Group Logical Relations

[dougdeep]

I am new at using the editor function and I am trying to add some more realistic economic conditions to a scenario. Over a long period of time (1830-2000) there were four periods of boom and bust plus twice as many periods of prosperity, normalcy, and recession. What I want to do is use an event condition that sets an economic status level such as – if <current game year> is (>=1872 AND <= 1875) OR (>=1919 AND <= 1921) OR etc. There doesn't appear to be any way to group the AND/OR logic relations within the event condition so I ended up with a condition like – if <current game year> is =1872 OR =1873 OR =1874 OR =1875 OR =1919 OR =1920 OR etc. Am I missing something in the editor or is there a better way to do this?

[nedfumpkin]

I actually was thinking about this for an upcoming scenario and my idea was that I would use the ledger for this. This way the ledger page could also state the economic conditions.

On the conditions for the ledger:

current game year >=1830; AND
current game year <1835

effect is:

economic status = 1 for 1 year.

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Do this for each the periods you want and at the beginning of the year it will set the economic conditions for the rest of the year.

[EPH]

My experience is that putting the OR functions first groups them in parenthesis.

[dougdeep]

My experience is that putting the OR functions first groups them in parenthesis.

Would that mean something like using the editor to set the condition like this:
evaluation1 OR
evaluation2 AND
evaluation3 OR
evaluation4
is equal to - (evaluation1 OR evaluation2) AND (evaluation3 OR evaluation4)
or would that be equal to - (evaluation1 OR evaluation2) AND evaluation3 OR evaluation4
which would give different results.

At any rate, I needed to group the ANDs before the ORs which doesn't seem possible. I did use nedfumpkin's suggestion about using the end-of-year ledger to set the economic climate. I ended up with 32 events (four each boom & bust, eight each normal, recession & prosperity) of 2 condition evaluations (year<this AND year>that) instead of 5 events of 170 evaluations. I don't know which is more efficient for the computer but the copy/edit function made multiple events easier to enter. I've heard that too many events tends to slow down the game processing but since the ledger occurs at the end of the year when the game grinds to a halt, I'm guessing there's not a big impact on game speed.

[Grandma Ruth]

I've heard that too many events tends to slow down the game processing but since the ledger occurs at the end of the year when the game grinds to a halt, I'm guessing there's not a big impact on game speed.

You've lost me on the evaluations, as I'm at work and don't have a copy of RT3 to experiment with, but as far as the ledger goes, I think it updates constantly, I don't think it's a once-a-year thing. If you look at it during the course of the year it will tell you the current state of play - if you've got, for example LTD or YTD loads hauled it will be the actual current number. I think.

[edbangor]

You've lost me on the evaluations, as I'm at work and don't have a copy of RT3 to experiment with, but as far as the ledger goes, I think it updates constantly, I don't think it's a once-a-year thing. If you look at it during the course of the year it will tell you the current state of play - if you've got, for example LTD or YTD loads hauled it will be the actual current number. I think.

That's correct. The ledger will display the information that is current at the time you are looking at it, for both yearly and lifetime results.
It should also so, instantly, if any needed connections are made, although that will depend on how often the game looks for the trigger, of course (end/start month, end/start of year etc)

[Sugus]

The RT3 editor doesn't allow to specify complex conditional expressions, i.e. non-trivial mixes of ANDs and ORs (as we programmers use in our daily coding) within one single event. So, I think that the only way to realize complex conditions is by splitting the story into a set of events with "simple conditions" and combine them by means of game variables in succeeding events.

[dougdeep]

I tried changing all of my status (ledger) events to yearly (beginning of year) events with a dialog attached to see if there was any difference in processing speed. It seems the same so far except now there's a short pause between the auto game save and the dialog. I think the dialog appears because the game calendar clicks over into the next year (show January) but the ledger appears as soon as the dialog is dismissed.

Thanks to everyone that replied. Your suggestions gave me a lot more to experiment with. It's a pity the editor won't allow for more than simple grouping of AND OR relations.

[JayEff]

I prefer to control the range of the economic state rather than set it precisely; otherwise the game is too predictable. And it might be easier to break up your events into steps.
1. The first event has dates as conditions and sets a game variable to the economic state that is about what you want.
2. Twice a year, after the game has made its random change, test the economic level, and reset it.
Early Canadian rail would go like this:
Start Game
1. Start of game, TRUE, then set gv1=1, set Economy State = 1, newspapers whine about oligarchs
Patriotes Riot
2. Beginning of month, if gameyearmonth = 183811, then set Economy State = 0, newspapers report riots
Resp Gov
3. Beginning of month, if gameyearmonth = 184803, then set gv1=2, set Economy State = 2, responsible governments elected in Nova Scotia and the Canadas
Free Trade
4. Beginning of month, if game year month = 185406, then set gv1 = 3, set Economy State = 3, Canada and USA sign free trade agreement
Recession
5. Beginning of month, if (current gamemonth=3 or current gamemonth=9) and gv1=1 and Economy State >2 then set Economy state = 1
Normal
6. Beginning of Month, if (Economy State = 0 or Economy State = 4) and gv1=2, then set Economy state = 2
Prosperity
7. Beginning of Month, if (current gamemonth=3 or current gamemonth=9) and gv1=3 and Economy State <2 then set Economy State = 3