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Topic: Economy limits - limit total number of builders, geologists and perhaps other types as well

megaloman

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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 11:41

I would like to propose limiting total number of empire builders, geologists, stonemasons and lumberjacks (and equivalents from other tribes) by a new economy setting "max workers of the type in my economy". I am playing with an idea to code proof of concept myself, but I haven't decided yet. First I would like to collect your opinion and ask if it make sense for other players as well.

Rationale

The problem: I would like to control total number of builders, geologists, stonemasons and lumberjacks in my economy. For example I would like to limit total sum of builders to 15 even if I have more than 15 construction sites in the economy. The goal is to satisfy my OCD and to save resources used to make a hammer and to save hammers for other worker types. There are scarcely enough resources to build so many buildings at once so putting more builders to my economy doesn't make much difference. I would like to limit a population of geologists as well. Sometimes stonemasons and lumber jacks too. Workers bound to a permanent building type (e.g. farmers, various craftsmen, breeders, trainers, ...) are limited by a number of buildings so it doesn't make sense to me to limit them.

The proposal:

  • Add economy setting of maximum number of workers of particular type for worker types: builder, geologist, stonemason, lumberjack and perhaps for empire tribe fishermen and hunters. For other tribes their equivalents (except fishermen for atlanteans, hunters for barbarians)
  • Don't allow creating of a new worker when total number of workers of the type in the economy is greater or equal to the setting.
  • Default setting should be 0 (zero means "create when necessary")

Pros:

  • Economy settings window for worker types has UI including buttons to set numbers per worker type
  • Default setting zero won't have side effects and won't affect saved and new games, it'd be in effect only when it's manually set to a positive value
  • Default setting zero is consistent with wares - zero means "create when needed"
  • If there are more workers than set by the setting, it does nothing at all (by proposal nobody should be killed)
    • This means setting lower than current value is safe (by accident or when gradually incrementing from zero to desired value)
  • AFAIK there's game mechanics for queuing requests for workers which aren't stored and couldn't be created right now

Cons:

  • AFAIK economy settings are for stored wares and workers, not for totals in the economy. Different meanings of settings donkeys + carriers (stored amounts) and builders + geologists + stonemasons + lumberjacks + ... (totals) might be confusing for a player
    • Could be resolved by new tab in economy settings window to set total quantities in the economy aside from stored ones. But this would involve more work and it would increase quantity of strings to translate as well.

Other considerations

Miners works at ephemeral buildings as well but I am not sure if I would like to limit them. It makes sense to limit them to me as they work at ephemeral building types, on the other side even depleted mine could yield from time to time by a chance. And there're problems with them that they have more ranks - miner, master miner (setting could be for sum of both), are one type "miner" for all resources and I couldn't separately control coal miners aside from iron or gold miners.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 12:04

This is a good idea face-smile.png
Especially limiting the number of geologists would be something I would use frequently.

  • AFAIK economy settings are for stored wares and workers, not for totals in the economy. Different meanings of settings donkeys + carriers (stored amounts) and builders + geologists + stonemasons + lumberjacks + ... (totals) might be confusing for a player

    • Could be resolved by new tab in economy settings window to set total quantities in the economy aside from stored ones. But this would involve more work and it would increase quantity of strings to translate as well.

This should definitely be a third tab in the eco settings. Don't worry about quantity of strings, and it would actually be less work than distinguishing between min and max settings in a single tab. (edit: and of course we should store such a limit for every worker type anyway.)

AFAIK there's game mechanics for queuing requests for workers which aren't stored and couldn't be created right now

The economy's handling of worker requesting could easily be adapted to never plan for more workers than (maximum - current_total).

Since nobody has to use this feature if they don't want to it would be free of undesired side effects as well.

+1

Edited: 2020-05-08, 12:05

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the-x
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 12:30

Nordfriese wrote:

This is a good idea face-smile.png
Especially limiting the number of geologists would be something I would use frequently.

AFAIK there's game mechanics for queuing requests for workers which aren't stored and couldn't be created right now

The economy's handling of worker requesting could easily be adapted to never plan for more workers than (maximum - current_total).

Since nobody has to use this feature if they don't want to it would be free of undesired side effects as well.

+1

We can do a Add-On where players can customize since there had been so many Ideas for Customization


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ilguido

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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 12:40

Nordfriese wrote:

This is a good idea face-smile.png
Especially limiting the number of geologists would be something I would use frequently.

I think that sounds too artificially game-ish. It would be better to have buildings to train geologists and builders and maybe carriers than putting arbitrary limitations. Moreover that would set up new economy strategy paths, i.e. is it better to spend resources to have more geologists/builders/carriers, or is it better to save those resources for later and try to use wisely the ones you already have?


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blind3rdeye
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 16:01

My current strategy is to leave a window open showing how many workers are available in all warehouses, so that I know not to start a new geologist job or a new construction site when there are zero workers available...

It's less than ideal; but I'm also a bit unsure about whether there should be a maximum setting. I agree that it seems a bit 'gamey'; and it would also mean more buttons etc. I suppose it could be limited a bit by having a single toggle to block all automatic training... which incidentally would help solve a problem that we were discussing awhile ago related to 'poor hamlet' starts.

One thing that bugs me about the auto-recruiting of builders is that they still get recruited even if the job they were needed for is already complete. eg. If you start a few extra construction sites; but don't yet have a spare hammer... you often end up recruiting new builders who's job it is to just stand around in a warehouse. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken about this. I haven't tested it explicitly, so I might have misinterpreted what I've seen.) It would be nice if the recruitment order was canceled if the worker is no longer needed, but as I understand it, that could be a technical challenge to implement.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 19:57

blind3rdeye wrote:

My current strategy is to leave a window open showing how many workers are available in all warehouses, so that I know not to start a new geologist job or a new construction site when there are zero workers available...

It's less than ideal; but I'm also a bit unsure about whether there should be a maximum setting. I agree that it seems a bit 'gamey'; and it would also mean more buttons etc.

but the buttons would only be at a third tab in the economy options.

I suppose it could be limited a bit by having a single toggle to block all automatic training... which incidentally would help solve a problem that we were discussing awhile ago related to 'poor hamlet' starts.

One thing that bugs me about the auto-recruiting of builders is that they still get recruited even if the job they were needed for is already complete. eg. If you start a few extra construction sites; but don't yet have a spare hammer... you often end up recruiting new builders who's job it is to just stand around in a warehouse. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken about this. I haven't tested it explicitly, so I might have misinterpreted what I've seen.)

I've not tested it neither, but I'm almost sture that it's true.

It would be nice if the recruitment order was canceled if the worker is no longer needed,

+1

ilguido wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

This is a good idea face-smile.png
Especially limiting the number of geologists would be something I would use frequently.

I think that sounds too artificially game-ish. It would be better to have buildings to train geologists and builders and maybe carriers than putting arbitrary limitations.

  • 1

Nordfriese wrote:

This is a good idea face-smile.png

+1

  • AFAIK economy settings are for stored wares and workers, not for totals in the economy. Different meanings of settings donkeys + carriers (stored amounts) and builders + geologists + stonemasons + lumberjacks + ... (totals) might be confusing for a player

    • Could be resolved by new tab in economy settings window to set total quantities in the economy aside from stored ones. But this would involve more work and it would increase quantity of strings to translate as well.

This should definitely be a third tab in the eco settings. Don't worry about quantity of strings, and it would actually be less work than distinguishing between min and max settings in a single tab. (edit: and of course we should store such a limit for every worker type anyway.)

+1

AFAIK there's game mechanics for queuing requests for workers which aren't stored and couldn't be created right now

The economy's handling of worker requesting could easily be adapted to never plan for more workers than (maximum - current_total).

Since nobody has to use this feature if they don't want to it would be free of undesired side effects as well.

+1

+1

megaloman wrote:

The proposal:

  • Add economy setting of maximum number of workers of particular type for worker types: builder, geologist, stonemason, lumberjack and perhaps for empire tribe fishermen and hunters. For other tribes their equivalents (except fishermen for atlanteans, hunters for barbarians)

+1 And maybe even soldiers, so one cannot only limit the number of soldiers in warehouses (second eco setting tab) but also the total number of soldiers of an economy (third tab)

  • Default setting should be 0 (zero means "create when necessary")

Here I disagree, it should simply be infinte (we have the infinity number for some weeks now)

  • Default setting zero is consistent with wares - zero means "create when needed"

I think it would be inconsistent

Cons:

  • AFAIK economy settings are for stored wares and workers, not for totals in the economy. Different meanings of settings donkeys + carriers (stored amounts) and builders + geologists + stonemasons + lumberjacks + ... (totals) might be confusing for a player

We could explain it in the eco tutorial then in order to prevent confusion.

- Could be resolved by new tab in economy settings window to set total quantities in the economy aside from stored ones. **But this would involve more work and it would increase quantity of strings to translate as well.**

Actually that's also possible, yes. We could have 4 tabs then, simply.


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 20:35

I agree with worldsavior. However currently the 2nd tab is so empty we could split it in the middle possibly. alternatively it would be a new third tab. either would be ok


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 20:46

However currently the 2nd tab is so empty we could split it in the middle possibly

It's not empty at all, it contains the same icons as e.g. the stock inventory. Except that entries without target quantity settings are made invisible. So this would be very difficult implementation-wise. A third tab would be the cleanest way.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 20:52

Nordfriese wrote:

However currently the 2nd tab is so empty we could split it in the middle possibly

It's not empty at all, it contains the same icons as e.g. the stock inventory. Except that entries without target quantity settings are made invisible. So this would be very difficult implementation-wise. A third tab would be the cleanest way.

ok agreed.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-05-08, 22:22

https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/3904


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