Take Dropsite Away from Civic Center

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, WhiteTreePaladin said:

This seems like a really interesting idea. I'm going to play a bit with the dropsite turned off on the civil center and see how it goes. I'm also going to make resource gathering buildings not require resources to build; instead they will only take time (like the Ptolemaic buildings).

Another possible solution would be to remove the "no resources" option in game setup, only allow it for scenarios. I know people don't like to remove options, but think of it as streamlining. How many players really play matches with zero starting resource? I'd wager only 1 out of every 1000 match, if that.

 

One thing i will admit is that this is a pretty big change to get used to at first. When I played a test match I totally forgot about my changes and wondered why my shuttlers were bypassing the civic center to drop their wares. lol It does take a change to the thinking of what your Civic Center's abilities are. You can't rely on the CC to be the dropsite anymore. But after that first match I was fine. Also, even in that match, once resources were cleared from the area around my CC and I had built farther out, the issue was resolved automatically. 

Edited April 1, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Another possible solution would be to remove the "no resources" option in game setup, only allow it for scenarios. I know people don't like to remove options, but think of it as streamlining. How many players really play matches with zero starting resource? I'd wager only 1 out of every 1000 match, if that.

 

One thing i will admit is that this is a pretty big change to get used to at first. When I played a test match I totally forgot about my changes and wondered why my shuttlers were bypassing the civic center to drop their wares. lol It does take a change to the thinking of what your Civic Center's abilities are. You can't rely on the CC to be the dropsite anymore. But after that first match I was fine. Also, even in that match, once resources were cleared from the area around my CC and I had built farther out, the issue was resolved automatically. 

Happens me too. Hahahaha , you need a good tutorial Campaing scenario to have that clear for newcomers.

[elexis]

10 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

with the bad pathfinding in the latest svn changes....

No pathfinding changes in alpha 22 as far as I know. (If you mean those wolves trying to get into the walls but never making it, this is the case for  soldiers too when they are ordered to move into a walled area. Or just sending a move command to 100 units to some point and most of them will circle pit forever)

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, elexis said:

No pathfinding changes in alpha 22 as far as I know. (If you mean those wolves trying to get into the walls but never making it, this is the case for  soldiers too when they are ordered to move into a walled area. Or just sending a move command to 100 units to some point and most of them will circle pit forever)

Is weird the movement of women, movevwithout sense. I will try to upload, y made my test with Delenda Est and SVN.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@elexis check the women when are minning

2017-03-30_0002.rar

[av93]

If storehouses are free and can be built in neutral territory, losing one isn't a big deal, right? Yeah, you only lose time of the workers.

[elexis]

5 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

@elexis check the women when are minning

2017-03-30_0002.rar

(From the commands.txt one can see the time when the replay was done, from that we can see the svn revision was used and that it is a delenda est replay. After that I could replay it.) Do you mean that the women went to a dropsite instead of the CC? I recall that was an issue since earlier versions of 0AD already

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, elexis said:

(From the commands.txt one can see the time when the replay was done, from that we can see the svn revision was used and that it is a delenda est replay. After that I could replay it.) Do you mean that the women went to a dropsite instead of the CC? I recall that was an issue since earlier versions of 0AD already

They used    worst path to drop the things, was very weird and my priest after train spares outside of the palisade, was very late game.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

priest after train spares outside of the palisade

This is because the game uses the <Footprint> for ungarrison and training exit position. In DE, I use the footprint to add the Temple healing aura graphics--it's currently the only way to achieve what I wanted. Unfortunately,they are not fully compatible.

[Zeta1127]

Oh, so your Temple healing aura graphics won't work without changing the footprint, well that is annoying.

[elexis]

On 2.4.2017 at 11:18 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This is because the game uses the <Footprint> for ungarrison and training exit position. In DE, I use the footprint to add the Temple healing aura graphics--it's currently the only way to achieve what I wanted. Unfortunately,they are not fully compatible.

There is a plan to add a simple form of aura visualization in D238. It renders a small 32px * 32px texture in a circle of the aura range.

If that proposal is implemented correctly, we can use the same for any range visualization, i.e. attack range and heal range too.

The footprint issue is not the only one with the delenda est approach. The aura can alos disappear under or fly above the terrain.

So I hope someone with openGL kung fu skills will be able to help and motivate us a bit to extend that approach to cut one of those big 1024px * 1024px textures into smaller pieces and render all of them at the corret terrain elevation. Then we can have truly awesome graphics. Especially for the hero and the new relic auras it'd be awesome. The feature has a huge lust for programmers lifetimes again though.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, elexis said:

The footprint issue is not the only one with the delenda est approach. The aura can alos disappear under or fly above the terrain.

 

Indeed. Happens with many large footprints, actually. See: Warships along the shoreline. Very ugly, not exclusive to DE.

 

About the aura graphics, @Enrique has offered to create nice custom aura graphics for each culture if only the feature was there.

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[elexis]

Here we can see why we don't want to add the hack but need proper terrain adaptation:

We have the same problem with selection rings in 0ad:

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I've been playing a few games with dropsite removed from the civil center. I had to modify several things in the AI. (I didn't realize farmsteads are only partially treated as dropsites.)

Also, I added a minimum range for farms. This made the AI create farms in a radius around the civil center. I was hoping that computer player would clump them around drop sites, but it appears to place them around the center even when resources cannot be dropped off there.

I think the minimum range idea has some real potential, I like the effect of the minimum distance for farms even more then removing the dropsite from the civil center. It creates cities that actually look and function like cities should. The surrounding farmlands look great too. They look even better when grouped around the farmsteads. You have to spread out more to place the farms and you don't end up with city streets that need mowing...

If someone knows an easy way to get the AI to place farms around the farmsteads, it would be appreciated. I ultimately ended up adding food dropsite to the storehouse to make the AI competitive because the AI wasn't building farms near the farmsteads.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2017 by WhiteTreePaladin

[Servo]

On 3/30/2017 at 1:45 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

In my gameplay proposal thread, I proposed that you can build slaves from dropsites. They're econ units only. I could see the possibility for a strategy in a nomad match where the player miiiight want to build a few storehouses and farmstead first, before their starting CC and gather some more resources before they found their city and announce to the enemy where they are. Dunno.

Seems ok but slaves maybe not real. 

[Sundiata]

What about calling the slaves "laborers" instead, representing slaves, as well as indentured laborers, landless farmers, dispossessed minorities and convicted criminals. Just an idea (a little less politically insensitive, and more historically accurate). Some civilizations made extensive use of slaves, others barely, so that would also solve that issue, seen as everybody made use of laborers in one way or another.

Maybe the "type" of laborer could depend on the type of resource you're collecting, the drop-site you're recruiting from or what civilization you're playing: "farmers" from farms, "slaves" from mines, "regular laborer" for wood cutting and building from regular drop-sites. Or something like that?  

[Lion.Kanzen]

Indeed.

Quote

Some civilizations made extensive use of slaves.

I can imagine some cultures like Iberians, Celts, some Germans...

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Celts and Germans definitely had slaves. Iberians is the only one I am not sure of their status on this item. Some sources claim Persians don't have slavery, others do. The ones that say they don't have slavery seems like semantics to me, kind of like saying the Spartans didn't have slavery, they had helots, which are almost identical to slaves in most respects... But they don't have to be called a "Slave" genericly in the game. "Laborer" is fine for the generic name, while for most their specific name would be "Slave" in their specific language. "Thrall" works too. But we can just say, "this is the Helot, the Spartan slave class of unit," and it still works fine. /The exact word does not matter to me one bit, though I tend to prefer to call something what it is: slavery.

[Lion.Kanzen]

17 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Celts and Germans definitely had slaves. Iberians is the only one I am not sure of their status on this item. Some sources claim Persians don't have slavery, others do. The ones that say they don't have slavery seems like semantics to me, kind of like saying the Spartans didn't have slavery, they had helots, which are almost identical to slaves in most respects... But they don't have to be called a "Slave" genericly in the game. "Laborer" is fine for the generic name, while for most their specific name would be "Slave" in their specific language. "Thrall" works too. But we can just say, "this is the Helot, the Spartan slave class of unit," and it still works fine. /The exact word does not matter to me one bit, though I tend to prefer to call something what it is: slavery.

Yes they commerce with that, Dacians for example change slaves and resources with Romans when Domicianus was emperor in order to bribe them to don't sake Moesia. Yes I never ear or know about slavery into the  Iberian society.

but The Empires was his engine of do mostly of things not only economic. 

Quote

Slavery, as practised by the Celts, was very likely similar to the better documented practice in ancient Greece and Rome.^[93] Slaves were acquired from war, raids, and penal and debt servitude.^[93] Slavery was hereditary^{[citation needed]}, though manumission was possible. The Old Irish and Welsh words for ‘slave’, cacht and caeth respectively, are cognate with Latin captus ‘captive’ suggesting that the slave trade was an early means of contact between Latin and Celtic societies.^[93] In the Middle Ages, slavery was especially prevalent in the Celtic countries.^[94] Manumissions were discouraged by law and the word for "female slave", cumal, was used as a general unit of value in Ireland.^[95]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

[Sundiata]

To be clear, I definitely don't think the term slave should disappear or be euphemized (at all), I just don't think it should be the only dedicated labor force you can recruit. I just love diversity in a game, and the ability to recruit slaves (cheap and vulnerable) vs (paid) laborers (more expensive but stronger and more efficient) would be something I'd personally enjoy a lot. Just as much as recruiting farmers for my fields, or builders for construction. Someone very naughty always tells me, "variety is the spice of life"...   

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

To be clear, I definitely don't think the term slave should disappear or be euphemized (at all), I just don't think it should be the only dedicated labor force you can recruit. I just love diversity in a game, and the ability to recruit slaves (cheap and vulnerable) vs (paid) laborers (more expensive but stronger and more efficient) would be something I'd personally enjoy a lot. Just as much as recruiting farmers for my fields, or builders for construction. Someone very naughty always tells me, "variety is the spice of life"...   

That's basically what the citizens are. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

All right, after playing some more test games I can't seem to get over the ingrained idea that the civic center should be dropsite. I get frustrate like why is not my dude dropping off his stuff instead of walking all the way to that storehouse across the base? Oh, I forgot, again, that I changed it. lol, very frustrating. Will probably put it back unless there's more discussion pro. I admit that maybe more playtesting could be done, but the feature is not that important to me. Keeping the farmstead unlocking fields though!

Edited April 8, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

Unlocking must the key   Or switching... the CC can be a mode and evolve to other mode after phase 2.

the first time you build is a dropsite but some changes you can upgrade to be more powerful.

even fortified CC is planned,

[DarcReaver]

13 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

All right, after playing some more test games I can't seem to get over the ingrained idea that the civic center should be dropsite. I get frustrate like why is not my dude dropping off his stuff instead of walking all the way to that storehouse across the base? Oh, I forgot, again, that I changed it. lol, very frustrating. Will probably put it back unless there's more discussion pro. I admit that maybe more playtesting could be done, but the feature is not that important to me. Keeping the farmstead unlocking fields though!

I think this may be related because it's your only building at the start. To fix that you'd be required to have another dropsite type building.

[Libervurto]

On 30/03/2017 at 9:39 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

In a zero resources at start match, first 2 dropsites can be free or something. Place them wisely.

Why not instead make construction sites drop sites for the materials required?  This would mean you could place construction sites for buildings even if you don't have the resources at hand to build them immediately.  Would that mess with the game?

 

Unlocking must the key   Or switching... the CC can be a mode and evolve to other mode after phase 2.

the first time you build is a dropsite but some changes you can upgrade to be more powerful.

even fortified CC is planned,

So the Civic Centre would only have a dropsite in phase 1?  Then changes abilities through the phases?  Interesting idea!

Edited April 13, 2017 by Libervurto