22-09-2001 04:42									#1
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On Mark's suggestion, this is a thread to discuss plans for D6.

Plans for D6.

These are the immediate things I intend to do for D6, more or less in order:

1. Make the map larger and scrollable.

2. Provide for a world map.

3. Get rid of Xerces (the XML scanner). I like Laurent's XML stuff and will use that as the basis, but recode the very small part of Xerces that we need.

4. Make all the currently hard coded data into XML files.

5. Build the tech stuff (written and working, though the data isn't yet available) in.

6. Work on the government and social stuff.

7. Make a consistent list of available commands. Make the commands available through key strokes.

8. And, as always, everything else I have forgotten.

Cheers

	22-09-2001 15:59									#2
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I think we should take on Only what we think we can do in 2 months or so for the demo. If our wish list is too big, IMO we need to trim it down. I think its crucial for us to get as much feedback as quickly as possible on what works and what doesn't since we are a bunch of amateur game designers doing a Very aggressive project. Some of our approaches are Bound to be impractical or just not fun. We need to check game design aspects asap to see if they pass the test. That said if we pick things that we think can be done in 2 and they take 4 instead, that's life, and we shouldn't put out something that doesn't work just to meet an arbitrary deadline. What does everyone think?

That said, I think I agree with everything in your approach except 2, and will add some points myself.

2. is I think premature unless you mean a fragment of a world map. There is IMO not enough in the game yet to make a world map a value-added component. I feel it would take time from more critical things.

As I understand it, most of your work for 5 would involve interfaces for the player to get info and give orders to the tech system, since the core part is done. This of course depends on Richard doing the entry and early testing for system stability etc. I will contact him if he doesn't show up here soon. I would like to add 5b: use of the tech system in the econ and military models as appropriate. Implementation: (Mark/Gary) and (Laurent/Gary) respectively on 5b.

Now my additions:

8. Begin the AI work in earnest by designing the first set of rules for AI. Also use these for player delegating command to AI if they choose. (We would leave for D7 the AI deciding the best among a set of rule-derived approachs to use through simulation. See AI page of Clash web page if interested in this topic.) (Mark mostly design Gary mostly coding per our conversation)

9. Include the first Diplomacy system (Sancio)

10. Handle ships in the military model for naval battles and naval transport (Laurent)

11. Put in special goods and merchants into econ system (Mark)

I'm sure I've left out a few things, but I think this hits most of the big ones. What does everyone think?

	22-09-2001 22:04									#3
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quote: I think we should take on Only what we think we can do in 2 months or so for the demo. If our wish list is too big, IMO we need to trim it down. I think its crucial for us to get as much feedback as quickly as possible on what works and what doesn't since we are a bunch of amateur game designers doing a Very aggressive project. Some of our approaches are Bound to be impractical or just not fun. We need to check game design aspects asap to see if they pass the test. That said if we pick things that we think can be done in 2 and they take 4 instead, that's life, and we shouldn't put out something that doesn't work just to meet an arbitrary deadline. What does everyone think?

I think that each addition should be got working, and the game released at that point. For example, with a scrollable map, we would have release D5.1, probably about a week after D5, and so forth.

quote: 2. is I think premature unless you mean a fragment of a world map. There is IMO not enough in the game yet to make a world map a value-added component. I feel it would take time from more critical things.

All I meant was a small version of the full map so you could click on it and have the main map switch to that area. Not a big job.

quote: As I understand it, most of your work for 5 would involve interfaces for the player to get info and give orders to the tech system, since the core part is done. This of course depends on Richard doing the entry and early testing for system stability etc. I will contact him if he doesn't show up here soon. I would like to add 5b: use of the tech system in the econ and military models as appropriate. Implementation: (Mark/Gary) and (Laurent/Gary) respectively on 5b.

That is reasonable, but again doesn't look like a lot of work.

I agree with all your additions except that I would promote 11 (ships) to a higher level, at least for transport.

Cheers

	22-09-2001 22:13									#4
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I agree your 5.1 etc. release schedule will be even better than what I was pushing for. Lets try it that way, and see how it works out!

Your map idea is fine by me. BTW, I didn't imply the numbers to be priority- or implementation-order in my list.

	22-09-2001 23:30									#5
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Glad you like the idea, Mark. I think it will really add impetus to the project.

This is a revised todo list for D6, incorporating Mark's additions. I have taken out the numbers, but ordered by victims (sorry - dedicated workers). I also added important items (roads and rivers).

• Make the map larger and scrollable. (Gary)
  
• Provide for a world map. (Gary)
  
• Get rid of Xerces (the XML scanner). I like Laurent's XML stuff and will use that as the basis, but recode the very small part of Xerces that we need. (Gary)
  
• Make all the currently hard coded data into XML files. (Gary)
  
• Add roads. (Gary)
  
• Add rivers. (Gary)
  
• Make a consistent list of available commands. Make the commands available through key strokes. (Gary)
  
• Work on the government and social stuff. (Gary)
  
• Build the tech stuff (written and working, though the data isn't yet available) in. (Gary and Richard)
  
• Handle ships in the military model for naval battles and naval transport (Laurent)
  
• Begin the AI work in earnest by designing the first set of rules for AI. Also use these for player delegating command to AI if they choose. (We would leave for D7 the AI deciding the best among a set of rule-derived approachs to use through simulation. See AI page of Clash web page if interested in this topic.) (Mark mostly design Gary mostly coding per our conversation)
  
• Put in special goods and merchants into econ system (Mark)
  
• Include the first Diplomacy system (Sancio)
  

Last edited by Gary Thomas on 15-10-2001 at 04:57

	15-10-2001 05:00									#6
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The scrollable (and hence potentially as large as you like) map has been implemented for D5, so is not now part of D6 (or even D5.1).

I propose to give immediate priority to fixing the XML stuff. This might make it into D5.

Cheers

	16-10-2001 21:00									#7
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In addition to naval transport and fight
(btw transport isalready coded, but only has test cases), I will try to get fortifications/terrain and an engineer element in the mil model, so that defenders may have more defense bonus.

	17-10-2001 07:00									#8
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Both of you: Sounds good to me

	20-10-2001 19:27									#9
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More for the list...

(fairly soon in the D6 plan for these)

Refactor government/territory command and control system as discussed in C&C thread (Gary)

Really populate the map, rather than just have a few cities. This will allow for testing how the civ/province/square hierarchy works, in econ and other models. What are now cities will become the capital cities of provinces. (Gary / Mark)

	20-10-2001 19:57									#10
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Would it be possible to add merchants/supply lines for armies soon? I don't know how much econ coding would be required. I think if it doesn't make it for D6, it would be good to start it as soon as possible afterwards, since it would add a lot to the game.

	20-10-2001 20:20									#11
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Supply lines may be pushing it for D6 But here are the things we can do for D6 to make the military more reasonable:
1. Army build removes population (trivial, just haven't done it yet)
2. Supplies come from Somewhere or the army will suffer the concequences. Probably the home square can support. (again fairly easy)

I'll try to do both these for the first release following D5, 5.1 or whatever. These two will reduce the infinite military buildup that's possible now, and also mean that when you take all the enemies' territory he won't be able to use conventional forces as effectively. I may still be able to do the whole supply thing for D6, but don't want to promise yet. But I will push it, because it is something that is Sorely missing in 4x games, and I want to show playtesters We've done it!

Another topic:

In D4 (old code) I had Support orders, simulating the fact that nearby troops, if given enough forewarning, can help a square/army coming under attack. I'd like to get that back in soon. These also help in covering a border, and could be assigned to automatically inderdict enemy supply lines when we get those going.

[edit] Cycling through TFs to move them would be good also. Right now its easy to fire a unit off to a staging point, and then forget about them. A way to cycle through all units without specific orders (move, garrison, whatever) would be useful to include soon.

[edit] Being able to automatically send new units to a rally point would be useful. If others agree this is a good thing to do this soon, we can work out a spec.

Last edited by Mark_Everson on 20-10-2001 at 20:41

	20-10-2001 22:18									#12
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From me:

quote: I propose to give immediate priority to fixing the XML stuff. This might make it into D5.

The deployment turned out to be blissfully easy, thanks to InstallAnywhere. So changing the download size is no longer an issue. However there are some other advantages to a tailored xml class, so I will continue (slowly) with this. It definitely is not now part of D5.

From Mark

quote: Cycling through TFs to move them would be good also. Right now its easy to fire a unit off to a staging point, and then forget about them. A way to cycle through all units without specific orders (move, garrison, whatever) would be useful to include soon. Being able to automatically send new units to a rally point would be useful. If others agree this is a good thing to do this soon, we can work out a spec.

I will handle these.

The second one raises a point which I briefly touched on in Command and Control. It is desirable that orders should be given in a consistent format. I think that this should be implemented by giving an order to an Economy object.

Cheers

	20-10-2001 22:35									#13
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Hey Gary, Thanks for taking those new items on. I'm with you that replacing Xerces is a fairly low priority.

"It is desirable that orders should be given in a consistent format."
Agree completely

"I think that this should be implemented by giving an order to an Economy object."
Disagree completely . Orders for where units/TFs go is a Military function. I don't understand at all how you think it could be econ. Care to elaborate?

PS I had fun playing the latest version of D5! Its come far enough along its starting to act like a game

	20-10-2001 22:44									#14
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quote: "I think that this should be implemented by giving an order to an Economy object." Disagree completely . Orders for where units/TFs go is a Military function. I don't understand at all how you think it could be econ. Care to elaborate?

Something has to issue the order to the unit. The only thing that knows when a unit is born is the Economy that produces it. What I had in mind is, if you like, an order to the Economy to give an order to the unit.

It is worth noting that, if we implement the command concept, each new unit will need to be assigned to a command. Under that system, the command could give the initial movement order. This could have the interesting possibility that different types of unit could be sent to different places.

Cheers

	21-10-2001 00:28									#15
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quote: Cycling through TFs to move them would be good also. Right now its easy to fire a unit off to a staging point, and then forget about them. A way to cycle through all units without specific orders (move, garrison, whatever) would be useful to include soon.

Done.

Sorry about that.

Cheers.

	21-10-2001 00:59									#16
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Thanks for implementing that request so fast! Now, is there a way to tell it Not to cycle? Sometimes you want to move through the TFs (ideally in some kind of order relative to geography) and sometime you want to do it by hand and then activate moving through TFs when you think you're done. (Just an idea, doesn't need to go in D5).

Unit / Command hookups.
I think Commands for different geographic sectors is the right way to go. But IMO when a unit is born it should register with 'Central Command' that is responsible for the whole civ military. Then Central can interpret arbitrarily complicated orders to it to assign the unit to whichever Command best suits it. Those Commands will know where they want to assemble units or whatever. I still don't think the economy should have anything to do with it, although passing econ an order isn't too revolting.

	21-10-2001 01:48									#17
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quote: Thanks for implementing that request so fast! Now, is there a way to tell it Not to cycle? Sometimes you want to move through the TFs (ideally in some kind of order relative to geography) and sometime you want to do it by hand and then activate moving through TFs when you think you're done. (Just an idea, doesn't need to go in D5).

There is a button on the button bar that says "Next TF". If you click on it, the next task force is selected, changing squares if necessary.

The sort order is left to right by squares, then top to bottom. Within a square the order is the order they appear in the TF box. So, if the first TF in the box is selected, it will move to the second, and so forth.

quote: Unit / Command hookups. I think Commands for different geographic sectors is the right way to go. But IMO when a unit is born it should register with 'Central Command' that is responsible for the whole civ military. Then Central can interpret arbitrarily complicated orders to it to assign the unit to whichever Command best suits it. Those Commands will know where they want to assemble units or whatever. I still don't think the economy should have anything to do with it, although passing econ an order isn't too revolting.

I agree entirely. However, until we get Central Control (I prefer General Staff, or some such term) going, my suggestion gives a quicker way to implement it. However, there are GUI issues.

Cheers

	21-10-2001 18:07									#18
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Gary: Sounds Great on handling TF moves! On the other, I didn't realize you were just talking temporary hacks. In the short term I don't have any problem with orders piggybacking on the econ stuff.

Laurent:

I will soon be making modifications as a first shot at the economy supporting units. For now it will just be a civ-wide support. I had in mind that there is a need for each unit of a certain amount of supplies. Since what I am doing now is just temporary, I think the supply needed can just be Money. What I need (it may already be in there) is a way to let the troops know how much they are being paid, and change their combat strength and movement effectiveness appropriately. Troops will all be paid at an identical pay % for now, so if you can just ask the CivEconomy what the troop pay rate is using float getMilitaryPayRatePercentage() that should be all you need from me. For now I will just have it return 100 (percent), and modify it to something better as soon as practical.

For now my notion is effectiveness should go from full at 100% pay to 1/4 at 0% pay. I want to still leave some effectiveness at 0, and since this is temporary I've just picked a number.

	21-10-2001 20:37									#19
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One more D6 issue:

I am hoping to be able to use the technology interface as a template for the forthcoming econ interface. For my own selfish purposes, it would then be best for you (Gary) to bring the whole tech model into the D6 framework (albeit in an inert fashion for now). That way when I steal part of the design to implement the econ interface, it'd be sure that all the support stuff for NamedObject etc (that I'm sure I won't really understand) is there. Please let me know if you think this is practical in the short term, or would best be put off till later.

	21-10-2001 23:18									#20
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Mark, is there any maintenance interface in the econ code? I was wondering, since infrastructure probably has the same problems of funding as the military, so there should be something in common: Since I am splintering Army into several interfaces, I don't really know where the upkeep cost should go. I am planning to leave it at the lowest level only.
I currently (as of D5) have an upkeep() method, which can call your method, but is not called today. I'd like to have a run of infrastructure upkeep at the beginning or end of each turn, so I could upkeep the armies, and probably also infrastructure could be attended to at that time. Does that sound sensible?
It would mean registering the armies at the econ level, but I think that will be needed in order for the econ to know what to pay.

	21-10-2001 23:48									#21
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Hi Laurent:

Infrastructure doesn't have anything like you're looking for. It decays automatically, so if you don't build replacements, it eventually fades away. For that reason I don't think there is any advantage to handling unit upkeep and infra upkeep together.

If you want your upkeep() method to do the work, that works for me! What I am setting up is just temporary anyway. I think in the long term, the Command for an army should place orders for supplies to go various places. Then the Econ model (thru merchants) will satify those orders. But IMO there should not be a direct supply connection between provinces and units, because it may be more natural for a completely different province to supply a certain unit. You don't want to send food half way around the world when you can purchase it locally .

	22-10-2001 02:25									#22
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quote: I am hoping to be able to use the technology interface as a template for the forthcoming econ interface. For my own selfish purposes, it would then be best for you (Gary) to bring the whole tech model into the D6 framework (albeit in an inert fashion for now). That way when I steal part of the design to implement the econ interface, it'd be sure that all the support stuff for NamedObject etc (that I'm sure I won't really understand) is there. Please let me know if you think this is practical in the short term, or would best be put off till later.

The tech stuff can go in right now. It is self-sufficient. The only reason I didn't include it in D5 is that there is a technology object in the model already and I didn't know whether it did anything. I don't think it does.

On another topic, I would like to get rid of the terrain class. At present, as far as I can tell, its only function is to provide resources to the economics model. If specific terrain is intended to automatically provide resources, then this fact should be built into the new terrain code, which is much more complex and sophisticated than the old one.

Cheers

	25-10-2001 03:53									#23
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Gary:

Great news, bring that Tech on. I never heard back from you on the email I sent about how to get rid of Terrain. I think the ball is in your court on that one.

Army maintenance:

I have added an infrastructure class that supports the troops civ-wide called Army Supply. (this is just temporary till Merchants come on line) Laurent, in addition to my previous requests to enable crude troop support, I need a way to figure how many need support. My best guess is that we should just require X amount of Army Support per element. Element because I wouldn't want to charge by unit, and have a unit with only a single element left pay full freight. Is there something in there already to do this? Ideally I'd just like a getMilitaryManpower() method in Civ that could just give manpower (or # of elements) so I could go ahead and finish this part off.

	25-10-2001 08:27									#24
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OK, I have:

• Carefully read your email
  
• Checked out the Resource class
  
• Checked out the ResourceInfo class
  
• Thought
  

	25-10-2001 16:12									#25
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Army support:
Each element has an ElementCost which can bear the info. It is a little better than a straight X per element, since it depends on the element cost and can take training into account. I'll try to compute the lump sum in a civ-wide method.

	25-10-2001 16:53									#26
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Thanks Laurent, that sounds great.

Gary, your approach is fine by me.

quote: Do certain types of terrain automatically have associated resources?

Well Everything automatically has a value for the basics: farm, and [natural] resources. Other than the basics the quick answer is no. For specials, their appearance will be correlated with terrain (or landform, whatever the right term is). However mountains, although more likely to have Gold, Tin, etc. aren't guaranteed to have them.

	25-10-2001 22:33									#27
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Three of the resources are "res", "prod", and "serv". While "prod" is a word, it is unlikely to be the full name of a resource. So I imagine that these are abbreviations. Of what?

The "farm" resource presumably doesn't produce farms. Does the economics model establish the kind of products per resource, depending on the resource, or what?

Farm production is likely to be related to the kind of terrain and the type of land cover (as described in the Terrain thread ), and hence be tied to a LandForm, LandCover combination.

Is there provision for forestry?

Cheers

	25-10-2001 23:31									#28
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The names are used to map which economic sector the resource belongs to. "prod" means production, i.e. manufactured goods. But as I thought I said in the email I sent you, all that are needed is
1. "res" meaning natural reources (including forrestry, mining, etc.)
2. "farm" meaning farmland.
3. Those associated with specials, which for now are only Gold Mining, but I'll be putting some others in soon.

You can change the names to be full names if you like, and I'll work around it. I want to go to better names eventually anyway.

quote: Does the economics model establish the kind of products per resource, depending on the resource, or what?

If I haven't answered this question then you need to reword it, since I'm not sure what you mean.

LandCover etc.: So long as I can get the info I need (sites for X kind of resource) from the interface, by getResourceValue(square, resourceName) or some such, I expect you will put them wherever you think are appropriate.

I hope I've given you what you need!

	26-10-2001 03:08									#29
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quote: 1. "res" meaning natural reources (including forrestry, mining, etc.) 2. "farm" meaning farmland. 3. Those associated with specials, which for now are only Gold Mining, but I'll be putting some others in soon.

Since these are number of sites, I will name them accordingly:

Forests, Farms, Mines, all of which can extend Sites.

On the other hand, isn't GoldMine a mine?

I notice that you use strings to identify the resource type. Can't you use the class itself, if I provide a static instance of each type. Perhaps the best way to see how this works is to look at game.model.military.Category class.

If you are only interested in the number of sites, I don't need my question about products answered.

Cheers

	26-10-2001 04:10									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas On the other hand, isn't GoldMine a mine?

Yes, but all mines don't have gold so I think the simplest way to handle specials is to make them have dedicated sites for just them.

quote: I notice that you use strings to identify the resource type. Can't you use the class itself, if I provide a static instance of each type. Perhaps the best way to see how this works is to look at game.model.military.Category class.

My problem with that is there will be 30, 40 or 50 specials by the time we're done. I frankly think its silly to have a class for each. Also its just not resources. The whole econ system runs using strings, and I really don't want to redo all that. There will be perhaps 30 infrastructure classes plus one for each type of unit, I don't want to have to make a class for each!

You can try further to 'educate' me, but Its going to be a hard sell.