Hungry Hungry Cities v1.5

Inspired by the Food Caravans from CivII, which made it possible to sustain cities in ridiculous locations, this mod adds two units and two buildings, which can only be built by those units.

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Units:

Shepherdess:
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/1650/shepherdess00015ja.jpg
Uses Female Settler and Sheep resource art
Requires Sheep and Animal Husbandry
Use food to build
Builds a Sheep Farm after staying on a city for 1 turn

Swineherd:
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/1871/swineherd00005sw.jpg
Uses Male Settler and Pig resource art
Requires Pigs and Agriculture
Use food to build
Builds a Pig Farm after staying on a city for 1 turn

NOTE: The screenies show my units standing in front of a normal pig/sheep resource respectively. As you can see, their own bunch of pigs/sheep are slightly bigger than the resource version, and they move around with it! (Pretty cool, huh? :lol:)

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Buildings:

Sheep Farm:
Uses Granary art
+2 Food at the city it's built
-2 Food at the city that built the Shepherdess/Swineherd
Disappears after 20 turns

Pig Farm:
Uses Granary art
+2 Food at the city it's built
-2 Food at the city that built the Shepherdess/Swineherd
Disappears after 20 turns

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Changes from v1.0

-Added Python code by RogerBacon
-This costs the city of origin 2 food as long as the Farm is producing 2 food at the city of arrival. It also makes the Farms disappear after 20 turns. The game will keep you up to date with "Farm at X will disappear in Y turns" type messages.
-Farms are no longer built by clicking the "build farm" button. Instead, the Shepherdess/Swineherd must remain in a city for 1 turn, and the Farm will be built automatically.

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Get ye file ====> http://www.Zophiel.com/stuff/HungryCities.zip

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So e.g. if you already have pigs and ag tech you can build a special settler that will then establish another pig farm.....yes ?

I like the shephard idea, although the shephard should be male and not female.

I like this idea.

About the activation animation. It's a long shot but try this, in the folder that contains the units you're using, grab the animation (file) that you want to play when unit performs the action (I'm assuming it's similar to prophets' build holy temple action), for example settler_female_md_foundcity.kf, make a copy of it and rename the action part of the name (in this case foundcity) to activate, so it'll look like this settler_female_md_activate.kf. Let me know if it works, I'm curious about it myself.

P.S. and I like that the shepherd is female, keeps it more interesting visually.

P.S.S. This probably belongs in Mod Components forum.

Very very good idea, I really like it.

So this works more like a "build somewhere else and join city at another location, and once joined, disappear and only leave a building behind, which gives +1 food" sort of thing?

Which reminds me... Let me start a thread about an idea I just got...

Awesome, Im gonna see if that animation fix works. If it does, it's gonna come in real handy for my Utopia Civ, which also has units standing still cuz they have no default animations. I'll try it later tonight and post my results, thanks!!

Yeah, that's pretty much what it does. They cost as much as a settler, so they're do-able but not spam-able at the early stages, and the production bonus is small enough that it will make a world of difference on cities with barren tiles, but not be too exploitable that it allows for obscenely sized cities. I did make a third food guy (Cattleherd, reskinned horse archer with cows in tow, requires horseback riding and Cow), but I think +3 food might just break the balance.

My original idea was to have them establish some sort of special trade route that generates food instead of commerce, but doing it via unique buildings was much easier, and just as effective.

I like my shepherd girl, leave her alone! :p

Whatever floats your boat, but in all my experiences shephards have been males, :lol:

http://www.goldenhilltravel.co.uk/kailash-gallery/images/shepherd%20girl%20near%20Limi.jpg

There you go.

Can you check the download? I think it is corrupted because when I try to unzip it I get an error.

Roger Bacon

Whatever floats your boat, but in all my experiences shephards have been males, :lol:

You can't have had much experience of rural life in the far East, then!

:)

That's weird, the original ZIP in my computer is perfectly fine, but if I download a new copy, it's always corrupted... wonder what happened :confused:

Oh well, I deleted the old version and re-uploaded a new ZIP, which Im pretty sure works fine now. Please try and download it again!

Has anyone actually been able to use this mod at all then?

V1.5 now available!

Thanks to RogerBacon's alchemical knowledge of Python, the Farms now work exactly as I originally wanted them to :D

Farms will now be more like a "food trade route"; The food being produced by them is taken from the food bank of the city that built the Shepherdess/Swineherd.
The Farms now also disappear after 20 turns, at which point you may want to renew the "treade route" with another Shepherdess/Swineherd.
Since Farms are now more realistically limited in some ways, I decided to increase their production to 2 Food instead of 1 Food. This means that HungryCities can not only feed your Desert/Tundra cities - It can also "free up" Specialists for 20 turns, as they produce as much food as a normal tile would!

Check the first post for more details and download instructions...

Have fun!

-Tavo

Very cool looking, i'll try it when I have access to my computer (tommorow) but I have a quick question: is there a limit to how many farms you can have in a city at one time?

This is great heroes182, looking forward to trying out (just as soon as I stop modding and get back to playing the darn thing :D).

Very cool looking, i'll try it when I have access to my computer (tommorow) but I have a quick question: is there a limit to how many farms you can have in a city at one time?

Farms are buildings so they are limited to one each: one pig farm and one sheep farm.

Roger Bacon

Farms are buildings so they are limited to one each: one pig farm and one sheep farm.

What he said. :goodjob:

yaaay! I always thought civilization should've had some sort of food (& weapons) trade, especially between different civilizations not only cities

I just don't like the idea of you having to replant them every 20 turns, makes them too distracting... Also having the units cost food to build, wouldn't that make you "specialize" the donor city to only feed the far city?? I mean it shouldn't be that costly to send some loafs of bread to a neighboring city :)

hehe, well, that's the thing, sending a few loafs of bread to a neighbouring city should cost you... a few loafs. Hence, the origin city losing 2 loafs per turn, etc.

In v1.0 of this mod, the Shepherdess/Swineherd built Farms which simply produced one food per turn and that's it, but I feel that implementing it this way makes it more fair.

ok, I like the mod, and just tested it... It has a bug..
you say that city of origin should lose 2 food.. I checked and it loses ONLY 1 FOOD per turn.. so that needs a fix.. also it would be nice if lose of food is properly showed in food bar (currently shows as if there's no food loss). that way you will know what cities give food, cause u may get even starvation and dont even know about it, food bar would show that city is growing!

please fix that. other than that its a good idea for a mod ;)

I'm even thinking making proper truck caravans for later stages in game, that wont require pigs or sheep :) can someone give me TRUCK unit dds and object? it would transport for and/or units..

i think I found where's error...
in HungryCities\Assets\Python\Shepherd.py you have

BONUS_SHEEP_FOOD = 1
BONUS_PIG_FOOD = 1

and later
giftingCity = pPlayer.getCity(giftingCityID)
giftingCity.changeFood(-1*BONUS_SHEEP_FOOD)

should probably be:
giftingCity.changeFood(-2*BONUS_SHEEP_FOOD)

---------

but still I dont think its good idea to decrease food that way. It would be much better if you construct another building at the same time that would be "Food caravan" and gives -2 food to origin city for 20 turns.. that way game will properly show loss of food and calculate accurately food bar. I guess we'll have to ask RogerBacon to do that, cause I dont know python.

i think I found where's error...
in HungryCities\Assets\Python\Shepherd.py you have

BONUS_SHEEP_FOOD = 1
BONUS_PIG_FOOD = 1



That must have been an older version that got added in to the zip. Originally this mod was +1/-1 food.


It would be much better if you construct another building at the same time that would be "Food caravan" and gives -2 food to origin city for 20 turns..

That's not a good idea because a city can only have one building and that would mean that a city can only supply one other city with the bonus food. As it stands now a city could provide many other cities with farms and each one would cost -2 food to the city of origin.

Yes, the lack of information on the interface is a pain. You have to rememebr how much food you're losing from the city each turn. I looked briefly at modifying the interface (for a different mod) but the file is really huge and complicated. Some people have done it but I haven't managed to tackle it yet.

Roger Bacon

Have many "food export" buildings.
Food Export I -1 food
Food Export II -2 food
Food Export III -3 food
...
Food Export XX -20 food
...
Food Export XL -40 food
...
Food Export LX -60 food

The python script would make certain that any one city would only have one of the above buildings. If more food was exported, it would just upgrade it.

(note: you couldn't actually build the above buildings -- they would just exist to provide the UI feedback that "taking food away with python" doesn't provide.)

Then have the Python script place these buildings in the cities (and upgrade/downgrade them as needed) instead of just taking food away.

Building a food caravan in the destination city should remove one of the two import-food farms (and retie the unit to the original exporting city). If you want to cancel a food-caravan, you'd re-build the unit in the destination city and disband it (or send it somewhere else).

Balance: The food caravan should continue forever until cancelled. One of the two should be much more expensive (so 2 food is cheap to import, but 4 food costs more).

The "pig farm" should grant a production bonus to building pig caravans (once you build the pig caravan, the pig farm gets removed -- this makes it easier to cancel your food import). The same for the sheep farm.

Would this be a better design?

ugh Yakk.. this even sounds too complicated, I cant even imagine how complicated is to code that to python.. not to mention general confusion with constant upgrading/downgrading of buildings :D

ok, lets look at this from another angle.. we can make food caravans just transfer certain amount of food ONCE. so lets say they carry 10 food.. when produced they substract 10 food from city, and when they arrive at destination city 10 food is added to current total food amount. (I even think this is exactly how it worked in previous Civ) can we make that.. its seems simple enough.

ok, lets look at this from another angle.. we can make food caravans just transfer certain amount of food ONCE. so lets say they carry 10 food.. when produced they substract 10 food from city, and when they arrive at destination city 10 food is added to current total food amount. (I even think this is exactly how it worked in previous Civ) can we make that.. its seems simple enough.

There is already a caravan unit available for download; I use it all the time in my games.

Roger Bacon

Is there any news about how to get the pigs resp. sheep animated? I'd like to combine my Druidess with deer.

Is there any news about how to get the pigs resp. sheep animated? I'd like to combine my Druidess with deer.

I'm not sure... I had an idea of how it might be done a few weeks ago, but haven't gotten atround to trying it.
I'll give it a shot later today, and if it does work, I'll let you know :)

I'm not sure... I had an idea of how it might be done a few weeks ago, but haven't gotten atround to trying it.
I'll give it a shot later today, and if it does work, I'll let you know :)

thx, would like that:)

No but I mean, a city loses 2 loafs and another gains 2 loafs: that's fair
Now why does the donor city have to lose more loafs in PRODUCING the unit?

Also why does it have to replant every 20 turns? Why not just make it one time so you can forget about it?



Roger Are you saying there's a caravan unit which can carry food mod? I saw one which can carry shields (costing 50 shields, conveys 25 to the target city). But one that carries food??

Roger Are you saying there's a caravan unit which can carry food mod? I saw one which can carry shields (costing 50 shields, conveys 25 to the target city). But one that carries food??

Yes, it is available here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145599&highlight=Caravan
I use a slightly modified version of it (I took out the production option because I thought it was a little overpowered.)

Roger Bacon

Ooh so you removed the hammers and replaced it with food? That's clever, why did he need python changes though?

Ooh so you removed the hammers and replaced it with food? That's clever, why did he need python changes though?

The caravan creates a building. The python catches the onBuildingBuilt() function and gives the city 75 food and then destroys the building. Since it all happens instantly you never actually see the building. It's just there so an event will trigger.

Roger Bacon

No but I mean, a city loses 2 loafs and another gains 2 loafs: that's fair
Now why does the donor city have to lose more loafs in PRODUCING the unit?

Also why does it have to replant every 20 turns? Why not just make it one time so you can forget about it?


I agree. Or something like that.