Teamster delivery AI logic is somewhat illogical

[captainpatch]

I have an outstanding Trade Contract for Logs to Russia. It's been running for 188 months. Which it shouldn't. Of the @12,000 Logs required, @6,000 were exported within the first year. I have LOTS of Logging Camps. (18 to be precise.) Granted there are 4 Lumber Mills converting Logs into Planks for Shipyards and Furniture Factories, but all those Demand businesses are on the same two islands as 14 of the Logging Camps. There are 4 Logging Camps on a third island, feeding to the Dock on that same island and quite nearby the 4 Logging Camps. But instead of delivering Logs to the Dock to complete the Russian Trade Contract, the Logs are going Past the Dock, crossing the inter-island bridge, and going halfway across the island to the nearest Lumber Mill -- which already has LOTS of local Logs to keep it fully occupied. Likewise the other three Lumber Mills.

Now, I _know_ that I can designate one or more Teamster Offices to transport Logs from one of those 4 Logging Camps to the nearby Dock.... but why should I have to? Doesn't the Russian Trade Contract constitute a Demand that MUST be met? (In fact, more demanding than the Demand of the Lumber Mills because Trade Contracts MUST be fulfilled to clear the Contract.)

I certainly hope the devs sort this out before T7.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by captainpatch:

I certainly hope the devs sort this out before T7.

Completely different developers.

[captainpatch]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by captainpatch:

I certainly hope the devs sort this out before T7.

Completely different developers.

Hallelujah! I've felt this last crew were somewhat off for what Tropico is and could be. Much of their humor felt rather.... flat.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by captainpatch:

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Completely different developers.

Hallelujah! I've felt this last crew were somewhat off for what Tropico is and could be. Much of their humor felt rather.... flat.

Even 6 was two different developers. Limbic released it, the release state was pretty bad. It was given to realmforge and they at least got the game playable and released larger expansions that weren't just single missions and then there's another developer already working on 7, that's been known for at least two years already.

It's not like this series ever had consistent developers. The first two games were two different developers, then the publisher and developer changed for three, then the engine changed for five and again for six with two more developers and so the cycle continues.

[Ragnarr Loðbrók]

It's always a diffrent team with each tropico, so in other words, they won't learn from the mistakes of the previous tropico, and will do their own mistakes.

[captainpatch]

Duh. Rather short-sighted to deliberately NOT look at the pluses and minuses of previous iterations.

A wise man learns from his mistakes. A wiser man learns from the mistakes of others. The wisest man learns from both."

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

It's always a diffrent team with each tropico, so in other words, they won't learn from the mistakes of the previous tropico, and will do their own mistakes.

Not quite every one, just for clarity:

1. original dev (poptop), original publisher (gathering), original custom engine
2. new dev (frog city), same publisher, same engine

3. another new dev (Haemimont), new publisher (Kalypso), same engine but rebuilt graphics to support 3D instead of sprites
4. same dev (Haemimont), (and publisher doesn't change anymore), same engine

5. same dev (Haemimont), ~ but they decided to stop building on the old engine, all 4 previous games had been rebuilds of the same engine upgraded, with 5 they started over from scratch in a custom engine ~ this is why 1 through 4 all had consistently more things added while 5 was missing some things

6. new dev (Limbic), another new engine built from unreal ~ expansions: another new dev (Realmforge) took over after Limbic left and made all the larger DLC and did tons of bug fixes that Limbic had ignored

7 another new dev (Nine Worlds Studios) (not sure about the engine being used yet)

Of note, Haemimont and Limbic were studios contracted by Kalypso to make those games, but they are independent from the publisher. In contrast Realmforge and Nine Worlds are both owned subsidiaries of Kalypso and likely can network with each other better than an independent studio would have.

7 has been in development since 2021, but with no release date mentioned yet, but I wouldn't expect anything until 2024 or 2025.

[captainpatch]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by Ragnarr Loðbrók:

It's always a diffrent team with each tropico, so in other words, they won't learn from the mistakes of the previous tropico, and will do their own mistakes.

Not quite every one, just for clarity:

THANK YOU for that very informative post.

From a Big Picture POV, _how_ a game performs and what features it has is almost entirely from the developers. Publishers, for the most part, bankroll the production (and get the lion's share of the Profits as payment for their investment). Publishers are most often the source of a game's shortcomings and faults because, once having invested such a large amount of capital, the publishers are eager -- and demanding -- to start getting some Return On Investment. The publishers often force the developers to kick the game out of development and into the stores ASAP, bugs and all, figuring that we the consumers will tolerate the need for patches, updates, and fixits. AFTER a game has been released, DLCs are subject to the same publisher pressure. There is also A LOT of pressure to develop minor/small items that can be sold separately because the Marketers tell the publishers who tell the developers that a LARGE percentage of game owners will automatically buy supplemental materials of games that they play. ("Large" being defined as anything greater than 20%.)

This far along in Tropico's development history, it's hard to say just what Tropico IS. In T1 it was obvious that it was originally intended to be a tongue-in-cheek satire of a Banana Republic dictatorship. (Watch the 1971 movie "Bananas" to see where much of the game's inspiration probably came from.) But the game quickly became more of a corrupt _democracy_ game, with very little actual dictatorship behavior. Secret Police, for example, had a very brief appearance in one of the middle Tropicos, and then disappeared again from more recent versions. And things that were common in Baptista's Cuban dictatorship, such as frequent street executions, were never implemented at all.

It seems that _actual_ dictatorship isn't all that humorous or even palatable.

So Today, it seems that what Tropico mostly IS is an island-based city building game. The humor isn't nearly as good as previous iterations. (I really miss Miss Pineapple.) Most of the "humor" is more like Rube Goldberg funny -- "Why would they do it _that_ way? That's crazy." I'm actually surprised that the Outer Space DLC didn't have Tropico try to be the first nation to land an astronaut on the Sun. ("It will be okay because we'll send the spaceship at night!") And now we're to the point where loyal Tropico fans are thinking that most _any_ change might be a change for the better.

[Laczek]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Not quite every one, just for clarity:
7 another new dev (Nine Worlds Studios) (not sure about the engine being used yet)

Propably unreal engine, https://www.games-career.com/Joboffer/31936_Unreal-Engine-Programmer-mfdNine-Worlds-Studios_Kalypso-Media-Group-GmbH

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Laczek:

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Not quite every one, just for clarity:
7 another new dev (Nine Worlds Studios) (not sure about the engine being used yet)

Propably unreal engine, https://www.games-career.com/Joboffer/31936_Unreal-Engine-Programmer-mfdNine-Worlds-Studios_Kalypso-Media-Group-GmbH

I meant more in the sense of if they were taking tropico 6's version (also unreal) and building from it or making their own branch from unreal from scratch again

The previous games had custom in-house engines (1-4 being all expanded from the original and 5 custom from the ground up)

6 built a branch from unreal, 7 we don't know if it's an extension of 6 or a restart from default unreal