An idea to fix the trading ports

[Puupertti Ruma]

I've been thinking of ways to "fix" the hardcoded effects of trade fleets. The problem is (and correct me if I'm wrong!), that from the trading port building complex, the first 3 give you a trade fleet in a hardcoded manner. The first level gives you one trade fleet, second gives you two and the third gives you three. The extra trade fleets that would be given in the EDB don't work. In EB, the first building is the Coastal Clearing building, which shouldn't give you any trading fleets, but in reality due to hard coding, it gives you one.

As a solution, I've been thinking that the "Coastal Clearing", "Small Port Upgrade" and the "Great Port Upgrade" could be moved to the river_port complex. The actual River Port building wouldn't conflict with the seaport buildings, as you cannot have a river hidden_resource at a coastal region.

So first you would have to build Coastal Clearing, which now doesn't give trade fleet, to build the first level port. Then if there is natural harbor, you can build the 2nd level port. If not, you have to build the Port Upgrade building, to be able to upgrade your actual port from level 1 to 2.

Is this possible to do, and could it be added in EB 1.2 for example? I don't have time now, but I might try making a mini-mod which does this, assuming it is possible to do without CTDs or other errors.

[bovi]

See the 1.1 release notes.

[Bellum]

I'm pretty sure the last port upgrade just gave you a boost in trade to compensate.

[Puupertti Ruma]

See the 1.1 release notes.

Yes, I have read them while researching this. The version 1.1 fixes only the upgrades, but not in a absolute way, in other words they give trading bonuses but not more trade fleets. And more over, the Coastal Clearance still gives you a trade fleet even though it shouldn't.

I haven't actually played 1.1 with a seafaring faction, so I might be totally wrong. Nonetheless I doubt it, as the engine hasn't changed since 0.8 or 1.0 where this (Coastal Clearence) bug was occured.

[bovi]

Sorry for not reading your post well enough. You could make the coastal clearing a part of the river port complex, however then you wouldn't be able to create ports anywhere except where there are rivers (or make it possible to make river ports everywhere coastal). This is obviously not desirable.

I don't think we will revisit the port mechanics for EB1, but you could create a minimod if you can think of a way around this problem and would like to implement it.

[Puupertti Ruma]

Sorry for not reading your post well enough. You could make the coastal clearing a part of the river port complex, however then you wouldn't be able to create ports anywhere except where there are rivers (or make it possible to make river ports everywhere coastal). This is obviously not desirable.

I don't think we will revisit the port mechanics for EB1, but you could create a minimod if you can think of a way around this problem and would like to implement it.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that... I actually have modded RTW very little and this was my first feeble venture to the EDB. Well, I have to see if there is another possibility.

Maybe making the river port a level 2 building in the river_port complex and the coastal clearing the level 1 building, making it in fact a "Clearing for a port". So you'd have to build first a clearing for your port, and in a inland region you would upgrade the Clearing to a Riverport, and in a coastal region it would upgrade to the first level port. I am under the impression that once you have the level 1 building from a complex, you can upgrade it to order it to upgrade to 2 different buildings, and with hidden_resource conditionals make the above work.

So, as a schematic it would go something like this.

port_buildings complex levels: port, shipwright, dockyard
river_port complex levels: coast, riverport, portup, shipwrightup

Trees:
coast >=[river]=> riverport
         >=> port >=> portup >=> shipwright >=> shipwrightup >=> dockyard
                     >=[tradeport]=>                     >=[bigport]=>

And old:
coast >=> port >=[tradeport]=> shipwright >=[bigport]=> dockyard
                                       >=>  portup                 >=> shipwrightup

Hope you can decipher what I try to say with the above...

I don't think we will revisit the port mechanics for EB1, but you could create a minimod if you can think of a way around this problem and would like to implement it.

I see what I can do, and if it works, and you guys want to use it in official EB, I would be very happy. Well, of to modding!

[Puupertti Ruma]

I've been modding this now and I hit an error message of which I can't get past. The error displays as follows:

Generic Error:
Building descriptions: unregognised building level 'coast' of type 'port_building' found at line 1381 column 192.

I edited the eb/data/text/export_buildings.txt and moved the descriptions of coast, portup and shipwrightup to the river_port section of the file. There shouldn't be any 'coast' level at the 'port_building' complex. I even tried deleting the map.rwm. Still same error.

I am at loss here. What file does the error file refer to?

[Foot]

Some other building or capability is referring to the "port_building coast" level in the EDB. You need to search for "port_building coast" and change it to "port_building port" or "river_port coast".

Foot

[Puupertti Ruma]

Thank you, that helped. Apparently the greek caravan building has the coastal clearing as a NOT conditional.

[Tellos Athenaios]

But. How are you going to tackle river-ports located in regions with ordinary ports; such as the region around Gawjam~Habukoz or Gawjam~Heruskoz?

Far as I know...

clearing: lvl0
  |-> seaport: lvl1
          | // this upgrade is one-way; if someone upgraded lvl0 to lvl2 he'd be unable to upgrade to lvl1 afterwards!
  |-> rivport: lvl2

Which would make further upgrades of lvl1 to lvl3 and lvl2 to lvl4 somewhat... difficult.

[Puupertti Ruma]

Well, I was under the impression that river resource was used only in inland regions to compensate the lack of sea trade, so I actually thought that EB doesn't have river resource at coastal regions. Thanks for bringing this up. *bow*
I tried to check this from your maps Tellos, but you haven't done a map with the river resource. Could you please? :) It would help and I am under the impression that it's pretty easy to do for you the map maker being automated and all.

The work around for having both the river and a coast, would of course be to delete the river hidden resource from all coastal regions. It's more work for me, but it would eliminate the problem you presented. I reckon the usually huge amount of income that you gain from sea trade is more than enough without the added bonus of riverport. So instead of making 1300 a turn in trade, you'd only make 1200 a turn. Not a game ruining loss I'd say ;)

:edit: Ah, forgot to say that I've made progress, and got the system working. Now I have to do balancing and write some insctructions to the building descriptions and put coastal clearings to all settlements with ports and take the river resources from coastal squares. But as I said the system works in game. Due to work packed weekend I can release this as a minimod earliest at monday or tuesday, might take a lot longer though.