war of eight continents Codex Dacanium: Terra (BETA 1.0 RELEASED!)

[Valixor 121]

18 minutes ago, BasaraMestre said:

Can you write the game code to make it an RTS? It must be difficult or nearly impossible task with these confusing developer source codes...

Maybe. A huge "maybe" to that question. WotEC is still in very early development, so I can't make any judgement as to if it'll happen or not, and AoH's code may indeed end up too spaghetti to RTS the thing.

In the meanwhile, I've thought of making province movement time-based, to make WotEC kind of RTS-ish (I guess)?, and to make sure some major city can't be reached in 3 turns from half the world over by going through desolate provinces.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Valixor

[Bruh_moment_AF 54]

When the android version?

[Valixor 121]

A TIME-BASED SOLUTION FOR PROVINCE MOVEMENT

As you probably know, the army movement system is based on a linear, turn-based system. That means armies (without any obstructions like enemy armies) move exactly one province per turn, no matter if it's a densely packed megacity or a desolate region covering an even thousand miles of nothing. Let's take an example here - an army wants to move from one side to another, of this map:

IN A TIME-BASED MOVEMENT SYSTEM

There are several provinces, each with perfectly flat terrain and no other obstructions, and the army travels at a linear pace through the provinces. If the movement is time-based (like all Paradox grand strategies, and most other RTS games), so the army covers a paticular distance each period of time, the shortest path looks like this:

IN AGE OF HISTORY II

On the way, the army crosses 6 intermediate provinces between points A and B, covering the shortest distance possible: around 550 distance units. However, Age of History II, having its roots in Age of History I's mechanics where realistic movement wasn't a concern, with a 1 turn per province movement, would have the shortest path be THIS:

By any reasonable measure, such movement would be insane to even think of. However, THIS is the shortest path from point A to point B, according to Age of History logic. The army crosses 4 intermediate provinces, and around 900 distance units, around 65% more!

The Sid Meier's Civilization, and the many turn-based strategy games that followed it, have a similar mechanic, but in Civilization, units can often move more than one province per turn thanks to movement energy, and all tiles are identical in size.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

War of the Eight Continents (obviously an AoH II mod), like many other grand strategy games/mods, use differently sized provinces to represent more or less sparsely populated areas, though AoH also has growth rate and development to more accurately represent them. As the provinces are of a different size, an army can just go through sparse deserts and tundras, and get to their destination faster than if they went in the logical straight path... which is rather unrealistic, and one of WotEC's main goals is to mitigate some of the unrealistic AoH game mechanics.

HOW IT WILL BE IMPLEMENTED

War of the Eight Continents is still at a very early stage, having just received its first update for the First Demo, therefore it is too early to say in more detail on its implementation. However, I can already reveal the proposed functionality of the time-based movement mechanic:

• All units travelling to a particular province will have to cover a particular distance, calculated by adding up the distances of every individual province they travel through. For this, the code used to measure distance from the capital may be reused.
• Units move at a base speed (per day), determined by current era, technology, and a tech perk, tentatively called "Military Transport".
• If it takes more than 1 turn to travel to that province when the distance is subtracted from the unit speed * days/turn, the unit will stay in the current province until the distance is less than 0. If travelling to a destination more than 1 prov away, the distance after travelling to the next province and all subtractions is kept, possibly making travel to the next province faster.
• If if takes less than 1 turn to travel to that province, first check if the unit is in an allied province, and going to an allied province. Else, the unit travels exactly 1 prov, this is to prevent units from skipping over provinces. Otherwise, if the destination is 2 or more provs away, after travelling to one province, see if the unit still has enough speed per turn (accounting for terrain) to travel to the next province. If true, move to that province, and repeat, otherwise stop at the current province and repeat the process on the next turn.
• Terrain will affect speed after all tech modifiers, with plains giving a slight bonus, and mountains and jungles giving massive penalties.
• Travel by sea will initially be much faster than land travel, but the difference will slowly narrow over changing eras.
• Distance will also have effects for a potential trade mechanic, making precious and desirable goods not available nearby very expensive.

I know that this much calculation may be very computationally intensive, but the implementation will come at the same time I start doing game optimization. Wish me luck... I'm gonna need all of it.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Valixor

[BasaraMestre 47]

If you can do it, I'll pay you, but as a difficult task, I doubt you can, but I want it's wrong, good luck 👍

[Lipark Japanese modder 1,207]

On 2021/7/6 at 午前7時20分, Valixor said:

多分。その質問に対する巨大な「多分」。WotECはまだ開発の初期段階にあるため、それが発生するかどうかを判断することはできません。AoHのコードは、実際にRTSを実行するにはスパゲッティになりすぎる可能性があります。

その間、私は州の移動を時間ベースにし、WotECをRTSっぽくすることを考えました（おそらく）？そして、世界の半分から3ターンでいくつかの主要都市に到達できないようにすることを考えました荒涼とした地方を通過することによって。

Do you know wc4 or 1941 frozen front series? in the game each unit has movement points and they must pay some points by the terrien. if you combine the system and a lot of provinces will make the game more better

(when you code game, you must have prepare that you hard effort can be disappear) 

[Valixor 121]

2 hours ago, Lipark Japanese modder said:

Do you know wc4 or 1941 frozen front series? in the game each unit has movement points and they must pay some points by the terrien. if you combine the system and a lot of provinces will make the game more better

(when you code game, you must have prepare that you hard effort can be disappear) 

Isn't the movement system in those two games very similar to Sid Meier's Civilization? All of the games have movement energy/points, and all of them have hexagonal tiles of equal size, that sort of system wouldn't work well for a game with provinces of vastly different sizes. That's why I've been planning out a time-based, speed-based RTS-like movement system, NOT a Civilization-like movement system.

However, I may implement combat energy, which each unit expends in battle to deal damage and decreases with increasing army sizes, so battles can last long enough for reinforcements to come, and more generally be less than instant. That would be even more calculations on top of the already computation intensive time-based movement system, so definitely not guaranteed, and maybe even unlikely.

TLDR: Civ-like movement and time-based movement are two mutually exclusive things... mostly.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Valixor

[Valixor 121]

THE TECHNOLOGY QUESTION

Age of History II, like most strategy games (not specifying RTS or turn-based, AoH II is an unholy mixture of both), has technology as a gameplay mechanic. There are a few ways of doing technology in strategy games:

• concrete, individual technologies researched using research points or other tech "currency" on a techtree,
• individual technologies researched gradually, possibly also on a techtree
• multiple technology levels that unlock new buildings, units or mechanics as tech level increases,
• and a single, monolithic technology level that also unlocks new stuff.

Age of History II uses the fourth kind, with a single number from 0.0 to 2.0 determining how advanced a civilization is. The default tech level is 0.45, and can be set between 0.0 and 1.0 in the scenario editor. When playing a random game, the starting tech level of the civilization is set between 0.2 and 0.29.

This type of tech level has some realism problems, which become more and more apparent the further in time we go. Let me explain.

UNLOCKS

In Age of History II, increasing technology also unlocks new buildings and mechanics. There are two mechanics-related unlocks:

• Can civilize as a tribe - Tech 0.35
• Can change government - Tech 0.4

and several building unlocks:

• Castle - Tech 0.25
• Fortress - Tech 0.5
• Watch Tower - Tech 0.2
• Port - Tech 0.25
• Farm 1 - Tech 0.15
• Farm 2 - Tech 0.3
• Farm 3 - Tech 0.4
• Farm 4 - Tech 0.55
• Farm 5 - Tech 0.7
• Workshop 1 - Tech 0.4
• Workshop 2 - Tech 0.65
• Workshop 3 - Tech 0.85
• Library - Tech 0.25
• University - Tech 0.5
• Research Lab - Tech 0.85
• Armoury - Tech 0.4
• Supply Camp - Tech 0.3

Tech levels also determine the attack and defense stats of armies.

(hey, I've just listed every reason to research in AoH above!)

The problem lies with the fact Age of History II covers more than 6,000 years of history, while the tech levels for unlocks remain the same. This means it is possible to have a Research Lab in 2000 BC, while a tribe in 1800 or an underdeveloped country in 1950 can't civilize or change government types respectively because of these arbitrary restrictions.

DO WE NEED A RADICAL SOLUTION?

Unlike Age of History's movement system, which has obvious realism and gameplay issues, the problems with tech levels are a lot more minor in comparison, and there is no one way to fix these issues. For example, technologies may be tied to both a tech level AND a tech year loosely tied to tech level, like this (sorry for bad mockup editing):

' 

Then, the ability to civilize and change governments could have tech levels decrease over time, so the ability to do so becomes accessible to less advanced civilizations. Meanwhile, buildings could be locked away until both the tech level and tech year requirements are satisfied, with tech level also decreasing as time passes.

The code to implement this solution could be inserted within wherever tech levels are handled, using existing code for functionality and avoiding the need to deal with Age of History's unmaintained, unmanageable spaghetti code and potentially breaking it.

Switching AoH/WotEC to a system based on individual technologies would be much, MUCH harder, even more so than the proposed time-based movement system. This would require a nearly complete recode of AI to get them to even research the technologies, let alone use them, major changes in nearly every gameplay-relevant gamecode file (which are so large, messy and interdependent that doing anything serious would probably break them)... you're better off remaking the entire game at this point.

Still, it would let me implement this tech tree concept:

Edited July 10, 2021 by Valixor

[WINNIE THE PARAMOUN LEADER 2,655]

Discord for mod: https://discord.gg/qr9zZpKErP

 

[Lipark Japanese modder 1,207]

On 7/8/2021 at 8:05 PM, Valixor said:

Isn't the movement system in those two games very similar to Sid Meier's Civilization? All of the games have movement energy/points, and all of them have hexagonal tiles of equal size, that sort of system wouldn't work well for a game with provinces of vastly different sizes. That's why I've been planning out a time-based, speed-based RTS-like movement system, NOT a Civilization-like movement system.

However, I may implement combat energy, which each unit expends in battle to deal damage and decreases with increasing army sizes, so battles can last long enough for reinforcements to come, and more generally be less than instant. That would be even more calculations on top of the already computation intensive time-based movement system, so definitely not guaranteed, and maybe even unlikely.

TLDR: Civ-like movement and time-based movement are two mutually exclusive things... mostly.

but one problem is left. RTS system need a high peformance and mobile can't be stand up for it.

but i came up with a combined idea.

how about assign the movement points in eaxh territen provinces?
like army need 1 turns to move on plains but need 3 turns on the forest ( and this can be decreased by invast )
in case moving army, you can make AI to prefer plains to forest or desert
demelit is you need modify in calculating AI's movement per turns

Edited July 12, 2021 by Lipark Japanese modder

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 6: TOO MANY PROVINCES...

The province guides are all COMPLETE!!! All the continents and seas are done, and now I can move to drawing them all in the Age of History map editor!

...and there's a slight problem. Over 13,000 of them to be precise.

Yes, I managed to way overshoot both goals of 7,500 and >8,000 provinces and head straight into Project Alpha territory, with a rough estimate of ~13,000 provinces just in this part of the world. That number was the estimate for the entire game world. We're now looking at more like 20,000!!! provinces if this level of density was extended to the rest of the world. Drawing 13,000 provinces is going to take too long, so first I'm working to reduce it to a more reasonable 10,000, which should be done over the next few days.

[Valixor 121]

Another small update: This mod isn't dead yet, I'm still working on reducing the number of province guides to less than 10,000. I'll give more information here later today.

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 7: THE PROVINCE GENOCIDE

Desperate times can come for any reason. In case of WotEC, they came because of a massive misjudgement, leading to the map containing over 13,000 provinces, 73% more than the original plan of 7,500. This massive province count would not only take too long to draw, but would involve massive performance problems, especially with the plans for RTS-like movement and other possibly computing-intensive features. For that reason, the difficult decision was made... to kill off thousands of provinces, while trying to keep some sort of aesthetic beauty. In the end, over 2,500 provinces were removed from the map, about half consisting of ocean provinces merged together, about a quarter in Mahaar, whose province counts are now about halved, and the rest in various continents, mostly Draconia and Westrinia. This is the result, a day late and around 500 provinces short: 

There will be more cuts made as the provinces are drawn in the map editor, to get it down to around, or even less than, 10,000 provinces. Also, the second demo is coming, and I can confirm where it will happen: in the Land of Red Flowers: the Zuan, Asaka and Western Krisham lands.

PROVINCE MAP OF THE SECOND DEMO

 

There are ~1,100 provinces in this area, with 32 complete super-regions and another 11 partial super-regions, and around a dozen scenarios are planned, a few with events - 2021, 1740, 1340, 375 BCE and Mythical Dynasties (2000 BCE) are guaranteed to appear in the second demo. The rest are still being decided upon and will be unveiled as development continues, however at least two scenarios are going to be set in the 20th century. The second demo will also feature new terrains (link to my post regarding biomes), and introduction of other changes, such as the 200% base growth rate, increased minimum army to attack, and possibly new technology types.

P.S. I will attempt implementing the RTS-like time-based movement system after releasing Alpha 0.1 of WotEC, and if successful release the new system together with Beta 1.0 of the mod.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Valixor

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 8: PROVINCES IN THE EDITOR

I've begun making the provinces for the second demo map in the AoH map editor, already 263 provinces are done:

All the provinces should be drawn in two days, and then map connections will be set up, and terrain and growth rates set in each province, which should take another day. Afterward, the only things left are to place cities, create civilizations and create the scenarios, which will take the longest of all steps.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Valixor

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 9: NEARING COMPLETION

The province map is now around 70% complete, with 770 of ~1,100 provinces, and most of the land provinces done. All 1,100 provinces will be done tomorrow.

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 10: PROVINCE STATISTICS

All 1,091 provinces of the Second Demo map are now complete, as well as their connections. Now, I'm doing the regions, growth rate and terrain, I'll make another progress update soon.

(the region names come from vanilla AoH II, they will be changed from the Alpha version onwards.)

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 11: A CIVIL WAR OF SORTS

Already, I've made enough progress today to show the first test scenario for the second demo of WotEC: the 2nd Asaka Civil War in 1968. 26 civilizations have been made just for this scenario, and they will be able to reunify Asakahima:

At first, I made all 26 factions be at war with each other... and obviously it was a massive pain and didn't work as expected. Instead, the civil war will happen in several, event-triggered stages, with increasingly united factions eventually going for a final showdown in 1973-1974. Over the next few days, I'll complete the growth rates and terrain, then civilizations, cities and scenarios.

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 12: THE WORLD IN 2021

The terrain and growth rates are now almost complete, and the first whole-map scenario has just arrived!

This is a partial country-level view of the Land of the Red Flowers in the year 2021, the Dara Raj is further south but not visible due to viewport limits. The next post will show some new scenarios, including a division-level view of the area, where the countries will be divided into their first-level areas (provinces in Zuan PR, prefectures in Asakahima and Naycheong, republics in Truc Nhom, princedoms in Dara Raj, and counties in Payn Daw and Chenhai).

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 13: DIVIDE AND... CONQUER?

Unfortunately, the countries shown above are a bit too large for my taste. They need to be punished. By splitting them... into their subdivisions!

In all seriousness, I made this to 1. create a more diverse set of scenarios, and 2. guide city placement. Next, these divisions will be colored under the same color as their parent country, and placed in an alliance with the country's other divisions.

[Valixor 121]

From tomorrow, I'll try to make and display at least 1 scenario per day to get the second WotEC demo ready on time...

[Valixor 121]

Gonna need at least 121 new flags for the 1340 scenario alone. Fortunately, that many new flags won't be needed for other scenarios as some of the civilizations will be recycled.

Edited July 24, 2021 by Valixor

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 14: PICK YOUR POISON

Welcome to the Land of the Red Flowers again, in the year... oh god... 1340 CE:

We were in southern Dacanium when we last visited this exact year, and it was a few years before things went really bad.

A lot of states and conflicts here, but in short we have a collapsing Jin Empire shortly after its disastrous campaign against the new Hawer Arelta 20 years earlier, three Turban factions (Grey, Red and Green Turbans) fighting either the Jin or themselves whenever convenient, the Orders of Ailaak, Dushun and Gyhosa who drive people visiting their territory into their suicide cults, with the blessing of the Mhai Temple, but are divided on how to do their last rites, the Tokawa and Komasa shogunates, both claiming to be the legitimate Asaka shogunate (neither are), a new wave of Qah'sanni and elven (Mahaarim) hordes destroying everything in their path, a Kingdom of Heaven with a plan to build their temple out of every tree in their land, Roman exiles believing the Augustian Empire still exists, I could go on...

[Dolphin General 1,842]

On 7/9/2021 at 1:00 PM, Valixor said:

THE TECHNOLOGY QUESTION

Age of History II, like most strategy games (not specifying RTS or turn-based, AoH II is an unholy mixture of both), has technology as a gameplay mechanic. There are a few ways of doing technology in strategy games:

• concrete, individual technologies researched using research points or other tech "currency" on a techtree,
• individual technologies researched gradually, possibly also on a techtree
• multiple technology levels that unlock new buildings, units or mechanics as tech level increases,
• and a single, monolithic technology level that also unlocks new stuff.

Age of History II uses the fourth kind, with a single number from 0.0 to 2.0 determining how advanced a civilization is. The default tech level is 0.45, and can be set between 0.0 and 1.0 in the scenario editor. When playing a random game, the starting tech level of the civilization is set between 0.2 and 0.29.

This type of tech level has some realism problems, which become more and more apparent the further in time we go. Let me explain.

UNLOCKS

In Age of History II, increasing technology also unlocks new buildings and mechanics. There are two mechanics-related unlocks:

• Can civilize as a tribe - Tech 0.35
• Can change government - Tech 0.4

and several building unlocks:

• Castle - Tech 0.25
• Fortress - Tech 0.5
• Watch Tower - Tech 0.2
• Port - Tech 0.25
• Farm 1 - Tech 0.15
• Farm 2 - Tech 0.3
• Farm 3 - Tech 0.4
• Farm 4 - Tech 0.55
• Farm 5 - Tech 0.7
• Workshop 1 - Tech 0.4
• Workshop 2 - Tech 0.65
• Workshop 3 - Tech 0.85
• Library - Tech 0.25
• University - Tech 0.5
• Research Lab - Tech 0.85
• Armoury - Tech 0.4
• Supply Camp - Tech 0.3

Tech levels also determine the attack and defense stats of armies.

(hey, I've just listed every reason to research in AoH above!)

The problem lies with the fact Age of History II covers more than 6,000 years of history, while the tech levels for unlocks remain the same. This means it is possible to have a Research Lab in 2000 BC, while a tribe in 1800 or an underdeveloped country in 1950 can't civilize or change government types respectively because of these arbitrary restrictions.

DO WE NEED A RADICAL SOLUTION?

Unlike Age of History's movement system, which has obvious realism and gameplay issues, the problems with tech levels are a lot more minor in comparison, and there is no one way to fix these issues. For example, technologies may be tied to both a tech level AND a tech year loosely tied to tech level, like this (sorry for bad mockup editing):

' 

Then, the ability to civilize and change governments could have tech levels decrease over time, so the ability to do so becomes accessible to less advanced civilizations. Meanwhile, buildings could be locked away until both the tech level and tech year requirements are satisfied, with tech level also decreasing as time passes.

The code to implement this solution could be inserted within wherever tech levels are handled, using existing code for functionality and avoiding the need to deal with Age of History's unmaintained, unmanageable spaghetti code and potentially breaking it.

Switching AoH/WotEC to a system based on individual technologies would be much, MUCH harder, even more so than the proposed time-based movement system. This would require a nearly complete recode of AI to get them to even research the technologies, let alone use them, major changes in nearly every gameplay-relevant gamecode file (which are so large, messy and interdependent that doing anything serious would probably break them)... you're better off remaking the entire game at this point.

Still, it would let me implement this tech tree concept:

if you do that you are jesus 3

[Valixor 121]

SECOND DEMO PROGRESS PART 15: THE EASTERN REKOVIAD

As promised, here's another scenario, this time from 1476, the same year the Rekoviad in the first demo happens. Next scenario will probably be 2000 BCE (Mythical Dynasties) and then 375 BCE (Winter is Coming).

[Valixor 121]

SCENARIO SHOWCASE: MYTHICAL DYNASTIES

Here's the Mythical Dynasties scenario, from 2000 BCE (1974 BCE in-game). This will probably be the earliest in time scenario in the second WotEC demo, Dawn of Civilizations (4000 BCE) is planned for the alpha/beta version showcase, with the full map.

At this point in time, the world is still in the Bronze Age, slowly advancing towards the Iron Age, with numerous small civilizations and tribes only mentioned in sources from 1,000 years later and often considered legendary by modern historians, therefore this scenario is called "Mythical Dynasties". There are also sentient mammoth, scorpid Firewalker and wyvern states, which would all suddenly go extinct in around 500 years as the Zhao Empire waged a military campaign against them.

Next scenario will be 375 BCE (Winter is Coming), and then there will be two set in the 19th century, and then 1740, and finally a 1000 CE scenario, scenario set during the Age of Darkness (306-651 CE), and a non-canon Superregion Wars scenario.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Valixor

[Valixor 121]

SCENARIO SHOWCASE: WINTER IS COMING

Or at least, the Zuan Winter Period. In 375 BCE, several Zuan dynasties have made their claim to the Mandate of Heaven, Zuan states continue their endless fighting, the Hawer Venora (northeast) is being pressed between a growing Hitheyah Khanate and internal fighting, Asakahima is at war between the Yamato, which are at war with each other too, and the Ewisu, which are at war with each other too, and the Ashoka Kingdom is at its peak of power. 

Just six more scenarios to go.