1.7.2 caravan early data for SadShogun

[Flesson19]

@SadShogun This was 2 days of testing and the profit hasn't change, I know you said economy need to be worked on so not concerned so much on that. But survivability is very concerning. You can see from the data that they are all virtually the same. I know people will say RNG, and I do agree it is not a huge sample size but 600 runs and the % are nearly identical. I don't think it's right and could their be a problem with the code, maybe the reports of player caravans not avoiding bandits. I wanted to wait for you to let me know if you find anything and I will re run the data again. Check the 2nd video, shows a caravan of mine walk right into a fight, I have save file if you want it
Caravan Data (Video)
Caravan walks right Into a Fight (Video)

 

[archaicwarrior]

Good review.

We only have "Level 1" caravans, I wonder if higher levels might fix these problems ? I'm not sure What level 2 would mean ? More soldiers ? more profits ? both ?

.

 

[Ask]

Caravan walks right Into a Fight (Video)

What the **** was that? It didn't even try zigzagging back or anything, it straight up just walked into the looters. What? Is their AI broken?

 

[scarface52]

What the **** was that? It didn't even try zigzagging back or anything, it straight up just walked into the looters. What? Is their AI broken?

Caravan ignored looters because they were weaker but sometimes bandits can make suicide attacks on caravans.

 

[Ask]

Caravan ignored looters because they were weaker but sometimes bandits can make suicide attacks on caravans.

Oh, because there was another band of looters nearby they did the thing were combined it wasn't a bad fight and decided to fight the caravan. Alright, I understand that, but shouldn't the caravan AI decide to try running away when there were two looter bands trying to attack? Looters would only try to attack if they are stronger than the caravan, no? And that means the caravan should feel threatened or try to run away?

Or does it depend if the caravan has enough scouting to actually see that there's 2 bands of looters instead of just one, and it misjudged the threat?

 

[scarface52]

Oh, because there was another band of looters nearby they did the thing were combined it wasn't a bad fight and decided to fight the caravan. Alright, I understand that, but shouldn't the caravan AI decide to try running away when there were two looter bands trying to attack? Looters would only try to attack if they are stronger than the caravan, no? And that means the caravan should feel threatened or try to run away?

Or does it depend if the caravan has enough scouting to actually see that there's 2 bands of looters instead of just one, and it misjudged the threat?

The caravan was still more powerful than both looter parties combined though. The power of 43 looters equals 23 while the caravan's power level would be 33 if we were to assume it's every troop is a tier 3 footman.

I "think" bandits have increased aggressiveness towards caravans so even when the odds are against them they can still attack them. This was done because otherwise, bandits were never a threat to the caravans. Read this:

...
I think this situation is not a good design because caravans are currently obviously OP and player has no fear of losing them. This results in caravans to be a stable game element. There are nearly none caravan involved battle in map and this create lack of variety. I want to make caravans more desired targets so that bandits and minor mercenary faction lords (which player is in war with) will attack caravans even they are a bit weaker compared to it or even they are a bit far. So this will result in losing your caravan time to time (more than current situation). Of course this should not be very common. In average once in a year player can lose his/her caravan.
...

Also, I feel like scouting or seeing range doesn't have any effect on AI parties fleeing behavior. They all seem to start to flee from the same range.

 

[Ask]

The caravan was still more powerful than both looter parties combined though. The power of 43 looters equals 23 while the caravan's power level would be 33 if we were to assume it's every troop is a tier 3 footman.

I "think" bandits have increased aggressiveness towards caravans so even when the odds are against them they can still attack them. This was done because otherwise, bandits were never a threat to the caravans. Read this:

Also, I feel like scouting or seeing range doesn't have any effect on AI parties fleeing behavior. They all seem to start to flee from the same range.

Ahhhhh gotcha, thanks for the explanations. Guess it's just one of those complicated matters of balance then.

 

[Flesson19]

Problem is they went from a more desired target to lunch for all, I know what mexxico was trying to do as we talked about caravans for months, but not having the ability to evade them at all, fine then that is high risk, then where is the high reward and don't tell me 400 avg is high reward, TW cant have is both ways, right now its high risk/medium rewards. And to the people that say oh my caravans make 600 a day, I say this, are you checking every single day to get that average or just once in awhile since quite a few day caravans don't make any money as they didn't stop somewhere or the place they stopped they didn't make enough to pay wages. I guarantee they aren't adding up everyday to get an average, sure I can see 500 or 600 at times when running a few caravans, and many days they make nothing. So money isnt good because of economy and survivability is junk because they think they are op, that is why after initial costs are paid and 'if" they survive 2 years they might make 250-400 per day average profit. I have the data for that as well. This has been going on for about 6-8 months, full release is soon, think we can get a fix before then?

 

[five bucks]

Could an ez fix be make caravans cheaper to setup?

 

[CrazyElf]

I think that at this point, yes Caravans need to:

1. Scale with trade skill (more profit from higher trade)
2. I'd argue scale with Steward as well
3. There should be a less aggressive AI - evade where possible for caravans and scout should help

This is one of those changes that needs to happen as the game approaches release.

Caravan ignored looters because they were weaker but sometimes bandits can make suicide attacks on caravans.

Attribution can wear down units with time.

 

[Spinozart1]

Could an ez fix be make caravans cheaper to setup?

+1
Some ideas to reduce the initial cost (and give more options to the player):
Scale caravan units cost with recruitment costs and leave the choice of troops type and quantity to the player. Of course we could even give our own troops as well.
Player define initial investment (Or have the option to choose and give the type and quantity of goods to trade...).

I think that caravans should be designed as a high risk investment with a higher return than shops (which only risk is if player is on war with town owner faction).

 

[niekdegrijze]

- reduce or remove bandit scaling parties relative to player level
- ability to set trade routes, this way you can try to avoid the most dangerous places
- combine your set trade routes with distributing input and output items of your workshops
- ability for cities to hire manhunters or constable patrols for the area around the town.
- Set clanmember to protection duty of a caravan. (just like the player mission) This way he will follow a way behind but helps out in battle.

 

[Flesson19]

I found the solution ..mods, As a dev once told me when tried to work with them to fix issues, "You can always go mod" Sad when that's how devs want to solve issues or work with the community.