Maximum number of resource gatherers

[Sierak]

Maybe RD and PD should change limit to 2/3 (or 1/2) of habitants in village/town that can gather resources?

No,PRUT proposition is better!

[Bowser]

It seems like every new adjustment to the game has one major consequence, to make things harder/longer to manufacture.

Tiredness, decaying items, extra smelting/crushing for iron & steel, limited resource gatherers, anvils needed for making certain tools, no more natural healing, glass for cars now has more steps also, weapons needing multiple tools and parts to create, skills that adjust peoples collection/manufacturing speed....

I do recognize that there have been a few new machines that have doubled output, such as harvestors and drills.

Brainstorming ideas and implementing them is certainly entertaining and challenges the player to adapt, but do 95% of them have to negatively impact production? I thought as we evolved, as our society moved on, we would come up with ways inventions and ways to do things more efficiently... but instead we have devolved and found extra steps and obstacles to accomplish our goals.

I will be a good boy and adapt to each change as it comes, but lets try moving forward and stop putting shackles on those of us who like to build things. I'm in no rush to use my planks, my mortar and pestle, my hoist and pullies, my adze, my apothecary table, my drying rack, my desk, my broom, and other tools. I have actually enjoyed making.

[Jos Elkink]

A few comments:

1) Limits per resource will definitely not be introduced. I don't want to fix how much of what resources can be gathered, but how much in total can be gathered. Land scarcity requires politics / social organisation to determine what the slots will be used for - setting it per resource type leaves out all politics and leaves it to the one optimal use.

2) Limits depending on population size will definitely not be introduced; population size should be partly depend on where resources are and how many there are, not the other way around. If there is not enough, perhaps you should consider moving to a neighbouring location.

3) I still think land scarcity is a good way to avoid this idea that so many people are just silently working for themselves, without any social involvement. The game is and has always been about social organisation, and this is a good incentive to do so.

4) Whether or not to introduce a currency - something I'm not much in favour of, even though I see some advantages - is really a different topic.

5) The idea that long repeating projects take too much of the digging slots is a strange argument: you can always tell that person to stop digging, or drag him/her away, or kill him/her. In other words: it can be socially controlled. Note that if you stop working on a project, the slot becomes available again, even if the project persists.

6) Has the Polish area really no animals? If so, please drop me an email and I'll fix that.

7) Too many people seem to continue to think that a city should produce its own food. Many cities have formed around places where rare and important resources can be found, for example hematite. One would expect those cities to be able to trade their hematite for food from neighbouring villages. Why would that not be possible? Even in the Polish region?

Note that if a few people use dung forks and farm for food, food production is already really very high and can sustain a large number of people with relatively little work / slots used. It might be advisable to organise that those people that dig are the ones with the right tools.

9) Again, as said, the limits as they are currently set are preliminary. If we really decide that they are too low, we might increase them. But for all locations, not depending on population size, or language, or ...

10) I'm not really sure this new system hurts the new lands, like the Polish area, so much more than the other lands. Why would that be? Aren't the Polish a little bit too much in a rush to keep up with the English? ... Note that the English areas have developed for four years now, so it will simply take time to get a similar industrial status.

11) Note that still loads of things - manufacturing, hunting, use of machines, etc - still do not use digging slots. So there is lots to do, probably, in most towns.

12) Finally, don't forget that this game is about social organisation, not building as quickly as possible. Those people that really only play to gather resources and produce might be playing the wrong game. Well, I'd like to keep even those players, but ... well, you really should think about playing more socially. E.g. 'nothing to do' in a town is really odd considering how few political debates, auctions, letter writing, newspapers, etc. I see. Those should be much more core of the game than they are now, imho.

Well, after all those points I should add that I do take the criticism very seriously. It's striking, though, that it's almost only the Polish that are currently complaining, so perhaps we should talk a bit more about what makes it harder for the Polish region and what can be done about that, instead of talking about abolishing the whole system.

Oh, and about how it is unrealistic that you cannot farm carrots, because someone else is digging for stone: well, if one person digs a big mine to gather stone, you cannot on the same land start farming potatoes ... I don't see why that is so unrealistic from a land scarcity point of view.

[Sierak]

Very romantic,but in polish locations we have much more reason to be worry,we don't have any machines and this limit is make polish locations more poor and more backward in time than english locations much more than before,without possibility to catch up.

Edit:Wow new big speech.

[Jos Elkink]

It seems like every new adjustment to the game has one major consequence, to make things harder/longer to manufacture.

Yes, I know that is often what is happening. It is not really the purpose as such. Some things are intended to make the game more challenging, to require social organisation etc. So parts of the changes are. But at the same time it is not really the idea that all progress should totally slow down. Hence the recent increase in iron and steel production speed.

The resource gathering limit, for example, is not intended to slow down resource gathering, but to increase regional activities. And yes, that will require more time too, so it will affect the resource gathering speed, but that seems hard to avoid. I don't think we want the kind of game where every new character just gathers everything for him/herself and builds everything for him/herself and that's it - and making that more difficult means making production more difficult. But with proper organisation, it should still all be well possible.

Any suggestions (perhaps in separate threads) about how we can speed up the game again, without removing all added challenges, would definitely be welcome. How to require social organisation, interregional trade, planning, politics, etc., while still making it possible to get things done - that's the challenge of designing this game properly.

[Sierak]

1) Limits per resource will definitely not be introduced. I don't want to fix how much of what resources can be gathered, but how much in total can be gathered. Land scarcity requires politics / social organisation to determine what the slots will be used for - setting it per resource type leaves out all politics and leaves it to the one optimal use.

Limit per resource is the most realistic,anyway you don't like this conception because in english locations you have a lot of machines,and have now no problems,but if english locations have limit per resource this is really catastrophe then english characters can't using they's machine and bring real part of material.


Moral is simple,you don't have a character in polish location,and you don't want to make problems for You and your english better understood-contacting friends.

You're suprised when You see in this topic a lot of polish voice?Polish forum is the second forum when you calculate number of topics,users...

[CyboRKg]

So, stop resource gatherers limit, and begin resources limits

It`s a good idea. But better idea is - switch off all kind limits

If we really decide that they are too low, we might increase them

Yes, please. Definitely

Oh, and about how it is unrealistic that you cannot farm carrots, because someone else is digging for stone: well, if one person digs a big mine to gather stone, you cannot on the same land start farming potatoes ... I don't see why that is so unrealistic from a land scarcity point of view.

Why not? Today big mine, tomorrow big field, day after tomorrow again big mine? It is unrealistic

[wichita]

I really want to follow this thread, but I don't think my brain has time to digest all of the ranting. I will lay out my thoughts and see how much of this repeats suggestions or arguments that have been made already, then maybe I can offer something to the discussion that is novel (though somehow I doubt this will be the case or will it be acknowledged )


First of all, what is trying to be stimulated is trade. Frankly people don't do enough of it right now and that is holding up progress more than anything else. This is more important than collection, processing, or assembly. Yes these are issues too, but the simple fact is that it will still take one man working by himself what...30 years to make a car. It is idiotic to be expect this be done.

A hallmark of the development of society is specialization. A person performs a certain set of tasks, and trades the services of his tasks in exchange for things he needs. If a man choses what task he performs on his own, based on his observation of needs, then trades with other independent workers for what he needs - that is capitalism. If the people in a society get together and allocate that task to him, then he passes those goods to the council which gives him other things in return - that is socialism. Both involve task specialization and trading goods.

Alright, so there isn't room for you to gather a raw resource. Well, talk to someone who is. Make a deal with the guy digging potatoes. "If you can give me food, I will make a dungfork for you so you can afford to get enough food for three people. Then give some potatoes to the guy digging hematite so you can get more iron." You and the hematite man get food, the farmer gets tools and weapons to protect himself. The society builds from there.

So your town doesn't have food. Seatown Forest got around this by learning how to eat silk cocoons. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. SF is a thriving community that survives on trade. They have the resources to provide manufacturing, which they trade for food. It can be done. It has been done.



The numbers may not be balanced yet, but the implementation is not the problem. That's my opinion, I could be wrong. But I doubt it. I know my characters have seemed to use it for the most part. It would work even better if the characters around them would also recoignize it and cooperate. But that is another problem that societies face, right?


Summary: Find a job that needs to be done. Do it. Trade for what you need. And learn some patience. Success doesn't come over night. And just because you are not making or collecting everything yourself does not make you a communist.

[Ahoyhoy]

Every single one of my character has been affected by this rule today. And everyone of my friends who play the game encounter that every town has maxed out too. It's ridiculous what do you have the maximum number of resource gatherers per city? 2?

[Schme]

Yes. Death to resource gathering limits.

[wichita]

Just to humour the people in charge of adjusting numbers, instead of coming to the forum and screaming "THIS SUCKS" try and see how many people are collecting at the time that you get the dreaded message. If the numbers really are too low, it would be nice to have some reports as to which areas might need some reasonable adjustment. I find it hard to seriously believe that it has been set as low as two.

And if you run out of fingers and toes, just move on to a different town.

[Just A Bill]

Not that cantr has to be realistic, but the "land scarcity" argument doesn't hold water when a 20 or so people are all that can work in one area and the next area is 4-5 days walk away. Its like we have these little islands of productivity surrounded by immense areas of useless blighted land.

If a city didn't have space for gathering what it needs, it would expand into the surrounding areas. While this might not work for some resources, Almost any city should be able to plant food in the surrounding area.

As far as the Polish problem is concerned, it looks like what happened something like this.... In the begining, people were relatively productive. Iron was available straight from the ground, there was no tiredness or decay. As time passed, the early lands got tools, vehicles, machines ect that made them even more productive. At some point something would have to change or all the accumulated stuff would overwhealm the game. So rule changes were made to combat this trend (hemitite, decay, tiredness) This works fairly well for the older areas, but the newer areas don't have the machines, tools, and vehicles to make them more productive. This makes it harder for the new lands to keep up, let alone close the gap with the other areas. I don't think this is unique to the polish area. I don't recall any moterized vehicles on K-island, but I could be mistaken

[kroner]

what would be really cool is if instead of limiting the number of workers, gather rates were dynamic...
left to its own, the yield/hour of each resource would rise slightly each hour, asymptotically to some maximum rate. each person-hour of gathering would drop the yield rate by a very small amount. this would create equilibrium yield rates that differed based on the number of people gathering. with a few people, yield per person would remain fairly high, but with more people, the yield per person would drop, and reach some lower equilibrium rate. it would be possible with enough people gathering that production would eventually go to zero, and people would have to lay off until it built back up to get anything at all. this creates scarcity and encourages conservation of resources without putting hard caps on the number of workers. it would be a little more complicated to implement than the current system since the for each resource in each location a value would have to stored for the current yield rate (probably just a multiplier of the base gathering rate), but it wouldn't be too difficult. the tools used by individuals as well as their health, tirdeness, etc would still influence their own gather rates, but would not effect the dynamic yield rates, thus raising even higher the importance of tools and efficient workers, since a tired toolless worker would tax the resource supply just as much as a rested worker with tools but yield less.

and it has such mathematical elegance, i feel happy just thinking about it.

here's an example of how the numbers might work:
the maximum rate, m, would be twice gather rates as they are now.
let c be the current rate and w be the number of workers on that resource.

the default increase each hour would be .01*(m-c).
the decrease each hour would be .001*m*w.
so each hour, the new rate, c1, would be calculated form teh last hour's rate, c0, by the formula:
c1 = c0 + .01*(m-c0) - .001*m*w

with these numbers, you could sustain the old rate (m/2) with 5 workers gathering. with 1 worker, you would could sustain a rate of .9*m. with 10 or more workers however, the gathering rate would eventually drop to 0.

it may look a bit daunting, but i promise it would work brilliantly.

[KVZ]

In location YYY can be produced just 8000g rice per day - no matter how many farmers will farm the fields!! Farm won't be bigger, so all the farmers will farm the part of total amount, dependingly of their indywidual skills and used tools or machineries.

This is exactly that what I have suggested one page before. And this is most realistic land scarcity implementation we can invent. And I very like land scarcity like that to make game more realistic, but still fun to play and playable. But wait... I have another solution which Jos could like... see below.

Also, I strongly disagree with the suggestion above the above post. That's even worse than what we have now.

No, worse is that when people can't gather anything because of current Jos "land scarcity" implementation

Maybe RD and PD should change limit to 2/3 (or 1/2) of habitants in village/town that can gather resources?

This is bad idea, because people can make "zombie" characters to remove limits and if location have small number of habitants why to have still any limit?

For what do these complications?
This game is really great but without these damned limits

If Jos really need land scarcity, it should be done like me and PRUT suggested (or more like I will suggest bellow). And think, it would be more fun, if in one forest you can gather 300 grams of wood and in other only 150 because of limit, so you have to plan where to make expeditions, etc... But still you can gather something you need everywhere

No,PRUT proposition is better!

Remember that this is also my proposition, and I would be VERY happy if this will be implemented, but after Jos answer I see that chances are low But I found another implementation which I hope Jos will like much more...

1) Limits per resource will definitely not be introduced. I don't want to fix how much of what resources can be gathered, but how much in total can be gathered. Land scarcity requires politics / social organisation to determine what the slots will be used for - setting it per resource type leaves out all politics and leaves it to the one optimal use.

Why not? This implementation is more realistic, why in the forest someone can't collect mushrooms if they are there just because others gather wood? And why someone can't gather ANYTHING just becuase someone was first?.. He should have possibility to "steal" something from field/forest/etc... Still govs can determine who should be allowed to gather and give licences (because too big number of gatherers will make everyone gather lower amount), and who should do what if they want to decide what is best for their development. But they are not forced to give so much limitation and force them like with limit of resource gatherers. And why you want to force govs to such changes? I recognise this as CRB on purpose

EUREKA If you realy want to determine how much in total can be gathered, why not give compromise solution, f.e. there could be a limit of total amount of resources can be gathered in any area and it would work like thet every resource will have daily gathering value mulipled by factor and result of every gathering will give the same factor, to make this more clear:
there is a factor 20 in any location, and then:
it is possible to gather 8000 of carrots/day, or 15000 of stone/day, or 4000 of carrots and 7500 of stone, with all possible combinations. So you will get what you want, but there will still be possible to "steal" some carrots Because dayly limit will be divided on all gatheres based on their skills, tools and machines So, someone using harvester will still get more, but when there will be 100 resource thieves in that location he will not get as much as now I know this is harder to implement, but if you really need to determine how much in total can be gathered it should be done in this way I don't think you should done this immediately, but please consider to do that in near future, and if you really want to stay with current implementation please at least double maximal number of gatherers, for the god sake of all Polish players.

population size should be partly depend on where resources are and how many there are, not the other way around. If there is not enough, perhaps you should consider moving to a neighbouring location.

I agree with that. This is good point, and I like that in "land scarcity", but at now there almost no place on old Polish island where characters can move to gather something, so please do as I said.

3) I still think land scarcity is a good way to avoid this idea that so many people are just silently working for themselves, without any social involvement. The game is and has always been about social organisation, and this is a good incentive to do so.

But why to force people to be "social"? What about individuality? And I think, that this will make more CRB in the game, becuase players will do anything to not obey the rules And I also consider this as too much integration in characters lives.

4) Whether or not to introduce a currency - something I'm not much in favour of, even though I see some advantages - is really a different topic.

There should not be programmed currency in the game, everything should be done by characters themselves, in other way we will kill what Cantr is, and we should change descriptions about this game. And I like current description very much.

5) The idea that long repeating projects take too much of the digging slots is a strange argument: you can always tell that person to stop digging, or drag him/her away, or kill him/her. In other words: it can be socially controlled. Note that if you stop working on a project, the slot becomes available again, even if the project persists.

We know all about this, but this force us characters to such brutal behaviour and is unrealistic. Why there in every location everyone could gather beffore, and now they are should not be allowed to do that? And this make other bad things, like suicides, many characters consider their own dead because they feel worhless. Many of my characters consider to starve to save food, so if they will not eat few days, then they will save some food, and then they will eat some to kill hunger. Is that what you wanted to archieve? I'm scared what will happen if they will forget to get food on the right time from their suppiles...

6) Has the Polish area really no animals? If so, please drop me an email and I'll fix that.

Yep, there almost no animals on old Polish island, and we not killed all. There was never too not much animals on this island after they was added. Biggest herd I saw on this island is 5 wild boars. And you think it is much of them to not be killed by stupid characters who don't read and respect rules?... They will never reproduce! Please give us more animals if there is that gatherers limit, so us characters can hunt at least... And please give us big heards (like 20 animals in heard as I saw in English locations), so if someone will kill one, there still will be big chance for them to reproduce. Please give us buffalos, cheetahs, cows, crocodiles (well, there are no swamps but I like them), desert tortoises (well, there are no deserts but they are very hard to kill so it will give us much fun ), elephants , lemmings (i love lemmings!), lemurs (they are so funny), LIONS (yep, we want real zoo there), sheeps, and.... famous desert beavers Or at least some of them...

7) Too many people seem to continue to think that a city should produce its own food. Many cities have formed around places where rare and important resources can be found, for example hematite. One would expect those cities to be able to trade their hematite for food from neighbouring villages. Why would that not be possible? Even in the Polish region?

I see your point, but in current implementation it is worhless, it will rather force cities to produce machines which are not limited by resource gatherers limit. So please do as I suggested: make limit of maximal possible resource gathering amount based on factor which can be multipled by any resource daily gathering base and include machines in those calculation.

Note that if a few people use dung forks and farm for food, food production is already really very high and can sustain a large number of people with relatively little work / slots used. It might be advisable to organise that those people that dig are the ones with the right tools.

I know that, but there is still very few tools on Polish island to get food with them and there are still no axes or pickaxes, because steel is luxury! And why there so many characters forced to do nothing? Why they can "steal" from field/mine/forest?

9) Again, as said, the limits as they are currently set are preliminary. If we really decide that they are too low, we might increase them. But for all locations, not depending on population size, or language, or ...

So I ask you Jos, for the sake of all Polish players, please double at least maximal number of gatherers in all locations

Aren't the Polish a little bit too much in a rush to keep up with the English?

Well, we are not very powerful nation in real, but we like to be very powerful society in Cantr

Note that the English areas have developed for four years now, so it will simply take time to get a similar industrial status

With current maximal number of gatherers we will not develop to this level even in 8 years

11) Note that still loads of things - manufacturing, hunting, use of machines, etc - still do not use digging slots. So there is lots to do, probably, in most towns.

What we can manufacture when we have not right tools, machines and enough resources that we can gather? And why we have to make 1000 stone hammers, when we can't gather enough wood to build cottages? Hunt on what when there almost no animals? How we can use even if we have 10 smelting furnaces in the city if there is not enough resources to refine? Why there is no stone/iron age tools for faster stone, wood, hematite and coal collection but only steel ones? And very important question, why in this "land scarcity" can be more gathered on the same location using tools, skill and machines, but limited number of gatherers This is no land scarcity, it is man scarcity as PRUT wrote If this should be implemented this should be factor of maximal resource gathering amount of all resources, but please make sure that those factors will not be too low like current "land scarcity" to stop the progress of the game... Because it is unrealistic that 20 people can gather 16000 carrots/day from one field using dung-forks, but there can't 40 people without dung-forks work on the same field to gather the same daily amount of carrots Please see this point

12) Finally, don't forget that this game is about social organisation, not building as quickly as possible. Those people that really only play to gather resources and produce might be playing the wrong game. Well, I'd like to keep even those players, but ... well, you really should think about playing more socially. E.g. 'nothing to do' in a town is really odd considering how few political debates, auctions, letter writing, newspapers, etc. I see. Those should be much more core of the game than they are now, imho.

We all know that this game is about social organisation, but now organisations are forced to face with unrealistic laws of physics, like that with dung-fork they can gather more carrots from the same field, then archieve the same effect using more man power And there was enough political debates, letter writing, newspapers already in Polish locations! And I bet that more then in many English locations. And this limitation will not intecrase those activity in Polish area, but rather there will be less activity like that, because more players and their characters would be sick to play Cantr with that bad implementation of land scarcity. There will be more killing, dragging and suicides

I don't think we want the kind of game where every new character just gathers everything for him/herself and builds everything for him/herself

But what with characters individuality? It seems you really like communist/forced labour systems and you like to force charactes to make them more strong. And this can make more CRB's, because players will do the worst to be more "organised"

Any suggestions (perhaps in separate threads) about how we can speed up the game again, without removing all added challenges, would definitely be welcome

Sorry, but I gived those suggestions in this post. I like to be implemented stone/iron age tools for faster gathering of wood, coal, hematite and stone... We can make shovel to get limestone/spinage faster, and sickles, dung-forks for other food, but we can't make stone/iron tools for faster gathering of other very important resources. We need steel, and steel is hard to obtain because of lack of animals to make bellows.

Limit per resource is the most realistic,anyway you don't like this conception because in english locations you have a lot of machines,and have now no problems,but if english locations have limit per resource this is really catastrophe then english characters can't using they's machine and bring real part of material.

Good point which says why there is not so many English complaints But I gived compromise solution which Jos can't ignore

Why not? Today big mine, tomorrow big field, day after tomorrow again big mine? It is unrealistic

But it was unrealistic before too... And Jos implementation of land scarcity is not to make Cantr more realistic but to make it from slow-paced game to make it veeeery slow paced game, and make lives of Polish charactrs wortless Where is this?

Cantr II is set in a fairly realistic world

If there should be land scarcity it should be done like I said above in this post.

[KVZ]

it would be a little more complicated to implement than the current system since the for each resource in each location a value would have to stored for the current yield rate (probably just a multiplier of the base gathering rate), but it wouldn't be too difficult.

But Jos doesn't like idea of "each resource in each location", so I gived another compromise suggestion which I have posted one post above

and it has such mathematical elegance, i feel happy just thinking about it.

I got the point from this post, but other fellow Polish players may don't, and there is much interest in this topic from my fellows So, can you write it in simpler English?