Longitude

[wilcoxchar]

I want to create an event for the discovery of how to figure out one's longitude while at sea but I need some ideas on how it should work. I got inspired to create the event by the book I'm reading about the history of finding out one's longitude. It should be a huge event because before then when ships lost sight of land, they were essentially lost at sea. It should trigger a different event for England as John Harrison of England made the clocks that allowed people to find their longitude at sea. England should lose 200 ducats for the 20,000 pounds they had to give in prize money. It should occur on May 14, 1741 when Harrison finished his first sea clock.

 

[unmerged(40258)]

trigger? maybe reaching level 18 of naval tech..(increased sightrange at sea) - Navigation Instruments IIRC

 

[unmerged(1047)]

Also, didn't the government end up applying his research funding against the prize money anyhow? So it wouldn't be a lump sum for the whole amount....

Also, Naval Tech 18 is way too early. Maybe more like 30 or 40.

 

[wilcoxchar]

That would be good but I'm wondering about what effects it should have.

 

[unmerged(1047)]

A big boost to naval research and maybe a slider move toward naval? (Although England is usually nearly fully naval by then anyway)...

 

[wilcoxchar]

I was thinking more of the Huge event for Longitude. Because it allowed ships to calculate their longitude to less than half a degree and greatly increased accuracy in naval travel. Is there attrition due to not being on a coast? If there is, this event should eliminate it.

 

[unmerged(1047)]

I understand what you're getting at, but we're limited here by what is possible within the machine language used for events. You can't directly affect things like attrition modifiers, only indirectly threough things like tech level and domestic policy sliders. And those are difficult because you can only modify them relative to their pre-event positions, not as an absolute.

There are a lot of attrition-reducing effects in the higher level naval technologies; that's why I suggested a lump sum of naval research or a domestic policy shift toward naval affairs.

 

[wilcoxchar]

So, to make the huge event, should I have it trigger lots of small events for all Europeans that increases their naval tech and domestic sliders towards naval? Also, how much of each should I do?

 

[unmerged(1047)]

Well, for slider moves, I'd hesitate to do more than 1 spot... maybe 2 for England only. For naval tech boost, you'd have to look at each country and what their tech research costs will probably be around that point in the game, and figure out an amount of progress they should make (say half a level). Then calculate what that would be in a raw number for each country you're doing an event for.

However, considering that England did keep the chronometers as a state secret for a while, I would question if an overall event is needed, rather than just one (even bigger in its effects) for them. Keep in mind that if you were to give them a serious technology lead, others nearby (France, Spain, Portugal, Genoa, Venice for examples) get a slow-acting bonus to their research speed to compensate for that lead, and it will cancel itself out in a period of something like 30-40 years.

If you go the route of just the English mega-event, I'd say maybe 2 clicks toward naval on the slider (remember, this is out of a 10 point scale) and a lump sum of something like 5000 or 7500 points of naval research for testing purposes, possibly increasing only the research if tests prove under your expectations.