New LTeX with Landmass=85 and tweaked Caravans?
LTXIV definitally showed that banning caravans makes a huge impact on the game, mostly a positive one in my opinion. But some players like caravan trade as a peaceful way to develop themselves. Here's an idea for the trade settings that we could experiment with in LTeX:
- use a map with very high landmass (85 or higher if possible), to create a continental map rather than islands and oceans
- use teams of 1 player each and no alliances as in LTXIV
- set revenue from caravans in such a way that traderoutes with your own cities give zero revenue, short-distance traderoutes (e.g. up to 30 - 40 tiles distance) give negligable revenue and very long distance traderoutes give good revenue.
These changes combined create the situation that it's challenging to establish profitable traderoutes. You have to trade with another player (who's not an ally or team member since that's switched off), and you have to travel over long distances over land (since it's a continental map). This requires good infrastructure and good diplomacy skills to negotiate a safe passage through the many enemy territories you have to pass. Only players with these skills will attempt caravan trade as a strategy for tech and city development, others will find it too much work or too risky.
We could also consider reducing the immediate tech and gold revenue to zero while leaving the revenue in trade points per turn intact (or reduced somewhat). In that way caravan trade is not an alternative to research and tax collection, but it would be important for rapturing your cities.
Just some ideas up for discussion.
You cannot change the
I don't think it's a problem. People will have just incorrect information about traderoute income, and CMA will make wrong decisions. But who is using CMA? (I'm using, but I can stop :D).
In other words - what's is a danger in using standard client with server with different traderoute calculation. Will it crash?
It depends, usually merging isn't big problem. It would be a problem if there are big changes in code your patch modifies.
BTW: what is capability hack?
You cannot change the
You cannot change the traderoute calculation formula without breaking old clients (esp. cma/governor). Since most people (especially those on win32) cannot be expected to recompile from svn sources, this is not immediately feasible.
I will consider using a capability hack to make it possible for 2.1.10 clients and servers like it is done for warclient, but when 2.1.10 is released maho will have to merge the longturn 2.1 server sources with it (I'm not sure how tedious this will be). I'm also not sure when 2.1.10 will be released. In any case it will not be less than a month from now.
So is it possible to add
So is it possible to add experimental trade rules to that server?? please......... i beg for that...
I was writing it many times but i repeat once more. In current caravan settings(even with greater min dist) there is always a situation when caravan has optimal conditions and GREAT income. So the best solution is to mix caravan rules:
1. Arrival bonus - experimental (2*ln(20+D+T1+T2))^2
in this case caravan can generate from 45 to ~145 gold/science(i doubt that in real game anyone will reach even 130) - that solves solves switching problem and problem with making great routes using rail/ships relay race.
2. each turn trade bonus - in experimental routes it is (T1+T2+4)/4 - that is perfect case from normal routes(different player and landmass) the worse case is X/16 and i think that should be the only rule! each route is the same!
In current EX game my best routes (city with 150 trade and not that worse connected cities) gives 23 trade so it means T1+T2 was ~90. With divisor 16 it would be 5,5 from that route. We can discuss if that should be 16 or 14 but not that, if there should be the same formula for all routes or not.
When we put those 2 changes to game caravans will be only addition and bonus for demo/repu but they won`t make those govs overpowered.
Alright, I made a
Alright, I made a 'trademindist' server setting and committed it to the 2.1 lt-civserver branch (r5323).
However, if someone (Book)
Ok maybe soon...
As I understood Book, we
As I understood Book, we don't need to change clients in order to play with increased traderoutes.
I will launch LTeX2.1 with current settings, as I doubt I will have time to do something with traderoutes. However, if someone (Book) will deliver me patch (commit change) about set traderoutes distance in settings - I will be very happy :).
Awesome :) I think the
Awesome :) I think the extreme landmass itself will already be an interesting feature.
Thanks for the info Book! So we could massively increase the minimum distance for traderoutes if we just ask players to upgrade to a new version. Would it be a complicated patch, or something we could easily try out and tweak with? Would you like to try it Maho, if it's not a complicated patch?
=== 0h Marduk, thou art chiefest among the great gods! To destroy and to create; speak thou the word, and thy command shall be fulfilled. ===
yes, I think that I could
yes, I think that I could establish another LTeX. I don't want to finish current, because I did changes which may revive game (techloosing).
But another one, why not? I can launch it ASAP, with all your remarks except
Increasing the distance
Increasing the distance would be alright (server will just give an error message for old clients), but decreasing it would make old clients unable to issue the "establish traderoute" command.
That's good to know. Is it
That's good to know. Is it possible to change the setting for the minimum distance of a traderoute? I think it's 8 tiles now, could it be set to say 50 tiles?
=== 0h Marduk, thou art chiefest among the great gods! To destroy and to create; speak thou the word, and thy command shall be fulfilled. ===
Caravan income calculations
Caravan income calculations cannot be changed without introducing network and other incompatibilities with older clients.