(NO) Constant import supply

[Profa]

In theory choosing NO for Constant import supply should change products in seaport.I tested for industrial goods and in 30 years three out of four products stayed the same whole time.

[Hans_Lemurson]

Random chance is less "even" than our intuition suggests.

If you have 100 rocks and toss them randomly at 100 different buckets, then you'll probably have about 37 of the buckets still empty.
Toss 100 more rocks (200 total), and you'd expect 14 buckets to still be empty.
Toss 100 more again (300 total), and you'd expect 5 buckets to still be empty.

So assuming the seaport products are swapped out randomly, it's not unexpected that some small fraction of them could simply never change.

I don't know if this was a factor in your tests, but something also you should keep in mind is that one Industrial Seaport could stop supplying Glass, but then another Seaport could shortly thereafter start supplying Glass as its new product, and thus glass would "Never stop being supplied".

[Profa]

Yes, but if 3 out of 4 are same for 30+ years then something is definitely wrong.

Actually I made 2 tests.First I noticed it in game I played, so i fast forwarded it to check.Then I started new game and it was the same.
In some seaports change was often, which made me wonder if there is internal game mechanism that blocks change?For example if goods are being purchased constantly.

[Hans_Lemurson]

I suppose it would make sense for whoever is supplying the seaport to keep shipping goods that are in high demand.

I wonder what sort of tests you'd need to do to find out for sure if this is the case.

[Brutus]

In theory choosing NO for Constant import supply should change products in seaport.I tested for industrial goods and in 30 years three out of four products stayed the same whole time.

Are you using Digital Age DLC?

If yes, then there are a few products that are never changed in the seaport as these are fixed at startup and will always be there at startup while running this DLC.

These products are,

Always in the first or second industrial seaport of the first city generated

• Steel

• CPU

• Electronic Components

• Plastic

(used for producing computers and communication devices by the AI)

Usually in the second industrial seaport but can also be in the 2nd generated city's industrial port

• Paper

• DVD

(used by software companies to produce software related products by the AI)

These products are necessary for the DLC to properly function and thus will always be spawned in and permanently available from start when the Digital Age DLC is enabled.

Also I can't guarantee it but I am pretty sure that if consumer goods from the consumer goods seaport aren't used that the seaport will more quickly switch them out. I've had plenty of times where I decided to ditch seaport goods for my own company made goods and saw the seaport almost instantly switch goods around since the good was no longer in demand. Of course this could be an observer bias so I can't verify this for sure without someone like David giving us a definitive answer on this.

[Profa]

No, but I do use CES, so maybe it is same logic here.
However I don't see the point in having option YES/NO Constant import supply if it doesn't work.As you said David is probably only one who knows how it is coded.

[Brutus]

I usually have 4 cities with just 1 industrial seaport and 1 consumer seaport giving a total of 16 industrial goods and 16 commercial goods. With Digital Age DLC that means 6 of those 16 industrial goods are locked in as mentioned previously while the other 10 fluctuate. I notice quite a lot of change especially for commercial seaport goods when I try to run a retail from seaport only start with the megastore to rake in money and put pressure on AI's.

If your run a game with significantly more cities or seaports you're very likely to see situations where there will always be every good available at every moment due to how the seaport mechanic works. Only one seaport will offer a specific good and there will never be duplicates such as two different seaports offering steel. There are a total of 21 semi-products, 12 farm products, 9 natural resources for 42~ industrial goods in a standard vanilla game. This means that if you have more than 10 industrial seaports in a vanilla game it is quite likely that the game will never change the availability of industrial seaport goods because a seaport only changes if there is a good not already sold through a seaport available to switch too and with that many seaport it means they are all locked into their place and everything is available all the time.

Is your concern industrial or commercial goods?

[Profa]

Industrial goods are my concern.Is AI able to build whole supply chain without industrial seaports?

[saffgee]

The settings for port supply can be superseded by script settings. So I'd say there are three options:
- You might have loaded a script that does exactly that, even though you think you set that to "no"
- As Brutus said you have DLC activated that forces some ports to provide constant supply of a limited number of goods (eg. in order to allow certain necessary products to be built)
- You have a mod loaded that has pre-set instructions that supersede game settings (again to ensure playability)

As to the latest question; yes the AI can build stuff without ports, however it can take him longer and he is generally less competitive at the beginning. On my mod my favourite script is one that allows for a good amount of industrial goods (1, maybe 2 per city) and zero consumer goods. That kinda ups the challenge and makes for a more fun game in the long run imo as it forces you to build a proper business. In theory you can of course still do the "farm startup" tactic, but the "easy port consumer sell" tactic isn't available. I like to survey what goods can be built at the beginning (based on ports) and then start either as a supplier of intermediary goods to the AI or build out a completely new chain (eg auto parts), which are not available in ports. Such is the flexibility of ModWorld

[Brutus]

On my mod my favourite script is one that allows for a good amount of industrial goods (1, maybe 2 per city) and zero consumer goods. That kinda ups the challenge and makes for a more fun game in the long run imo as it forces you to build a proper business.

Hey Saffgee, not sure if it is still the way in the game since the mechanic was changed recently after I suggested that industrial goods be transported through industrial seaports (was not the case previously, every good used a commercial seaport in previous builds), BUT, it used to be that if you had NO commercial seaport in the city, all industrial goods would be exported at map coordinates 0,0 (far north) rather than the industrial seaport right next door. I reckon the bug goes the other way as well if you have commercial goods and no commercial seaport, all commercial goods are probably being exported at coordinates 0,0

If you have a script specifically that uses a zero ANY% seaport setup (like I used too) that probably means you got some buggy seaport shenanigans going on. Might want to look into that and if it is buggy ask for the code to be updated to switch to a different type of seaport if no native seaport type is available. This way commercial goods could still be exported through industrial seaports if there are no commercial seaports available and vica versa for industrial goods.