Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 ... 8

Author Topic: more challenging trading  (Read 9204 times)

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #45 on: July 28, 2014, 05:39:51 pm »

Quote
They are not being dumb.  They are simply not treating everyone and everything as a resource to be exploited mercilessly.  They actually understand that one should make sacrifices for the wellbeing of your people and for your ideals in general. 
Sure, and if you want to encourage the wellbeing of your people, then don't send them off to some godforsaken island with no resources and no particularly good benefit to the homeland that's too far away to affordably resupply them.

In terms of the "fort backstories" I mentioned in my previous post, basically I think that if your fort is too far away and too poor, etc. to make any sense as profitable or strategic, then it should basically just gray-out some of the options for backstories that wouldn't make sense there. So that you'd only be left with things like "fugitives" or whatnot if you're in a particularly silly location for the other backstories. Because nothing else would make sense -- in a stupid enough location, any sort of symbiotic relationship explanation would become strained and immersion-breaking.

But if you look at the embark location and force an appropriate explanation, the contradictory circumstances would evaporate, because you wouldn't BE citizens anymore, so there wouldn't be any nonsensical situation where your country sent you to your doom and/or their own economic ruin for no reason.

Quote
Except that they cannot go bankrupt because the only thing that dwarves are 'paid' in essentially is food and beer.
By "bankrupt" I mean "economically ruined." As in, not able to make ends meet. Not able to take care of your citizens or properly defend the realm or continue to take care of your outposts or blah blah due to lack of resources. I don't mean just "having no coins." Coins and wages have little or nothing to do with it. This is macroeconomics.

If you use up all of your stuff on sending out silly expeditions for no particularly good reason, then you don't have stuff anymore that you need to help your people survive the winter or enemy sieges or other things, and you get overrun.

Your point would be valid if the only expense of a caravan were food and beer, but as I outlined in detail earlier, there are like 30 other ways that a caravan costs you much more than that, most of which have other important applications you could be using them fore, and thus it strains your civilization and makes them more vulnerable. If the civ. isn't getting a return on that investment, then it's being dumb.

It would not, as you yourself point out, ever send such expeditions, so the game should simulate that by not letting you embark on expeditions with the backstory of "civilization funded" if it is a location that doesn't make sense for civilization funding.

Quote
Tribute to whom? Remember that we are not actually paying tribute to say the king, because the king like everyone else has no private property.  Therefore you would just be giving the tribute from your collective hands to the hands of the settlement that the king happens to live in.
Asked and answered.  Tribute to the mountainhome fortress - i.e. shows up in their "trade depot" if you will. Which makes perfect sense, because that's also presumably where all the supplies and dwarves and everything for your caravan is being taken from -- the mountainhome fortress (not the king's pockets). Costs are from and to the same place.

Quote
Because if they send no caravan they will not keep the settlement at all whether it succeeds or not.  Why would they not become independant or pledge allegiance to the nearest other civilization if they have recieved nothing at all ever from the rest of their civilization?
I'm NOT saying they should never get anything ever. See the explicit examples in my previous post -- it's just that you only get a caravan every once in awhile, once you're expected to have built up enough excess goods and needs to make the journey worthwhile.  It's just a caravan every 4-5 years perhaps for a truly remote hole in the ground, instead of every 1.

Quote
The idea that they would actually sacrifice something in order to insure the greatest chance of success for each new outpost seems completely alien to you.
No, again, if you'll shift your attention to my previous post (which I'm getting the feeling you didn't notice before writing this), there are all kinds of possible "backstories" for a given fort. SOME forts are nearby, heavily supplied, extensions of the mountainhomes basically. Other ones are medium far and might get caravans every year. Some are military and strategic in nature. Some might be religious or backed by guilds. Others might be exploratory "deep space" probes, essentially, high risk high reward gambles.

I'm not suggesting EVERY settlement is a "fire and forget" deep space probe. I'm simply pointing out that such a strategy is logically possible and would be within the repertoire of an expansionist civilization, amongst many other kinds of settlements as well.

By analogy, the Enterprise in Star Trek explore very deep, uncharted space and comes home far less frequently than other ships. It's not like they're entire fleet is made up of those. It's just a specialist mission amongst many.


Quote
1. If a settlement does not need a caravan, then it is now completely self-sufficiant of the civilization that it is part of. What keeps the settlement in the fold if it needs the civilization for nothing at all?  Loyalty is not free.  People you owe you nothing but a death-march into the wilderness end up feeling that they owe you nothing.
Even if so, your solution is not a solution to this. If I AM self sufficient, then sending me a caravan with a bunch of crap I don't need or want and which I am just going to ignore does absolutely nothing to make me feel any more indebted to you than if you sent nothing. In fact, as a player who generally ignores caravans, if anything it makes the homeland seem more pathetic and desperate for attention, honestly.

The caravan only matters to me and only makes me feel grateful if it's actually useful. I.e. if I actually have some resource I really need and want to trade for routinely. But in those situations, it also means there's profit being made usually, so it makes sense anyway.

Quote
If you cannot afford the cost of keeping something then you do not set it up in the first place.
You cannot MAKE a non-sensical settlement somehow make sense just by invoking retroactive logic.  There is an entire generated world, and thus the facts are all there in front of you, not to be swept under the rug. Either a settlement makes sense, or it doesn't, in a location. No amount of armchair rhetoric makes a useless, resource-less, non-strategically-positioned fort somehow have a valid reason behind it that would be satisfying.

If you want a consistent storyline, then the only way to deal with forts like that, as far as I can see, is to force you to choose an optional backstory for them that does NOT include them being official state settlements. But rather things like "religious refugees" or "penal colony" or "Shipwrecked dwarves" or "lost explorers" or whatever. Make the circumstances fit the undeniable uselessness of the location, not the other way around, which is impossible in such a detailed simulation game.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2014, 05:46:03 pm by GavJ »
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Scruiser

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #46 on: July 28, 2014, 05:45:12 pm »

The nature of a fort's existence and its role within a civilization will evolve over time too. 
What if the game tracked the forts purpose with a hidden or indirectly exposed "Political Capital" variable(s)?  This could quantify the motivations GoblinCookie is talking about into something that can be scaled with the economic drives GavJ is suggesting.
For example:
A fort gains political capital for intercepting armies, resisting invasions, taking on unwanted migrants, establishing your civilization's presence or right to a contended area (expressed by trade/negotiation with other civs, sending patrols off map), settling a previously unexplored area (taming animals, exporting seeds from the area, sending out exploration parties off map), exporting key strategic goods (would vary by civilizations current needs)
A fort loses political capital for giving tribute/negotiating with invaders (not an option now anyway, but should be in the future), taking freebies from the caravan with nothing in return.
A fort can use political capital to influence home civs politics, exert political pressure etc.
If the fort is established with a specific charter, it gets a multiplier on political capital related to it (military outpost gets bonus for stopping invasions).
The player could evaluate their political position by having a noble with high enough social stats talk to travelers and liaisons. ("The Mountainhome is pleased", "The Mountainhome is angry", "The Mountainhome feels your fort is not contributing")

Actually, such a system could be used for relations between other civilizations and your fort, or maybe even between sites during worldgen.  Hmm... not sure how well it would fit with the personality driven model now.
 
Anyway, the whole point of such a system would be to quantify political relationships values that can be compared with economic values.
But yeah, I kinda feel you will need to quantify your ideas more, GoblinCookie, if you want me or GavJ to appreciate them properly. 
Logged
Things I have never done in Dwarf Fortress;

- Won.

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #47 on: July 28, 2014, 05:55:47 pm »

Vache, I think all of those things are reasonable, and in the algorithms, I am already accounting for things like "political capital" with a higher "strategic value gained" (synonyms between us it seems) per year from that settlement. Repelling enemies successfully represents real value that can be modeled as a $$ equivalent.

Strategic value, unlike economic value, does not inherently require caravans to reap it, because its value is in it happening, not things being moved. However, often, certain types of helpful actions may only be possible to maintain with caravan-supplied goods or with information.**

For example, see the river fortress I outlined in the explicit examples earlier - it is listed as $20 a year "strategic value gained" which was supposed to represent exactly the sort of thing you're saying -- fightng off invaders every year. It doesn't explicitly need a caravan every year per se to fight off invaders and provide value in the form of protection. However, it might require a steady supply of non-native iron to continue to do so. As long as the mountainhome provides that, it's good to go. Whether it be 5 units every year, or 20 units every 4 years, as long as at no point it runs out.




**Speaking of which, another very important and useful concept here would be the ability to send NON-CARAVAN missions to forts and settlements. If all a fort needs is news/information, diplomatic updates etc., then why would you send a bunch of slow, rickety expensive wagons to them? You would just send a fast diplomat and a couple of guards on horseback with only their own supplies, at maybe 1/8th of the cost and risk of a caravan.

Diplomatic/information-only missions would make all these discussions probably meet much closer to the middle without violating cookie's sense of nationalism, nor economic realities. They would allow the mountainhomes to check in and make sure you haven't "gone rogue" on them, would allow orders and price checks to gauge more efficiently when caravans are needed, and exactly what their composition should be ahead of time (via trade agreements), etc. at much more reasonable and doable costs.

So for a normal fort, you'd get a diplomat every year, or in EXTREME cases maybe every other year:
1) He'd give you news and any orders if relevant to your situation, confer titles, etc.
2) He'd take taxes and stuff if relevant.
3) He'd ask you to commit to a certain amount of existing + promised stuff for a caravan (just like the current trade agreement, but more... binding), and how long from now you will be ready, and what you want.
4) Based on #3 and the needs and situation of you and of the mountainhome, distance, weight, etc.plug info into some algorithms chunka chunka chunka, they conclude that a caravan will be launched at X time in the future (could be a year, could be 27 years, depending how much you're slacking off and how useful you are and what your backstory is), which may or may not be when you requested exactly. And might be updated in the meantime if another diplomat arrives before then and production has since ramped up or down, etc.

And of course, if you are a fugitive or something, then you don't get a diplomat even. Or if you do, they're only interested in talking surrender terms and taunting you about encroaching forces early on, not about caravans. Maybe later if you establish yourself as a fabulously wealthy and powerful independent state despite them, they might recognize you and give up and ask to trade.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2014, 06:08:07 pm by GavJ »
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Scruiser

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #48 on: July 28, 2014, 06:13:07 pm »

Vache, I think all of those things are reasonable, and in the algorithms, I am already accounting for things like "political capital" with a higher "strategic value gained" (synonyms between us it seems) per year from that settlement. Repelling enemies successfully represents real value that can be modeled as a $$ equivalent.

Strategic value, unlike economic value, does not inherently require caravans to reap it, because its value is in it happening, not things being moved. However, often, certain types of helpful actions may only be possible to maintain with caravan-supplied goods or with information.**
TBH, my reading comprehension was lacking the first time through cause there was like 6 longs posts back and forth... so I missed it... sorry...
    I think the only difference in my political capital idea is that it would have some more convoluted calculations going into it.
Like because economic value doesn't directly affect it, if you kept political value high, you could extract free good indefinitely, even if it economically doesn't make sense.  This would correspond to all the irrationality of real life GoblinCookie refers to.  You would basically be manipulating the Mountainhome into the sunk cost fallacy, or similar types of thinking.
    I think a direct Strategic value calculation could also handle this, by distorting values according to personalities or political allegiances back in the Mountainhome.  Like the king has an aggressive personality that refuses to back down, so he overvalues your military outpost.

**Speaking of which, another very important and useful concept here would be the ability to send NON-CARAVAN missions to forts and settlements. If all a fort needs is news/information, diplomatic updates etc., then why would you send a bunch of slow, rickety expensive wagons to them? You would just send a fast diplomat and a couple of guards on horseback with only their own supplies, at maybe 1/8th of the cost and risk of a caravan.

Diplomatic/information-only missions would make all these discussions probably meet much closer to the middle without violating cookie's sense of nationalism, nor economic realities. They would allow the mountainhomes to check in and make sure you haven't "gone rogue" on them, would allow orders and price checks to gauge more efficiently when caravans are needed, and exactly what their composition should be ahead of time (via trade agreements), etc. at much more reasonable and doable costs.
I think this says it really well.  Non trade missions would keep the flow and feel of the game going while maintaining realism.
Logged
Things I have never done in Dwarf Fortress;

- Won.

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #49 on: July 28, 2014, 06:41:23 pm »

Quote
Like because economic value doesn't directly affect it, if you kept political value high, you could extract free good indefinitely, even if it economically doesn't make sense. 
The study of economics is the study of the flow of actual value and utility. There is no such thing as a worthwhile arrangement for two parties that "economically doesn't make sense." 

Doing things like defeating somebody's enemies IS a proper economic service if it holds value to them, and the mountainhomes giving you stuff for your performance can be conceptualized economically just as if it were a protection business charging wages for having swords for hire. Even if that's not the words that the dwarves might use.

Economics covers everything you hold dear, not just money. Even things like satisfying someboy's jealously or murdering a person can very much be economic services, if they affect the exchange of other goods and services.
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

GoblinCookie

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #50 on: July 28, 2014, 07:17:52 pm »

Sure, and if you want to encourage the wellbeing of your people, then don't send them off to some godforsaken island with no resources and no particularly good benefit to the homeland that's too far away to affordably resupply them.

That is why you keep sending caravans *damn the expense* to them if you are going to colonise some godsforsaken island with no resources for whatever apparantly insane reason drove you to do that in the first place, given that it is to no-one's benefit. 

In terms of the "fort backstories" I mentioned in my previous post, basically I think that if your fort is too far away and too poor, etc. to make any sense as profitable or strategic, then it should basically just gray-out some of the options for backstories that wouldn't make sense there. So that you'd only be left with things like "fugitives" or whatnot if you're in a particularly silly location for the other backstories. Because nothing else would make sense -- in a stupid enough location, any sort of symbiotic relationship explanation would become strained and immersion-breaking.

But if you look at the embark location and force an appropriate explanation, the contradictory circumstances would evaporate, because you wouldn't BE citizens anymore, so there wouldn't be any nonsensical situation where your country sent you to your doom and/or their own economic ruin for no reason.

Yes that makes sense.  The most likely explanation for people being on a completely desolate island location is that those people are essentially convicts sent to a gulag.  You were sent there precisely because the place is desolate and remove, all the immigrants sent there are also convicts. 

All this is basically just fluff though, it really does not matter or mean anything.

By "bankrupt" I mean "economically ruined." As in, not able to make ends meet. Not able to take care of your citizens or properly defend the realm or continue to take care of your outposts or blah blah due to lack of resources. I don't mean just "having no coins." Coins and wages have little or nothing to do with it. This is macroeconomics.

If you use up all of your stuff on sending out silly expeditions for no particularly good reason, then you don't have stuff anymore that you need to help your people survive the winter or enemy sieges or other things, and you get overrun.

It actually is not that simple.  Problem is that all the goods the caravan is consuming are the very same goods that those dwarves would consume anyway, so economics are not actually working in the way you are familiar. 

You cannot send out caravans unless you have the supplies.  Essentially all you are doing by sending out caravans is reducing your population, but since population also creates consumption you can basically send out caravans until you either run out of caravan supplies or people. 

If you have no people that are not in caravans, then you do not need those supplies at home.  Therefore no economic ruin actually happens at all even if you use every last person on caravans unless those people all come back home with nothing.  If there are a few farmer dwarves at home though, no famine happens.  My point is that your estimate of the inherant cost of caravans is actually rather lower in the dwarf fortress world than it would be in the real world. 

Your point would be valid if the only expense of a caravan were food and beer, but as I outlined in detail earlier, there are like 30 other ways that a caravan costs you much more than that, most of which have other important applications you could be using them fore, and thus it strains your civilization and makes them more vulnerable. If the civ. isn't getting a return on that investment, then it's being dumb.

The only real expense of caravans once created is food and beer.  Without money a lot of things are a lot, lot cheaper than they would otherwise be. 

You are right there is a limit, but we are only talking about one caravan for a whole civilization.

It would not, as you yourself point out, ever send such expeditions, so the game should simulate that by not letting you embark on expeditions with the backstory of "civilization funded" if it is a location that doesn't make sense for civilization funding.

There is no way they can get the supplies to ever create their own settlement without actually stealing them from existing settlements.  The limited personal possessions of dwarves do not include the basic neccesities of settlement creation; therefore such a settlement is a band of criminals that would essentially found a new civilization even if their 'mother' civilization was not bothered enough to actually hunt them all down. 

Asked and answered.  Tribute to the mountainhome fortress - i.e. shows up in their "trade depot" if you will. Which makes perfect sense, because that's also presumably where all the supplies and dwarves and everything for your caravan is being taken from -- the mountainhome fortress (not the king's pockets). Costs are from and to the same place.

There is no 'mountainhome fortress' on the map.  The concept is really a pure abstraction obviously meaning in a concrete sense 'those individual fortresses' on my trade route. When used by the dwarves themselves it obviously means 'the rest of the nation' and that is about it.  It is an abstraction.

My basic idea at core was to replace the existing 'fake' economic system with one based upon actual settlements producing actual stuff based upon factors and caravans moving around the map taking a certain amount of time to do so and going where there is demand for the goods they have in stock. 

I'm NOT saying they should never get anything ever. See the explicit examples in my previous post -- it's just that you only get a caravan every once in awhile, once you're expected to have built up enough excess goods and needs to make the journey worthwhile.  It's just a caravan every 4-5 years perhaps for a truly remote hole in the ground, instead of every 1.

There is actually only ever 1 caravan per civilization and it is shared by all neglected far-flung outposts.  The reason that it's existance is absolutely essential is that caravans in my idea trade based upon demand. 

The player has to announce his demands for stuff to others, but he can obviously cannot do this until the caravan arrives.  No 'profit-seeking' caravans can arrive precisely because they cannot initially gage what you are demanding however prime your location. 

Because they all share 1 caravan, if there are a lot of far-flung neglecting outposts we indeed could see them arriving only every 5 years or so.  That comes not from any judgementalness on the part of the civilization but rather the limited resources it is willing to devote to 'altruistic' trade and how they have to be divided up among all. 

No, again, if you'll shift your attention to my previous post (which I'm getting the feeling you didn't notice before writing this), there are all kinds of possible "backstories" for a given fort. SOME forts are nearby, heavily supplied, extensions of the mountainhomes basically. Other ones are medium far and might get caravans every year. Some are military and strategic in nature. Some might be religious or backed by guilds. Others might be exploratory "deep space" probes, essentially, high risk high reward gambles.

You have not written that when I begun writing my earlier post.  None of it is relavant sadly, there is a relatively simple idea that would work and it is mine.  The whole political side of things is taken care of by the 1 caravan that automatically visits all the farflung outposts that are not (yet) on anyone elses trade route. 

I'm not suggesting EVERY settlement is a "fire and forget" deep space probe. I'm simply pointing out that such a strategy is logically possible and would be within the repertoire of an expansionist civilization, amongst many other kinds of settlements as well.

By analogy, the Enterprise in Star Trek explore very deep, uncharted space and comes home far less frequently than other ships. It's not like they're entire fleet is made up of those. It's just a specialist mission amongst many.

It is a lose-lose strategy as already discussed.

Even if so, your solution is not a solution to this. If I AM self sufficient, then sending me a caravan with a bunch of crap I don't need or want and which I am just going to ignore does absolutely nothing to make me feel any more indebted to you than if you sent nothing. In fact, as a player who generally ignores caravans, if anything it makes the homeland seem more pathetic and desperate for attention, honestly.

That is actually more of a problem in places that are not far-flung desolate wastelands, they need caravans desperately to survive.  Places with a nice balance of trees, rivers and metals actually can become completely self-sufficant. 

I of course need caravans so I can buy weaponry off them to stop my being killed by the goblins.  I always end up with some combination of lead or tin in my starting area, but also gold, silver or gemstones galore.   :) :)

The caravan only matters to me and only makes me feel grateful if it's actually useful. I.e. if I actually have some resource I really need and want to trade for routinely. But in those situations, it also means there's profit being made usually, so it makes sense anyway.

I cannot see why we cannot add the option of telling the caravan to get lost.  Isn't stealing from them kind of the way it is done at the moment?

Quote
You cannot MAKE a non-sensical settlement somehow make sense just by invoking retroactive logic.  There is an entire generated world, and thus the facts are all there in front of you, not to be swept under the rug. Either a settlement makes sense, or it doesn't, in a location. No amount of armchair rhetoric makes a useless, resource-less, non-strategically-positioned fort somehow have a valid reason behind it that would be satisfying.

If you want a consistent storyline, then the only way to deal with forts like that, as far as I can see, is to force you to choose an optional backstory for them that does NOT include them being official state settlements. But rather things like "religious refugees" or "penal colony" or "Shipwrecked dwarves" or "lost explorers" or whatever. Make the circumstances fit the undeniable uselessness of the location, not the other way around, which is impossible in such a detailed simulation game.

We can randomly generate some fluff that fits the location, but that is basically trivial.  We can also forbid players from creating irrational settlements by using the same mechanics that govern the caravan routes in a slightly modified form.  Too far away, too difficult to get to, no embark possible.  That does fundermentally alters the game and causes problems if all dwarf civilizations have gone extinct. 

All legal settlements *are* official state settlements because no group of individuals can legitimately acquire the neccesery capital to create a new settlement wherever they fancy because private property does not exist except in the most minimal sense in dwarf fortress.  I have already pointed this out already and you outright ignored me once.

Unless the statement was founded illegally my retroactive statement is not in any way nonsensical.  In that case however, it is not exactly clear in what case they were ever part of the main civilization at all in a political sense or why anyone would ever treat them as anything but a hideout for bandits.

What if the game tracked the forts purpose with a hidden or indirectly exposed "Political Capital" variable(s)?  This could quantify the motivations GoblinCookie is talking about into something that can be scaled with the economic drives GavJ is suggesting.
For example:
A fort gains political capital for intercepting armies, resisting invasions, taking on unwanted migrants, establishing your civilization's presence or right to a contended area (expressed by trade/negotiation with other civs, sending patrols off map), settling a previously unexplored area (taming animals, exporting seeds from the area, sending out exploration parties off map), exporting key strategic goods (would vary by civilizations current needs)
A fort loses political capital for giving tribute/negotiating with invaders (not an option now anyway, but should be in the future), taking freebies from the caravan with nothing in return.
A fort can use political capital to influence home civs politics, exert political pressure etc.
If the fort is established with a specific charter, it gets a multiplier on political capital related to it (military outpost gets bonus for stopping invasions).
The player could evaluate their political position by having a noble with high enough social stats talk to travelers and liaisons. ("The Mountainhome is pleased", "The Mountainhome is angry", "The Mountainhome feels your fort is not contributing")

Actually, such a system could be used for relations between other civilizations and your fort, or maybe even between sites during worldgen.  Hmm... not sure how well it would fit with the personality driven model now.
 
Anyway, the whole point of such a system would be to quantify political relationships values that can be compared with economic values.
But yeah, I kinda feel you will need to quantify your ideas more, GoblinCookie, if you want me or GavJ to appreciate them properly. 

Political capital actually already exists, but it is basic in that it is only gained I think by giving stuff away to the caravan.  Most of those ideas, while good are off-topic. 

Just because GavJ insists on fanatically pushing something that on multiple counts I have pointed out is needless and redundant complexity invented to solve a problem that essentially does not exist, does not mean I have to do anything. 
Logged

Scruiser

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #51 on: July 28, 2014, 07:30:15 pm »

  Yeah, this is actually getting into the IRL debate about whether or not people are rational economic actors, and have really weird values/preferences sometimes, or if people are irrational but are pursing reasonable utilities (and a variety of mixed viewpoints).  Like the person that pays an extra $100 bucks for a bottle of wine that isn't actually better or some other luxury good.  Economists/psychologists that favor the rational economic actors would say he is buying the value of showing off, or the feeling of wealth.  Others would say he is just being irrational.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus <-Related wikipedia article arguing it.
  GavJ, you seem to favor the method of assuming rational agents with economic values for everything, and then add adjustments for complex/weird utilities.  I am arguing for irrational agents making decisions without necessarily having a good rational economic basis while still having a rational agent economy underlying things.  GoblinCookie seems to favor modeling irrational agents, with no rational economy underpinning their interactions.

Quote
Like because economic value doesn't directly affect it, if you kept political value high, you could extract free good indefinitely, even if it economically doesn't make sense. 
The study of economics is the study of the flow of actual value and utility. There is no such thing as a worthwhile arrangement for two parties that "economically doesn't make sense." 

Doing things like defeating somebody's enemies IS a proper economic service if it holds value to them, and the mountainhomes giving you stuff for your performance can be conceptualized economically just as if it were a protection business charging wages for having swords for hire. Even if that's not the words that the dwarves might use.

Economics covers everything you hold dear, not just money. Even things like satisfying someboy's jealously or murdering a person can very much be economic services, if they affect the exchange of other goods and services.
It should be this way.  It even is this way in straight forward cases.  It would be this way if people behaved rationally (even if they had weird/inconsistent values).  In the real world, even knowing these theories, politicians and policy makers, much less everyday people don't behave this way.  Even business people fail at this sometimes (but the free market eliminates those business that fail at this).  In middle ages/ancient world, I don't think any cultures even had a theory of utilitarianism, much less had policy makers and rulers make decisions by it.

Edit:  Was ninja by GoblinCookies post, edited you's to refer to GavJ, to make it clear who I was addressing.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2014, 07:58:58 pm by Scruiser »
Logged
Things I have never done in Dwarf Fortress;

- Won.

Scruiser

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #52 on: July 28, 2014, 07:57:15 pm »

Double post cause first post was mostly aimed at GavJ and was ninjaed by GoblinCookie.

GoblinCookie, I disagree with GavJ's pure rational agent economic model of everything (sorry for one sentence summary), but I still think economic modeling is a good way to go in general.  The way you describe it, your civ is entirely irrational to the point of unrealistic it seems...

Sure, and if you want to encourage the wellbeing of your people, then don't send them off to some godforsaken island with no resources and no particularly good benefit to the homeland that's too far away to affordably resupply them.

That is why you keep sending caravans *damn the expense* to them if you are going to colonise some godsforsaken island with no resources for whatever apparantly insane reason drove you to do that in the first place, given that it is to no-one's benefit. 
I just don't see this as realistic behavior.  Rulers make irrational choices, but they are not that irrational.

In terms of the "fort backstories" I mentioned in my previous post, basically I think that if your fort is too far away and too poor, etc. to make any sense as profitable or strategic, then it should basically just gray-out some of the options for backstories that wouldn't make sense there. So that you'd only be left with things like "fugitives" or whatnot if you're in a particularly silly location for the other backstories. Because nothing else would make sense -- in a stupid enough location, any sort of symbiotic relationship explanation would become strained and immersion-breaking.

But if you look at the embark location and force an appropriate explanation, the contradictory circumstances would evaporate, because you wouldn't BE citizens anymore, so there wouldn't be any nonsensical situation where your country sent you to your doom and/or their own economic ruin for no reason.

Yes that makes sense.  The most likely explanation for people being on a completely desolate island location is that those people are essentially convicts sent to a gulag.  You were sent there precisely because the place is desolate and remove, all the immigrants sent there are also convicts. 

All this is basically just fluff though, it really does not matter or mean anything.
And you miss mine and GavJ's points about ways of modeling this.  It doesn't have to be just "fluff".  You could represent it with a linear economic "strategic value" or you could represent it with "Political capital" but I see no reason to leave it as backstory fluff.

By "bankrupt" I mean "economically ruined." As in, not able to make ends meet. Not able to take care of your citizens or properly defend the realm or continue to take care of your outposts or blah blah due to lack of resources. I don't mean just "having no coins." Coins and wages have little or nothing to do with it. This is macroeconomics.

If you use up all of your stuff on sending out silly expeditions for no particularly good reason, then you don't have stuff anymore that you need to help your people survive the winter or enemy sieges or other things, and you get overrun.

It actually is not that simple.  Problem is that all the goods the caravan is consuming are the very same goods that those dwarves would consume anyway, so economics are not actually working in the way you are familiar. 
Even if the economic incentives are skewed, you could still represent with "strategic value".  If the Mountainhomes is outright behaving irrationally, you should still model that somehow and not just leave it as an absolutely certain event.

I'm NOT saying they should never get anything ever. See the explicit examples in my previous post -- it's just that you only get a caravan every once in awhile, once you're expected to have built up enough excess goods and needs to make the journey worthwhile.  It's just a caravan every 4-5 years perhaps for a truly remote hole in the ground, instead of every 1.

There is actually only ever 1 caravan per civilization and it is shared by all neglected far-flung outposts.  The reason that it's existance is absolutely essential is that caravans in my idea trade based upon demand. 

The player has to announce his demands for stuff to others, but he can obviously cannot do this until the caravan arrives.  No 'profit-seeking' caravans can arrive precisely because they cannot initially gage what you are demanding however prime your location. 

Because they all share 1 caravan, if there are a lot of far-flung neglecting outposts we indeed could see them arriving only every 5 years or so.  That comes not from any judgementalness on the part of the civilization but rather the limited resources it is willing to devote to 'altruistic' trade and how they have to be divided up among all.
??? It makes no sense for a civilization to have a single caravan running around everywhere, either from a realism or a gameplay point of view.  Are you using this as an exaggerated example? if so, it is not clear.

No, again, if you'll shift your attention to my previous post (which I'm getting the feeling you didn't notice before writing this), there are all kinds of possible "backstories" for a given fort. SOME forts are nearby, heavily supplied, extensions of the mountainhomes basically. Other ones are medium far and might get caravans every year. Some are military and strategic in nature. Some might be religious or backed by guilds. Others might be exploratory "deep space" probes, essentially, high risk high reward gambles.

You have not written that when I begun writing my earlier post.  None of it is relavant sadly, there is a relatively simple idea that would work and it is mine.  The whole political side of things is taken care of by the 1 caravan that automatically visits all the farflung outposts that are not (yet) on anyone elses trade route. 
You are kind of ignoring a lot of good, detailed examples and cases, many of which covered the issues you are raising.

Even if so, your solution is not a solution to this. If I AM self sufficient, then sending me a caravan with a bunch of crap I don't need or want and which I am just going to ignore does absolutely nothing to make me feel any more indebted to you than if you sent nothing. In fact, as a player who generally ignores caravans, if anything it makes the homeland seem more pathetic and desperate for attention, honestly.

That is actually more of a problem in places that are not far-flung desolate wastelands, they need caravans desperately to survive.  Places with a nice balance of trees, rivers and metals actually can become completely self-sufficant. 
If it is plausible IRL for a community that is self sufficient to not care about trade then it should be plausible in game, that simple. 

What if the game tracked the forts purpose with a hidden or indirectly exposed "Political Capital" variable(s)?  This could quantify the motivations GoblinCookie is talking about into something that can be scaled with the economic drives GavJ is suggesting.
For example:
A fort gains political capital for intercepting armies, resisting invasions, taking on unwanted migrants, establishing your civilization's presence or right to a contended area (expressed by trade/negotiation with other civs, sending patrols off map), settling a previously unexplored area (taming animals, exporting seeds from the area, sending out exploration parties off map), exporting key strategic goods (would vary by civilizations current needs)
A fort loses political capital for giving tribute/negotiating with invaders (not an option now anyway, but should be in the future), taking freebies from the caravan with nothing in return.
A fort can use political capital to influence home civs politics, exert political pressure etc.
If the fort is established with a specific charter, it gets a multiplier on political capital related to it (military outpost gets bonus for stopping invasions).
The player could evaluate their political position by having a noble with high enough social stats talk to travelers and liaisons. ("The Mountainhome is pleased", "The Mountainhome is angry", "The Mountainhome feels your fort is not contributing")

Actually, such a system could be used for relations between other civilizations and your fort, or maybe even between sites during worldgen.  Hmm... not sure how well it would fit with the personality driven model now.
 
Anyway, the whole point of such a system would be to quantify political relationships values that can be compared with economic values.
But yeah, I kinda feel you will need to quantify your ideas more, GoblinCookie, if you want me or GavJ to appreciate them properly. 

Political capital actually already exists, but it is basic in that it is only gained I think by giving stuff away to the caravan.  Most of those ideas, while good are off-topic. 

Just because GavJ insists on fanatically pushing something that on multiple counts I have pointed out is needless and redundant complexity invented to solve a problem that essentially does not exist, does not mean I have to do anything. 

An economic model provides a implementable generalized way to get variable, creative, logical, and playable procedurally generated results.  A lot of your suggestions are easy to implement and playable, but make no sense from a realism/logical perspective (1 caravan going everywhere?), or they are realistic but you don't explain how to implement it.
Logged
Things I have never done in Dwarf Fortress;

- Won.

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #53 on: July 28, 2014, 08:50:49 pm »

Quote
In middle ages/ancient world, I don't think any cultures even had a theory of utilitarianism, much less had policy makers and rulers make decisions by it.
Utilitarianism doesn't require philosophy, it's a natural condition of anybody who actually gives a crap about their country to do things that are overall good for it and avoid things that will ruin it. Just common sense.

Sure, I'm with you that sometimes people don't use common sense. But that shouldn't be the rule -- we'd be extinct if it was the rule. I'm all for simulating irrationality for flavor, but do it by simulating the hyper-rational choice, and then modifying it with a dice roll if you want. it's cleaner, easier to code, and more mod-friendly than coding irrationality at the core.

Quote
All this [backstories] is basically just fluff though, it really does not matter or mean anything.
It's not fluff - it dictates a set of very important and consistent algorithms for gameplay that goes with that story consistently.

If you're at the gulag, for instance, you ain't gettin' any care packages (no caravans, or if there are any they only carry necessary tools for your labor sentence and stuff). The game might also mandate certain activities for you to accomplish as your hard labor, and the diplomat will stop by to check. If you're falling behind, they might decide you are now a leper colony instead of a gulag regarding your next shipment of prisoners... or something.

Blah blah etc. etc.  Any backstory = a whole suite of gameplay conditions that match up with it. Different types and requirements for caravans, different diplomatic demands and options, different responses from the mountainhomes or your merchant employers for insubordinance, different numbers of embark points, different ongoing charity or tribute demanded.

Quote
It actually is not that simple.  Problem is that all the goods the caravan is consuming are the very same goods that those dwarves would consume anyway, so economics are not actually working in the way you are familiar.
So dwarves, if they were at home, would be twiddling their thumbs not producing or defending anything (a very distinct cost - one of the larger ones)?
And they would be using up ammunition defending against highwaymen at home?
And they would be hiring boats and guides and paying ferrymen at home?
And they would be hoarding multiple wagonfulls of your stuff and stopping you from using it for months, if they were at home (clothes in the caravan = not available to be worn, etc.)?
And they would be spending bribes for local hill tribes to let them pass, at home?
And they would be out in the open, undefended, exposed to dragons and husks and goblins and everything else, at home (cost of life per day = much higher)?

Quote
There is no 'mountainhome fortress' on the map.
Um yes there is. You can look up exactly where it is in legends. It's the capital founded city at year 1 for that civ. I don't remember whether it can move or not later on.
This might explain a lot of the confusion in the discussion so far, since several suggestions are based on the location of your civ's mountainhome.

Quote
The player has to announce his demands for stuff to others, but he can obviously cannot do this until the caravan arrives.
Please read prior posts, don't just click through when it says "something has posted in the meantime."

This is not obvious, since there is no reason to bring a wagon with you to ask people questions about stuff.

I had like several paragraphs about how we can resolve most of the arguments in the thread by simply having diplomat-only, MUCH cheaper missions, with a diplomat and a gaurd on horseback with no wagons.  Costs vastly less (thus being more economically realistic) and takes care of all of your nationalistic diplomatic desires and information and news and taking caravan orders, etc. So it should make both of us happy.

(from scruiser:)
Quote
??? It makes no sense for a civilization to have a single caravan running around everywhere, either from a realism or a gameplay point of view.
Agreed. In fact, not only would you not have one caravan for everywhere, but you would likely even have several caravans for each place. Cookie, if you've never played adventure mode before, I suggest you go do so for an hour or two. It will give you valuable perspective on just how likely a caravan would be to die during a trip across a continent even to just one fort.

Also consider how often caravans die in your fort. Now multiply that by every fort in the civ.

Such a caravan (one going around everywhere by itself) would have about a 99.99% mortality rate every trip. Amongst other issues.

Quote
That is actually more of a problem in places that are not far-flung desolate wastelands, they need caravans desperately to survive.
Do you play Dwarf Fortress? Nowhere, far-flung or not, "desperately needs" caravans in this game. In fact, it is not even all that difficult to bring a single pick and anvil with you, nothing else, and zero skills in an evil glacier and still make a prosperous fort without ever talking to a caravan (collapse some ice into water, go to caverns. Profit).

I sympathize with your claim that the mountainhomes would want to keep tabs and keep in touch with their settlements. But again, that can be accomplished with lone diplomat + guard on horseback, for a fraction of the time and cost of a caravan, thus making it more realistic if/when a caravan is not being profitable or strategic.

It would also actually be much safer too! Horses can outrun almost anything. Those diplomats would not very often be dying when visiting your fort next to ambushers or on the road.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2014, 09:01:24 pm by GavJ »
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Scruiser

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #54 on: July 28, 2014, 09:13:47 pm »

Alright I've said my argumentative points, so I think I will just focus on ideas of developing algorithms and models.

Anyway, I think in the short term, it would make sense for Toady to work on the non trade/caravan visits (as described by GavJ), basic back story behind the embark, and basic economic modeling.  I think together, these three elements will lay the groundwork for more challenging trading, as OP desired.  (lol OP just made one post and then nothing)
Summary: To summarize discussion so far and suggest a few new related points
Non trade/caravan visits
    -sending key worker/migrants according to backstory or player demands
    -always send at least a diplomatic representative if possible
    -messengers with world news
    -tax collection if Mountainhome decides you owe them
    -nobles looking to play some political angle
    -travelers in general (i.e. tavern arc, we could discuss the integration of this into our suggestions)
Basic economic modeling
    -dynamic pricing as discussed previously
    -world economic issues leads to requests for production of certain things (also discussed in a few posts)
Backstory (compiling some ideas already bounced around into one place)
    -Military Outpost
    -Fugitives/penal colony/political dissidents (voluntary and involuntary)
    -Expansionist settlement just because (kind of the default option maybe?)
    -Explorers in new region
    -Resource production of key local resource
    -Occupy contested area

Like I said, I think I've said my arguments, so if we could move forward talking about ways of doing each of these points (or other points related to achieving more challenging trading) that would be good.
Logged
Things I have never done in Dwarf Fortress;

- Won.

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #55 on: July 28, 2014, 09:31:39 pm »

Okay algorithms

Non-trade visits should probably just be essentially a separate entity from caravans, although usually arrive at the same time if both are coming that year. Can include (adding to /modifying to your list, Scruiser):

-A Diplomat/liaison
-A Guard
-Any special persons (for ministories, political intrigues, mad alchemists, pesky nobles, specially requested individuals, whatever.)
-News of the world
-Diplomat collects small amounts of taxes if your fort has them (based on your settings, backstory, etc.). May demand a limited amount of money reasonable for the amount a horse can carry (assuming the value density of gold/silver/gems). If you owe so many taxes that they can't fit on two horses, then they will probably just be sending a caravan anyway.
-Any new titles for your fort (barony, etc.) declared by diplomat.
-Kings arrive with this if you get that far.
-Orders or mandates from the mountainhomes arrive with the diplomat.
-The diplomat also does any checking up on you at this point. Seeing if you are following previous mandates, making sure you haven't been undermining them, etc.
-This is when you make your trade agreements. Which are a little more hardcore than the current ones. The layout can be the same as now, but numbers are more exact, you can specify larger amounts of single things, and it is effectively binding (in most cases, maybe not for all backstories/situations). Depending on the backstory, you may begin your trade agreement with a mandatory amount of value to promise at minimum. Or you may begin with a certain amount of free credit.
-Trade agreements sometimes might have various hard restrictions - absolute needed or offered things, perhaps lockouts of trading other things, etc. based on backstory/circumstances.
-The diplomat then lets you know, based on your promised trade agreements, whether he can justify a caravan profitably/strategically for you, and if so, how long it will be. if you already had an agreement and are waiting, you can have an option to re-negotiate, if your fortunes have changed since the last time (to avoid penalties for underperforming, or to promise more if you're doing better).
-For some backstories, it might not be a "diplomat" but rather something like a "guild representative" or whatever is appropriate.
-Finally, the diplomat might bring CRUCIAL, very small items to you to trade or help you in your mission. Things like troop movement information, very high value condensed goods for trade if appropriate (a mini mini mini caravan), such as adamantine wafers or a few masterwork weapons or things.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2014, 09:35:12 pm by GavJ »
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #56 on: July 28, 2014, 10:25:02 pm »

Backstories, examples plus example things they would change: (also expanding on scruiser's list)

You are a military outpost
- Possibly more than 7 starting dwarves.
- You get partially or fully subsidized caravans with weapons and armor and ammo and some amount of "store credit" -- might depend on how well you're actually doing.
- You might get well trained troops migrants and/or cheaper military skills at embark.
- You get very early sieges compared to normal games, and more sieges and more violent sieges than normal.
- The sieges might have some more interesting flavor to them, like a certain kind of randomly chosen threat, like lots of flying attackers or something for a given fort. And they may all come from one side of a map, to allow you to make a fun Hadrian's wall, or whatnot.
- You have a specific mission, which might change over time. For example, you might be expected to actually kill invaders as part of your mission, not hide until they go away. If you hide, the diplomat will start to punish you and maybe even try to replace you, and (some proportion of) your loyalist soldiers might turn on you if the diplomat orders it so.
- Another example mission might stipulate that you don't need to kill invading sieges, but you ARE expected to harry and sabotage any passing supply lines (enemy, often escorted, wagons that you have to destroy before they get across map)
- You might be included in the loop with mountainhome military intelligence, with more info than normal about enemies.

Fugitives (not allowed to leave, ran away/escaped from something)
- You may get early ambush(es)/siege(s) from your home civilization early on
- Variable number of starting dwarves
- You don't get any normal caravans.
- You don't get any migrants.
- You don't get any normal diplomat visits. They might still visit, but only to talk terms and demand large fines and difficult or compromising future relationships in exchange for pardoning your crimes. But they won't tell you news at the same time or anything like that.
- You get very few embark points.

Exiled dwarves (allowed to leave, but get no help)
- Variable number of starting dwarves.
- You just don't get any home civilization contact at all. No migrants, no diplomat, no caravan, nothing. But also no harassment or hunting you down.
- You get very few embark points. 

"Standard," respectable, civilian, expansionist settlement
- 7 dwarves.
- Diplomats bring normal news, etc. and make normal trade agreements with no special strings. No special missions.
- Caravans are purely profit-minded, and don't make any especial demands for tribute nor free gifts or quotas or anything weird. They will be sent to you when the trade agreement adds up to a worthwhile trip between your + the mountainhome's needs.
- Migrants are normal, vanilla, expected migrants.

Specific resource economic colony
- You have a specific mission to gather a whole bunch of X resource and have it ready to ship back to the mountainhome, which is in desperate need of X. The game would of course make sure that whatever your embark is actually makes sense as having X.
- You are expected to sell X at significantly below going world market rates (otherwise they could just buy from others, that's the whole point of the colony), and you have quotas. Other than that, though, trade operates along standard, profitable algorithms.
- They still might not send you a caravan every year, if you don't have enough to justify one, even if you have some small amount of X.  HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that they overlook your quotas. If you aren't gathering enough X (and other things) to make caravans worthwhile, then that is merely a symptom of you failing at your mission, and you may suffer consequences soon or attempted replacement. if you're doing your job right, you should be getting enough X to fuel regular caravans.
- There may be flavorful hazards associated with X. Such as it may only be available in veins in the middle of the magma sea. Or it might be plants that can only be gathered not farmed, and elephants just LOVE to munch on... etc.

Merchant guild venture - you are a business venture send out privately
- Diplomat (guild rep) sets quotas for profits only. No specific resources matter, but you must export much more wealth than you import, and you must do so in sufficient volumes to make the caravan trips worthwhile too.
- No normal migrants. Instead you might get employees if you've shown good profit margins so far. Which would be skilled workers in whatever industry you've been turning profits in, perhaps. But fewer in number than normal for DF.
- Similar to the specific resource backstory, caravans are not guaranteed if you can't make promises to justify them, but IF you can't, you're failing and are in imminent danger of consequences. In this case, consequences might be things like your employees abandoning you and going back home (you can get them to stay on your side perhaps by making them super happy and by having them make friends with the original 7 and descendants). Or possibly even private armed thug "caravans" sent to clean you out. Either way, you might then get cut off with no further contact or aid or people.
- If you do really well you might get guild offices and "nobles" and things coming in with their own demands and so forth and "supervision" for Fun. You don't get normal nobles or monarchs.
- Your own civ might occasionally become hostile to you, if some intrigue between them and the guild has them at each other's throats at the moment.
- Possibly higher than normal embark points
- May also include mandates brought to you occasionally by the guild rep for filling specific resource quotas now and then to fill special orders.

Deep wilderness exploration You are being sent on a wing and a prayer to the far flung reaches of the world, without expectation of significant resupply, for the high risk, high reward glory of your civilization, and to answer life's mysteries.
- Has to be an embark far away from the mountainhome, and posisbly far away from any settlements.
- No caravans.
- Very few migrants. Maybe 1 or 2 here and there with the diplomat as special entourage. Some might be alchemist types with their own science mandates and agendas.
- However, possibly a few more than 7 original dwarves.
- Diplomat might visit once every 3-4 years or something. Perhaps they bring a couple extra men and in the mini-trade option (stuff the diplomat and guard(s) can carry on their horses), they might make demands (you start initially with one) for samples of exotic local flora and fauna for their next visit (i.e. skins and stuff, not live animals), exotic single rock or wood samples, marine animal extracts, etc. And they get pissy if you don't deliver. And they might bring very small volume essentials.
- You might have exploration missions like charting the caverns, magmanauts, seeing what this whole HFS thing is about, determining rock strata, or if game features allow, an option to send out sub-forts from your population to also explore nearby areas.
- You might have requirements for learning about taming exotic local animals for your civilization's knowledge bank
- Perhaps a higher bonus likelihood of early Titan and FB attacks and special normal creatures, night creatures, etc.

Subservient colony expected to generate wealth for your homeland above all else (like British empire)
-Blend of standard mountainhome + mercantile guild

Gulag
- Original dwarves are jailmasters.
- Diplomat comes with a larger entourage, and delivers a sizeable number of prisoners every year. May also occasionally provide an extra guard or two.
- Prisoners act like semi-tame animals that freak out routinely (really, they just have a bunch of baseline negative thoughts, is all, so they're easy to tip over the edge). Can be led and chained and caged like pets. But they will seek out their own food and water like dwarves. They may have one or two specific labors available, depending on the Gulag's mission (you might be tasked with certain hard labor being done). If left uncontained unled unchained in the presence of guards, they have a chance of attacking.
- Diplomat gets pissed off if too many prisoners die and may bring consequences. Such as sending you some some diseased prisoners instead, so you have epidemics to worry about. Or more violent ones. Or taking (less than loyal) guards back with him leaving you shorthanded, or in extreme cases, bringing troops to try and replace you.
- Caravan is a standard, default, profit-oriented caravan. Although it may have quota demands for certain specific hard labor products.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2014, 10:29:50 pm by GavJ »
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Scruiser

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #57 on: July 29, 2014, 02:25:23 am »

More expansion on our list
Occupy Contested Area
 - Send out regular patrols
 - Avoid starting conflicts with elves or human, while maintaining a strong political position (in negotiations with other civilizations)
 - Not as heavily subsidized as a pure military fort
 - If war breaks out, Mountainhome sends a messenger and mission shifts to military outpost

I am thinking for the embark screen there is the option to filter locations by back-story type (would filter to show what areas are acceptable for what types of missions or back-stories), or to select an area and then review what missions/back-stories are acceptable.

Logged
Things I have never done in Dwarf Fortress;

- Won.

GoblinCookie

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #58 on: July 29, 2014, 08:47:23 am »

Double post cause first post was mostly aimed at GavJ and was ninjaed by GoblinCookie.

GoblinCookie, I disagree with GavJ's pure rational agent economic model of everything (sorry for one sentence summary), but I still think economic modeling is a good way to go in general.  The way you describe it, your civ is entirely irrational to the point of unrealistic it seems...

All rational economic decisions are ultimately based upon irrational intrinsic value.  In the final analysis 'reason' fails because everything reduces in the end to arbitery values with no rational foundation except in politics/ideology.  This in my book means that economics is simply applied politics, all economic theories are actually political doctrines in disguise.

To the civilization the outposts are not merely an 'investment'.  They are like your children, you do not consider them as a means to your own end, you consider them ends in themselves.  Since this clashes however with other ends we get a compromise, we will send a certain number of caravans to a far-flung outpost but there is a limit to how much they are willing to send. 

I just don't see this as realistic behavior.  Rulers make irrational choices, but they are not that irrational.

You the player have modelled irrational behavior on the part of the civilization.  Irrational behavior is right at the bottom of the economic pile as already explained.

The far-flung outpost is an instrinsic good, it is essentially an expenditure that they justify because holding that outpost is valuable in itself to them.  Perhaps expansion is an end in itself?  Perhaps the island is sacred to them in some way and needs to be kept of the hands of others that will defile it?

And you miss mine and GavJ's points about ways of modeling this.  It doesn't have to be just "fluff".  You could represent it with a linear economic "strategic value" or you could represent it with "Political capital" but I see no reason to leave it as backstory fluff.

Within the context of the scope of this thread it is just fluff.  Outside of the scope of this thread all sorts of things are possible with the idea, as GavJ latest derailment posts have demonstrated. 

Even if the economic incentives are skewed, you could still represent with "strategic value".  If the Mountainhomes is outright behaving irrationally, you should still model that somehow and not just leave it as an absolutely certain event.

The problem is that all settlements have to have greater than 0 strategic value or else they would never have been created.  Since sending caravans is a requirement to keep the settlements in the fold, unless something reduces the strategic value below 0 they will always send caravans end if it is at a loss. 

I'm NOT saying they should never get anything ever. See the explicit examples in my previous post -- it's just that you only get a caravan every once in awhile, once you're expected to have built up enough excess goods and needs to make the journey worthwhile.  It's just a caravan every 4-5 years perhaps for a truly remote hole in the ground, instead of every 1.

In my experiance unless you can buy weaponry in the first year you will not live to become an economic power in the first place.  Self-sufficiancy is only possible if you have wood and metals easily available in your starting location, which is a very big if. 

It is quite possible though that you will end up getting a caravan every 4 years, much of it depends upon how much the 'royal caravan' has to service other outposts and just how far you are away from the royal residence. 

??? It makes no sense for a civilization to have a single caravan running around everywhere, either from a realism or a gameplay point of view.  Are you using this as an exaggerated example? if so, it is not clear.

The caravan represents the total cost the civilization is willing to spend on the instrinsic value of their outposts.  There is only one caravan because there is a limitation of how much they are willing to spend.  This represents quite nicely the existance of political intrinsic values but also the limitation of how much they are willing to spend on them. 

No, again, if you'll shift your attention to my previous post (which I'm getting the feeling you didn't notice before writing this), there are all kinds of possible "backstories" for a given fort. SOME forts are nearby, heavily supplied, extensions of the mountainhomes basically. Other ones are medium far and might get caravans every year. Some are military and strategic in nature. Some might be religious or backed by guilds. Others might be exploratory "deep space" probes, essentially, high risk high reward gambles.

All of them have initially greater 'strategic value' than 0.  That means political intervention will ensure they get service regardless of normal economic factors.  So within the context of the thread it is fluff; why the outpost is valuable is not important, since if it had no value it would have never been created.

Outside of the context of the thread, it is a very cool idea and would add much to the game. 

You are kind of ignoring a lot of good, detailed examples and cases, many of which covered the issues you are raising.

I suppose I am.  They were largely redundant within the scope of this thread.  The problems they were supposed to solve have already been solved in a far simpler manner.

If it is plausible IRL for a community that is self sufficient to not care about trade then it should be plausible in game, that simple.

The possibility of complete self-sufficiancy is kind of threatening to the 'mountainhomes' however.  They do not want you to end up completely self-sufficiant, because what reason would you then have not to become completely independant of them? 

They would of course continually pester you with different types of goods until they find something they can make you dependant upon. 

An economic model provides a implementable generalized way to get variable, creative, logical, and playable procedurally generated results.  A lot of your suggestions are easy to implement and playable, but make no sense from a realism/logical perspective (1 caravan going everywhere?), or they are realistic but you don't explain how to implement it.

The 1 caravan I was refferring is the caravan that is 'belongs' to the monarch of your civilization.  As I have already pointed out, caravans are limited to the number of nobles in a settlement.  The king however has a special caravan that acts according to a more political logic than other caravans do. 

The realism comes from the sense of civilization wide responsibility that the monarch alone has.  The monarch seeks to look after all the far-flung outposts solely because they are part of the civilization and keep them in the fold.  But that is not all that the caravan does.

It automaticly goes to all settlements of that civilization that are NOT in any other (dwarven) trade routes.  It also routes through if possible other settlements, trading with all of them along the way.  This means that it is not even necceserily making a loss overall, more subsidising the journey towards the final destination with profits made along the way. 

In all other respects the caravan is just like any other.  If nowhere out there is not getting any caravans normally, it is will trade completely according to completely normal basis. 

Utilitarianism doesn't require philosophy, it's a natural condition of anybody who actually gives a crap about their country to do things that are overall good for it and avoid things that will ruin it. Just common sense.

Sure, I'm with you that sometimes people don't use common sense. But that shouldn't be the rule -- we'd be extinct if it was the rule. I'm all for simulating irrationality for flavor, but do it by simulating the hyper-rational choice, and then modifying it with a dice roll if you want. it's cleaner, easier to code, and more mod-friendly than coding irrationality at the core.

Rationality is a tricky thing.  The problem is that what is the value of say the Falklands Island inherantly.  Who decides?  Both Argentina and Britain value them enough to spend millions on a war, but they are of little value in the sense of resources that the centre gets from them.  Madness you think, but what is the value of anything?  If you consider you outposts inherantly valuable, you are willing to expend a certain amount even if they produce little value to you. 

Your basic 'rational' ideology is actually hugely destructive in practice.  Because outlying areas are considered only extrinsicly valuable by the centre, they are ruthlessly exploited by said centre creating a situation by which their development is cannibalised in order to further develop the centre.  Essentially the ultimate end of your reason are such things as the American War of Independance and arguably the Third World in general. 


It's not fluff - it dictates a set of very important and consistent algorithms for gameplay that goes with that story consistently.

If you're at the gulag, for instance, you ain't gettin' any care packages (no caravans, or if there are any they only carry necessary tools for your labor sentence and stuff). The game might also mandate certain activities for you to accomplish as your hard labor, and the diplomat will stop by to check. If you're falling behind, they might decide you are now a leper colony instead of a gulag regarding your next shipment of prisoners... or something.

Blah blah etc. etc.  Any backstory = a whole suite of gameplay conditions that match up with it. Different types and requirements for caravans, different diplomatic demands and options, different responses from the mountainhomes or your merchant employers for insubordinance, different numbers of embark points, different ongoing charity or tribute demanded.

Yes but all of it is beyond the scope of this thread.  The caravan will arrive, because otherwise your settlement will simply drift into either isolation or extinction, whether it was originally meant as a prison camp or not. 

Yes there may be special conditions or demands, but all that belongs in a seperate thread. 

So dwarves, if they were at home, would be twiddling their thumbs not producing or defending anything (a very distinct cost - one of the larger ones)?
And they would be using up ammunition defending against highwaymen at home?
And they would be hiring boats and guides and paying ferrymen at home?
And they would be hoarding multiple wagonfulls of your stuff and stopping you from using it for months, if they were at home (clothes in the caravan = not available to be worn, etc.)?
And they would be spending bribes for local hill tribes to let them pass, at home?
And they would be out in the open, undefended, exposed to dragons and husks and goblins and everything else, at home (cost of life per day = much higher)?

The costs are not great because it is likely possible to engage in plenty of trade en-route to our destination.  I was never working on the assumption that everything our caravan did was travelling to far-flung outposts.  You are subtracting from your profits, not making an overall loss.  And in the end not even so, in the long run you may end up making a profit from the outpost too.   

Um yes there is. You can look up exactly where it is in legends. It's the capital founded city at year 1 for that civ. I don't remember whether it can move or not later on.
This might explain a lot of the confusion in the discussion so far, since several suggestions are based on the location of your civ's mountainhome.

By that definition my 'mountainhome' was Oiledcat and that was destroyed centuries ago by a monster.  You also continue to get caravans from the mountainhome if the rest of your civilization is completely extinct.  So no, the mountainhome the caravan refers to is clearly *not* a physical location. 

Please read prior posts, don't just click through when it says "something has posted in the meantime."

This is not obvious, since there is no reason to bring a wagon with you to ask people questions about stuff.

I had like several paragraphs about how we can resolve most of the arguments in the thread by simply having diplomat-only, MUCH cheaper missions, with a diplomat and a gaurd on horseback with no wagons.  Costs vastly less (thus being more economically realistic) and takes care of all of your nationalistic diplomatic desires and information and news and taking caravan orders, etc. So it should make both of us happy.

As already explained, they are not merely trying to keep contact they are also trying to make you in some sense dependant upon them.  Because they are trying to tie you to use them economic dependancy.  A diplomat who offers you nothing is not going to motivate anyone not to do a US declaration of independance.

The goods you will have will be the goods that the caravan has on it.  That generally means you will be buying whatever goods that were bought by the caravan enroute and those from the monarch's residence where the caravan is based.  The game engine autonomously decides what will be for sale based upon the route it is following, not any pre-made script based upon how valuable you are. 

You inform them (as at present) what you want to get in the future and the game will inform all the caravans in the game what your demands are.  Once another dwarf caravan arrives, you no longer get any special treatment, the royal caravan will only visit you if it makes economic sense to do so. 

Do you play Dwarf Fortress? Nowhere, far-flung or not, "desperately needs" caravans in this game. In fact, it is not even all that difficult to bring a single pick and anvil with you, nothing else, and zero skills in an evil glacier and still make a prosperous fort without ever talking to a caravan (collapse some ice into water, go to caverns. Profit).

I sympathize with your claim that the mountainhomes would want to keep tabs and keep in touch with their settlements. But again, that can be accomplished with lone diplomat + guard on horseback, for a fraction of the time and cost of a caravan, thus making it more realistic if/when a caravan is not being profitable or strategic.

It would also actually be much safer too! Horses can outrun almost anything. Those diplomats would not very often be dying when visiting your fort next to ambushers or on the road.

I do play Dwarf Fortress and from my experiance unless an embark site has both wood and weapon-grade metal (or perhaps weapons-grade metal and coal) self-sufficiancy at the most basic level is not possible for any length of time.

I lost my first fortess because I could not understand how the trade system worked, thus could not acquire any weapons, I could not find any weapons-grade metal (tin was all I could find) and then the goblins killed me. 
Logged

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: more challenging trading
« Reply #59 on: July 29, 2014, 12:35:50 pm »

Quote
All rational economic decisions are ultimately based upon irrational intrinsic value.  In the final analysis 'reason' fails because everything reduces in the end to arbitery values with no rational foundation except in politics/ideology.
No, it's quite objective to have an economic demand for food, for instance. Food allows your body to survive, and thus produce offspring. Therefore, people who don't value food disappear rather quickly because they starve to death and don't stick around to teach others. Those who do value food spread across the earth. This has nothing to do with politics or ideology, and it is not arbitrary (at least no more than the physics it is based on is arbitrary). It is rational.

Quote
The problem is that all settlements have to have greater than 0 strategic value or else they would never have been created.
You continue to simply not read whole sets of posts, which makes it inefficient to respond to you. Many counterexamples were give to this. As just one example, fugitive criminals do not have any strategic value to the mountainhomes, yet I think we can all agree that fugitives exist, yes? Therefore, your quote here is disproven: settlements (of fugitives) do not need to have greater than 0 strategic value to the civilization to make sense. In fact, they can even have negative strategic value.

Quote
Self-sufficiancy is only possible if you have wood and metals easily available in your starting location, which is a very big if.
Every single map in the game has wood available on it. The fact you're saying this leads me to believe you have not been playing the game very long, and may be overestimating the importance or need for caravans out of inexperience. An assumption that explains most of your (IMO incorrect and unrealistic) comments about how settlements "will collapse or drift into isolation imminently without caravans." No, they won't. Self-sufficiency is quite possible and actually fairly easy once you know what you're doing, even on an empty glacier with no plants and virtually no supplies, and deadly cold frostbite temperatures.

1 pick, 1 anvil, glacier:
1) Collapse pillars of ice underground, they become water. You now have drinks to not die of thirst.
2) This buys you enough time to dig to the caverns without too much pressure.
3) You can now solve the second need, hunger, by using herbalism to gather underground plants which can be eaten directly, like plump helmets. OR more easily, by just butchering your pack animals. But you need to gather plants eventually anyway, so...
4) After eating them, you have seeds and can begin farming. For additional water, use more glacier ice or find a cavern lake, until you can start distilling enough plants, at which point you can survive indefinitely.
5) Wall off the area, use trees underground to make your beds (you can also use wagon wood to make earlier beds), and proceed as normal to an arbitrarily powerful fort. Using either the magma sea or underground tree farms to fuel forges and glassworks and things.

Having no metal, on the other hand, is annoying, but has little to do with sustainability. It just means you have to make traps (glass serrated discs, anyone?) instead of relying entirely on a military. (or marksdwarves)
« Last Edit: July 29, 2014, 12:43:12 pm by GavJ »
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 ... 8