about that green bar.........

[David In Asia]

hi all, nice to meet you

just finished my third game of civIII, and saw in a thread somewhere that ctp2 had been modded to make the game what it should have been. i hope so, because there are so many things which make ctp better than civ, it was just too easy.

anyhows, i haven't come here to start a debate (oops, too late ), but to ask a question regarding food. i can see that the figure in the green bar is added to the pop., but how does the amount of food made relate to that number. for example, my city london is at +970 (green bar), and bringing in 130 bread. how do these figures relate to one another. my other city has +900/77 bread. same question.

i understand the relationship with the sliders, np there. am i making sense? where do the greenbar numbers come from??

yours hopefully and thanks in advance
d
ps. also, does ctp2 use ZOC?

[Alex]

Hi, David, and welcome to Apolyton! I see that you have followed my advice on the CFC forums and headed this way... You'll be amazed with what people can do to a game 'round here...

As for your questions, I really don't have an answer to the food numbers. I'm in the dark here. Could someone please explain this to us?

Oh, and CTP2 uses ZOC.

Sorry if I was not of much help, but the modders and experts are coming...

[Hermann the Lombard]

I don't have a very good understanding of city growth factors, but if you see "+2500" for example you will add about 2500 population on the coming turn. You can use this to calculate when your city will grow to the next size, at which point the calculation will change as you're trying to grow from a larger base. This is particularly relevant when trying to efficiently exploit the inner ring or to reach a trade resource in the next ring out.

Note that the city radius first grows at seven in the unmodded game, and at nine in Cradle (and MedMod, I think). Nine makes more sense since there are eight tiles in the inner ring.

[DeanToth]

This is a damn good question. I even hand-counted all the Food values in the tiles of a city and the total food collected doesn't match the Bread number, though it gets close once you take into account +10% and +15% for granary/silo, and whether you add the 10 or 15% together (as 25%) or sequentially.

Maybe a SLIC programmer out there has the numbers figured out. I've played with the numbers a bit but have found there to be too many factors for me to take the time to reverse engineer the math involved.

Below are all the factors I can think of that affect the relationship between a city's Bread and it's Growth bar:

City improvements like the granary/silo add to the number of bread.

Certain national Wonders can add to the bread rating not only by having a food bonus, but making your field workers more efficient in certain cases (since you can't manually allocate which tile is worked on as you could in CTP1, this one is hard to confirm).

Also take into account your Government's "growth rate" which I'm betting can ADD or SUBTRACT to the base Bread rate.

Also, don't forget to count the tile hidden under your city (right click on the city, choose MAP INFO)

Crime rate in city subtracts.

Finally, the current size of the city is some kind of multiplier to the amount of Bread that converts to Growth. I.E. a city of size 1 may have a growth of 1500, but with all other things being equal, the growth will fall to like 750 once the city reaches size 2.

[David In Asia]

hi alex, i remember you well (well, not that well ) - thanks for the advice on where to go.

i've got the green bar in itself sussed - that's the number of citizens added to the pop. each turn. nice one, dean, for being so thorough, but, dammit, i want a a fixed formulae showing the relationship between the loaf of bread and the green bar!! (i feel a song coming on....)

anyhows, i've just started a new game, with only a couple of cities built. i'm going to follow the figures and see what happens. i've started a new organization - Anally Retentive Statistic Examinations - to help collate all data. (new members of A.R.S.E. always welcome).

keep you posted. hopefully, someone will shed some light on the riddle - hopefully a programmer so we can all snigger at his trousers being too short.

d

[DeanToth]

*lots of laughs!*

I love the ARSE bit!


PS - i had to edit my post where I said "since you can manually allocate which tile.."

I meant to say "can't manually"

I'm gonna try to pester some SLICers and see if they can come to this thread.

Later

[child of Thor]

Hi,
try this link here . It's also got a link within it to more info on this subject.Hope it helps(cause i havent got a clue!)

[DeanToth]

yes, I've been reading thru the "science vs commerce" and "boosting science" threads since they have some detailed explanations for tile harvesting rules.

I haven't finished reading them yet,.... but so far haven't see any mention as to the actual calculation that gets from the "bread" number to the "population growth graph" number. Mostly it's discussion on how the Bread number itself is derived (and the gear, the coin, the flask).

Will keep reading thru them though. Hopefully A.R.S.E. will have it's answer shortly

[David In Asia]

that's a really interesting thread - many thanks to locutus (and i wasn't sniggering at your trousers ). for those who don't know, not the first link, but this one:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=17362

very enlightning. just to get this straight, have a look at my picture - is that right? cheers.

although, as dean said, still no explanation for greenbar>bread relationship. we'll get there.

d

[DeanToth]

yeah, the tiles-to-population relationship has been fairly clear for me... playing Call To Power 1 helps with this, cuz you get the ability to manually place the members of your population on any square in your influence..

It is apparent that CTP2 did away with this in favor of only using CTP1's "automatic/best worker placement" method, mitigated by the "efficiency" rating (which, for reasons worthy of another thread unto itself, is a good way to go IMHO)

But as David said that i said when I paraphrased him, how does BREAD beget the GROWTH number??????????

A pox on you David for making me think of this, as it has never been an issue for me up to now, but I find myself scouring the forums now looking for clues and pestering other users.

I suspect that lurking under the hood are similar issues regarding how the Flask/coin/gear amount affects the actual science/income/production amounts. But.... one thing at a time.
============================

PS -
Child of Thor: I am a big fan of Conan the Barbarian, which along with Dragonslayer are the two best "sword/sorcery" movies ever made. (conan the destroyer movie was much disappointing).. So I really like your signature text. And thanks for offering your help with the thread link you supplied.

David: I used to live in Japan myself. Are you in Asia for real?

[DeanToth]

Oh, and yes... I second your Locutus kudos (Lokudos?) Not just for that thread, but for basically being a good borg and assimilating many many questions and helping the CTP collective immensely.

[David In Asia]

lol, dean

But as David said that i said, how does BREAD beget the GROWTH number??????????
A pox on you David for making me think of this, as it has never been an issue for me up to now, but I find myself scouring the forums now looking for clues and pestering other users.

yep, live in thailand. and while we're on the subject, is there any way to change the ending date victory condition??

[Maquiladora]

Just a thought but as you right click on the tile it gives you the amount of food resource on that tile, ie grassland 20 (unfarmed etc) So maybe it adds up all the ones being collected FROM and shows it as the little bread icon in the city screen.
Whether ''the bread number'' is the WHOLE of the 9 squares surrounding and centre square (city size 1-6) or just the one/s that are being collected from im not quite sure.. YET. But it would be easy to find out, just right click on all the squares and take a look at your bread number, it should correspond. Same goes for production.

I dunno, anyway just a thought.

[DeanToth]

you mean changing the cutoff date from 2300ad to something else?

yes indeed, I had this very question and there is a way to change the SLIC code to your liking.

I will have to look over the text of my other forum participations and find it but rest assured it exists. I ran into it just the other day.....

back soon

[DeanToth]

Maquiladora :

when you say to "right click" are you talking about getting the Tile values for each square?

Cuz if you are, then there is a much easier method...

Just float your pointer over the tile, and the far lower right corner of the screen has a little status bar that says something like:

"Spanish grassland: F:15 P:5 C:5"

and even will try to tell tell you what units are on it, space allowing.

[Maquiladora]

Just float your pointer over the tile, and the far lower right corner of the screen has a little status bar that says something like:

Yeah and that method too

[David In Asia]

i think maybe it's just a simple formulae, but one that ties in the citizen count with it. i think the green bar starts at a base figure, depending on food sllider settings, citysize and other variables, and the bread amount is worked into it (probably just added). the rest we know - at the end of each turn the greenbar figure is added to the population until it hits a 10K increment, then up it goes a population point.

i know i'm just sort of stating the obvious, but maybe that's all it is - obvious. rather than civ-style "for every 60 (or whatever) bread units collected=1 population point", it just works so the final figures are citizen headcounts, rather than bread, per se.

do you know what i mean?? or ?

[DeanToth]

Maquiladora,

;-)

==========


David -

do a file-search of folders on your drive for "const.txt" file... there will be several of these depending on the number of scenarios and mods you have.

For a non-scenario or non-mod game, it'll be in this folder:
\call to power 2\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\

Open or edit the text file with your text editor of choice (notepad will work).

Look for a line of text called:
END_OF_GAME_YEAR 2300

Change the number to whatever you want. (there may be a lot of blank spaces between "year" and "2300"... i'm not sure how this affects anything)



I've gone thru many of the threads and don't see any direct tutorial-type directions on how exactly to change variables in the game... just scattered hints and tips... These guys really do know what they are doing, however, so I'm am certain one of them can help. If you know where there is a step by step tutorial on what needs to be done to change various aspects of the game, please let me know.

Hope this helps... Later

[DeanToth]

Originally posted by David In Asia
i think the green bar starts at a base figure, depending on food sllider settings, citysize and other variables, and the bread amount is worked into it

I tend to disagree... though not with any sense of confidence since I have NO REAL IDEA how the numbers are derived.

In my view, the green bar doesn't have the Bread amount worked into it AFTER THE FACT, but rather the Bread amount determines the Base value of the growth-greenbar FIRST - - - THEN other factors are figured in (population demand/crime/granary/etc).

Insofar as there is a base value at all, we agree. As to what determines this base value, there is still great confusion.

When you say the base figure is dependant on food slider settings, I am not so sure... The bar is OVERALL affected by the food slider, but I don't think the BASE figure is determined by it.

But then again, since I have no idea what is going on, I'd rather not get into any kind of debate here since I am clueless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tend to think the base figure is based on:

- the total FOOD OUTPUT of all the tiles within the city's dotted-line area

- modified by the number of workers. "Workers" in this case are are those people "assigned" to each tile to work it's resources. Only one worker per tile. The number of your city population equals the number of workers (aka tile-workers); see your own graphical diagram to explain this - population 6 cities work 6 tiles around the city; a size-12 city has 12 tile-workers (this is all assuming you have NO specialists and NO slaves... this is in accordance to CTP1's method)

- this base score is additionally affected by the TILE LOCATION of each worker (only if you have fewer workers than tiles available in the dotted-line area)... again, this is something you cannot determine manually in CTP2 but is evident in CTP1 (i know of no way to see which worker is harvesting which tile in CPT2). So if you have 2 workers working on 6 tiles, they will preferentially work on "foody" tiles or "production oriented" tiles based on your sliders.. (oh wait... here is where your point of view comes into play again.. darn, maybe I'm completely wrong..)

this is getting ridiculous... I say we do a check on the programmer credits in the game and search the web for their email addresses!!!!

[Maquiladora]

Oh but i just thought why u would HAVE to use the right click method (yes im goin on lol) to find out the food/production/commerce value for the tile UNDER the city. Well thats if you didnt know the tile values off by heart, which isnt hard either.

-----

I think the modders know exactly what the answer is they just dont wanna get involved

[DeanToth]

Maquiladora:

heh heh....

check my post earlier on this page (dated 07-05-2002 12:07) - I already covered this one ... but yes you are right.

Thanks for staying involved in the thread though!!!

[David In Asia]

my brain hurts.

dean - thanks for the end-of-game thingy instructions.

going to bed.....been up all night. probably going to dream about little green bars in spaceships abducting me.

d

[child of Thor]

DeanToth,
Yeah Conan rocks and i missed Dragonslayer, but i did have a book of the film(the hero in it uses dragon scales as a shield if its the same one right?) which i enjoyed!
Conan the destroyer - its the Episode I of the sword/sorcery film world .
And oops i've just forfilled my second signature

Er...as to bread production in CTP2, erm......maybe ask the baker? (pitifull attempt to get on topic - makes me feel better though )

[DeanToth]

I see no one has responded yet with an answer to the question of the relationship between "bread" and "growth"

Again, this same question can be applied to "flask>science" and "gear>production" and "coin>income"

Maybe this thread could be renamed to something more conducive... "about that green bar" at first had me avoiding this thread too...

Anyway, to any lurkers reading this thread, we are trying to figure out how the GROWTH graph number is derived from the BREAD number... *not* how the Bread number itself is derived in the first place.

Having said that, please participate in the "tournament" games! And register in the multiplayer registry!

Take it easy

[Locutus]

Ah, the food/growth questions of Vel reminded me of this thread, so I did some research (no, I don't have time for this but I couldn't resist ) and I figured out how the growth and food numbers are related. All the calcuations below were done in the original game, with the human player (AI might get some bonuses or penalties, I didn't check that).

Note of caution: CtP2's system of rounding up/down seems to make little sense. Sometimes they are rounded up, sometimes they are rounded down, seemingly at random. So if you re-calculate the numbers I calculated, you'll probably find a lot of off-by-one errors and some other minor deviations. I've done enough calculations to be fairly certain that it weren't actually mistakes or oversights on my behalf, I'm afraid that's just how the game works...

Case 1
The first thing that matters is the amount of food ('breads') in a city. This is determined first and foremost by the terrain: in a size 1 city surrounded by Grassland, Plains and a river (see pic of Berlin), there is 25 food in the city tile itself (grassland = 15 + 10 = bonus), plus 135 in the first (and only) ring around the city. So the total amount of food collected from the terrain is 25 + 135 * 1/6 = 48. Over this you have to apply the government food coefficient though, which in this case - in 4000 BC in Tyranny - is 0.85. So you get 48 * 0.85 = 41 food. This is also the number displayed in the City Manager.

To get the population growth from this, you need to first take into account the Crime. By default this is 25%, so we substract that from our food supply and get 0.75 * 41 = 31 food. With only 1 city in our empire, this is also the sum of the Consumed + Stored category in the Empire Manager. Our Rations are by default set at 12, so 1 pop * 12 rations = 12 rations are consumed, as can be read from the Empire manager screen. The other 19 are stored and go to city growth. The default growth multiplier (as set in citysize?.txt) is 75 and the city size is 1, so to get the total amount of growth, we say 19 * 75 / 1 = 1425, which is also what is listed as the growth in the City Manager. The overcrowding factor should now be applied to this number to get the net growth, but since in such a small city overcrowding is 0, no growth is lost to overcrowding.



Case 2
Let's do this again to make sure this wasn't a fluke: we take Paris, which lies next to hills and mountains. This time we changed the difficulty level to see if this makes a difference (there's a value in DiffDB.txt that should deduce growth on higher difficulty levels). Paris itself produces 25 food (plains = 10 + river = 5 + 10 = bonus) and the terrain around it 100. So the amount of food available in our city in Tyranny is (25 + 100 * 1/6) * 0.85 = 41 * 0.85 = 34, as shown in the City Manager. Once again, Crime is at the default value of 25, so the the net food available is 34 * 0.75 = 26, as can be seen from the Empire Manager. 12 of this is consumed and 14 stored. 14 * 75 / 1 = 1050 growth, which corresponds with the City Manager again (still no overcrowding). So our formula works like a charm, although the DiffDB value doesn't: it doesn't do anything, or at least not with food (it might still affect overcrowding but that seems unlikely).



Case 3
Now we'll have a look at a larger city, to see confirm that the population factor works out as I described above (in fact, in my original model it didn't I had to correct it after this city but I didn't want to confuse you guys so I made sure my above models use the proper formula). Also, this city has a Granary, an Aquaduct and a bunch of tile improvements in it's radius and the government used is Republic, to make things more interesting. The city is Paros, a city from the Peleponnesian War scenario. I gave all other cities that I controlled away, so I could use the Empire Manager to double check my values. This reset the Crime rate from 27% to 25%, but with 27% things work out as well, I made sure of that.

The city tile itself is a Hill, which produces 5 Food, plus the 10 Bonus = 15. The surrounding tiles, with their Nets and Port produce 150 food, so the total food collection is 15 + 150 * 5/6 = 140. The growth coefficient of Republic is 1.15, so the food amount is 161, which is in turn multiplied by 10% because of the Granary, bringing the total food to 178, as can be verified in the City Manager. From this, we must substract 25% Crime, so the net food in this city is 178 * 0.75 = 132. With pop 5 and rations at 12, the consumption is 5 * 12 = 60, leaving 72 food for storage. This can again be verified with the Empire Manager. So 72 * 75 / 5 = 1080 gold, as the City Manager confirms. Normally though, cities from size 4 onwards (as specified in citysize?.txt) experience overcrowding, which should therefore apply to our city as well. However, our Aquaduct raises the overcrowding limit with 6, so overcrowding only starts at pop 10.



Case 4
Finally, let's have a look at overcrowding. I haven't figured this out yet so help would be appreciated. I took a size 9 city without buildings from the same Peleponessian War scenario (Larissa). The food on the city tile is 20, the first ring offers 175 food and the second one 195. So the food collected is 20 + 175 * 6/6 + 195 * 3/12 = 281. Multiply this with the 1.15 multiplier of Republic and you have a total food collection of 281, as the City Manager confirms. With 25% Crime, the net food available is 210, of which 9 * 12 = 108 is consumed and the remaining 102 stored. 102 * 75 / 9 = 850. But we don't have an Aquaduct, so there is overcrowding and the City Manager shows a +734 Growth. By putting an Aquaduct in the city through the Cheat mode, I eliminated Overcrowding and confirmed that the total growth of the city is 841, almost the 850 we calculated (a rounding error somewhere, I'm sure). So 107 (quite possibly 108, rounding errors are frequent and although possible I don't think it's likely that the overcrowding is a prime number). How this number is calculated beats me. I compared it with several other cities but it doesn't make sense. A city starts producing overcrowding at size 4, which could mean there is 108/6 = 18 overcrowding per citizen, but this figure doesn't correspond with figures from other cities (I saw a size 10 city with an Aquaduct which produced 53 overcrowding, for 1 citizen).



Generalization
R0 = amount of food in Ring 0, the city tile itself
R1 = amount of food in Ring 1, R2 = amount of food in Ring 2, etc
W1 = number of workers in R1, W2 = number of workers in R2, etc
GC = Growth Coefficient for the current Government
BC = Building Coefficient, bonus food added by Buildings
WC = Wonder Coefficient, bonus food added by Wonders
C = Crime percentage
TF = Total Food collected in the city, excluding Crime
NF = Net Food available to the city, including Crime
CO = amount of food consumed by the citizens of the city
ST = amount of food stored for growth
P = Size of the city (Population)
R = Rations for the empire
TG = Total Growth of the city
NG = Net Growth of the city, corrected for Overcrowding
OC = Overcrowding, unknown

TF = (R0 + W1 / 6 * R1 + W2 / 12 * R2 + W3 / 18 * W3 + ...) * GC * BC * WC = ['Food' in City Manager]

NF = TF * C = ST + CO = ['Consumed' + 'Stored' in Empire Manager]

CO = P * R = ['Consumed' in Empire Manager]

ST = NF - CO = ['Stored' in Empire Manager]

TG = ST * 75 / P

NG = TG - OC = ['Growth' in City Manager]

Notes:
- If the city grows through Slaves and the city reaches or exceeds it maximum size, the Growth will change to 'Starving', even if there is a surplus, and the city will not grow further until an appropriate building is built.
- The maximum Net Growth rate is +2500.
- If a city doesn't produce enough food, it will start to starve: the population of the city will decrease rather than increase.
- If the population of a city passes over a multiple of 10,000 the city's size will change accordingly (regardless of the direction of the change). So a size 7 city which goes from 7,900 citizens to 8,100 will grow to size 8, and vice versa.
- Certain buildings, such as a Granary, can postpone the shrinking of a city for a fixed number of turns, to give the player the opportunity to do something about the problem.

What's next?
We still need to investigate the effects of Specialists (Farmers), Wonders, having several Food buildings in one city and we should continue the research on Overcrowding. Also, it would be useful to figure out how units which require food for support fit into all this. An extra check on Crime wouldn't hurt either (where the difference in Crime is larger than 2%), but I'm fairly certain that won't give nasty surprises. Once we have all this figured out, it would be a good idea to confirm that Production, Gold and Science are calculated in the same way, and to see if there are any notable differences. But that's for another time though, as I should be doing other things right now...

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Locutus
So our formula works like a charm, although the DiffDB value doesn't: it doesn't do anything, or at least not with food (it might still affect overcrowding but that seems unlikely).

It depends on the difficuilt settings you use on medium and hard there is neither a food bunus nor a food malus there. You get 0% extra food there. The AI has its own boni. But you won't be able to detect them with the cheat editor, because if you use the cheat editor to switch to an opponit he will be turned into an human player immediately.

Originally posted by Locutus
- The maximum Net Growth rate is +2500

As you find it in the const.txt:

MAX_ABSOLUTE_GROWTH_RATE 2500

-Martin

[Pedrunn]

Just a guess.

Isnt the specialist work like that:

Farmers as default gives 30 bonus (pop.txt). So i guess you add this bonus goes to the food income but the to total food gets multiplied by the efficiency wich is

E = efficiency
P = total pop
S = total number of specialist
SF = food from farmers.
E = P - S / P

Of course, this is just an untested yet logical thought

[Velociryx]

Bravo guys, Bravo!!! That was the correlation I was looking for, and I suspect that the same basic formula applies to all the game's factors of production (food, production, commerce). Outstanding!

Armed with that information, we can no estimate with a fair amount of accuracy such things as the opportunity cost of taking on a farmer specialist and such....OUTSTANDING!

-=Vel=-