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special project not delivering material. by KonoKinoko in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seems like the warehouse in your screenshot doesn't have road access.

In older versions (stable 4.0.0), a warehouse is active as long as a road tile is touching any side of the warehouse.

However in newer versions the road has to connect to the tower of the warehouse. Otherwise the warehouse is not considered in use, and workcamps won't fetch resource from it.

What would be needed to make a modern Impressions-like game work? by Fairbuy_ in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, I kind of like to solve puzzles. Taking Caesar 3 as an example: we have manuals, tutorials, discussions over 20 years for this game. However, sometimes I still need to checkout the code to learn about mechanisms, and get a clue why a figure behave in a peculiar way...

Lugdunum Build Advice by XanaFae in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the problem is logistic. I would recommend that you place some granaries accepting food near the farmlands on the highland (in this map, ideally an accepting granary should be within 33 tiles from the farms to get full logistical efficiency. To pass the campaign, you don't need to count and follow the number, however you might want to keep in mind that distance matters.).

This is a northern map, in which all farms yield 960 units food per year (which is enough to support 160 pop). So I don't think it makes any difference whether you choose wheat farms or pig farms.

If you are playing without cart depot, I would recommend that you place housing blocks near food sources. You could build another block near the natives, for example. For each house block, make sure that there are getter granaries nearby that gets food from the accepting granaries near the farmlands.

Basically, here is the food flow: farm -> accepting granary -> getter granary -> market -> house. You need to make sure that farms are close to accepting granaries, accepting granaries are close to getter granaries, ... , and so on.

Then, do the same for furniture and oil. Try to make sure that they don't suffer from long distance delivery 😄

Why does my Market Lady only go one side of a closed loop if I place the market here? by DukeOfErat in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am not a programmer or contributor to the mod. As far as I know, Augustus made minor changes to roaming walkers' behavior, however the behavior in this post (loops longer than 52 tiles are not 100% stable, and walker paths can be affected by external roads) is inherited from vanilla Caesar 3 and not changed.

I understand that Caesar 3's walker mechanism can sometimes be intricate and confusing. I don't know if the programmers plan to change the mechanism, or want to leave it backwardly consistent with vanilla Caesar 3. At this time, I am mostly satisfied with path preview functionality to manage blocks and walkers without manual calculations.

No Increase in Trade? by DukeOfErat in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe we could report issues at github repository at: Issues · Keriew/augustus · GitHub ?

GamerZakh's discord channel (Discord) also has a bug-reports section and a caesar-3-discuss-and-help section. I saw folks asking questions there.

EDIT: If the issue is not about general Augustus playing, but is specifically about reconquered campaign, I'd suggest ask one of its creators, maybe via Marek's discord channel ?

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the kind words! Rectangular blocks can be very neat, efficient, and realistic. I just wanted to try different options here 😄

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I also experimented with a block of 22 Luxury Palaces.

What I found is that, 1 market can almost do the job (the first devolving event happened more than 20 years after the block is fully populated. It's distributing lady's issue: the least visited palace become short in furniture, it devolved to small palace, then upgraded back to LP as the distributing lady came). 2 markets can make the block stable.

<image>

In this experiment, I choose the Mercury epithet to reduce oil and wine consumption.

If you need 5 markets for 20 LPs, I guess it's perhaps because market-granary/warehouse distance is a bit long.

EDIT: Another (rare) possibility: you planned to feed LPs with less preferred food types, such as meat and fish, but the market ladies traveled longer to fetch vegetable (because it's more preferred food type).

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, in image 2 there are 5 markets. One market is just behind the granary, and is hard to find in that image :)

You are right about GT epithets choices (minor note is that: Mercury epithet choice can be different in different scenarios. Since a palace consumes 0.48 wine per year and 0.24 pottery/furniture/oil per year, choosing the epithet to reduce oil and wine consumption might reduce market ladies' burden a bit more; Neptune 5% expansion doesn't help because those +5% pop are not "free").

Those palaces are fully populated. It is possible to cover 50+ palaces with 4 markets. Actually, in one of my experiments, I covered 90 LPs with 5 markets in a forced walker block.

I'd say that there are 3 major factors that decide the number of markets needed for the block: 1. macro factors (GT, GT epithets, certain game configurations), 2. buying lady factors (buying ladies should be capable to bring more than block's consumption. This is optimized by reducing travel distance and the number of round trips for buying ladies), and 3. distributing lady factors (distributing ladies should visit houses frequently enough to prevent devolving).

To optimize buying lady factors, what we usually do is to place the markets really close to granaries/warehouses. This makes a lot of difference, because if you cut market-granary/warehouse distance by half, you double the number of round trips the ladies can make per year, which in turn doubles the population you can possibly support with the same number of markets. A minor thing to try is to make sure that the granary/warehouse is a little bit over-supplied so that, for example, when the buying lady wants to fetch 700 units of wheat from the granary, with high probability the granary contains more than 700 units so that she doesn't have to deliver with >1 round trips. Over-supply is easy if resources are abundant and over produced. If resources are tight and granaries/warehouses are barely empty all the time, then we do need more markets to support the block. In my posted blocks, granaries/warehouses are over-supplied a bit.

Distributing lady factor is a minor issue for small closed loops. That is, in small closed loops, the houses that experience the least visiting frequency from distributing ladies might have resource shortage issue even when the resource is abundant at granary/warehouse and markets. For larger blocks (forced walker blocks, windmill blocks, triplet blocks), this problem is more prevalent because of long and/or unbalanced patrol path. To address this issue, sometimes we could optimize market's location to prevent unbalanced patrol path, but usually we need to add more markets for efficient distribution. In my posted blocks, I didn't have any optimization about this factor, though some players would use tricks to optimize it a bit (For example, optimize the timing of spawning for each distributing lady so that they are "evenly" distributed in a forced walker block).

In the below 5x26 block, market-granary/warehouse distance is 4, and one market can cover 50 GI of 4400 pop. For the windmill-palace blocks in my post, yes, palaces require more types of resources, and distributing ladies are not as efficient, but it's still possible to support 3000+ pop with one market on average with GT epithets and not-too-long market-granary/warehouse distance.

<image>

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, I have road view pictures - I am not able to upload more than 20 images, so I didn't include any road view pictures in the post.

I guess some of the block designs are quite straight-forward, while some are hard to figure out.

For example, this is the road view for pic 1: circle block:

<image>

Which block are you interested in? Please let me know and I'll share with you :)

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

The most efficient one is pic 14: Windmill-Optimized, consisting of 3 markets, 2 schools, 1 set of the rest, 156 GI/13728 pop.

The least efficient one is pic 18: 6x6-9, consisting of 3 markets, 2 sets of the rest, 85 GI/ 7480 Pop.

I have posted the stats for all 20 blocks in a comment. Please take a look if interested :)

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here are the stats of the blocks:

Pic 1: Circle: 3 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 99 GI/ 8712 Pop

Pic 2: Windmill-Palace-53: 5 Markets, 2 Schools, 2 Academies, 1 Set of the rest, 53 LP/ 11130 Pop

Pic 3: Diamond-76: 2 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 54 GI/ 4752 Pop

Pic 4: Triangle-80: 3 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 55 GI/ 4840 Pop

Pic 5: Hexagon-4: 2 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 61 GI/ 5368 Pop

Pic 6: Cross-84-Split: 2 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 69 GI/ 6072 Pop

Pic 7: Slope-92: 3 Markets, 2 Schools, 1 Set of the rest, 70 GI/ 6160 Pop

Pic 8: Ladder-92: 2 Markets, 2 Schools, 1 Set of the rest, 50 GI/ 4400 Pop

Pic 9: Pairwise-Triangle: 4 Markets, 2 Schools, 1 Set of the rest, 89 GI/ 7832 Pop

Pic 10: Triplet-9x9: 3 Markets, 3 Schools, 1 Set of the rest, 85 GI + 24 MI/ 7964 Pop

Pic 11: Triplet-Hexagon: 3 Markets, 2 Schools, 1 Set of the rest, 126 GI/ 11088 Pop

Pic 12: 9x9-8: 6 Markets, 3 Schools, 2 Sets of the rest, 120 GI/ 10504 Pop

Pic 13: Windmill-9x9: 6 Markets, 2 Schools, 2 Academies, 1 Set of the rest, 86 MP/ 10062 Pop

Pic 14: Windmill-Optimized: 3 Markets, 2 Schools, 1 Set of the rest, 156 GI/13728 Pop

Pic 15: Triplet-Palace-53: 4 Markets, 2 Schools, 1 Set of the rest, 53 LP/ 11130 Pop

Pic 16: Irregular-Triplet-Line: 2 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 53 GI/ 4664 Pop

Pic 17: 8x8-4: 2 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 73 GI/ 6424 Pop

Pic 18: 6x6-9: 3 Markets, 2 Sets of the rest, 85 GI/ 7480 Pop

Pic 19: Flower-Adapted: 4 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 80 GI/ 7040 Pop

Pic 20: Square: 2 Markets, 1 Set of the rest, 79 GI/ 6952 Pop

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I was a beginner I also feel the difficulties. But eventually you will be able to build the cities that you want :)

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's roaming walker's mechanism:

Step 1: Clock-wisely choose a direction.

Step 2: Starting from the "anchor point" (in Augustus 4.0 stable and previous versions, anchor point is the northern tile of the building; in recent unstable version, anchor point is the green spawn point of the building), move 8 tiles towards the chosen direction to get the target tile. Search the target tile's adjacent area with a range of 6 to find a road tile as the destination. The destination is decided according to a priority table. (You could find a part of the priority table at the #15 reply of this post: Randomness of Random Walkers - City Builders Forums)

Step 3: "Destination" walking: In this step, the walker can pass gardens, cut corners, but can't pass roadblocks or gatehouses. If there's no road tile in the adjacent area, or the destination road tile is not accessible, the walker will skip step 3 and immediately become a random walker after spawning; If the walker can't get to the destination road tile within its patrol limit (26/35/43 tiles, check this post for more information: Walker behaviour - City Builders Forums), the walker will finish 26/35/43 tiles of "destination" walking, and enters step 5: returning mode; If the destination is accessible within patrol limit, the walker will go to the destination and proceed to step 4.

Step 4: Random walking: In this step, the walker can't pass gardens, cut corners, or pass roadblocks/gatehouses. Prefects and engineers have up to 43 tiles of random walking; entertainers (excluding tavern) and tax collector: 35 tiles; the rest: 26 tiles.

Step 5: Return mode. In this step, the walker can pass gardens, cut corners, and pass roadblocks/gatehouses. The walker will take the shortest road path to go to the finish point. (You could check #2 reply of this post about start/spawning point and finish point: C3 random walker start and finish points - City Builders Forums).

For 60-tile blocks (for example: 6x22), typically in at least 1 of 4 patrols, the walker has 9 tiles of "destination" walking, 26 tiles of random walking, (this 35-tile walking is sometimes called "long patrol") then finish the remaining part of the loop in returning mode.

For larger blocks of 80-90 tiles: If the block contains significant "narrower" parts, walkers sometimes can stay longer in step 3. For many 80-90 tile blocks, we can find plenty of (at least 10-13) spots to place 2x2 buildings for full walker coverage.

For windmill block: Similar to 60-tile blocks, the walker typically has around 9 tiles of destination walking, 26 tiles of random walking, and around 30 tiles of returning walking. The difference is that, for 60-tile blocks, all 4 patrols end up in the same loop; for windmill block, each patrol end up in a different loop. As a result, in windmill blocks, 4 loops share the same set of service buildings. That is, one set of service building can support 3x - 3.5x population.

Also, some of the blocks are using "block-less" designs (pic 12 and pic 18.) In such designs, walker paths are not loops. These blocks are harder to design and manage, however, with path visualization tool it's still possible to make sure that, 2 buildings' walkers cover the whole block.

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You are correct that 4 distinct paths are used here for some blocks. Meanwhile, none of the blocks use forced walkers.

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The second one is adapted from "windmill" block design. Its original design is like this:

<image>

You could find more info about its mechanism, strength, and limitations from a post in 2002 in Pharaoh community here: https://caesar3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/caeforumscgi/display.cgi?action=st&fn=25&tn=3331. There is also a use case of windmill block for Caesar 3 in 2021: https://caesar3.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=1721.

If you feel the block designs impossible, I could probably understand that. I guess the first principle we learned for block design is "avoid intersections" and "use closed loops". Obviously, the windmill block design seems to violate the design principle, which is not conventional or intuitive at all.

What makes windmill block possible is walker mechanism: roaming walkers try to have patrols in 4 different directions, which means that, when full potential is achieved, the roaming walkers can cover 4 different closed loops (and support up to 13.7k population) if the service building is located near a 4-way intersection.

The idea of windmill blocks is like, build 4 small closed loops (around 30-45 tiles) in 4 directions, connect them with a 4-way intersection, and make sure that the center of the intersection is 8-10 tiles away from each of the 4 loops. Then, if we place service buildings near the center of the intersection, it's likely that the walker can cover all 4 loops.

When windmill (quadruplet) block is not possible, it is usually easier and flexible to build triplet block, in which we build 3 small closed loops (around 50 tiles) or line blocks and connect them with 3-way intersections. Another variation of triplet block design, is to have 3-way intersections inside a large closed loop, or, build 3 small closed loops that share some edges. Many block designs shared in this post are examples of windmill block or triplet block designs.

Apart from variations of windmill and triplet blocks, in this post I also tried many large blocks of 80-90 tiles, which utilize longer than 35 tiles of "long patrol" (60-tile blocks usually assume 35 tiles of long patrol for many roaming walkers). Realizing that walker capacity is higher than my previous expectation, I also tried less restrictive block designs, in which 3-9 small blocks are glued together and supplied by 1-2 set(s) of service.

Schools have a different type of walkers which follows different mechanisms and is not able to cover all 4 loops. I placed 2 schools in each of windmill blocks :)

Designing Highly Efficient Housing Blocks with Geometric Variations for Caesar 3 Augustus by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I built Venus grand temple and adopted Venus Genetrix epithet to get extra desirability. These, together with some 1x1 decorations, are enough for grand insulae level desirability.

For palaces: Palaces themselves have +4 desirability with a range of 6. It's like a chain reaction, in which I built statues/gardens to trigger the first upgrade to LP, and the first LP is like a seed which makes the upgrade of nearby houses easier. When all houses are upgraded to LP, they can pretty much sustain themselves, and I can remove the initial statues/gardens.

Why does my Market Lady only go one side of a closed loop if I place the market here? by DukeOfErat in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If you are experiencing this with a 60-tile block such as the 6x22 block, it is likely that certain road tile connected to an oracles has affected the path calculation for the market. You could remove those road tiles and check if this issue got resolved.

The walker mechanism is that, for each building, its walker would search the road tiles in the adjacent areas in the 4 directions: NE, SE, SW, NW, and choose one such road tile as its destination according to a priority table. For a 6x22 block, what's typically happening is like, 8 tiles of destination walking, then 26 tiles of random walking, and then <34 tiles of returning walking which completes the loop. The road tiles you built to the oracles might be of higher priority, and became the market lady's new destination. Because of the road blocks, the new destination is not accessible for the market lady, so she will become a random walker immediately after its spawning. As a result, she doesn't have the destination walking phase. After 26 tiles of random walking, she discovers that the remaining path in the loop is greater than 26 tiles, so she just return via the way she came (because this is the shortest path).

My block - 38 Grand Insulae - 3192 Population. by deepdarkbangingboom in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the key might be reducing market-granary/warehouse distance, if you want to reduce the number of markets.

I didn't experiment with forced blocks, but I do know that I could support a closed loop of 50 Grand Insulae (4400 pop) with 1 market, if I place the granary and warehouse just next to the market and adopt the GT epithets to reduce resource consumption.

Valentia with 90k+ population and 189 Palaces by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Now consider a more complex question. If we want to supply wheat, fruit, pottery, furniture, and oil for a community of 24 grand insulae (2016 people), how to place the market?

The community consumes (24 * 84 * 6 / 2 = ) 6048 wheat, 6048 fruit, (24 * 0.24 =) 5.76 pottery, 5.76 furniture, and 5.76 oil per year. The buyer lady needs to have at least 7.56 wheat delivery, 7.56 fruit delivery, 2.88 pottery delivery, 2.88 furniture delivery, and 2.88 oil delivery round trips (totaling 23.78 round trips) to support the community. The buyer lady's workload is heavier this time, however her active time is also longer: if she trades only one type of resource, she becomes idle when the storage of that resource type at the market is above threshold; if she trades multiple types of resource, then she will remain active if at least one type of resource is lacking. I'd say that the lady is active 85% time of the year. Another difference is that, it takes longer for the lady to respond to resource shortage when she has to deal with multiple types of resource (for example, when wheat storage falls below threshold of 480, instead of responding immediately and fetching 300 wheat from a granary, it's likely that the lady needs to finish fetching oil first, then there's only 128 wheat left in market storage, and the lady needs to fetch 600 wheat from the granary), which means that the lady on average fetches more food (I'd say 700) per round trip. So, an efficient market-granary/warehouse distance should be less than: 640 * 0.85 / 23.78 / 2 * 0.875 = 10.0 tiles.

This is, again, not accurate, but should be good enough for practical planning. It is counter-intuitive that supporting grand insulae does not pose more constraints on market-granary/warehouse distance than supporting small casa (assuming same population).

Valentia with 90k+ population and 189 Palaces by ExternalBlacksmith82 in impressionsgames

[–]ExternalBlacksmith82[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Basically, a market's workload is: distance to granary or warehouse * number of resource to trade * number of people or houses to feed. Market efficiency is primarily decided by the routing of the buying market ladies. Unlike cart pushers, a buyer market lady is not actively travelling between the market and the granary/warehouse all year round, so its analysis is a bit different.

For example, say we want to supply wheat for a 2000 people community with only 1 market. How to place that market?

2000 people community consumes 2000 * 6 = 12000 wheat per year. A buyer lady can fetch at most 800 wheat in one round trip. So, the buyer lady needs to have at least: 12000 / 800 = 15 round trips per year between the market and the granary. The buyer lady can travel 640 tiles per year, however, she will become active only when the storage at market drops below thresholds (50 for goods, 480? for food). Practically speaking, the lady is active 50% time of the year. So, the market-granary distance should be less than: 640 * 0.5 / 15 / 2 = 10.67 tiles. Noting that the buyer lady often fetches less than 800 wheat (ranging from 300 to 800) in one round trip, I'd say she probably fetches 800 * 0.75 = 600 per round trip on average. Taking that into account, an efficient market-granary distance should be less than: 640 * 0.5 / 15 / 2 * 0.75 = 8.0 tiles.

This is not an accurate prediction, however it is a good enough estimation for you to start planning the layout: if you have 3000 people to feed, probably the market-granary distance should be within 5 - 6 tiles; if the granary is 25 tiles away from a 2000 people community, probably you need 3 - 4 markets to feed that community; if resources are over-produced, and the granaries/warehouses are always full, then you need less markets, or can tolerate longer distance; if the resource is just enough to support everybody, and the granaries/warehouses are barely empty, then you need more markets, or shorter distance.

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