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Post by rocket54321 on May 5, 2016 15:14:44 GMT
One of the things that I really didn't like about spore was the simplicity of the civ stage. You were either religios, economic, or military, which determined what behicles you could make. You could only trade if you were a economic civ, only fight wars if you were a military civ, ect. I think there is some concensus that this won't be the case in thrive. But something that is overlooked in this forum is the actual method of supporting/using/attaining vehicles. Boats are pretty simple, you should build a shipyard on the coast and build boats there, and service/load/unload them at a port, which would be built in coastal cities. Aircraft are similarly straightforward, you would need airports to be serviced/load/unload, and you would first be able to build small, slow, short range aircraft and get bigger and better planes through research, and would upgrade airports accordingly (spaceplanes?). Ground vehicles, however, might be more complex. You should almost certainly need to actually build and maintain roads, and progress from wagons to cars and trucks, increasing speed and capacity. Roads should be somewhat cheap to build over flat ground, but it should expensive to build tunnels and bridges, you can design your vehicles, et cetera. But what about railroads? It is accepted that the invention of steam power heralded the industrial revolution, and Thrive should probably follow suit. And with steam power for you factories, what about trains? I think you should be able to (design and) build railroad lines, which would basically be more expensive roads, and design and build your own locomotives and carriages (passenger and freight), which would go from cute little chugging wagons, to huge, sleek maglevs flying throug vacuum tubes. The players ability to construct complex rail networks should be pretty in depth, but signaling shouldn't be a concern. Railroads should require teams of workers some time to build each line, and the player should be able to control what is shipped, and train building and routing should be like railroad tycoon, exept you pay for cars and they don't disappear at stations. This should all be driven by some sort of economy that requires goods and people to travel between places that would persist from the society stage through the space stage. What do you guys think? Anywhoos, Cheers! rocket54321
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Post by StealthStyleL on May 5, 2016 15:28:17 GMT
It's just a visual point, but when you make your posts, do you mind breaking it up with paragraphs, please? It's just a bit off putting having one huge block. Thanks.
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Post by rocket54321 on May 6, 2016 15:48:03 GMT
It's just a visual point, but when you make your posts, do you mind breaking it up with paragraphs, please? It's just a bit off putting having one huge block. Thanks. Sorry. Should be better now!
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Post by lowry on May 6, 2016 17:17:34 GMT
Although it could turn out micro managey if there was a way to automate transport links eventually, I'd be for this idea
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Post by tammio on May 19, 2016 21:29:13 GMT
Would it realy be nescessary to manage the transportation of each good individualy? I mean I love building interdependent economies and trade routes in the Anno style as much as every one else, but I think in the Thrive context that would just be too much. I mean wouln't it be better, if the player would manage his civ more on a macroeconomic level? Here's my idea:
So every city/centre produces certain goods. City A produces Iron. City B doesn't. Naturaly you would try to export excess Iron, not needed in A to B, in order to use it there. We could attach two values to the comodity Iron:
1. Transportability (wich is influenced by weight, size and wether it will go off after a time). So Iron is quite heavy on one hand, but easy to transport since you can smelt it into bars and it does not go off (like food would), so it doens't matter how long transportation takes. 2. Economic worth: determined by supply, demand and the availability of other, similar comodities. If Bronze is accessible in City B, and will do the job too, why go to the truble of importing iron?
The transportability will be affected mainly by the accessibe means of transport. Using this value a maximum range can be calculated over wich a good can be transported. As I just said, Iron doesn't care about time, so a handcart transporting Iron will have a long "range" on the time axis. On the other hand Iron is rather cheap, wich limits it's transportation range, due to rising costs from transportation. If City B is whithin A's Iron transportation range the Iron supply in both cities will equalize itself over time. Still the price for Iron would be higher in B than in A, due to transportation costs. Transportability will be affected positively by Roads/Railroad infrastructure, Tech. advancement (ie Horses, Steam engines, Cars) and geography (mountains bad, rivers GOOD).
So now City B has access to a limited supply of Iron at a slightly higher price than A. (This price should decrease over time as efficiency in transportation rises.) Now we go a step further; City C also whants Iron. The problem is, it's located too far away for it to be profitable for handcarts to travel all the way from A to C transporting Iron. (this might change when Horses are tamed, who knows?) ON the other hand, City C is in the transportability range of City B, wich leads t othese Cities equalising their supply again, even though Iron will be slightly more expensive in C than in B.
The players part in all this would simply be to build and protect the infrastructure. The Trading would work without him, leaving him free to pursue other projects (like burning and looting Troy or whtever). Also if a single boat is sunk your whole trade network wouldn't colapse like in Anno (wich always anoyed th Belgium out of me)
Furtermore the TRUE beauty of this system is you get an easy to understand, difficult to master but acceptably realistic macroeconomic simulation for the price of a handfull of (I hope) simple algorithms. Any comodity produced ANYWHERE in your empire will over time be accessible everywhere else, like in the CIV games, but still work in a realistic way unlike the CIV games by making them more and more expensive, and limiting their supply propotionaly to the distance they traveled) Also this creates a time lag between the accessability of a comodity in Cities A, B, and C.
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Post by tjwhale on May 19, 2016 22:01:58 GMT
Now we go a step further; City C also whants Iron. The problem is, it's located too far away for it to be profitable for handcarts to travel all the way from A to C transporting Iron. (this might change when Horses are tamed, who knows?) ON the other hand, City C is in the transportability range of City B, wich leads t othese Cities equalising their supply again, even though Iron will be slightly more expensive in C than in B. On this point I think you fall afoul of the triangle inequality. So the cost of transporting iron from A to C <= cost of transporting iron from A to B + the cost of transporting iron from B to C Why? Well I know the left can't be more than the right because I can go from A to C via B which means there is always a route to make the two sides equal. However there could be a shortcut which means bypassing B so the left could be less than the right. So, for this reason, there can never be a situation where it's possible to say "Its too expensive to transport iron from A to C but it is reasonable to transport iron from A to B and then from B to C". Does that make sense? [Interestingly there are hyperbolic geometries where the triangle inequality doesn't hold but that's another story!] ---- In general your idea is a nice one. Its a bit like saying, when you want to buy iron, you get to see a list of prices which is Cost of Iron + transportation cost for all cities in your trade network. The city you are in has transportation 0 but maybe there is another city which has some transportation cost but lower cost of iron so it makes more sense to buy iron there and have it shipped. A bit like when people shop on the internet rather than in a local store. ---- In even more generality there is a balance to be struck between the how abstract the model is and how much micromanagement there is. Too abstract and it's boring, too much micromanagement and its exhausting.
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Post by tammio on May 19, 2016 22:18:39 GMT
Actualy my ABC method s cheaper, since you first set up a trade route to B. As this grows more efficent transprtation costs drop, and infrastructure is expanded making trade cheaper again. Setting up a new trade route from A to C via B will at some point be profitable, since you're using the already efficient and established route from A to B. Yes the distance traveled is greater than A to C direclty, but more efficient. Also you only have to pay upkeep for 1 long trade route instead for 2 wich are individualy shorter but combined longer. This obviously presumes City B is situated just slightly off the direct A to C route. Obviously this works only so many times, because of the laws of diminishing returns but still... it works often enough
Giving you a real life example: During the Bronze age Egypt imported Amber from the Baltic sea, trading it for Bronze. A merchant would never travel from Denmark to the Nile. He might however trade from the coast 200 miles South into middle Germany. From there another merchant will trade down to the Alps, another from the Alps to Sicily, the next ofer the Mediteranian and so on. Yes the price for Amber increases by 1000% during this time, but none the less we still find Amber in the Pyramids and Egyptian Gold Masks bearing the visage of Pharaos near moddern day Munich. And swords made from Syrian Bronze in Poland
This is because Economics doesn't care about geometry. Economics cares about efficiency.
Another example: Cities A and B are conected by a river. It might be cheaper to transport Iron via river to B for 25km, then over land to C for lets say 15km instead of transporting Iron from A to C overland for 30km. Yes 25+15=40km > 30 km but transport via River is waaay cheaper than over land
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Post by rocket54321 on May 25, 2016 15:52:01 GMT
Would it realy be nescessary to manage the transportation of each good individualy? I mean I love building interdependent economies and trade routes in the Anno style as much as every one else, but I think in the Thrive context that would just be too much. I mean wouln't it be better, if the player would manage his civ more on a macroeconomic level? Here's my idea: So every city/centre produces certain goods. City A produces Iron. City B doesn't. Naturaly you would try to export excess Iron, not needed in A to B, in order to use it there. We could attach two values to the comodity Iron: 1. Transportability (wich is influenced by weight, size and wether it will go off after a time). So Iron is quite heavy on one hand, but easy to transport since you can smelt it into bars and it does not go off (like food would), so it doens't matter how long transportation takes. 2. Economic worth: determined by supply, demand and the availability of other, similar comodities. If Bronze is accessible in City B, and will do the job too, why go to the truble of importing iron? The transportability will be affected mainly by the accessibe means of transport. Using this value a maximum range can be calculated over wich a good can be transported. As I just said, Iron doesn't care about time, so a handcart transporting Iron will have a long "range" on the time axis. On the other hand Iron is rather cheap, wich limits it's transportation range, due to rising costs from transportation. If City B is whithin A's Iron transportation range the Iron supply in both cities will equalize itself over time. Still the price for Iron would be higher in B than in A, due to transportation costs. Transportability will be affected positively by Roads/Railroad infrastructure, Tech. advancement (ie Horses, Steam engines, Cars) and geography (mountains bad, rivers GOOD). So now City B has access to a limited supply of Iron at a slightly higher price than A. (This price should decrease over time as efficiency in transportation rises.) Now we go a step further; City C also whants Iron. The problem is, it's located too far away for it to be profitable for handcarts to travel all the way from A to C transporting Iron. (this might change when Horses are tamed, who knows?) ON the other hand, City C is in the transportability range of City B, wich leads t othese Cities equalising their supply again, even though Iron will be slightly more expensive in C than in B. The players part in all this would simply be to build and protect the infrastructure. The Trading would work without him, leaving him free to pursue other projects (like burning and looting Troy or whtever). Also if a single boat is sunk your whole trade network wouldn't colapse like in Anno (wich always anoyed th Belgium out of me) Furtermore the TRUE beauty of this system is you get an easy to understand, difficult to master but acceptably realistic macroeconomic simulation for the price of a handfull of (I hope) simple algorithms. Any comodity produced ANYWHERE in your empire will over time be accessible everywhere else, like in the CIV games, but still work in a realistic way unlike the CIV games by making them more and more expensive, and limiting their supply propotionaly to the distance they traveled) Also this creates a time lag between the accessability of a comodity in Cities A, B, and C. Wow, I love this idea! But what would be even cooler is if player could not only set up the tracks, stations, ports, airports, ect but also be able to optimize the vehicles operating on specific routs to be able to transport one goods type more efficiently in order to have more control over what's going on (so that you could create supply pipelines and boost manufacturing centers).
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Post by StealthStyleL on May 25, 2016 16:11:56 GMT
I think it's important that, while this may be fun, this stuff should be able to be able to be done automatically and without need of micromanagement. This is not Railway Tycoon.
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Post by Moopli on May 28, 2016 4:32:28 GMT
tjwhale when adding new edges to your graph is expensive, sometimes you don't want to bother adding more edges, particularly when the lowest-cost path is good enough.
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Post by tammio on May 30, 2016 15:41:48 GMT
sure optimising vehiecles and so forth would be a fun way to engage the player in the industrial stage, but I think it would be best if the cars, trains or whatever are automaticaly controlled and generated. Like in the Total War games, where you just build the roads and set up trade agreements but the trading itself doesn't need the players intervention. But unlike TW, we would be able to create our own vehiecles etc... just without the need to tell every ship individualy what to do (like one has to in the Anno games)
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Post by rocket54321 on Jun 7, 2016 15:42:48 GMT
sure optimising vehiecles and so forth would be a fun way to engage the player in the industrial stage, but I think it would be best if the cars, trains or whatever are automaticaly controlled and generated. Like in the Total War games, where you just build the roads and set up trade agreements but the trading itself doesn't need the players intervention. But unlike TW, we would be able to create our own vehiecles etc... just without the need to tell every ship individualy what to do (like one has to in the Anno games) I think that is what we've been saying. You set up production centers, transit routs, and buy/optionaly optimize the vehicles, then you're dandy!
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