Placing raw material resources on maps

[theguyintheshed]

Hi all, I know it's the holidays, not too many people around, but:

 

I have seen several posts that discourage placing raw material resources (coal, grain, etc.) when making maps, indicating it results in unbalancing the game, but nobody has explained the specifics, assuming everyone knows about it.

 

A) Exactly what is the problem? And,

 

B) Is this specific to early game versions, or has it been corrected?

 

 

[akuenzi]

Happy New Year, theguyintheshed...

 

I'm sure you'll get a better answer from those on here with way more experience than I have, but here's my humble opinion:

 

A) If a person places these on their own, I think there can be a tendency to place too many of them on the map, or to line them up too much relative to where industries are.  Then when the game is played, it becomes too easy for the human player, or too predictable, and thus 'unbalanced.'  At least, this is what has happened to me when I've done it.  Leaving things a bit more random helps maintain the fun factor and challenge.

 

B) No, I don't think this was specific to early game versions, nor is it something that needed to be corrected.  The game is simply robust enough that it gives you more than one option.  You can indeed place them on your own, or you can make the computer do it through the settings.

 

Anyway, that's one man's opinion.  Hopefully the others chime in and give you a better answer!

[Gwizz]

I may not have a better answer. I often preplanned and added industry etc. into my maps.

Then when I tested the map I would adjust the seeding of the map to give a better balance usually

with less seeding when the balance was excessive;

and If too many players complained, I would back down on my seeding even more.

I enjoy a map with heavy seeding. I enjoy bull-dozing buildings as in real life to make

best use of the land and of right-of-ways. Most players don't do this. The game doesn't count how

many companies I seeded. It just looks at what I programed into map territories and ignores my seeding to give game seeding a balance that was programed to be part of the original game. To control balance within the game, I would just program lots of territories and let each territories be seeded by the game and by territory size and mountain height.

[jeffryfisher]

There's a game bug where placing any building will derail the automatic buildings in the whole city / economic area. You can end up having a New York with your hand-placed steel plant and nothing else, not even a house. Let me tell ya, it's freaky to have an entire econ region go empty, with nary a farm nor mine for hundreds of miles around.

 

I discovered this bug the hard way when I tried to place ports in cities that I thought deserved them. Most of the cities were still-born. My port was in each, but they had little or nothing else, and they never ever grew.

 

That's why you should use the industry percentages and densities to tune the random generator rather than placing anything by hand. The only work-around I can think of is to plop your hand-placement entirely within the bounds of a teeny-tiny village whose name is the thing you're placing. Just make sure you don't care that nothing else may appear in that patch of land.

 

If not for the bug, then hand-placements would be a useful way to guarantee access certain industries in certain locations.

[Gwizz]

That is interesting Jeffry.

Now I'm wondering if those cities that I had, that occasionally became ghost cities, were because of that bug.

If controllable, they would make for an interesting twist for a map. On one of my maps I had a farmer refuse to let the RR cross his farm.

The farmer stashed two wagon loads of nitro at the pass. When the RR tried to cross, the whole map exploded to desktop. I wonder if that bug caused that mishap.

[akuenzi]

Aha -- I knew there must be a 'real' reason other than the one I gave. :)

 

I'm going to have to try this in the game, but is there a way to control the size of a territory?  Can you place multiple 'micro' territories next to one another if you want certain industries concentrated in a particular area but don't want to be impacted by this bug?  Guess I'll have to give it a try...

[Gwizz]

Just place the territories close together for smaller territories.

[theguyintheshed]

Thank you, Akuenzi & Gwizz. I believe from a gameplay balance standpoint your answers are valid and correct. But, Jeffry's response was what I wanted to verify. I had seen it specifically referred to as "bugged", but not why, and could not recall the thread or context. (Or poster. Who else but Jeffry?)

 

I asked because I have been playing with modding building footprints in the exe, and at the time, the question of manually seeding or not seemed pertinent. Since then I have discovered it is less important to the technique I'm exploring. It has the flexibilty to be used both in making maps & in game play. Simultaneously, I have been having some conversations with Jeffry about seperating out his data table fixes as modular patch files. And he has been encouraging me to start a dedicated modding thread. I am working on that, but I need to get my ducks in a row, with adequate documentation.

 

But, since you are regulars, and kind enough to offer constructive responses, (and because I couldn't attach this to a PM to Jeffry), I'll give you a teaser. A free smiley to whomever gets the correct count on how many things I did, that I shouldn't have been able to do.

 

Though this was constructed in the editor, it was all done by hex editing the executable. I will spell out the specifics in the modding thread, but the key point is that the mod is retained in the map file even if the executable is reverted. You can use several differently named exes. Edit a map or play a game file with one set of mods. Save. Exit. Reload with a different set of mods. New variations on top of the old. I haven't play-tested it enough to know if it introduces subtle bugs or game play inconsistencies, but it opens a wealth of new play-style possibilities.

 

So, enough said, here's the teaser:

 

 

 

FootprintMod.zip

[akuenzi]

theguyintheshed -- Wow, that looks pretty cool!  I'm not even going to try to count the number of mods you made -- I'm sure it would be wrong.  But I'm very much looking forward to your 'modding thread' and whatever possibilities you discover.  Thanks for the teaser!

[MaglevForever]

Just thought I would say that it looks good, and I tend to like the carefully sculpted scenarios which should be available using this mod. Keep it up!

[Gwizz]

I was thinking, what it would look like to have the locomotive back into the grain farm to pick up a car or two.

 

Well I can dream can't I.  :D

[CrownVic95]

There's a game bug where placing any building will derail the automatic buildings in the whole city / economic area. You can end up having a New York with your hand-placed steel plant and nothing else, not even a house. Let me tell ya, it's freaky to have an entire econ region go empty, with nary a farm nor mine for hundreds of miles around.

 

I discovered this bug the hard way when I tried to place ports in cities that I thought deserved them. Most of the cities were still-born. My port was in each, but they had little or nothing else, and they never ever grew.

 

That's why you should use the industry percentages and densities to tune the random generator rather than placing anything by hand. The only work-around I can think of is to plop your hand-placement entirely within the bounds of a teeny-tiny village whose name is the thing you're placing. Just make sure you don't care that nothing else may appear in that patch of land.

 

If not for the bug, then hand-placements would be a useful way to guarantee access certain industries in certain locations.

 

 

That is interesting Jeffry.

Now I'm wondering if those cities that I had, that occasionally became ghost cities, were because of that bug.

If controllable, they would make for an interesting twist for a map. On one of my maps I had a farmer refuse to let the RR cross his farm.

The farmer stashed two wagon loads of nitro at the pass. When the RR tried to cross, the whole map exploded to desktop. I wonder if that bug caused that mishap.

I, too, found that an interesting possibility and good food for thought. But I have since tested this theory and found that, if there is such a bug, it doesn't effect all maps/scenarios.

 

Since the Australia - 1850 WA map was uploaded a while back, it has been my favorite and is about all I ever play anymore. At start-up, it's resources are typically very sparse. So I found myself restarting it time and time again, hoping the luck of the draw would deal me a better hand to work with starting out. Eventually I got to a point where I decided to save time and add my own strategically placed supply sources, including a couple of ports, a paper mill, and a lumber mill.

 

I've played several games since, and have seen lots of new growth in cities with those new raw materials. And, in fact, the growth is faster because of the dramatically increased level of trade. Makes the map really get going sooner and thus more fun. 

 

Bottom line is I've seen no evidence of any limitation caused by placing my own raw material sources on this map. Perhaps there are other triggers in specific scenarios?

[jeffryfisher]

On one of my maps I had a farmer refuse to let the RR cross his farm. The farmer stashed two wagon loads of nitro at the pass. When the RR tried to cross, the whole map exploded to desktop. I wonder if that bug caused that mishap.

There's another bug where part of a farm can be hidden by another feature on the map (or was the farm hiding the other feature?). If a RR is built over that other feature, then a crash to desktop (CTD) will occur, perhaps when a train passes over it. I didn't report the bug, so I don't recall the details.

[Gwizz]

If I remember correctly,  The farm was partly in the lake and the RR tried to cross over that part of the farm that was in the open.

 

I had a warning dialog that the farmer would blow up the railroad if track were built onto his farm.  :D

[jeffryfisher]

Wow, that's a lot to take in. I think it might be cool to add a station config, but I wouldn't want to give up any... or would I? I almost never use the medium-sized stations. I could replace them all with odd-ball terminals. Could I make a large terminal "cross the T" at the end of a track? (e.g. building oriented E-W right at end of N-S track)

[theguyintheshed]

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I was recently reminded I'd last left everyone with a teaser and no followup.

RL has kept me from RRT, and will continue to do so. I am uploading my notes from back then, that made that map possible. They are attached below. Anyone may use them anyway they want.

*WARNING* This is only for people comfortable with hex-editing!

Notes.zip

[theguyintheshed]

A final note before I go:

All that modding was done some years back, and in some areas of experimentation, I did not take notes.

The saved map can be hacked, but you will need to learn that on your own, as I had not fully figured out how the file was constructed. Below are a few additional pictures that may help flesh out some of my notes:

So long, and HAVE FUN!

[jeffryfisher]

That Albany diagonal is interesting because your placement is legal for the central track. Now that you've made it possible for the near track too, it's not obvious which track it is serving.

Another wild idea: By scrambling (or renaming) the stations, we might induce computer companies to build differently. It would be nice if the AI always used large terminals in order to encompass more houses. It's station placement is rarely precise enough to make good use of tiny depots.

[theguyintheshed]

Very quickly. NEITHER depot at Albany is serving the central track. It is non-stop express track, intended to avoid bottle-necking 'points-west' traffic at Albany. 'Albany Paper & Lumber' was always intended for the siding. As I indicated in the notes, the game does not consider the building to be the station, it is the track construct (full central track, 2 half stubs) that the game treats as THE station. While it would be possible to manipulate things to create a 3rd station serving the center track, it was not my intent in this scenario. I did not experiment with trying to have a station with 2 track constructs. If it didn't crash the game, one or the other, I expect, would be ignored, or created an insoluble conflict for the game engine.

Not sure I understand your second point. Don't know much about A.I. companies, but suspect whatever intelligence capabilities were given to them by the programmers, had less to do with names, more to do with regional stats (# of houses, industry profitability, etc.) for a hypothetical station scenario considered by the A.I. before it builds. Did not experiment with modding stations, and allowing A.I. companies to build with them. Each mod I made was constructed for a specific situation, then I reverted to the default .exe to play. As I said, consider my work to be a starting point for others to experiment with.