Automated intercity caravans
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: Suggestions & Game Enhancements
Forum Description: Got a great idea? A feature you'd like to see? Share it here!
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=2261
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 13:43
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Automated intercity caravans
Posted By: nvp33
Subject: Automated intercity caravans
Date Posted: 15 Aug 2011 at 21:24
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Was talking to Shuey707 about his soveregnty and he complained about maxxing cities but not being able to affoard the "cool" sovereignty, only the food sovereignty. I asked if he couldn't just make a "super" money city and "super" food city to pay for the other cities so they could get the "cool" sovereignty. To which he commented, "sure and then you don't log in for a day or two and then you loose half your sovereignty and most of your armies, didn't that happen to you at one time as well nvp33" Then it all came back to me, the horror, the undescribeable horror. Oh!! the pain of those memories surrounding my leaving Illyriad comming flooding bac. Of standing triumphant, shoulder by shoulder with all those who fought and helped win the war against TMM, only to log out for a critical few hours and return and see that I had forgotten to send out my caravans and had now lost most of my sovereignty and the majority of the armies it had taken me a little over a month to build. This was a major reason for me leaving I gotta say, there were a lot of other factors, but this truly played in. Shuey707 and I wondered if it wouldn't be possible to set up an automated caravan system which send out money and food and whatever else you wanted oncve a day or week or something like that, payed for by prestige somehow ofc. This would prevent people from suddenly loosing months of work due to an oversight. What do you think? |
Replies:
Posted By: liberty6
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 05:05
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i disagree with your idea. you could avoid that in the first place by having stable cities (e.g. taxes adjusted to meet needs higher for income lower for production). second claiming several (3-9) sovereignty will do that if you have your city specialize in 1 or 2 sovs you wont have that problem. and third don't claim sovs more than 2 squares away because maintenance increases by 100 gold per square (if you do 2 sqaures claim 1 sovereignty). if you keep yourself in the red you reap what you sow. as i said above stable cities would avoid most problems. ------------- whats happened to the world? if intelegent life came to earth is RL would they consider us intelligent or not? probably not!!!! |
Posted By: Shuey707
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 06:27
People do go red in gold or food for various reasons, including war-time military production or simply aiming for that 9th or 10th city. Some prefer this method of game-play along with simply shipping gold and food from "feeder cities" to the ones in the red. However this style of play requires logging in often enough to keep the flow of supplies up. This proposed idea would have automated caravan departures and arrivals that you can set up timers for and that use a certain amount of prestige for per week or day. Setting up such deals would allow you to go on vacation without worrying about a sitter forgetting your account, or allowing you to not have to log in every day or two to ship that food order from City D to City A. This saves your military, sovereignty, and building queues from untimely demise This could also be used to send shipments to newer players on a schedule so that they don't have to ask... its already on the way. Makes them think you're psychic. This is a great idea for the training alliances like ITG or T?. -Shuey |
liberty6 wrote:Posted By: intor
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 09:49
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If you're going to add something like that, why not go all out and have a system of Trade Routes? It could work like this: - You could establish a trade route between 2 cities. - Trade routes would have a base upkeep cost simply for existing (even if no caravans are assigned to them), and perhaps a one time cost to establishing them. - The upkeep cost would be based on the distance between the cities, and you could choose what portion of the upkeep either of the cities pays (more on that later). - Each caravan assigned to a trade route would add to the upkeep cost. - Only the owner of each city could specify how many goods are to be transported out of their city and to the other. The amount would be specified as daily or hourly. - Each resource would be given a priority, which would decide which ones are more likely to be brought along if more resources are waiting then the caravans can carry. - You could select whether caravans should wait until they can take their 25% / 50% / 75% / 100% capacity. A 0% option should also exist. It would mean the caravan would leave, even if it does so empty. - A caravan assigned to a trade route would be unavailable for other purposes, and if unassigned while it's moving, it still wouldn't become available again until it finishes its current order. - By default, any changes to the agreed amounts of goods to be moved would have to be approved by both parties before taking effect, though there should be an option to auto-approve changes. [Perhaps a new Trade tech?] The upkeep (values are just for the sake of example): - The upkeep could be the distance between cities = gold/h (rounded up). [Once pathfinding is implemented, together with roads, I imagine each tile will have a movement difficulty value or something like that. This could then be used instead of the current straight line distance for upkeep cost.] - Each caravan assigned to the route could add (distance/4) gold/h upkeep rounded, with a minimum value of 1. (1 gold / hour / caravan for those very short, 5.96 squares or less, trade routes.) - Perhaps it should be possible to have caravan groups. The caravans in a group would each cost less upkeep, depending on the number of caravans in that group. The more caravans, the lower upkeep. The downside would be that they would only move together, which could sometimes mean tying up a lot of capacity for nothing. - Each city would declare how much of the upkeep cost it will pay. No city could specify that it will pay below 50%, but if for instance city A specifies that it will pay 70% of the upkeep, then city B could accept those terms, thus only paying 30%. - Perhaps upkeep could also be modified by the total caravan capacity assigned to the trade route? Edit: - For trade routes between cities of the same player, the upkeep cost could be halved. (There should be a benefit to doing things manually // Cost to automation. Whichever way you prefer to look at it. :P ) |
Posted By: nvp33
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 10:31
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The problem with a fully automated caravan system is that it leaves a player entirely free to not log into Illyriad (more or less anyways) and what keeps these kinds of games going and profitable is players logging in often. So a non prestige cost option for automation, although not exactly catastrophic, wouldn't be a very good idea. The idea I suggested called for an intercommerce traderoute, designed to let players who are at the sovereignty lvl, activate it when they are busy with other "stuff" in life, like exams or vacation and such, but pay for it so it's not always active, prompting ppl to stay active in the game whenever they aren't busy with important RL stuff. I like your idea, it's not that, I just don't think the devs are gonna go for it. |
Posted By: Thexion
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 10:35
| Trade routes that should be renewed every week or so could be one option for example. |
Posted By: Shuey707
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 10:40
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Such a deal should have a prestige requirement. Not only does it encourage a player to keep active (Spending money on the game), but it also forces them to renew their prestige account to keep the automation. Automation without cost allows for inactivity. Also have to think about simplicity here. Adding a prestige button to a timed caravan is easier than implementing trade routes, gold/hr costs, etc. If Illyriad had a large dev team this wouldn't be an issue. |
Posted By: Torn Sky
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 19:26
Its been said before that the devs want to avoid automation,though if that opinion still stands idk, just increasing the number of vans again  would help alleviate the problem(depending on how negative you are)
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Posted By: The Duke
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 21:18
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Not only do they want to avoid automation but they have said repeatedly that they dont want prestige accounts to hold an overbearing amount of advantage over other non-prestige players. Also as stated previously- if you keep your cities stable instead of exploiting the negative food and negative gold then this isnt a problem. Specialize your cities so they dont go in the negative- and then your cities can all work together supplying w.e it is you need- not every city needs to be maxed out
------------- "Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives." |
Posted By: liberty6
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 02:49
------------- whats happened to the world? if intelegent life came to earth is RL would they consider us intelligent or not? probably not!!!! |
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 03:41
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Very interesting discussion - please continue it! It's definitely something we've spent quite some time on internally, and there are good arguments on either side (both for and against automated vans of some description, and also for or against making it prestigable). There are some content releases upcoming that might alleviate some of these issues, but there are also some other content releases upcoming that might accentuate some of these issues as well, so it's something of a "hot topic" atm internally. Generally we use extreme caution around prestigable options, and we also apply extreme caution to automation. Equally we understand that grinding repetitive functions simply isn't quite as much fun as it really should be ;) I'd really like this discussion to continue, though - I think the broader the input the more likely we are to come to a sensible conclusion. Regards, SC
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Posted By: Shuey707
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 08:46
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In all honesty, I don't see how this could be used to give an upper hand to a player if designed correctly. Making it only usable to send to a player's own cities and limiting the amount of times per week it can be used would also lower the 'advantage' it gives. In actuality though, it just removes one needlessly mundane task from the game: Sending resources from one city to another on a schedule. Whether it's supplying food or gold to a 'red' city, or sending resources to that new town you just settled, you're eliminating one repetitive task to allow yourself to get back to the fun of the game. Too much automation is just as bad as none at all. Most sane people grow bored of doing repetitive tasks, causing them to grow bored of Illyriad and leaving. Also, as nvp33 stated, if you log in one day and realize that your military is gone because you forgot to send gold out the day before, it could cause you to give in and quit. Losing players is usually a bad thing. |
Posted By: surferdude
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 12:00
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Posted By: Albatross
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 12:16
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I'd vote against Prestige here. If something special needs automating, then it should be kept simple by using units, research or buildings. For example, we currently have a Messenger unit, which runs out to deliver orders to armies. It is a very temporary and expendable unit, for occasional use. I propose something similar here: a unit or mode of operation that can be temporarily employed to automate the supply task. It should have a high cost and expire (or need refreshing) after some time, like the Messenger. So my proposal is a 'Trade Commander' unit that (is trained and when deployed) can be given limited orders to travel to-and-fro a few times with the caravans. This should fit nicely with what I've heard of current dev roadmap, and lots of possibilities exist to duplicate the Military army+division+commander+units model into Trade, so we'd have the Trade Commander carrying extra abilities to help make travel and trade more successful.
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Posted By: Kilotov of DokGthung
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 14:01
| leave prestige as it is...its enough |
Posted By: nvp33
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 14:29
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The idea isn't to make prestige spenders even more powerful. The ide is to take a mundane repetetive task, which, if let to it self, can result in major loss of resources and troopsand uatomate it. Someone said "well just make balanced cities" but that's not possible for all of us aftet the big move 6 months back, and for other ppl it's just not plausible for their playstyle to make these "balanced" cities. It might not need to be a prestige spending option, but in my opinion there's need for a look at sending resources around between a players own cities. It could also be done with a "shared pool" of food and/or gold, but that would be a bit overkill in my opinion. Automated caravans for an intercity commerce traderoute would seem to be the way to go. But if there are other ideas, other than "don't build that way then", then let's hear them, I'm all ears :-) |
Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 17:43
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One idea for a "Trade overseer" could be something like a unit with these kind of options- ----------------------------------------------------- Overseer Commands < Current City > [wood] [clay]...[siege blocks] <Destination City> [wood] [clay]...[siege blocks] ----------------------------------------------------- The trader unit would travel back and forth between city 1 and city 2 with the selected resources and the caravans required. If the mentioned resources are not available in a city, he would wait there till they become available and set off again. The trade movements will continue until they are cancelled. Such a complex mechanism might be an overkill just to keep supplying towns with resources. A lot of players wouldn't be interested in an expensive "Trade Overseer" just for shuttling food and iron. If trade becomes something more than what it currently is, the arrangements could add some value. Say you need raw materials from two different factions to craft something in your capital and sell it to another faction in need. A few carefully made trade arrangements with the local factions could save a lot of 'work'. This would also justify a high upkeep for a trade overseer unit. ---------------- Also the use of additional caravans for trade outside the player's cities may be restricted. ie the trader would be allowed to carry only 1000 resources or so for any arrangements outside his own cities. This could avoid a few problems like - 1. alliance members setting automated trades to new players, thereby killing their gameplay in 2 weeks. 2. Alt accounts routinely sending resources to the main account and vice versa. 3. A player sending resources to alliance mates while going on a vacation. Also, a trade arrangement need not involve more than two cities. More cities will make the "orders" page cluttered without any significant addition to functionality. ----------------
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Posted By: Nesse
Date Posted: 17 Aug 2011 at 20:08
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I'd love to have a couple of automated supply routes going out. I would have to renegotiate trade agreements for it, but that is fun. .) How about having a limited number of automated routes without prestige, and more with prestige? Even one outgoing would reduce repetition a lot, and having two on prestige would make sense. |
Posted By: nvp33
Date Posted: 18 Aug 2011 at 00:32
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Actually the idea of making Tradeagreements, like send me 10k iron/day would be great Nesse, could be used for tons of things, and wouldn't be truly possible without an automated system of some kind at least. Could also be used for setting up internal supply routes for "red" cities. Good really good possibbillities this, really good... |
Posted By: Tordenkaffen
Date Posted: 18 Aug 2011 at 22:42
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I would like to be able to "donate" excess basic resources from my established large cities, e.g. stone, in return for a quite small boost in my other smaller city's basic resource production per hour. This is simply an alternative to shipping caravans each and every day all of the time because your stores cap out in your Cities and your smaller towns are in a constant demand for resources (if you use prestige). It gets too monotonous overtime to be considered much fun to do, and so I for one would welcome a passive way of distributing excess resources, even if it would cost prestige. The tricky part is that sovereignty also costs basic resources to maintain, so you would need a simple et effective arrangement that would not upset the gentle balance of economy. To ensure that it doesnt I would suggest that the accumulated amount of resources wasted were registered and the determining factor for the production bonus in the other cities. It makes no "realistic" sense (its a kind of magic..), but it increases the enjoyment for people who can only be on a short while daily or a few times a week, who cannot manage their mules constantly. Hope you can follow my reasoning in this. Cheers. |
Posted By: liberty6
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 04:52
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i am still against this idea. a STABLE city won't need this much automation. i could see for starting a new city but then the priority would be to get them resources up. if this idea would run lets say a temporary arrangement like 24 hours with 12-16 hour cool down this way it encourages you to keep the city in a decently stable situation. and it makes it so you cant rely on it ------------- whats happened to the world? if intelegent life came to earth is RL would they consider us intelligent or not? probably not!!!! |
Posted By: Shuey707
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 05:15
Not everyone can have nor wants to have stable cities. Some prefer not to for various reasons. Some are forced to go red during wars, etc. This just gets rid of monotonous tasks and lets people get to the fun part of Illyriad. Are you against people having fun, Mr. Liberty? |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 20:47
Please explain to me how you get 10 cities while maintaining stable cities. -------------  |
Posted By: Tordenkaffen
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 21:19
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The issue is not stable cities imo. The issue is instead of automated caravans, which essentially removes all benefit of being very active because of the automation (and I do think that effort and time should = reward), the issue is, is there another less intrusive way to do automatic resource sharing between cities? Hence, If I in city A have capped warehouses and a lot of resources wasted hourly, is there a way that this hourly waste can grant some benefit to town B? An example could be: 1% growth to all basic resources pr. hour, in town B for every 50.000 resources wasted pr. hour in City A. Maybe theres a better way of doing this. What we do *not* want is to enhance the advantage of having many cities and excess production by making resource distribution too easy between cities, nor do we want to handicap players who cant be on regularly and do the manual transports, more than they already are. |
Posted By: Tordenkaffen
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 21:36
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Posted By: liberty6
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 21:59
------------- whats happened to the world? if intelegent life came to earth is RL would they consider us intelligent or not? probably not!!!! |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 22:07
Why build something in general if the other reason behind it is to be "bigger and badder"? I build my cities up because that's one of the core mechanics of the game. Why going for 10 cities is any different from going for 5 in your mind is beyond me. However the fact is some people want more than 9 cities, the reason behind it is irrelevant. Also, if I had of lowered my taxes to 0% on my capital back when it only had 22k pop, I still would have had -4k food per hour. The negative food would have been higher still had my pop in that city been 26k. So no, that doesn't work, you still go through a ton of food even with low taxes and thus getting that 10th city is still very difficult. I don't see why you're so opposed to something that would help people in a situation you clearly have no experience with. ------------- |
Posted By: liberty6
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2011 at 22:25
oooh i have no experience with 10 cities your right but!!! you didn't argue my spell point so if your going to rebuke my claim then attack all of it not just the 1 and then add the experience part. now for my argument 10 cities ok but what other benefit would it have noobs getting resources that's nice and all but how many start then quite within the first week. i could see a temparary use like the 24 heck even 36 hours with a cant use for 12-16 hours after that so no one could abuse the system. i don't like the in-defendant idea. and as tordenkaffen WE would need limitations to keep possible abuses down ------------- whats happened to the world? if intelegent life came to earth is RL would they consider us intelligent or not? probably not!!!! |
Posted By: Tordenkaffen
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2011 at 00:56
Well you would obviously need more than your first city to gain anything out of this, but it would make the second city that more attractive, encouraging growth. But mainly this would be a feature that would benefit players with multiple cities and a well established resource output - but thats fair since all players eventually will reach apoint where they can draw advantage from it. You could flip the whole perspective and think of this as a critique of the current system, essentially that a player with a large excess of resources and regardless of prestige, will loose vast amounts of basic resources due to the limited caravan amount, and the fact that sending resources requires logging on in hourly intervals and do the tedious task of sending the vans. An advantage to especially prestige users who can play most hours a day and essentially draw use from 100% of his resource output, where as players with little online time a day recieves nothing at all despite his efforts in the game. This difference should for the sake of a healthy gaming culture be mitigated somehow. Am I wrong? |
Posted By: nvp33
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2011 at 01:06
| No, you are exactly right. |
Posted By: liberty6
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2011 at 01:30
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ok point taken.but i still don't have to like it
------------- whats happened to the world? if intelegent life came to earth is RL would they consider us intelligent or not? probably not!!!! |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2011 at 01:36
That -4k food was WITH the nature's bounty spell. I'm all for limiting this to stop player from abusing it (such as players could have their advanced resources constantly shipped from town to town every hour to make thieves highly ineffective) but making an arguement about how players should just never have imbalanced towns screams inexperience and isn't realistic in the current state of the game. Even getting 9 cities I'm going to have to dip into negative food production in a city or two of mine in order to get to 130,000 population. As for the "but new players wouldn't benefit from it" argument, I don't understand why that matters. Should a player who has been playing this game for six months and has invested hours and hours of their time into not be rewarded for it? Should a player who got to nine cities not rightfully have advantages over those with only one? ------------- |
Posted By: Tordenkaffen
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2011 at 01:46
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@Brids - I just want to add that I never calculated on the system involving advanced resources of any kind - only basic stuff to keep it simple, and no actual caravans would enter the picture, just a basic resource production boost (in any given small town) based on a fraction of the sum wasted (in a big resource overflowing city). |
Posted By: Shuey707
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2011 at 04:14
I'm agreeing with Brids here. In my main city which, only has 17,341 population (instead of 20-26k), I have five sovereignty squares, nature's bounty, all food buildings maxed, and an over 25% tax rate and that's all that city can get to without going heavily negative in gold to increase population. There's just no way to get to the higher populations for a city without going red at some point. And yes, this doesn't benefit new players much. However a person with nine cities has invested more time, energy, and money in to Illyriad than a player with 20 population. Don't you think it's a bit understandable to allow these players a break from some of the monotony they've been dealing with? In reality though this would benefit anyone with more than one city. |
Posted By: fluffy
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2011 at 07:28
why would you have to go negative food? you can get 16250 pop(the average amount you need per city for the 9th requirement, using 6 5 farm sov and 1 15 farm sov on a 5 farm town and have 1000 food income left over, and have 46% taxes, which gives almost 26k gold per hour after sov is taken out. :) Not really hard at all.
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Posted By: liberty6
Date Posted: 22 Aug 2011 at 22:16
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iv just given up the loosing battle because im arguing with the same guy. but nice to see you have the right idea
------------- whats happened to the world? if intelegent life came to earth is RL would they consider us intelligent or not? probably not!!!! |
Posted By: Hugie
Date Posted: 03 Sep 2011 at 20:59
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I'm new in Illyria but this makes interesting reading. The point of the game it seems to me is to become more and more interesting, to always offer new challenges. At the start, it's as much as a newbie can do to get resources to build. Then once all the building is done in one city, we start building armies and second cities. A few cities down the line, and the game becomes about specialising in one aspect - military strategy, alliances, helping new players, trade and playing the market, whatever. In the "real" world, as you get better at your job you "automate" the mundane repetitive bits by employing someone to do that. As Illyria creates a wrap-around world of its own, perhaps it could be possible to automate all of the previous tasks - some examples: 1) - an extra build in the queue (and research? do you have to research in each city?) per city so with your second city you can have 3, with your tenth you can visit once in a few days and set a whole lot of things going 2) - Illyria is cleverer than many in that resources aren't pooled. I believe it would make sense to have Trade Commanders between your own cities. I also agree that packages for newbies should be from the heart, not just automated (ie Trade Commander between own cities, no option to other people's cities) 3) - what I'd really like is roads but I'll put that on a new request (or find a request for roads and support it)
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Posted By: Hugie
Date Posted: 05 Sep 2011 at 11:32
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I had another thought - what about Account Apprentices (the opposite of Account Sitters)? As a player gets bigger and busier, it should be possible to take on "apprentices", newer players who can learn the ropes in Illy and ultimately spread their experience in their turn. In the same way that a player appoints a Sitter for when they are on holiday, they should be able to appoint Apprentices who can connect at the same time as the Mentor (or a different time) to handle some of the mundane tasks. These will be Illy players in their own right, just doing Apprenticeship in addition to their own city to learn from the best! I think it will be too difficult to circumscribe what they have authority to do - the lead player will need to trust them, but they could for example look after the growth of a new town, or manage the steady transfer of resources, or manage a brigade in a large military force, all under the supervision and guidance of the lead player. Whether it is necessary to have a third Chat Room for the lead and his/her apprentices or not, I don't know. |
Posted By: Hora
Date Posted: 12 Sep 2011 at 22:47
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I don't really think Account Apprentices would work. As a new player, I really wouldn't log in just to ship caravans for a bigger player. And more difficult task would need that much explaining, it wouldn't spare any time. To come back to the caravans... I remember playing ANNO 1602 once. There was a interesting trading system, where one of the main tasks was maintaining trade routes. That was possible between own cities (where you defined a minimum or maximum amount of resources you want to keep) or even to other player (with defined maximum exchanged amounts / price per ton, etc...) The interesting bit there, of course: Those where attackable units, even when moving, and needed some weapons/guards. Further, big cities in there where additionally on constant need for advanced resources, and resources where able to deplete... So quite some differences in basic game setting, but perhaps might work as a example for Illyriad, too... |