Inability to build in some places

[circletheskies]

I've found that there are places that I simply cannot place houses - there's no zone for it. I've fiddled around and discovered that a shrine can be placed there just fine.

I'm virtually certain it's not some hidden feature beneath - in a couple I built the place up from the sea.

Anyone have an idea what's causing it?

[circletheskies]

Oh, and on a similar note, it's a little irritating that there's no size 1 or 2 houses that can be built up high; mountain cabins would spice up the terrain, in my opinion...

[Danjal]

Originally posted by circletheskies:

Anyone have an idea what's causing it?

A design decision / experimentation on behalf of 22cans / Peter Molyneux.

They figured its a great idea to remove size 1 and 2 houses from the stone tier and to make wood exclusive to meadows aswell as stone exclusive to mountain layers.

[circletheskies]

Ah. Not entirely sold on that, to be honest - when you think high-altitude housing you generally think of cabins and the like, not giant ranches or lodges.

But that still leaves the main problem, which is places simply not able to be build; I can 'nudge' plots around to get them where I want them, but as soon as they cross some undefined border they vanish.

[Danjal]

I've noticed much the same - I imagine that in their attempt to exclude layers and plots they made some mistakes and it "bugs out" sometimes. Leaving dead space to be generated.

[Corun]

You need the high tier houses, then you can build everywhere

[circletheskies]

Oh, I can build on high - but only larger houses.

[Danjal]

Correct - They made house tiers exclusive.

Straw huts on sand (anything between sea level and layer 4~5 I believe?
Mud huts and cabins on meadow (5~15 or 6~15, anything between mountain and sand)
Wooden huts, cabins, cottages etc on meadow
Stone Cottages and upwards on mountain (layer 16 and upwards)


Stone buildings generally offer more belief and belief generation per building and far more population - this is obviously an attempt to get us to not flatten the world.

Sadly, wooden huts remain the most efficient method for belief collection and population.
There is no reason other than aesthetics to use anything else.

[circletheskies]

Actually, I get straw or mud (Can't recall which) on the dark green level above the highest point wood huts can be.

As for not flattening... well, when I flatten I tend to flatten *up*, so stone buildings as incentive not to flatten are actually counterproductive.

[circletheskies]

To be honest, I feel that the housing in the game is too simplistic and, well, controllable. Have a settlement 'grow' more organically from the statue, for example, rather than be a set of manipulatable zones. Different aesthetics depending on the kind of settlement, say.

Perhaps have houses 'improve' and/or grow (as space allows) as the residents become happier and thus are fruitful and multiply - leading you to want to have the place looking nice. Take out the different sized-dwellings and, well, see previous sentence.

That way a house starts small, enough room for a couple, but if the residents are pleased (and assuming there's space) it'll grow and perhaps gain tiny little special features at random (mechanically tiny buffs - perhaps a bit more or faster belief generation, perhaps the residents are hardier... stuff like that).

Sure, if you don't want a house somewhere or it grows in a way you dislike, you can smite it - a rather deific thing to do, to be honest; deities tend to be big on the carrot and stick method.

[Danjal]

You get "rank 1" on layer 16, this is a bug, and only on that layer.

Originally posted by circletheskies:

As for not flattening... well, when I flatten I tend to flatten *up*, so stone buildings as incentive not to flatten are actually counterproductive.

A lot of players I've spoken with actually flatten everything down to layer 15 or below - because wooden huts are the most cost-effective way of building houses (and settlements). Atleast in terms of population and belief generation.

Originally posted by circletheskies:

To be honest, I feel that the housing in the game is too simplistic and, well, controllable. Have a settlement 'grow' more organically from the statue, for example, rather than be a set of manipulatable zones. Different aesthetics depending on the kind of settlement, say.

Perhaps have houses 'improve' and/or grow (as space allows) as the residents become happier and thus are fruitful and multiply - leading you to want to have the place looking nice. Take out the different sized-dwellings and, well, see previous sentence.

That way a house starts small, enough room for a couple, but if the residents are pleased (and assuming there's space) it'll grow and perhaps gain tiny little special features at random (mechanically tiny buffs - perhaps a bit more or faster belief generation, perhaps the residents are hardier... stuff like that).

Sure, if you don't want a house somewhere or it grows in a way you dislike, you can smite it - a rather deific thing to do, to be honest; deities tend to be big on the carrot and stick method.

While I like the general idea of this suggestion. Having you place settlements/hubs and have your people build around that.
I imagine this like having a village center, marketplace or similar such idea and have people collect there and build up their own villages/towns/cities.

There are some severe restrictions with that. One of the main reasons many core gamers prefer micro-management is because this allows them a greater degree of control (and therefor efficiency).
The more you leave up to the followers, the better the follower AI has to become.

Doing anything less would lead to much frustration. You can already see how frustrating the pathfinding becomes, when you go out of your way to sculpt a route. And the fail to recognize it and either slip through a little hole you missed on a voyage, or they stand at a cliff pointing at the house you want them to move towards.


So its a double-edged blade. On the one hand having a self-forming settlement. That changes based on resources and technology available is something that sounds very interesting to me.
On the other hand I believe that the game would benefit a lot from more player-controlled housing and construction. Particularly if the followers end up getting more needs, you would have to build these facilities for them or otherwise urge them to build it.

Another thing is, if the followers do everything themselves (which has some advantages) - then as a god you'll be sitting there waiting a lot more. So how are you going to keep the "god" entertained with a game that runs itself? Which is a secondary reason for why you want more micro-management.

Keep in mind, it becomes more than just "I want these buildings here" - if the game would have the followers make all their own decisions. Then that leaves nothing for you to do as a god - we'd be looking at long stretches of waiting untill they finished the AI and other code surrounding followers.


A compromis to that suggestion is something I've seen someone else suggest. Instead of making fixed houses. You set down/designate plots or settlements. And then your followers can build a variety of houses on that. It could be a single large building, or several smaller ones. It could be a house with multiple floors, or perhaps one that spreads out more.
Moreover the houses could incorporate their surroundings, a shorebound structure could do something with the sand or water its located at. Meadows utilize that theme. Houses could utilize layer differences or other surrounding elements and ultimately certain buildings might require to be near trees/mountains/water/animals.

I also believe that the v1.3 aspect that any building thats part of a settlement "changes" is a really good addition. As communities form and people settle in one location. Their habits and habitat adjusts to this permanence. Settlements could (should...) reflect that.


Ultimately I think settlements should no longer be split up in farmer/builder/miner settlements. They can perform these tasks through other means. Either because you designate them or because you build a certain building for them or even because of terrain modifiers (near a mountain you can make mines etc)

Instead, allowing settlements to naturally form, grow and advance would make a lot more sense (and is a lot more aesthetically pleasing). The ability to upgrade houses and settlements also joins with this. Needing to smite buildings to upgrade them is just awkward.


I definitely do NOT think that the followers should be treated like the creature in B&W. Hit them if they do something wrong and praise them if they do something right. There are countless other methods to urge them into your ways instead of direct intervention. Or atleast this should not be the exclusive route. You can give (or take away) resources from your followers. But you should not have to slap them for building the wrong thing or praise them for doing right.


Having follower free-will affect your decisions on the other hand is definitely something interesting. I suggested elsewhere that the already existing messages of "Your followers want X" could get a mechanical effect that.
If they want to expand - sculpting becomes cheaper while that desire exists.
If they want to do X - X becomes cheaper.

Similarly by playing to their desires, offering more trees around them, a wider variety of houses, less crowded environments - they could get certain modifiers.
Whereas a more cruel god would instill fear into his followers and make them suffer. And get other modifiers through that. Both methods should be viable.
Unlike what Peter believes, acts of evil are not necessarily exclusive to multiplayer, some players revel in punishing their flock.

Sorry bout that, that turned out a bit longer than planned

[vv [FuMM]]

I like a mix of both. I'd really like to build a single settlement in an area and the people wander around and find the jobs that need doing. in other words. if you place one near a resource then they'll wander (like ants) and find that resource and then start mining it. if you don't want them to mine it you command them not to or similar.

I really need to make a god game. I have some nice ideas based around managing your people. like you tell your priest what you want to happen. i.e don't mine that or we need to go over here now. The priest then can either inaccurately advise the people or just plain straight out lie to the population (greed being a possible factor for example). so if you leave a settlement alone for too long then they can start becomming a different gods playthings or so different from your other people that they might attack them etc.

anyway. back to this game :D

I'd like to see a mix like I said. I have no issue with the population breeding and building a new house if they need to. It's kind of silly if they don't. The only thing that could change is if they have a profession then they might build their house near that jobs area rather than all in the one place. so if you go into a village and make one of them a wook cutter then he might decide to move his family close to a forrest and either have a tent (he chops down trees and would move a bit) in the early stages of society or build a more stable structure in the later stages (when people start using horses for example).

This way you'd get a nice mix of randomish buildings around the place that would satisfy peters desire for more interesting design. People would be less inclined to flatten a forrest if the population needs it. Not for a while anyway. The People AI needs to be a bit more adventuress and go exploring on their own. a primitive population would do this anyway. seasonal movement etc. that gives me a nice new idea actually. Have your god population a caravan or moving tribe to start with.

[Danjal]

@vv [FuMM] - Like your concept - still worried about its implementation. Would require a decent AI and pathfinding etc. (Which would need proper planning as opposed to the hit or miss trajectory they've been going at so far.)

[vv [FuMM]]

It's actually not hard. The AI could make people act like ants. You have a person wandering around and collect notable locations near their area (some kind of ratio of food required to travel or somthing) and that dewd would add the locations of resources to the tribes pool of known resources. Then the AI goes "we need xyz based on qba" and sends an unemployed dewd towards what ever resource is required. It could base the travel to the resource on the ant trail left by the guy who's doing the searching. it's not optimal but it'd work.

I actually want to do somthing like this for a god/tribe game my self one day.

[Danjal]

Sounds interesting. I wonder if it actually would work (in practice) and if it would be (relatively) efficient processing-wise.
But if those barriers could be surmounted I guess it could work.

Mind you, I'm mostly comparing to other game-titles I know and problems I've seen them run into. For all I know there actually is some genius programmer out there that has a really good low-cost solution for this very problem.

[vv [FuMM]]

Well traditionally ant based AI's are fairly easy to program. Their main issue is that the other ants need to follow on their previous path. It's not efficient but I don't think it should be unless you are dealing with mapmaking civilizations etc. If it's a prehistoric or stone age society with out mapmaking then the ant based AI makes sense. You as a god can intervene and make them move in a more direct way (I'm going to suggest being able to move the leash location marker for example as a way to avoid the AI path finding issues).

I've been thinking about this for years now on and off. I really am getting even more tempted to see about designing a god game and asking some friends to code it for me. Design might take about 6 months or somthing to do it properly.