I'm not much of a programmer (although I have modded many of the game's I own slightly usually games by Paradox Interactive) but I was wondering if I could mod in a new level of cottage/hamlet/village/town. I want to add the SUBURB as a level after town. Thanks in advance.

LOL, this sounds like either a really good idea, or a real unbalancing factor. :crazyeye:

The file you're looking for is CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml under assets/xml/terrain. Easiest way to make a new one is to copy town and only change what you need to. Don't forget to add that town is supposed to upgrade to your new level (including changing upgradetime)

When you're done I recommend saving it to your customassets folder instead of overwriting the original file (there should be a shortcut to it in your civ4 directory).

Wow, I thought that would have been an SDK thing. I guess XML is more powerful than I thought it would be.

I'd love to see a Suburb improvement! Perhaps take up an entire tile with the paved/concrete ground texture etc and not be avaliable until the Modern Age.

I actually had the exact same thought: add Suburbs as a final-tier Town. Takes 100 turns to reach. Maybe give it a small production bonus instead of more commerce; this'd help the AI in the modern era, since they tend to make more cottages than they really should, at the expense of production.

The problems:
1> Graphics, obviously.
2> All the civics and improvements that affect Towns would need to be re-assessed. Universal Suffrage and Free Speech civics, and the Printing Press tech, improve Towns. Then there's the Financial characteristic. Each of these would need to be adjusted to include Suburbs.
3> Balance. Town with all the upgrades is already at a +7 commerce, how high do you really want to go?

How much of an issue will balance be if it is available to AI opponents as well?

I would suggest tying the ability to have suburbs into one of the modern era technologies.

As Spatzimaus points out adding the new graphic will be an issue. I'm not sure how one can add new graphics to the game .. it might not even be possible at this point. (Note, when I say add, I specifically mean adding without replacing an existing graphic.)

If you have add say 1 or 2 production instead of commerce it might be better. I think someone mentioned that earlier in this thread.

Say:
Suburb adds 1 hammer and 7 commerce and upgrades from town

Also could have a Metropolis level too ... AKA New York, LA, Mexico City, other big cities with urban sprawl

I like this idea. As Spatzimaus said, graphics will be a problem (though I think you CAN add new graphics, but not much has been done yet with it, so it's unknown as to exactly how to deal with it.) As for balance, I think adding a Hammer would be a great idea. Perhaps finding a tech to improve suburbs even more (like, Fiber Optics would add another Hammer, due to.. something meaningful.)

They should take a long time to reach (100 turns is probably a good number) and they should DEFINATLY require reaching the modern age. (Perhaps you'd need oil, too) Suburbs didn't develop for real until the 1950s, when cars became über popular.

How much of an issue will balance be if it is available to AI opponents as well?

It's still a major issue, because what are the chances the AI has been taught to use these improvements correctly? I've heard a lot of players comment on how the AI makes too many Cottages and not enough farms/mines/etc., resulting in high commerce and research but lousy city production. This looks to me like the AI isn't actually assessing the long-term effects of the Cottage improvement, but is simply assigning them a flat pre-determined value. So, what happens if you make Cottages better/worse? The AI probably would continue to build them in exactly the same way as before.

The balance issue is more a question of what sorts of improvements you should use. If you were to put massive bonuses on Suburbs, then the only tiles that should ever be anything else will be those that have a resource on them. The way I plan to get around this is simple: I'm adding several future eras, and so while Suburbs would be stronger than Towns, many other tile improvements will also be getting boosts along the way (similar to how Windmills and Watermills get stronger at Electricity and Replaceable Parts). For instance, once you research robotic mining technology, all Mines get +1 production. So, the relative value of the improvements won't change much.

Anyway, on to the other point: I suggested +1 production instead of more commerce, because a city with massive sprawl should be more productive once people in the suburbs can work in the core city, and you don't need more commerce. This way, in the modern era, you can pave over more of the earth for suburbia without sacrificing productivity. But as it is, Towns give +1 production under Universal Suffrage. So, maybe we should just accept that the modern "Town" already represents a Suburb... or, a Suburb under Universal Suffrage would be +2 production, the same as a non-resource Mine (unless you bump up Mines, like I mentioned above).

The main reason I wanted to do this was to somewhat implement urban sprawl. Also, I've been at school and have thought about it. Maybe give it +1 food and +1 hammer if that's not too overbalancing and perhaps make it available at Mass Media (a seemingly common theme for suburbs) although I'd prefer making it availablt at the late modern era (perhaps with Electricity or Railroad). I think giving it a food and a hammer would really help the AI out.

EIDT: Maybe also have it give another food at Refrigeration and another hammer at computers.

Adding both food AND production for free would definitely be overpowered, IMO. Remember, the Town's already giving up to +7 commerce, and possibly one production point if you run the right civic (Universal Suffrage). Having it add production and food on top of that would make it a better tile than pretty much anything else.

One of the things I plan on doing is adding a new Government civic, "Green", which gives all Towns and Suburbs +1 food production, and which adds 2 health per specialist. Since it's in the same category as Universal Suffrage, you wouldn't be able to run both at the same time (to stack the production and food bonus), and that's a big sacrifice, since US is the only way to money-rush things.

Also, before you put Suburb at some tech like Mass Media, realize that the previous cottage upgrades don't require any additional tech; they all unlock at Pottery, but just take the listed number of turns. Maybe the others SHOULD be moved to some specific techs, but they aren't at present. Sticking it at a high number of turns (like 100ish) should be enough to ensure you don't get suburbs in the middle ages.

Well, from my own experience I have gotten towns before researching Alphabet. But maybe having the different levels of cottage moved to reuire certain techs could be useful to make it so economies progress fairly slowly until the Industrial Age.

Actually, concerning the AI, it's only the automated workers that "overbuild" the cottages/towns. the other civ AI (at least on lower levels) builds a average collection of farms and towns.

The way I see it, adding any more than a single hammer to suburbs (or a single anything), would make them far overpowered. As it is, they're mostly just the best way to make money, both early on, and late game.

Then maybe we should reduce the commerce bonus then give them another hammer. Not sure exactly how this will end up, right now I'm basically just throwing ideas out there.

Perhaps increasing the time all of the upgrades would make them not overpowered? If what now takes 20 turns take 30 etc you get more benefit once you reach the last level but it takes longer to do so.

my 2 cents: Make it have the same effects as a town with all bonuses, but without the requirements. (ie, 7 commerce and a hammer regardless of civics/techs). Follow the pattern and make it take 50 turns after town. That means a cottage won't become a suburb for 120 turns, which is a good fraction of the game.

Follow the pattern and make it take 50 turns after town. That means a cottage won't become a suburb for 120 turns, which is a good fraction of the game.

The pattern is 10/20/40, so that'd make it take 80 after Town, for a total of 150. While this IS a good fraction of the game, for a cottage built on turn 10-20 (i.e., improving your first city), you'd have a Suburb while still in the middle ages. Now, maybe that's accurate; your first city really WOULD start to sprawl earlier than the rest. But I don't think it should actually happen until you reach the point where "mass transit" of some kind started being available.

Oops. I was thinking it was 10/20/30/40.

I have already increased the turn time of each improvement in conjunction with making the epic game longer. I would definately like to add a suberbs improvement down the road, once we have some graphics for it of course. But yes, increasing the turn time for these upgrades is a must. You can't have suberbs appearing at 100 AD. :crazyeye:

Also could one make it so that a suburb would only grow in a tile next to a city tile or a tile with a suburb on it already? I think it would look rather strange to see a suburb in the middle of nowhere but if that's not possible, meh.

I'm sure it's possible. It would be like farms requiring a water source or adjacent farm.

Leonel, at first I had the same thought, but then I realized it's actually not that far-fetched. First, remember that they have to be only one or two tiles away (and not even the diagonal 2) from a core city to be worked (and therefore grow), so that growth limit would be a lot of coding for very little impact.

Second, it's actually not unrealistic for a "suburb" to spring up away from the city (i.e, a farm tile in between or something.) I see two situations where that'd happen:
1> When the town and the city were connected by a major transportation line, whether it's a trade route, railroad, river, or highway. In modern times, it's easy to live in a "rural" town and commute to the city, which is the justification I was using for the production bonus in the first place.
2> When two cities grew near each other, close enough that you wouldn't (or couldn't) put them as overlapping Civ4 cities but far enough that one isn't considered an actual suburb of the other. American examples of this would be Baltimore-Washington D.C., Los Angeles-San Diego, or Seattle-Tacoma. Sure, one might be larger than the other, but it's not the same thing.

And, if you're going to say that Suburbs should only give benefits to the core city if they're contiguous, why aren't cottages/hamlets/villages/towns limited that way?

Anyway,

To defend the suburb sringing up not next to a city thing, just look at the edge cities that are near Chicago (taken from my AP Human Geo class). They are near Chicago but far enough away to be not right next to the city.

EDIT: I think we should have a tech requirement for the upgrades to at least village, town, and suburb. Maybe Feudalism for village, Chemistry for town (this would actually give me a reason to not research fission before chemistry) and railroad for suburbs (this was technically the first mass transit). These ideas are definitely open to discussion and I'd like to also see what you guys think the base bonus/tech bonus upgrades should be.

About the cottage being to good with food production, just look at the widmill.

What I would like to see is a progression like 5/20/60/160/400
But by reasearching certain techs you reduce the time to develop (instead of just being a civic)
e.g. after a few techs
3/10/30/80/200
2/5/15/40/100
1/3/8/20/50
-/2/4/10/25
So latter in the game new cities (or pilliged areas) could develop faster.