Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

[fodder]

here's another thought.

um.. why have hard pop caps? wouldn't a player (ie.. region lord) imposed cap be more interesting? (ie.. a player can figure out how much food region produces.. what pop cap it can support and then increase/lower the cap to dictate the food surplus/deficit and then do whatever about the surplus/deficit)

for that matter.. don't define rurals/cities/towns.. just have base terrain type (plains, whatever civ style tile) limiting resource production, then let the players dictate the pop. very crowded region with a food deficit would be equivalent to a city, for example.

have a cap on the number of pop available to dedicate to farming or whatever food. (to simulate more land used for living, less land for farming)

by removing towns/cities/rural (because those are description relative to pop rather than terrain), you can allow people to build castles anywhere with the pop to sustain it. and allow every region to be capital, etc.. if the players want it.

and that you don't have to besiege castles just to go march past them... surely the whole point of most castles is not that you block the road with them literally and physically.. but that if you leave one in enemy hands behind you, the enemy can base around it and hit you from behind.

a long term goal perhaps?

[Tom]

um.. why have hard pop caps?

I've thought about that one long and hard a few years ago.

The problem is that soft or no caps are very, very, very tricky to do right, and very, very easy to "game". And the other reason is that BM is very intentionally not one of those neo-liberal "growth or death" games. This is one of the few games that don't work on an exponential growth curve, the basic economic concept of BM is to make you manage what you have.

Yes, the hard caps are unrealistic. But they dramatically simplify a lot of things, from coding to gameplay, and work best at making the game what it should be.

[Lorgan]

While you're at this, how about introducing Dwilight's mountains to the world of Battlemaster and make them worthy of conquest like all other mountain regions in BM?

I've never understood why they're so worthless, contrary to their counterparts on other continents.

[De-Legro]

While you're at this, how about introducing Dwilight's mountains to the world of Battlemaster and make them worthy of conquest like all other mountain regions in BM?

I've never understood why they're so worthless, contrary to their counterparts on other continents.

The Zuma already mined all the good stuff before nobles arrived :)

[Zakilevo]

I agree with Tom. In realistic terms, if we have no population cap things will be more complicated. During human history, population exploded while people had enough food but people died off in chunks when droughts, plagues and other disasters hit. If we are going to have no population cap, we should probably add disasters and plagues to control the population. You can't control population like the modern countries. BM is a medieval game and lords probably wanted as many people in their regions to get their taxes from.

[Bedwyr]

Damnit.  Tim, any luck finding the redistribution stuff we came up with?  I can't find the whole thing, only this preliminary version, and I know we had something more sophisticated...

Newpop = ([(if distance to city is < 50 then .1(lost city pop), if distance to city is < 100 then .05(lost city pop), if distance to city is < 200 then .01(lost city pop))+old region pop]*(if newpop > 2*oldpop, .66)

[Tom]

I will move forward with my update quickly. That does not mean we can not do a better rebalancing in the future. Maybe we can do it for real this time, for example since we now have region geometries, we can actually calculate population densities, etc.

[D`Este]

Why the rush?

Isn't it better to adjust one time to changes rather then having to do it twice?

[egamma]

Why the rush?

Isn't it better to adjust one time to changes rather then having to do it twice?

It's referred to in business as "agile" or "continual" development--making small, continual improvements rather than forklift upgrades.

[De-Legro]

Earlier in the thread Tom said that other changes we want to make are waiting on some sort of rebalancing being made. At the moment better to get something sort of right with the rebalance, so those other projects can move forward. Something you need to remember when your team is volunteers is motivation, sometimes the best practice is the one that allows everyone to continue working on an element they find interesting, rather then the boring but reliable practice you would use if it was a commercial product.

[Andrew]

I'm amazed no one has asked this yet with all the talk about food, but how will weather affect harvests now? Same as usual, with weather changing weekly? Or will it be daily?

And it would be amazing to have some truly epic weather patterns thrown in. But that's just me ranting now.

[De-Legro]

I'm amazed no one has asked this yet with all the talk about food, but how will weather affect harvests now? Same as usual, with weather changing weekly? Or will it be daily?

And it would be amazing to have some truly epic weather patterns thrown in. But that's just me ranting now.

No change to weather at this time.

[Tom]

I'm amazed no one has asked this yet with all the talk about food, but how will weather affect harvests now? Same as usual, with weather changing weekly? Or will it be daily?

And it would be amazing to have some truly epic weather patterns thrown in. But that's just me ranting now.

De-Legro is mostly right, with one exception I haven't yet told anyone about: With the new region management code, weather changes aren't hardcoded to a specific time anymore. Every day the weather could change, and individually for every weather region. The longer the weather stays the same, the more likely a change becomes, so that you won't be stuck in a drought forever, but it can last a while, or it can be over in two days.

Before, doing it this way would've been pointless because of harvest cycles. Now, it makes it more interesting (and realistic).

[Andrew]

Awesome. That's what I was kind of hoping for. More dynamic.

[Anaris]

Damnit.  Tim, any luck finding the redistribution stuff we came up with?  I can't find the whole thing, only this preliminary version, and I know we had something more sophisticated...

Newpop = ([(if distance to city is < 50 then .1(lost city pop), if distance to city is < 100 then .05(lost city pop), if distance to city is < 200 then .01(lost city pop))+old region pop]*(if newpop > 2*oldpop, .66)

It's in a Google Doc.  I'll post the link to the dev team board, 'cause I don't remember if there was anything sensitive in there.