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[Duke 2.0]

 Colonies mine the land, uncovering RICHES. These can be taken back to the homeland to sell. Only produced slowly, so you'll only get a decent profit from going back to the homeland and back to the colony. Raiding the natives can produce a lot of RICHES very quickly, but is much more dangerous. One can also happen upon RUINS that can have multiple effects, from making forming colonies on them cheaper to random amounts of RICHES or natives.

 There needs to be some point in making colonies and going back to the home country.

[slashie]

a geographical map might highlight shoreline, terrain features, native settlements, resources, and be valued based partly on area covered.  a nautical chart would be valueable for its accuracy and ability to traverse between points.  it wouldnt mater how much you sailed in circles uncovering tiles, it would only mater that you discovered (with some degree of accuracy) a clear path between some descrete points. 

I'm really not sure what goes into making nautical charts, especially not in that era.  From looking at them, they have lines between points with notes on what celestial measurements to make to set the right bearing, and an idea of travel time required.

After some wikiresearch...

May be you could start charting from a landmark, sail into one cardinal position and record the path, included the deduced distance, and that could go into your map. If you stray too far from your original direction, the chart may lose accuracy and value.

For simplicity, geo and nautical maps would merge, but how they are composed depends on whether you are at sea or land.

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1230

But you could still record things like wind conditions and how many times you were in an area at what time of year, and build a model of the dominant wind patterns or currents. 

Sounds nice... http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1231

perhaps it would be like a mini "race" game where there were some discovery points for making some trip between two places in a shorter time than was done before.

Speed records, sounds nice http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1232

I was assuming that the longtatudal calculations lost accuracy after a while and that is why you needed to reset it, but maybe thats not the case.

Oh yes, this is correct... if you go to America and then come back to spain, you will notice it's not back to 0, that would be a good time to reset

What I meant is that you can't reset it to a particular value, so all your calculations must be differential for now.

This would be tricky.  In essence, I think you would need to be playing on a globe and only rendering the viewable area as a flat projection.  calculate the game map as 3d geometry, and only render it as 2d.  you could do the same thing on an interrupted projection, and render the viewable space as continuous.  say you plotted that projection on a grid but noted that the squares on either side of the break were logically adjacant, and rendered it as such in the view... the problem would be where some square has more than 8 adjacent squares, so i guess that you could solve that by making the edge squares "half" squares where if you occupied one then you occupied the other at the same time, thus things could merge together.  there would still be display inconsistancies if you tried to put an entire map together from your observations through the viewer, but hopefully you wouldnt see any wierd re-drawing issues within the viewer.

Understood, that may be a bit confusing for the players, but distortion would probably not be too big on the small scale of the viewport, probably even dismissable as unnoticeable by the customer... thanks for the idea http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1233

[slashie]

Colonies mine the land, uncovering RICHES. These can be taken back to the homeland to sell. Only produced slowly, so you'll only get a decent profit from going back to the homeland and back to the colony.

Mining has been proposed already, but I was thinking more above the lines of creating a mine in a similar fashion you create a colony... it makes much more sense to create a "Mining Colony" instead (a normal colony, only with mines on it) and make it produce certain good.

Added and built upon: http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1144

The question would be if mining colonies can mine from nearby spots or only from their standing position.. Your colonies must currently be far from each other in order to prevent exploits. May be allowing to create mining (and other sort) of camps, which don't count for your rank..

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1229

Raiding the natives can produce a lot of RICHES very quickly, but is much more dangerous.

You can currently do this... the question is how much riches are you obtaining

One can also happen upon RUINS that can have multiple effects, from making forming colonies on them cheaper to random amounts of RICHES or natives.

Added http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1227 and http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1228

There needs to be some point in making colonies and going back to the home country.

Agreed, currently you do it only to obtain ranks from the crown

[Greenbane]

Don't forget about my question!

[slashie]

Awesome project! A question about the game's (probably far) future: will it be purely about exploring and settling only minor towns, or would it eventually take after Colonization, encourage you to develop stronger cities and ultimately allow for the possibility of declaring and defending your territory's independence?

Thank you, and sorry

It is currently more aimed at the life of the expeditionary (I was thinking on eventually make him die of old age), establishing some colonies in the new world for the crown, and probably defending them from european powers.

The focus is currently on exploration and conquest rather than long-span wars. In contrast with Colonization, in this game you impersonate a person instead of the almighty presence.

It does sound nice, however, to eventually get his eldest son to inherit all his reputation and play their lives too

There are many cool things on the RFE queue right now, becoming an independent nation would be the next. thank you

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1234

Also, congrats on having the "1234" request, you win a toaster

[Greenbane]

Also, congrats on having the "1234" request, you win a toaster

YES!

+1

By the way, you should look into Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons (SNES), which has a similar focus but is more geared towards your character and ship(s) rather than the possibility of founding cities and doing land exploration. One cool feature you can draw from is the mechanic around natural wonders and major archaelogical sites. Discovering important landmarks would earn you points with the Crown and increase your fame. They would not be exclusively locations, but mainly remarkable discoveries: examples include the Moai Statues and even the giant turtles of the Galapagos Islands.

[puke]

Oh yes, this is correct... if you go to America and then come back to spain, you will notice it's not back to 0, that would be a good time to reset

What I meant is that you can't reset it to a particular value, so all your calculations must be differential for now.

so this is what i was on about, knowing that you havent returned to zero, you know your basic margin of error.  if you make the trip multiple times (or make some leg of the trip multiple times or in multiple directions) you should be able to narrow down the margin of error and produce more accurate charts

Since you are probably taking a multi-leg trip, from europe to south or central america, up the coast, and across (at least if you want to leverage the best winds and currents) it would be important to have some sort of "trip meter" or something like that to track each leg uniquely.  of course, you can just take some notes and do some subtraction if you only need to know for your own book keeping. 

[slashie]

"Keeping your own book keeping" is one of the reasons I have to be more resilient to include automatic maps... I thought it would be fun for players to draw their own maps on paper

Trip meter sounds nice too, some sort of "Captains' Log" tools.   http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1237

Oh, I had forgotten to include allowing players to write messages into the captain log, to ease telling fun stories like the ones I have in the log http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1236

[slashie]

Discovering important landmarks would earn you points with the Crown and increase your fame. They would not be exclusively locations, but mainly remarkable discoveries: examples include the Moai Statues and even the giant turtles of the Galapagos Islands.

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1238

This one is similar too, in a pokedexic way: http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1167

[Greenbane]

That suggestion might require quite a bit more research, but sounds good, too!

However, for legendary landmarks, like the cities of gold, El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, etc. I'd suggest their location be randomized, and maybe have a mini-quest attached to reveal them so they're not simply on plain sight. The 'real' landmarks, on the other hand, would be always visible and always in the same, fixed location.

[Kogan Loloklam]

I know for sure that your native populations need to increase. When I landed on the Island of Terra Nova near Cat Harbor I expected to be able to trade with the natives to get enough food for my return voyage. After searching the coast from where I landed all the way down past where Port Blandford would be, I was disturbed to not find a single Beothuk inhabitant. This depressed me since my voyage took a more northerly route running with the wind.My expedition didn't have much time to repair the ships. I dumped 25 of my sailors since I lost a ship in the voyage, took all the supplies and headed back. I managed to make the coast of France before I lost my last ship right next to shore.

So, Thoughts:

Natives: Diseases and Such
In the book 1491, New Revelations of the Native Americans Before Columbus written by Charles C. Mann, it was hypothesized that the Americas were pretty heavily populated throughout the entire continent before Columbus.
Also, Native American trade was pretty extensive.
It is thought that disease ran ahead of the whites, depopulating native villages and making the continent seem so empty. A good example of exactly what that meant would be in studying blackfoot lore.
You are talking about villages with direct contact with disease losing 90% of their people, or more. And the tribe as a whole being decimated by over half. Ref: Smallpox Epidemic of 1837
Since you are dealing with conquest, it might be a good thing to model. It was smallpox hitting the Inca that allowed Francisco Pizarro's expedition to walk in and pretty much take over the Inca empire.
In my voyage, I SHOULD have encountered the Beothuk. They devastated the Viking attempt at colonization. My European diseases should have wiped them out!

Sailing: Shipwrecks and such
If my ship went down within 2 nautical miles of the coast, many of my supplies and expedition probably should wash up on shore.
In my voyage, this would have helped me greatly in getting back to the king and reporting on my journey, although a hike through France probably wouldn't have been very fun since I had 54 mouths to feed and only 13 days of food remaining (before the shipwreck)
To be fair, I probably should have just put in next to forest and done some hasty repairs, but I kind of expected to encounter some kind of city or something where I could put in. Couldn't get rid of the extra men or buy more food though.

Departure: Cost of Supplies and funding
It's a little silly to outfit an entire expedition on the annual allowance that was given to Columbus to keep him in the Spanish control, though outfitting them seemed to work so meh. I've heard the crown advanced a million maravedis and that Colombus contributed a good half a million to the expedition. Also, only the Santa Maria was leased. The Santa Clara and the Pinta were both conscripted. Part of the conscription was the supplies for the voyage. It was supposedly to cost 360 maravedis or somewhere around that to feed a single sailor for a month. Double that for officers.
So we should be playing with larger numbers to accomplish much the same thing that occurs now.

[slashie]

I know for sure that your native populations need to increase. When I landed on the Island of Terra Nova near Cat Harbor I expected to be able to trade with the natives to get enough food for my return voyage. After searching the coast from where I landed all the way down past where Port Blandford would be, I was disturbed to not find a single Beothuk inhabitant.

Interesting, I based the cultural population on this data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-Columbian_cultures , they seem to miss those as well as most of North American groups, should have of looked at this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1241
http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1242

This depressed me since my voyage took a more northerly route running with the wind.My expedition didn't have much time to repair the ships. I dumped 25 of my sailors since I lost a ship in the voyage, took all the supplies and headed back. I managed to make the coast of France before I lost my last ship right next to shore.

At least you found land, I lost two expeditions yesterday about 50 miles away from Palos, or so I think.... I was lost

Natives: Diseases and Such
In the book 1491, New Revelations of the Native Americans Before Columbus written by Charles C. Mann, it was hypothesized that the Americas were pretty heavily populated throughout the entire continent before Columbus.
Also, Native American trade was pretty extensive.
It is thought that disease ran ahead of the whites, depopulating native villages and making the continent seem so empty. A good example of exactly what that meant would be in studying blackfoot lore.
You are talking about villages with direct contact with disease losing 90% of their people, or more. And the tribe as a whole being decimated by over half. Ref: Smallpox Epidemic of 1837
Since you are dealing with conquest, it might be a good thing to model. It was smallpox hitting the Inca that allowed Francisco Pizarro's expedition to walk in and pretty much take over the Inca empire.

In my voyage, I SHOULD have encountered the Beothuk. They devastated the Viking attempt at colonization. My European diseases should have wiped them out!

There's an entry already for diseases, but related to the expedition acquiring disease instead. (http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1172) spreading it into the native population looks interesting and accurate from the historic POV, but may destroy gameplay, which is sad
http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1243

Sailing: Shipwrecks and such
If my ship went down within 2 nautical miles of the coast, many of my supplies and expedition probably should wash up on shore.
In my voyage, this would have helped me greatly in getting back to the king and reporting on my journey,

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1244, however, that's part of the reasons you just dont just lose random equipment but instead get to pick what to drop into the sea..

although a hike through France probably wouldn't have been very fun since I had 54 mouths to feed and only 13 days of food remaining (before the shipwreck)

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1245

To be fair, I probably should have just put in next to forest and done some hasty repairs, but I kind of expected to encounter some kind of city or something where I could put in. Couldn't get rid of the extra men or buy more food though.

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1246 http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1247 http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1248

Departure: Cost of Supplies and funding
It's a little silly to outfit an entire expedition on the annual allowance that was given to Columbus to keep him in the Spanish control, though outfitting them seemed to work so meh. I've heard the crown advanced a million maravedis and that Colombus contributed a good half a million to the expedition. Also, only the Santa Maria was leased. The Santa Clara and the Pinta were both conscripted. Part of the conscription was the supplies for the voyage.It was supposedly to cost 360 maravedis or somewhere around that to feed a single sailor for a month. Double that for officers. So we should be playing with larger numbers to accomplish much the same thing that occurs now.

Where did you get this data from!

That all sounds very interesting... should find a way to model it and make it simpler for the player, or may be just add it as flavor text on the introduction... changing the scale of the currency would require to run again thru all the stats to rebalance them

Balancing the numbers has been hard (it's always the hardest part ) right now it feels a bit on the hard side, specially because surviving on the land is so hard and thus you need to buy lots of food. It is however not completely imbalanced, which is a good start

May be current maravedies are about 1000 real maravedies?

[Kogan Loloklam]

Interesting, I based the cultural population on this data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-Columbian_cultures , they seem to miss those as well as most of North American groups, should have of looked at this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_era

Even that isn't a great source, since there was lots of cultures destroyed without even being documented. There were a lot of migrations that the colonization of the new world caused, and those cultures migrated to areas that were probably once occupied by other groups. For example, the entire Lakota nation as it is known as the Sioux migrated there escaping pressure from the east. Since your villages aren't claiming any real specific tribe (that I've seen so far. Haven't actually successfully made it to Mesoamerica or the andies yet) then just drastically increasing population density, especially over areas with decent population density now, should resolve the situation.

There's an entry already for diseases, but related to the expedition acquiring disease instead. (http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1172) spreading it into the native population looks interesting and accurate from the historic POV, but may destroy gameplay, which is sad
http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1243

Perhaps, perhaps not. Not sure exactly what element of gameplay you are referring to. Disease being communicable to the natives ensures that villages your diseased people get to will die off, and the nearby ones, but it should, if done right, end up creating black holes of population. Areas around your cities get depopulated easiest, but since there should be a massive increase of population over the entire americas, that element should be a wash.

Where did you get this data from!

That all sounds very interesting... should find a way to model it and make it simpler for the player, or may be just add it as flavor text on the introduction... changing the scale of the currency would require to run again thru all the stats to rebalance them

Balancing the numbers has been hard (it's always the hardest part ) right now it feels a bit on the hard side, specially because surviving on the land is so hard and thus you need to buy lots of food. It is however not completely imbalanced, which is a good start

May be current maravedies are about 1000 real maravedies?

I forgot where I got the data from. I think it was some academic paper regarding the cost to profit analysis of Columbus's first voyage.

I think that more than a price adjustment would be required. with 90 men you only have 36000 maravedies per month to feed them (32400 plus another 3200 to account for officers)
This means 1.5 million could supply the expedition for 41 months. What is going to eat up the rest of that money is probably crew saleries. You had to pay the men working for you or they'd get rather cross. Some of that is covered in the hiring cost, but when you start to run your ships for 5-6 years, you start to face situations where you should need to pay a wage. That's where that money went. He filled his holds up to the brim, but he probably didn't have more food than to supply his entire voyage of eight months (288000ish for food). I've read that spanish sailors in the early 1500s earned about 10 castellanos a year, and that 1 castellano was equal to 485 maravedis. That would place the sailor's wage at around 400 maravedis a month. Officers probably made twice that at 800 maravedis a month. So you'd probably have a wage of 40000 maravedies per month for 90 men.
With that you have probably half the entire amount for the expedition there. The rest probably went to getting the ships and spare equipment, and then the remaining amount went into a reserve for unexpected expenses I think.

But yea, Leaving it alone might be easier.

(Edit: One question, does your system model wind realistically? For some reason I ended up in Boston this trip. Next time I am going to the canaries and doing it right, then maybe I can survive to meet the Inca. There is no natives within 3 days journey of my landing site. My inability to create enough food to survive prevents me from looking further inland, or getting back on my ship and sailing off. I have 3 farms and a mill, do they not produce food?)

[puke]

I'd be really excited to see population density modled closer to the high count numbers in 1491.  its definitly worth your time to read given your interest in these topics, Slashie.  It does a good job of talking about some of the current anthropological contraversies rather than singlemindedly advocating any one viewpoint.  But it does lean quite a bit toward the "high count" arguements.

on a completely different note, the ship repair mechanism seems a bit odd to me.  did they really haul bulk quantaties of lumber for this?  even for colonization, wouldnt outposts more logically be built with local materials?  From what i remember, most repairs of wooden vessels required liberal application of Pitch.  The valueable equipment for building sustainable camps and colonies would probably be Tools and Plants.

Also, stopping travel at sea to make repairs seems odd.  I've been on some large sailing vessels, and those guys were constantly working on repairs while we were under sail.  it was pretty much a constant ongoing process:  cleaning, repainting spots, repairing fixtures, sewing sails and flags, you name it.  from what i've read about naval battles, serious repairs need to be done in a port, or at a minimum on a beach.  Thats probably the only place where you would pause and use bulk quantaties of lumber.  otherwise, I think it just happens in motion.

[slashie]

Even that isn't a great source, since there was lots of cultures destroyed without even being documented. There were a lot of migrations that the colonization of the new world caused, and those cultures migrated to areas that were probably once occupied by other groups. For example, the entire Lakota nation as it is known as the Sioux migrated there escaping pressure from the east.

What source would you recommend? you seem pretty knowledgeable on the topic!

Since your villages aren't claiming any real specific tribe (that I've seen so far. Haven't actually successfully made it to Mesoamerica or the andies yet) then just drastically increasing population density, especially over areas with decent population density now, should resolve the situation.

There are currently cultures and basic tribes... may be you have only found hunterer-gatherers or maize-farmers, but you can find several mesoamerican and south american cultures.... north america, as we discussed before, seems to have been left out of civilization because of my misinformation.

I will look into increasing villages density.. have you had a look at their population numbers? how well do they sound? http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1249

Perhaps, perhaps not. Not sure exactly what element of gameplay you are referring to. Disease being communicable to the natives ensures that villages your diseased people get to will die off, and the nearby ones, but it should, if done right, end up creating black holes of population. Areas around your cities get depopulated easiest, but since there should be a massive increase of population over the entire americas, that element should be a wash.

I just mean may be you can wipe-out the continent without even knowing (europeans almost did it) it may be more fun to interact with the native population may be if it's not a chain-reaction, but rather a local-area of effect even, (like a black hole) it will be more handable

I think that more than a price adjustment would be required. with 90 men you only have 36000 maravedies per month to feed them (32400 plus another 3200 to account for officers)
This means 1.5 million could supply the expedition for 41 months. What is going to eat up the rest of that money is probably crew saleries. You had to pay the men working for you or they'd get rather cross. Some of that is covered in the hiring cost, but when you start to run your ships for 5-6 years, you start to face situations where you should need to pay a wage. That's where that money went. He filled his holds up to the brim, but he probably didn't have more food than to supply his entire voyage of eight months (288000ish for food). I've read that spanish sailors in the early 1500s earned about 10 castellanos a year, and that 1 castellano was equal to 485 maravedis. That would place the sailor's wage at around 400 maravedis a month. Officers probably made twice that at 800 maravedis a month. So you'd probably have a wage of 40000 maravedies per month for 90 men.

With that you have probably half the entire amount for the expedition there. The rest probably went to getting the ships and spare equipment, and then the remaining amount went into a reserve for unexpected expenses I think.

But yea, Leaving it alone might be easier.

Indeed, at first I had thought on making crew members charge you every year or month for their services, but that may be unneededly complex... sounds more and more like a "hardcore" and "normal" version, for the adepts to details such as this...

(Edit: One question, does your system model wind realistically? For some reason I ended up in Boston this trip. Next time I am going to the canaries and doing it right, then maybe I can survive to meet the Inca.

Half realistically... there are dominant winds defined by the latitude, but there's an amount of randomness involved. There are also the doldrums, which move around depending on the month of the year. Wind is currently not affected by land-mountain ranges

There is no natives within 3 days journey of my landing site. My inability to create enough food to survive prevents me from looking further inland, or getting back on my ship and sailing off. I have 3 farms and a mill, do they not produce food?)

This is one of the things that may make it less enjoyable to play right now.. the game punishes exploring heavily, at least in your first trip(s). I'm sorry to inform that farms and mills do not produce food in this version

Gotta keep working on it, wish I was as brave and bold as the toad so I could dedicate enough time to it