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Topic: About Economy options

alocritani

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Joined: 2011-11-24, 13:03
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Posted at: 2011-11-24, 13:42

Hi, first of all I want to underline that I'm completely new to Widelands, and I've never played Settlers I or II, but I've played first two barbarians' tutorial. Build is 16. I've a question regarding "Economy options" window.

At first I thought that you can set the maximum number of stocked wares, for every ware, and I thought that the message, for example, "skipped: not economy needs [something]" confirms my idea.

But than I start noticing that I've a lot more water or wood than the limit I set.

So I got curious and started digging into source code to understand what the limit means.

I've discovered that the limit is only meaningful for a building only if a building's conf file set some clause about that, like the smelting works building about iron. No iron is produced if economy doesn't need iron (ie if the iron is more than the limit).

But also I discovered that most of the buildings doesn't implement this rule but they use another logic: don't build something if the wares you need to build it is needed by economy unless you really need it. In other words: cattlefarm will not "create" oxes if wheat is under the limit and oxes are over the limit. But if oxes are under the limit, the cattlefarm will try to create it even if wheat is lower than the limit.

Finally, only wares that are used in at least one "economy needs [ware]" rules in any conf file are displayed in the economy option.

Another point is, if I understand correctly, that only wares in warehouses are counted when checking "economy needs" rule, so if you are creating the ware far away from the warehouses you can easily thing this ware is under the limit, because it's moving.

Ok, very long post...Finally, the question (remember, I'm a complete noob):

Is this really intended to be in this way? In other words: is it really intended you can continue to create wares even if you are over the set limit? The "problem" is that these unwanted wares are moved through the road network, creating traffic. I know I can stop the production, but in this way I have to check the wares supply and reactivate it when needed...

And why iron is limited by the set limit and, for example, water is not?

Finally a note: I find all this thing a bit confusing for a noob.

Sorry if I've bored you with this long post, but I really start to like this game and I want to dig more inside the details.


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ixprefect

Joined: 2009-02-27, 14:28
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Posted at: 2011-11-24, 14:39

First, of all: Welcome face-smile.png

Yes, this is intended. In the case of water, for example, you benefit from over-production because later in the game your consumption might go faster than production, and then it's a good idea to have some stock in the warehouse.

The difference between water and iron is that producing more water is never a mistake [1]. In the worst case, it is stockpiled in a warehouse. But when you produce iron, you are using up coal. The coal might better be used for something else, though, and that is why iron should only be produced when it goes below the limit.

[1] In the sense that it is never a waste of resources. Your point about the road network is taken, but it is your job as a player to ensure that the road network works well. The economy options are not intended for that purpose.

Edited: 2011-11-24, 14:39

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alocritani

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Posted at: 2011-11-24, 15:43

Thanks ixprefect.

I understand the point of saving coal for later (but if I have more coal than the limit, I might want to produce iron anyway, just to use the coal, but only if coal is over limit...)

The same logic could be applied to cattle farm, also, but from cattlefarm's conf:

return=skipped when economy needs wheat and not economy needs ox
return=skipped when economy needs water and not economy needs ox

If economy doesn't need wheat or water (ie: I'm over the minimum), cattlefarm will start creating oxes, even if wheat - water can be saved for later, and even If I don't need oxes.


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ixprefect

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Posted at: 2011-11-24, 17:48

That's a good point. I suppose you could argue that wheat and water can both be produced indefinitely, while supply of coal is limited by whatever is in the mountains (well, there is the charburner, but it's not a very efficient substitute). So then you won't want all your coal used to produce iron, just to realize later on in the game that you are short on gold, and have goldore left but no coal! On the other hand, you can always produce more wheat.

Still, it might be nice for consistency's sake to change the cattlefarm to keep more reserves of wheat around. What do others think? Perhaps an explanation of the original rationale?


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QCS

Joined: 2009-12-29, 22:47
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Posted at: 2011-11-24, 19:48

I can remember about two years ago (?) I asked the same question, and I was told that this is on purpose. If you have plenty of wheat, you might as well create Oxen, because you will need them anyway (up to a certain extend of 100 spare, that is face-wink.png )

You can always increase the amount of wheat to keep for your economy, so "when economy needs wheat" triggers.

What I can imagine would be an improvement in the following way:

return=skipped when economy needs wheat and not economy needs ox or economy hasplenty ox

The 'value' for hasplenty could then be something around 3 times the limit for needs.

For example, Economy limits for wheat and ox are 40 each.

So, as long as we have less than 40 ox, we produce them (whatever the value of wheat is). If we have more than 40 ox, and less than 40 wheat, we skip producing ox to save the wheat. If we have more than 40 ox, and more than 40 wheat, we produce ox anyway (on stock). If we have more than 120 ox on stock, we skip again to avoid creating useless ox, whatever the value of wheat is.


CMake is evil.

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Fantastory
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Joined: 2020-04-21, 08:27
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Posted at: 2020-04-23, 13:52

Economy options shall reserve workers rather than tools. Or maybe each map shall start with 1 worker of each class rather than with each tool.

Well probably my fault but I just stuck on the second map of empire campaign. I build strong wood infrastructure for faster building. But after awhile I noticed my vineyards are empty. Actually vineyard worker needs a shovel, and I used all shovels for foresters. I can not end building toolsmithy since it requires marble. And marble mine needs wine...


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-04-23, 14:41

Hi Fantastory,

Sorry you got deadlocked. But this happened to most of us once in a while. So thanks for the proposals.

+1 for reducing one shovel and adding a vine_farmer in Startconditions to avoid complete deadlock in this case (there are still plenty ways to get locked)
-1 for having eco controls for each worker, as by this some tools / materials could be wasted and they would be at 1 or 0 anyway. (most of the experienced players reduce the tools to this value and ensure to have a toolsmith early).

However the most important building material for empire is marble as it is needed in masses and not easy to produce, so part of this issue you can see as a lesson for the future


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-04-24, 01:08

this thread was 9 years and 4 versions old. why was it resurrected?

anyway, marble can be produced by quarries too. but it's much slower, yes. you could also have dismantled some of the buildings that give a marble yield.

also, empire campaign is centered around not getting deadlocked.


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Fantastory
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Posted at: 2020-04-24, 09:50

Thanks for the answers. Yep as I read again the economy options, I noticed it is not designed for reserving but rather for not wasting.

Hmm I thougth it the campaign is rather about solving the locks. Maybe with many changes in buildings but still with ability to move forward. Any way I managed to build the toolsmith. So it was not a deadlock, but maybe a bottleneck. So in that way campaign did it job for me face-smile.png

Sorry for the necromancy thing, this is because when i search for information It leads me to this topic. I find wikipedia bit outdated probably in game help is way to learn.


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