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#26 2019-05-02 00:48:49

Booklat1
Member
Registered: 2018-07-21
Posts: 1,062

Re: Idea for pond distribution

Jason, can't we test that gridless, no clump iteration? i bet it'll be fine


btw, what if someone eats the goose before files?

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-05-02 00:49:58)

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#27 2019-05-02 01:27:05

GreatShawn
Member
Registered: 2018-09-08
Posts: 381

Re: Idea for pond distribution

what if we have life grid pattern pond spawning areas? then the pond can appear anywhere in that area, whitch means you'll eventually run into one. then the pond spawning areas can have a gap in between, like 30 tiles, and the area themselves are 10x10 tiles?

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#28 2019-05-02 01:46:58

antking:]#
Member
Registered: 2018-12-29
Posts: 579

Re: Idea for pond distribution

jasonrohrer wrote:

So... Eve spawns near the pond, and then she's stuck there?

Do your best with this pond, sweetheart, it's all you're ever gonna get!

No more Eve wandering.... but I'll bet there'll be lots of Eve suicide....

yes that would be true...  but if you ever do universal biome survivability this would pair up nicely with it..

(warning off the wall idea)  what if eves could teleport between ponds? you know your not satisfied just teleport to another random pond!


"hear how the wind begins to whisper, but now it screams at me" said ashe
"I remember it from a Life I never Lived" said Peaches
"Now Chad don't invest in Asian markets" said Chad's Mom
Herry the man who cheated death

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#29 2019-05-02 01:48:19

GreatShawn
Member
Registered: 2018-09-08
Posts: 381

Re: Idea for pond distribution

hidden underground tunels under ponds

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#30 2019-05-02 05:07:14

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: Idea for pond distribution

I like the idea because it would allow to have farms in other places than the swamp BUT there is some issues that come with this, mainly that ponds have goose and eggs, goose is essential fo techtree, so if someone burns or eats the only goose of the area, you either have to rush sheep to get dung to raise goose from eggs that could already be omelettes or you have to find the other pond that could be x tiles away.

I guess there could be wild geeses that roam around like the wolves,boars etc... Or some other solution, like using palm oil to grease the file blank.

Also you would need to be able to turn the kerosene newcommen pump into diesel engine pump, and the newcomen water pumps should run out of water at some point and need upgrade, otherwise we could stay at charcoal pump and have infinite water, oil is infinite too but this could be fixed as opposed to charcoal than cant be made not infinite since it's used for forge too and comes from wood which wouldnt be viable to nerf.

Also if a griefer turns the charcoal pump into kerosene pump and village has no oil then it's GG griefer town is dead, so need a fix for that too. Maybe the pumps would only be upgadeable when they are depleted of water and need an upgade.

With only one source of water there is also a risk that griefers could try to block the access of it with irremovable objects, stone wall makes you waste a whole pickaxe to remove and the https://onetech.info/2246-Newcomen-Engine-Tower cant be dismantled, ideally the whole https://onetech.info/2243-Multipurpose-Newcomen-Engine should be deconstructable to avoid griefing and to be able to move forges to another place.

Last edited by Dodge (2019-05-02 05:28:56)

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#31 2019-05-02 06:45:03

BladeWoods
Member
Registered: 2018-08-11
Posts: 476

Re: Idea for pond distribution

I believe there's currently no way to upgrade a charcoal or kerosene pump to a diesel engine pump. Only a shallow well or deep well can go to diesel engine.

Ponds perfectly lined up feels very unnatural. There's gotta be a better way to separate them. Like a pond being in some random 10x10 around these grid points.

If ponds get cut a lot in number may need to consider eggs and geese.

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#32 2019-05-02 07:26:45

pein
Member
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 4,335

Re: Idea for pond distribution

part of the beauty of a map is the randomness

the jackpot system makes sense, evenly distributed would mean a lot of average spots

back before temperature revamp we do search heavily for the good spots
desert near ponds but access to branches
a good eve found this, sure we ran a lot and suicide if we don't find it

but that's one fulfilling part, that you found a good spot

ofc for good spots to exist, need bad spots, if everything is good spot, nothing is good spot
its just meh
here is a pond lets settle

sure, we don't need that much variables

i think the best would be the same jackpot system for ponds but reduced jackpot size?
if i understand correctly you got a 10x or nothing right now
so first you generate how many items are then what they are

so for ponds and stuff like flintstone could be reduced to 5 or even 3, so if you find them, you still take it cause that's a good roll
best rolls of 6 to 9 ponds would be rare so people would appreciate them

one pond is not enough
and you want to give a chance to players
just because veterans can make a camp wherever, doesn't mean average people can
now we did this for a long time

we quit on eves who had started a farm in the green, near soil but no water, and no hot spots
a new player struggles to find a pond even if it's 50 tiles away, they need t o cross other biomes where animals are dangerous, and they can lose their original starting point, especially as male, getting lost is the end

you had several nerfs to game, which were directed from a snapshot like this
last time you said that you born in a camp and they had stacks of iron
sure, but it wasn't lose iron collected by all the family
someone made an effort to make a cart, a horse, a mine, get it home and basically was a life worth of project

you nerfed compost cause people knew how to do it so everything wont run out

but your nerfs direct veterans
i join a game and i know that this is nearly impossible, hard or easy
now if i quit, i might doom them

i was making a pen for a very bad city, and raised kids, and my granddaughter was Tarr, he quit cause the camp was bad
and i agree, it was bad, i stayed cause mom was nice, sometimes i like a challenge, but a different kind of one, it's no question that a camp is badly positioned or not. but i did like the life where he had tons of cacti but water was very far, and i almost managed to survive there but my daughters died and the last one was a troll

general game of the newbee: spawns to a mother in forest
they run around eating the berries, maybe make some tools, mom starts having babies, a pressure to settle, they don't want to lose another baby
but they do too many things is same life so nothing gets done

general view of a newbee: eve run is hard so he wants a berry farm at least

general view of a mediocre player: wants to keep everyone alive so works hard on food
soil runs out, nobody helps or knows what to do, but food is there so they enjoy it for a few minutes then a chaos of realization of no food, they run out of camp but they die anyway
if you do tools she complains that you need more food

general view of the better players: can make food and sustain the family, but doing over and over each lfie burns him out to a point where he is happy when unskilled people die

general view of veterans: ignores others and does the next step in tech as long it's not critical to intervene

now nerfing the system would just push people toward more to edge where they don't want to feed everyone
and on bottom level, that they want to born somewhere there is food

i mean there isn't many players who play support role for eve camp if they can be an eve, and generally not as rewarding to be the uncle who feeds everyone, you arent their mom, you just an old dude who they don't really see


one life i set some corn aside and when all food ran out it kept the people alive for 5 min, then i told the last 2 survivors to eat cacti, i gave them 7 of it ( i made the first pack)
they ate it very fast, then i told them to follow me
one died very soon, other followed but she tried to eat milkweed seeds big_smile cacti was like 60 tile north and she died right before i could have force feed her
end of story, not a good one, if she makes it i might have been able to fix camp and repopulate it
moral: people take it for granted, and the family dies with no warning, they realize food is low but too late, they start working but is too much pressure. it's not a good life if they got 0 veterans and they wont if they already got a bad camp
------------------------------------------------------------------
i got an idea but you need to make some changes to the game afterwards:

nerf swamps to 60% of water, they still are the best choice to water, the rarity is lower, but the clusters still there

add 20 % water chance (1/3 of swamp pond rarity) to savana and badlands
green biome is strong early and it's necessary so no water needed there

now you can have a combination of green and any of the 3 but in savanna and badlands you will have more pressure to upgrade the single or 2 ponds early
needs higher skill to settle near the savanah or badlands
but badlands provides stone and iron and flat space to build, industry/tech based cities, might need some renewable resources
savanah allows better clothing so food isn't that hard, also fast carrot farms so pushing for a pen can be good enough, more like vanity/clothing optimisation, maybe could allow higher popualtion cause of it, so more focus on gathering further
swamp still provides clay and adobe which allows more plates and more water for food, so more agricultural

this way you nerf the swamps, but allow different gameplay elemetns you can extend upon later
this choices of  which combo a city chooses could be more influential on how to build them up optimally


https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7986 livestock pens 4.0
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4411 maxi guide

Playing OHOL optimally is like cosplaying a cactus: stand still and don't waste the water.

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#33 2019-05-02 13:22:11

Sukallinen
Member
Registered: 2019-04-03
Posts: 180

Re: Idea for pond distribution

One pond for us newbies is not enough to eve/near eve. Isn't the underlying problem elsewhere ?

Established town could remove pond and wells with a bit difficulty, all other solutions (imo) just add griefers power, and I am not against them but there's a limit to everything. I don't care how you can remove extras, or just have some % of "ponds/wells/such" when used dry totally, or whatever. Also, advanced town could drill for oil, why not water.

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#34 2019-05-02 13:47:48

Booklat1
Member
Registered: 2018-07-21
Posts: 1,062

Re: Idea for pond distribution

pein wrote:

i think the best would be the same jackpot system for ponds but reduced jackpot size?
if i understand correctly you got a 10x or nothing right now
so first you generate how many items are then what they are

so for ponds and stuff like flintstone could be reduced to 5 or even 3, so if you find them, you still take it cause that's a good roll
best rolls of 6 to 9 ponds would be rare so people would appreciate them

one pond is not enough
and you want to give a chance to players
just because veterans can make a camp wherever, doesn't mean average people can
now we did this for a long time


Honestly all we needed was a soft nerf to pond clusters


but we can't have easy, predictable changes for testing, can we? gotta have a gimmick. Again.

What if geese are eaten, ponds are fenced? why create so many risks when all we needed was less clustered ponds?


I hate that every update we're fighting against a needless change instead of hyping for content. What's the point in Jason asking us about no cluster if it got insta scrapped and grids added? Why make ponds spawn everywhere if town variation wasnt an objective?

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#35 2019-05-02 13:51:16

Ilka
Member
Registered: 2018-07-25
Posts: 212

Re: Idea for pond distribution

And what about making a arrows?
The only pond - the only goose - the perfect opportunity for griefer.
He will kill the goose, invite the bears to the camp.
Before anybody makes three arrows, everyone will die.

I really think the idea of mixing in mechanics is not very thought out.

If people are to set up camps in other biomas, they must have everything they need to live at the beginning - water, soil and a lot of wild food.
Artificial restriction of the number of joints will not encourage players to settle where they can not survive.
Even the savannah does not have enough food for Eve's camp.
The jungle has enough food but there is no place there, but there are mosquitos.
Desert and cold biom fall away immediately.
There is nothing to eat in the mountains. There is no soil anywhere.
Do you think that someone will want to run more than 15 tiles with a basket to the soil?

At the end, please Jason, this game is already too difficult, further obstruction is a mistake.
If more people are to play, you can not match everything to veterans.

Dear veterans - if you think that the game is too easy try to play, at least once without mods and think that this is how the beginner game looks like.

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#36 2019-05-02 14:08:22

Booklat1
Member
Registered: 2018-07-21
Posts: 1,062

Re: Idea for pond distribution

Ilka wrote:

And what about making a arrows?
The only pond - the only goose - the perfect opportunity for griefer.
He will kill the goose, invite the bears to the camp.
Before anybody makes three arrows, everyone will die.

...

Dear veterans - if you think that the game is too easy try to play, at least once without mods and think that this is how the beginner game looks like.


I completely agree with what you said at the beginning but here's why ponds need nerfs:
The way Jason intends ohol to work is that  challenges should be substituted as tech develops. Water becomes a main component of food production early in game but later we should worry less about water and more about coal/oil. This is why nerfing ponds to weaken deep wells is necessary, so we transition into pumps.

As Tarr mentioned in discord, I doubt water becomes much of an issue now, however like you noticed, this idea comes with other obvious issues related to it. And thats why I dislike these "off the bat" ideas. It tackles the problem poorly (water may run out much earlier) and creates many other issues (few geese) while aiming to fix a non-immediate problem (swamps being the only water biome).

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#37 2019-05-02 15:06:40

Turnipseed
Member
Registered: 2018-04-05
Posts: 680

Re: Idea for pond distribution

I vote we call this update "grapes of wrath" and add dust storms


Be kind, generous, and work together my potatoes.

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#38 2019-05-02 15:24:03

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Idea for pond distribution

Summary of Key Points in This Post Because I Talk Too Much:
  • cut number of ponds in half, keep jackpot system so they are still kinda clustered

  • maybe add dry wells in mountain and yellow biome?

  • no big need for ponds outside of swamps

  • veteran players can't ignore food and focus on higher tech if they want a long line

  • nerfs are about selective pressure to spur tech advancement not about stopping surplus from happening

  • surplus isn't always a sign of a problem, it can mean someone or something is working well



Reduce the number of ponds by about half. Increase the water in ponds and maybe in shallow wells by 30 and 20 percent respectively. This should not have much impact on Eve. She looks for 4 or more ponds and 4 or more soil. Now it will be hard to find 4, might need to settle for 3 or 2, but you would not find 8 or 15... Eve can use up 3 ponds, get at least a shallow well. Not much should change for her with this update, it's her kids and grandkids that will need to adapt.

I don't think adding ponds to other biomes is essential. I agree they should NOT go in the green biome. Maybe add dry shallow wells or deep wells in the yellow prairie and in the mountain badlands? Dry wells would spawn rarely and offer some interest, opportunity, give more options to creative people. There might be one not too far from your Eve camp and you could choose to work with it or not.


I also agree that just because you see towns with lots of something doesn't mean that it's too easy or needs to be nerfed. I'm proud of my stacks of iron and giant milkweed farms. For the love of god do not nerf those. I gather big hoards of those items *because* that are needed in huge quantities and having a surplus lets people plan better and be more creative. So the ponds nerf isn't just about "there are too many"

So, I mostly agree with Pein.



<begin minor rant>
Except for the notion that it is ever viable to ignore your people and just work on tech! I was in a town recently with a roller and stamper but 3 dried out deep wells and water was the main issue. Someone in the previous generation was rushing for cloth or cameras IDK, but they didn't pay any attention to the farm or water used up all the iron too, so my job of upgrading the well to a simple coal pump had extra steps. This person (or persons) had made rubber since they built that roller, but didn't make extra for the basics: water.

And it's not just about feeding newer players: it's about retention. There was a kid in this town who said he was bored "nothing to do" The farm was green at that moment, berries were there, carrots, pies, to his eyes there was a lot of food and "nothing to do" I told him about the water problem and we worked on the pump together. It would have been great if whoever made that roller had done ANYTHING to make our job easier, but we had to make a bucket, get latex, get iron, dig stones, cut them, move them, make a cart...

Instead of making a roller that person should have made a pump, or at least left cut stone for us, or some extra rubber. We just made it but the population took a huge hit and the town died a few generations later, I don't know if they put the pump together or not. Or choices in this game have consequences for generations. I enjoyed this life, but to a degree the emergency in the village was an artificial one.

The best kind of player is the one who identifies and does the right job the one that is needed most no matter how unglamorous it might be. That might mean you water and soil berry bushes some of the time. Or farm carrots, or fetch round rocks. Making the right choice about what needs to be done matters more than working on the highest tech you can get at. You can stay alive if the berries die. The can't. 
</end rant>


The issue with water (as I think we all agree) is that too many ponds makes higher water tech more of a toy than an essential. I want to live in the town where getting a kerosine pump going is *essential* and everyone gets involved and learns about it. That is how I learned sheep, by realizing there was no more soil, realizing why, and then helping the people by doing simple things like bring adobe for a pen, or getting a rope, or making a bow. Higher tech should be bigger projects that involve people at all levels, not something one veteran does on their own.  If we do get a good water nerf (and I hope we do) could we talk about how you would split up making each level of water tech in to simple and more complex jobs. Things like "get round stones" up to ... "locate the nearest terry spot, and drill"

Last edited by futurebird (2019-05-02 15:27:11)


---
omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

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#39 2019-05-02 15:26:30

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,803

Re: Idea for pond distribution

There's a big problem with just "reducing clusters," because there will still be some clusters at random.  I tried removing ponds from the list of things that get a 10x regional boost.  The clusters are less common, but there are still places where, just by random chance, there are 2 or 3 ponds together.  Any sensible player would search for such a place.

The problem here is that it creates a 2x or 3x slow-down in pressure for ALL stages of the water tech tree.  You have 2x or 3x ponds, so you can wait 2x or 3x as long to build shallow wells.  Same for building deep wells.  Same for pumps.  Same for each pump up the tree (if I actually made all the pumps necessary).

If I want to have a lever that I can adjust to accurately, directly control the "pressure" in the game, I need to make sure that some players aren't nerfing my lever with a factor of 2x or 3x.

In seems that the only way to do that is to somehow force ponds to be far apart, and at least a known distance apart.

By "only," I mean the most straight-forward way that doesn't require major changes to the engine.  (For example, you could have nearby ponds, wells, pumps drain each other----same water table, makes sense---but this violates the tile isolation property of the current map engine (and tile isolation is a nice property to have)).

Spreading ponds out, even putting them on a grid in almost all biomes, doesn't make anything "samey" except as far as ponds are concerned.  You still need to find a pond in a good spot.  Every pond is in a different spot.  That pond in the rock biome next to the arctic isn't a good pond, right?


And "one pond isn't enough" only because ponds are currently nerfed to compensate for them appearing in clusters.  Once I knew how many ponds you had ready access to (one pond only), I could directly control the amount of water in a pond until it was perfectly paced.


Now, as for gooses being a side-effect here, I suppose there could be some gooses just standing there in the swamp, matching the old pond spawn and cluster rate.  Pondless gooses.  There's your eggs, grease, and feathers.


Still, the following problem lingers:  if ponds are sufficiently spread out, how the heck do you FIND them?  Really, in testing this, it's horrible.  You can really wander forever without finding a pond.


As far as complaining about my design process, this is the way that I work.  I don't just "tweak" some parameter and "see what happens" for a week.  How would I "see what happens" anyway, even if I wanted to?  Ask players for subjective reports?  Measure some statistic?  And if it doesn't work, then tweak again, and see what happens for another week?

Let's say I did just decluster ponds and leave it at that.  Well, it could have messed up the whole game, and then I'd be scrambling to fix it.


No, I need to solve problems directly, not with a tweak-and-see approach.  I need to think through the possibilities, to the best of my ability, and try to predict what effect a change will have.

And then pick the most laser-focused change that I can make.  Not a general, vague, and hand-wavy change.  I don't want to measure the effect after the fact.  I want to have numbers ahead of time that prove what the effect will be.

Ponds currently cluster in groups of 2 to 6 ponds, giving you 2X to 6X water on average before running out.  If you're stuck with only one pond, that pond should give you 3X (or whatever seems best) water before running out.

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#40 2019-05-02 15:32:10

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,803

Re: Idea for pond distribution

Anyway, I'm now stuck on figuring out how you will be able to find ponds if they are spread out.  Even putting them 40 tiles apart makes them almost impossible to find.  And 40 tiles is a 13 second walk (not very far apart, if you know where the nearby ponds are).

I don't want to just stick Eve at a pond and say "this is it."  I do want Eve to have an interesting choice to make about where to settle, so the other ponds nearby should be pretty easy to find.

I even thought about something really silly like a goose flying overhead in the direction of the nearest pond.  Or a dowsing rod.... or damp spots leading you.... or a spiderweb of creeks radiating out from a pond, making it easier to find a leader creek and follow it to the pond..... or goose droppings and goose footprints....  or....

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#41 2019-05-02 15:39:47

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Idea for pond distribution

You can't place a cap on the jackpot? Like cap it at five and leave them in swamps only. "How to find ponds" is "look for a swamp" now. Spread them out to multiple biomes and you you have to search in many more places.

I've never looked at the code before but I think I'll take a peak because it could help this conversation it seems something that sounds simple to us is, in fact rather complex.

Last edited by futurebird (2019-05-02 16:02:50)


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omnem cibum costis
tantum baca, non facies opus

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#42 2019-05-02 15:41:42

wondible
Member
Registered: 2018-04-19
Posts: 855

Re: Idea for pond distribution

Would it make sense to leave ponds alone and add say, a natural spring, at fixed locations. Well tech would move to springs, leaving ponds as a little extra starting water in swamp, but not a multiplier for sustainable water.


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#43 2019-05-02 15:44:42

Potjeh
Member
Registered: 2018-03-08
Posts: 469

Re: Idea for pond distribution

What about dowsing rods? Something fairly simple to make (so a fresh Eve can do it), and it points you to the nearest pond.

*edit* whoops, didn't fully read previous posts. But yeah, still seems like a sensible solution.

Last edited by Potjeh (2019-05-02 15:47:02)

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#44 2019-05-02 15:55:04

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: Idea for pond distribution

jasonrohrer wrote:

Still, the following problem lingers:  if ponds are sufficiently spread out, how the heck do you FIND them?  Really, in testing this, it's horrible.  You can really wander forever without finding a pond.


Wouldnt it be possible to spawn the ponds in advance then use a dowsing rod/divining rod to locate the sources of water?, yes it's on the level of magic and it was used to locate ground water but it's historically accurate and i dont see any other early tool that could be used to find sources of water.

Or maybe the goose in the pond could emit a sound that you could hear and see on screen in which direction it is when you are relatively close to it. But would require to spawn them in advance or in a larger radius around a player and the sound would have to be loaded from further apart.

edit: lol

Last edited by Dodge (2019-05-02 15:56:05)

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#45 2019-05-02 16:06:21

thundersen
Member
Registered: 2018-12-02
Posts: 92

Re: Idea for pond distribution

wondible wrote:

Would it make sense to leave ponds alone and add say, a natural spring, at fixed locations. Well tech would move to springs, leaving ponds as a little extra starting water in swamp, but not a multiplier for sustainable water.

Why not? Sounds pretty straightforward. Eves could still settle at a pond cluster, but later generations would have to locate a spring and either move the farm or transport water to cisterns. (And let's not forget that awbz-powered Eves should be able to find grid-placed springs pretty easily.)

Maybe dig up empty ponds for a little bit of extra water before they disappear.

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#46 2019-05-02 16:18:25

Turnipseed
Member
Registered: 2018-04-05
Posts: 680

Re: Idea for pond distribution

I like the dowsing rod idea. Willow branches incoming!

But it would add a learning curve to an already difficult process, and require you to find a swamp first.

Mabey saplings?

Running water audio que?

Tough stuff


Be kind, generous, and work together my potatoes.

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#47 2019-05-02 16:40:36

Chard
Moderator
Registered: 2018-03-04
Posts: 125

Re: Idea for pond distribution

Dowsing? I guess we already have weird magic with the apocalypse so why not.

What about just tweaking the Eve spawns to be close to the points on the wiggly grid. Maybe even just on the grid, spawn you on a pond...

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#48 2019-05-02 16:46:39

Psykout
Member
Registered: 2018-11-14
Posts: 353

Re: Idea for pond distribution

It would be nice to still have perhaps a 1/10 chance for a second pond within 15 to 20 tiles away. Just so water still has a chance to enhance the location instead of being just a marker of viability. Also clay based water storage at half the capacity of a bucket would be nice. If it came down to one well per town buckets would be crazy in demand.

As to testing some of the off wall ideas, weekend test client/server based out of the forums occasionally to get feedback could be an outlet to explore. I would participate and give in depth feedback to that.

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#49 2019-05-02 16:46:51

Wuatduhf
Member
Registered: 2018-11-30
Posts: 406

Re: Idea for pond distribution

I think this "even pond distribution" thing is us approaching the problem backwards. We're no longer trying to get a proper solution to making unique village setups occur, this feature is implementing an "equality of outcome" by guaranteeing every village has 1 pond, no more, no less. This is removing the significance of Ponds/water as a resource entirely by making it uniform, non-random, and a given for any village.

Resource scarcity/resource discrimination is the 'spice of life' in playing survival games. I experienced it very slightly in CivCraft, and it's a very common feature in Age of Empires II, an RTS where the resources dynamically generate on each map to prevent a perfect meta. Even if you were to implement this change, a player/Eve starting a new village will not worry about ponds as a resource; they're expecting to get one, and are searching for the next important 'Jackpot' that people value in an initial base setup, such as soil. Is the next step to make soil evenly distributed across the map like pond? After that will be iron, and so on and so forth.


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#50 2019-05-02 16:50:40

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,803

Re: Idea for pond distribution

Okay, so in talking to my 16-year-old, who slept on the problem last night, the following solution emerged, which is similar to what wondible suggested above.

1.  Leave ponds the way that they currently are (in swamps, with goose, etc.)  They are an early water source, and the early game can have variable pressure depending on how good of a spot Eve finds.  (Maybe....make ponds run out a bit faster, just to be sure, but a small change there)

2.  Add a separate natural object.... "spring head" or "damp spot" or "wet crack" or something like that.  These spawn everywhere but deserts and arctic, and they are evenly spaced in some kind of grid.  These are the spots where wells can be built.

The idea here is to separate "early water" (and other goose products) from "late water opportunities."  The benefit here is that reworking ponds and geese isn't necessary.


Now, the question remains:  If they are spread out, how do people find them?  When Eve settles, she'll need some ponds, but also need to have one of these springheads nearby for later.

One idea is to put them close together, and nerf all wells to compensate.  Maybe even make them 20 tiles apart (7 second walk) so that a "big town" could have two wells.  Problem is:  if they can have two wells, they can just as easily have five wells (7-second walk in four directions).  So that's not great.

Dowsing rods are another idea, but they are bogus, so I'm really hesitant there:

https://illuminutti.com/james-randi/jam … r-dowsing/

Essentially, we need a "gradient" of some kind on the map that you can use to "hill climb" toward the nearest spring head...

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