Warehouse can deliver abnormally with disconnected industries

Topic Subject: Warehouse can deliver abnormally with disconnected industries

Brugle
HG Alumnus

posted 03-18-01 17:08 ET (US)

While rebuilding Massilia with better plebian housing, I saw a new (at least to me) phenomenon. A timber warehouse continually delivered to connected furniture workshops, even when they all had 2 (or more) timber stored. (As expected, timber yards delivered to the warehouse when all connected furniture workshops had 2 timber stored, and a nearby clay warehouse only delivered to pottery workshops that had less than 2 clay stored.) If the warehouse could deliver timber to the furniture workshops faster than it was used, then the timber stored in those workshops could increase without limit!

I rearranged the 11 connected furniture workshops to prevent the warehouse from delivering timber as fast as it was used, so that the timber stored in those workshops wouldn't increase indefinitely and excess production from the 6 connected timber yards would eventually accumulate in the warehouse. However, I wasn't satisfied with that work-around, and decided to take a break from building Massilia to see what was happening.

The problem turned out to be that there were 2 additional furniture workshops (right next to a timber yard) that had no road connection to the timber warehouse, and while those 2 workshops were kept supplied, at any given time at least one had only 1 timber stored. When both of those workshops had 2 timber stored almost all of the time (simply arranged by preventing their furniture deliveries for a little while), the (unconnected) warehouse went back to delivering timber normally almost all of the time.

The apparent algorithm is that a warehouse will try to deliver raw material if any workshop (even an unconnected one) that uses the material has less than 2 stored. If there are no connected workshops with less than 2 of the raw material stored, the delivering warehouse will deliver to another warehouse that will take the material or to a workshop that already has 2 (or more) of the material stored, similar to the way a warehouse is "emptied". (Two connected warehouses will merrily deliver raw material to each other if there is an unconnected workshop that uses the material.)

There's always more to be learned about Caesar III!

(For Pharaoh players--since I've seen a storage yard delivering raw material to another storage yard (and it was when there was an unconnected workshop that used the material), I ran a quick test, with negative results. Even with an unconnected workshop that used the raw material, a Pharaoh storage yard wouldn't try to deliver to a workshop that already had 200 of the material stored.)

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 03-18-2001 @ 05:17 PM).]

Author

Replies:

catilina
Pleb

posted 03-18-01 18:08 ET (US) 1 / 10

I was preparing a thread called "How To Bury Raw Materials In Workshops", but you were faster.

Now I can only confirm all your observations and conclusions and add some glyphs of a small city describing the situation.

Legend

1. The upper workshop is not only disconnected, but non-functional.
2. There is a limit for the raw materials stored in workshops: 1000. Maybe it's 500 on PCs

[edit:] Build a second warehouse on the same road as the first one and you'll see the Cartpushers' Olive Ballet.

[This message has been edited by catilina (edited 03-18-2001 @ 06:56 PM).]

catilina
Pleb

posted 03-18-01 18:54 ET (US) 2 / 10

Almost the same with farms and at least one disconnected granary (<= 1200 units). The warehouses deliver the food to each other.

Cartpushers' Food Ballet

Legend

Note: The granary must have access to workers!

Treborius
Pleb

posted 03-18-01 19:11 ET (US) 3 / 10

Wow, That's certainly interesting! More info to tuck away.

On the subject of odd warehouse behavior, here's one I found while troubleshooting a problem over at Caesar3. The other Governor was importing fruit in Lugdunum and had set up warehouses and a granary like this:

Legend

In experimenting, I set the left warehouse to "accept", the right warehouse to "get", and the granary to "accept" (non-fruit was all set to "not accept").

The results astounded me. At first all went as expected: the accepting warehouse delivered fruit to the granary and the getting warehouse got fruit from the accepting warehouse. But once the granary became adequately stocked, the accepting warehouse began getting fruit from the getting warehouse! The two cartpushers would march along side by side trading fruit between their warehouses.

quis enim ex vobis volens turrem aedificare non prius sedens conputat sumptus qui necessarii sunt si habet ad perficiendum

Brugle
HG Alumnus

posted 03-19-01 04:35 ET (US) 4 / 10

catilina,
I'm astounded by the coincidence.

Treborius,
Are you sure that the warehouses were "getting" from each other? If there was an unconnected granary somewhere that "accepted" fruit, then I'd expect the two warehouses to deliver to each other, as catilina explained in reply #2.

Smack
Pleb

posted 03-19-01 10:33 ET (US) 5 / 10

Yeah, I thought there was something strange going on in Valentia when my oil shops had up to 5 cartloads stored... The deal was that I had some more oil workshops VERY far away in road distance.

Treborius
Pleb

posted 03-19-01 13:55 ET (US) 6 / 10

Brugle: All other granaries and warehouses were set to "not accept" fruit.

If the warehouses weren't getting from each other, than they would have been taking to each other. I am fairly certain that I had watched carefully to determine that each warehouse generated an empty cart and actually got food, but it has been a few months since that time.

Hmm. I think I need to redo the experiment in order to refresh my memory. I recall setting both warehouses to "accept" and having the swapping stop, but the memory is a little vague.

Oh, by the way, Catilina's post refers to a "disconnected" granary; in my test the granary is connected, but half-full of fruit.

quis enim ex vobis volens turrem aedificare non prius sedens conputat sumptus qui necessarii sunt si habet ad perficiendum

[This message has been edited by Treborius (edited 03-19-2001 @ 01:59 PM).]

Smack
Pleb

posted 03-19-01 19:11 ET (US) 7 / 10

Just half an hour or so after posting my reply, I set a granary to Not Accepting fruit. (The effect was that all of the fruit I was producing piled up in a warehouse, and the markets in the block connected to that granary ran out of fruit. I was planning on restructuring that block, and didn't want to lose anything when I razed the markets.) But when I set the granary to Accepting again, the carts continued to go to the warehouse! It was not until I set the granary to Getting and built an Accepting granary for it to get from, that everything returned to normal.

Brugle
HG Alumnus

posted 03-20-01 15:06 ET (US) 8 / 10

Hi Smack,

Excuse me if this is obvious, but did you see a cart pusher leave the fruit farm when the granary was set to accepting (and had room) and go to the warehouse? Most walkers with a destination will continue to that destination even when conditions change during their trip.

Of course, there have been cases when granaries (or other buildings) got messed up. If you like, you can send a saved game (preferably zipped) with a description of the problem to the email address in my profile.

Treborius
Pleb

posted 03-20-01 15:09 ET (US) 9 / 10

I ran through my tests last night and couldn't duplicate my prior results. I can only conclude that I must have had another granary accepting fruit someplace on the map just as Brugle suggested.

Watching the cartpushers more carefully this time, I determined that they were taking fruit to, not from, the other warehouse -- but only when:
1. An inaccessible granary is set to "accept" fruit ("getting" did not cause the swapping)
2. That granary is not full, and
3. The local, accessible, granary is full.

So without the inaccessible granary, the cartpushers fill the local granary half-full and stop. With the inaccessible granary, the cartpushers fill the local granary full and then begin swapping food. File this one under "how to fill a granary with imported food".

quis enim ex vobis volens turrem aedificare non prius sedens conputat sumptus qui necessarii sunt si habet ad perficiendum

Smack
Pleb

posted 03-20-01 17:35 ET (US) 10 / 10

Brugle,
No, I'm pretty sure that the problem was real. But it went away after I temporarily added a second granary.

Treborius,
I'm starting to understand how it works.
1. Warehouse sees granary. Warehouse wants to take food to granary.
2. Warehouse sends cart to granary.
3. Cart can't get to granary, goes to other warehouse instead.

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