hoping to find a fun system that will put some kind of challenge/cost to moving them between settlements. |
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I haven't read the whole discussion here but I just came up with an idea. How about roads? There already are som strange roads/lines between wind shelters and villages but I don't really know what they do there. With roads you can add features like.. -Can only transfer resources between villages that are connected with raods. -Trading resources takes a certain amount of turns, better roads decrease turns. -A village won't be under "your control" until you've connected it with a village that is. ...or you can't transfer resources if there's windstorm(s) in the way. Which the player could solve by building a windshelter. |
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Given that we don't have control over either the roads or the windshelter locations, I'm not really keen on a mechanic that relies on those... |
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The fact that you don't have control over the windshelter locations is actually fair game: it's a struggling civilization that must take what it can get. But yea, if it's auto-placing the roads then it will need to not be too persnickety elsewhere about exactly where the roads are. |
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Please don't make us place our own roads... |
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I've no intention of allowing manual road placement, don't worry ;) Otherwise we'd probably wind up needing a "pavement" region type the way some folks play strategy games ;) |
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Well, my workers needed /something/ to do while I was trying to recapture Paris and Lahore. Covering two continents with railroads made sense at the time. :-P |
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Hmmm, just thinking about the general game lore as is, how it seems that most people aren't able to live out in the wild, so I don't think any traditional sense of a caravan would work thematically. How about some sort of Ilari transport network? A brief mechanic might be that you build a special receptor building in city A, then you build a sender building in city B (and a pulldown to pick a free receptor in the world) - and that allows ONE specific good to transfer from A to B. Not universal links or receptors/senders, just set up a single connection for that one good to travel one way between the two. That way you have the costs of building things, plus the two extra citizens / food needed to maintain the link as an effective upkeep. Since you only are sending one resource in one direction it would set up more of a outpost and hub mechanic which would seem to fit the world. Could set it up to have a universal receptor but have sending locked to any one receptor. Would cut down on the number of buildings needed to set things up. I mention just because I think the danger would be chaining resources through a specific settlement, then losing that settlement to marauders and forcing a ton of rebuilding everywhere to relink everything. Huh, well maybe it gives some thoughts. |
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"Hmmm, just thinking about the general game lore as is, how it seems that most people aren't able to live out in the wild, so I don't think any traditional sense of a caravan would work thematically." You're right, in general. But it is possible for a storyteller and a Guardian to work together to provide protection for a group of humans travelling in the wild. But it takes a lot of energy and isn't a lot of fun for said humans. It's the sort of thing that a network of wind shelters and roads could make a lot easier, though. "How about some sort of Ilari transport network? A brief mechanic might be that you build a special receptor building in city A, then you build a sender building in city B (and a pulldown to pick a free receptor in the world) - and that allows ONE specific good to transfer from A to B. Not universal links or receptors/senders, just set up a single connection for that one good to travel one way between the two. That way you have the costs of building things, plus the two extra citizens / food needed to maintain the link as an effective upkeep. Since you only are sending one resource in one direction it would set up more of a outpost and hub mechanic which would seem to fit the world. Could set it up to have a universal receptor but have sending locked to any one receptor. Would cut down on the number of buildings needed to set things up. I mention just because I think the danger would be chaining resources through a specific settlement, then losing that settlement to marauders and forcing a ton of rebuilding everywhere to relink everything. Huh, well maybe it gives some thoughts." I'm thinking something like this for establishing and maintaining the routes, but something where the number of TUs (and possibly shards, dunno) necessary to perform a given transfer would depend on how far apart the settlements are, and perhaps the presence of various macrogame pieces on the board. So yea, something like that. One thing I'm wary of is this whole idea basically requires the game inferring the need for a transfer of resource X from settlement A to settlement B, and/or some system of defining a "trade route" like "If settlement B has less wheat than it needs, and settlement A has more wheat than it needs, transfer that amount from A to B". Having them be player-defined would be alright, but I wonder if it would just feel like too much micro. Some UI power tools and mild automation could be added, but if a system is going to need them... then is it worth the time? |
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How about something more like a stock exchange? Every settlement reserves some amount of resources for its own use (player-defined, but with a sensible default) and the rest is available for purchase at some kind of cost. If there's going to be automated trade, a per-transfer cost of some percentage of the goods transferred makes a certain amount of sense, and can be proportional to the distance between "buyer" and "seller". The trade volume can be limited by buildings operated by NPCs, so there's a TU cost in being able to do any trading at all. (Although I'd like to have some "free" trade capacity for every settlement so I can bootstrap new ones more easily.) This turns most of the management into making sure your settlements aren't giving away stuff they need and that you have enough warehouses and wagon depots to maintain the required trade volumes. Initially, you won't really need much of a trade network, but once you have a bunch of settlements in various places it might make sense to have some specialisation due to available resources or whatever, because the extra production offsets the cost of transportation. Likewise for certain "luxury" goods that require nontrivial infrastructure to manufacture -- it's cheaper to ship across the continent than it is to build the production pipeline locally. |
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"So yea, something like that. One thing I'm wary of is this whole idea basically requires the game inferring the need for a transfer of resource X from settlement A to settlement B, and/or some system of defining a "trade route" like "If settlement B has less wheat than it needs, and settlement A has more wheat than it needs, transfer that amount from A to B". Having them be player-defined would be alright, but I wonder if it would just feel like too much micro. Some UI power tools and mild automation could be added, but if a system is going to need them... then is it worth the time? " I suppose for my idea I was thinking that the hub city would have full access (like a global pool) to the sender(s) - everything would stay stockpiled in the home city but in the resource list you'd see the local stockpile then in parenthesis perhaps the amount available through the network. I suppose if there were multiple senders and the hub took supplies, it would draw off evenly from all senders. If it was a more trade route idea perhaps a set # per turn for the building, or just any excess # after upkeeps - ie you could set a building or whatever up to send wheat, but if you had negative wheat, nothing would happen until you got more farms up and got a positive amount to send. |
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Maybe food can be used as a currency for trades. Currently, I find food stockpiles just grow to the heavens, because microing food is for the birds. This would give a small amount of free trade to every town, but moving large stockpiles would require extra laborers in a natural fashion. I'm thinking a transfer form that allows you to send one-time or recurring shipments. "Move XXXX Granite to Hub City. Repeat? Yes (X) No ( )" It would probably need an interface/menu to view all recurring transfers to/from the active settlement. Each commodity could have a separate movement cost. Granite might be 10 food used per unit sent, while stone blocks might be 8. Depends on if you wanted to reward moving finished goods or raw materials. |
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I would like to see all settlements having shared resources on everything. - Allows you to specialize each settlement depending on the surrounding resources. - Transferring is already trivial. (Get -> Change settlement -> Put) - It will allow Nodes to work intuitively - Focus more on fun and rewarding mechanics than micromanagement |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2, 2011 7:47 am | jerith | New Issue | |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:37 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015272 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:37 am | keith.lamothe | Internal Weight | => Fix Before Major Release |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:37 am | keith.lamothe | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:37 am | keith.lamothe | Status | new => assigned |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:41 am | Toll | Note Added: 0015273 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:49 am | jerith | Note Added: 0015274 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:52 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015275 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 10:59 am | jerith | Note Added: 0015276 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 11:04 am | Dizzard | Note Added: 0015277 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 11:05 am | Dizzard | Note Edited: 0015277 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 11:05 am | jerith | Note Added: 0015278 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 11:10 am | jerith | Note Added: 0015279 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 12:31 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015286 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 1:35 pm | c4sc4 | Note Added: 0015297 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 1:36 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015298 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:05 pm | Itchykobu | Note Added: 0015308 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:10 pm | jerith | Note Added: 0015309 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:11 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015310 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:25 pm | wingsofdomain | Note Added: 0015311 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:36 pm | jerith | Note Added: 0015314 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:48 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015320 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:52 pm | jerith | Note Added: 0015325 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 3:53 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015326 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 4:01 pm | jerith | Note Added: 0015328 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 4:04 pm | FallingStar | Note Added: 0015329 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 4:15 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015330 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 4:33 pm | jerith | Note Added: 0015331 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 4:49 pm | FallingStar | Note Added: 0015332 | |
| Oct 2, 2011 5:15 pm | Baleyg | Note Added: 0015334 | |
| Oct 9, 2011 5:40 pm | jerith | Relationship added | has duplicate 0004758 |
| Nov 22, 2011 12:28 pm | TNSe | Note Added: 0017571 | |
| Jan 27, 2012 3:40 pm | tigersfan | Status | assigned => closed |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:30 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Suggestion - Gameplay => Gameplay Idea |
