It is about time that we should mod this part of the game.

First of all I would remove the entire cottage chain. Instead I would have farms give +1 commerce after 30 turns, and add villages which give +2 commerce but do not evolve. This would force players to use specialists more, which is in keeping with the WH world.

Also I would add a chain to mines. After 20 turns mines should generate and extra +1 hammers, and after and extra 30 turns, another +1 hammer and +1 commerce. This would greatly increase production encouraging the player to build more units, and make production cities a lot more valuable.

Im not too sure about that. i quite like the vanilla improvements as they are. it is an interesting idea however. im going to dwell on it for a bit and then give you a decent answer;)

perhaps we could make race specific improvements?

You could have race/religion/civic specific bonuses for improvements, but adding entirely new improvements for each race seems a bit much.

I'd like to see how Olleus' idea plays out. Maybe find another use for the cottage chain? The extra commerce is great for cottages, but if WH is a specialist based world then maybe Olleus is correct. Playtesting is the answer!

i would like to use more the specialist aspects, we can mod the graphics for them too ;)
evolving mines is a good way to give players more time for producing units (which is the main part of the mod ;) ) and it will make pillaging even more effective, perhaps we can think of some better use of forts then too using ranged combat ?!

perhaps we can give every race one or two special improvements or effects for imprvements... btw do i remember right that techs can upgrade the effect of improvements too ?!

the improved mine chain should only be avaliable for dwarves, chaos dwarves, orcs, goblins, dark elves and maybe the empire. but i dont see many other races mining all that much. level one mines should give +1 production, level two mines should give +2 production, level three mines should give +2 production, and + 1 commerce

Dwarves, chaos dwarves, orcs, goblins, dark elves, and skaven should also be able to build mines in mountain peaks, and also a new improvement called a "mountain pass" which acts like a road, allowing other units to cross it, and gives +1 commerce.

perhaps give cottages a % chance to recruit citizens when there are enemies nearby, and as the cottage levels up, increase the % chance. (but keep the money benefit)

Forest cottages should give 1 food, Forest hamlets should give 1 food, 1 commerce, Forest villages should give 1 food, 2 commerce. and they should also spawn citizens like normal cottages.

Farms for Bretonnia, the empire and most other human races should give and extra commerce or production after x turns, as they seem to rely heavily on peasents.

Plantations should also give extra production, say 2 Commerce and 1 production. i also think it would be cool if we could build plantations in forests without destroying them.

I think farms should also be able to be built on rice on hills, in the form of terracing (this has always been my pet wish;))

just my 2 cents for now;)

What I was trying to do is to move away from the commerce orientated vanilla civ, and move towards a production orientated WH world. The best way to do this seemed to be to give incentives to players to look after their production from the word go, and evolving mines seemed the best way to do this.

This is what I propose for improvements:

farm (+1 food) -> (20 turns) +1 commerce -> (30 turns) +1 commerce -> (40 turns) +1 food (human civs only)

village (+2 commerce, +1 prodution, chance of spawning a unit if an enemy is nearby, available in age of discovery) -> (20 turns) + 2 commerce (high elves only)

Workshops (+1 hammer, -1 food) -> (15 turns) +1 hammer -> (30 turns) +1 hammer, +1 commerce

Mines (+2 hammer) -> (10 turns) +1 commerce -> (20 turns) +1 production ->
(30 turns) +1 production (dwarves, chaos, dark elves, skaven only)

Lumber Mill (+1 hammer, +1 commerce, another +1 commerce if it is next to a river, avaible in age of discovery)

Hunting camp (can only be built in forests, +1 food) -> (15 turns) +1 hammer (wood elves only)

Fishing village (can only be built on coastal sea squares, consumes workboat, +1 food)

[need a name] (+1 food) -> (20 turns) +1 hammer

Removed watermills and windmills.

So what does this mean?

Production cities will generate a little income due to the commerce generated by mines and workshops. This will be just enough to lure to player into building income enhancing buildings and risk weakening their army. They will also be able to get some food for growth by building hunting camps and [Need a name].

Commerce cities will generate a lot of money by building farms (which give a little money) which will in turn allow the city to assign specialists. This means that commerce cities will generate a lot of cash, but they will be quite rare as they are very hard to set up (takes production for buildings which allows specialists, and time for farms to grow).

Late cities will probably build the jack-of-all-trade village, and will get fishing villages (which are as good as level 3 farms, but require production (for the workboats) instead of time).

I would limit the civ specific bonuses to an extra level for a particular improvement. For example, dwarves get a level 4 mine which generates yet another +1 hammer. Woodeleves get a level 2 hunting camp which gives +1 hammer.

Edit: Added some civ specific improvements.

That idea is not too bad:) it could work quite nicely with a bit of group design and tweeking, but now i understand what you were talking about, and i agree.
The hard part is making improvements too powerful or too weak, or unbalacing the commerce / production line.

Also, i dont like the heavy reliance on mines for all civs. perhaps have mines only be uber beneficial for Dwarves, chaos dwarves, orcs, goblins, dark elves, and skaven, but let other races reap a smaller benefit from these structures.

Have a different, new improvement wich is avaliable to all races, but uber benifitial to other groups. perhaps having 3 groups which have 3 different uber impovements to keep with the flavor of the WH World. for example: the Wood Elves, High Elves and Lizardmen are all more nature oriented, and do not build mines (highelves scavenge for ores on mountain sides, Wood elves do not use metal that isnt found, or scavenge like high elves, and lizardmen use obsidon) in this case we could make a new improvement called [something] which has the following benefits:

[something] (+1 hammer, +1 commerce ) -> (10 turns) +1 production -> (20 turns) +1 production -> (30 turns) +1 production

i know this is a lot of work for minimal playablity in creating all these new improvements, but i think it will help greatly for the flavor of the game, and this is really only future talk.

With some after thougth, I agree that the last levels of mines should be removed. However, I don't think that we should create uber improvements for certain races. If one improvements is a lot better than all the others, then it is the only thing worth building, and a desison is removed from the player.

For wood elves, maybe hunting camps could provide +1 hammer and +2 commerc, making forests very usefull for them and giving them an advantage in the early game

Thats a good point Olleus.

So this is what I propose for improvements:

farm (+1 food) -> (20 turns) +1 food -> (30 turns) +1 commerce -> (40 turns) +1 commerce (human civs only)

village (+2 commerce, +1 prodution, chance of spawning a unit if an enemy is nearby, available in age of discovery) -> (20 turns) + 2 commerce and higher chance of spawning a unit(high elves only)

Workshops (+1 hammer, -1 food, +1 unhealthyness) -> (15 turns) +1 hammer +1 unhealthyness-> (30 turns) +1 hammer, +1 commerce -> (60 turns) +1 hammer (dwarves, chaos dwarves only)

Mines (+2 hammer) -> (10 turns) +1 commerce -> (20 turns) +1 production -> (30 turns) +1 production (dwarves, chaos dwaves, dark elves, skaven only)

Lumber Mill (+1 hammer, +1 commerce, another +1 commerce if it is next to a river, avaible in age of discovery) (not avaliable to woodelves and lizardmen)

Hunting camp (can only be built in forests, +1 food) -> (15 turns) +1 food -> (30 turns) +1 hammer +1 commerce(wood elves only)

Fishing village (can only be built on coastal sea squares, consumes workboat, +1 food)

[need a name (Market Gardens?)] (+1 food) -> (20 turns) +1 hammer

Ore Fields ( replaces mine for High elves and Wood Elves only) (+2 hammer) -> (10 turns) +1 commerce -> (20 turns) +1 production

Singing Glade (replaces lumbermill for Wood Elves only)(+1 hammer, +1 commerce, another +1 commerce if it is next to a river, avaible in age of discovery) -> (30 turns) +1 Hammer

just another 2 cents from me;)

Looks very good but isn't there a bit to much food?
Your farms and hunting camps both provide +2 food when in civ4, you have to wait until biology to get anything producing +2 food. Also, how can you build ore fields?

good point on the food thing.

The ore fields isnt really something you build. its just an area where people (elves) go to scavenge for natural ore. i was thinking that the improvement could look like some small workers digging with thier hands or something, perhaps with baskets that they keep thier looted ore in?

Looking good guys.

I dislike the idea that EVERY improvement that is in the game should be changed and that EVERY improvement in the game becomes beter and better over time.
I like the player to have something to do for his improvements to become better (like in vanilla discovering new techs and building railroads on mines etc.) and not just sitting around and watching how his empire grows and grows while he is doing NOTHING for this except building the initial improvement - that´s no fun for me, I want to do things myself and not just sit and watch!

I´m not against changing the aspects of improvements to something more production oriented, but this is a difficult topic, because most times you just need to get that extra commerce from villages and towns if you don´t want to drop your research rate under 50 or 40% - And IMO the game makes no fun if you need around 30-40 turns to discover the next technology, the constant developement is one of the main fun of cIV.

So if we want to touch improvements (and we have already done this for the woodelves with the Forest cottages) we may just have to do it slowly and think about a very good concept zhow to improve production and take out a little bit of the commerce factor, but that may also involve tinkering around with the maintenance and upkeep system of the game.

Very good point Duke, and now im divided on my opinion:sad:;)

To make players work for thier extra benefits, we should make them make thier workers work the improvements (did that make sense?:crazyeye: )
Perhaps we could do this:

Leave cottages and Villages untouched, and keep forest villages etc the same. (except allow cottages and the like to spawn citizens when enemies are nearby)

farm (+1 food): having a worker 'work' the farm produces an extra hammer after 15 turns of working, then after an extra 15 turns uninterupted working annother hammer. once working on the farm is complete, the worker is free to do other stuff.

Mines (+2 hammer) gain one extra commerce after 15 turns like a cottage, but after that, if you 'send a worker down' the mine the mine will produce another hammer after 20 turns. then after that, the dwarves, chaos, dark elves, and skaven can send down one last worker which, after 30 turns, produces yet another production (workers are sacrificed in this way)
(Alternatively to the final step in italics, we could give the dwarves, chaos, dark elves, and skaven an extra +1 hammer for mines when they research a certain tech.)

Lumber Mill (+1 hammer, +1 commerce, another +1 commerce if it is next to a river, avaible in age of discovery)

Hunting camp (can only be built in forests, by hunters, +1 food) -> (15 turns) +1 hammer (wood elves only)

Fishing village (can only be built on coastal sea squares, consumes workboat, +1 food)

Market Garden (+1 food) -> (20 turns) +1 hammer after being worked by a worker like a farm

Ore Fields ( replaces mine for High elves and Wood Elves only) (+2 hammer) -> (after being worked for 10 turns) +1 commerce -> (after being worked for another 20 turns) +1 production
Workers are consumed in working this improvement.

Singing Glade (replaces lumbermill for Wood Elves only)(+1 hammer, +1 commerce, another +1 commerce if it is next to a river, avaible in age of discovery) -> if a Wood Elf spell caster casts the "tree singing spell" on the improvement, 30 turns later it produces 1 more Hammer.

I like the idea of sending sacrifying extra workers to improve the yield of an improvement, but I think that this should be limited to mines, ore fields and farms, as they are the most labour incentive improvements. Also it adds another dilema to the player, "Do I sacrify all of my workers to create an uber city, or do I try to improve all of my cities first?"

About duke's point, villages and lumber are only available later on, not at the begining, but that is only for 2 improvement. Maybe if we replace railroads by highway (movement 5?) and unlock that in the last age, and make highways give +1 commerce to villages and farms, and +1 production to mines and ore fields.

I am against keeping cottages in the game as they qre very unWarhammer like. If we increase the amount of commerce given per specialist and add more buildings that give free specialists, then we shouldn't have a problem with people going bankrupt. Anyway, I think that we should try to balance the game so that having a 70% research rate is considered very high, even if this means lowering tech costs. This is warhammer, not researchHammer.

So to recap:

farm (+1 food) -> (20 turns) +1 commerce -> (30 turns + worker) +1 commerce -> (40 turns + worker) +1 commerce (human civs only)

village (+2 commerce, +1 prodution, chance of spawning a unit if an enemy is nearby, available in age of discovery) -> (20 turns) + 2 commerce and higher chance of spawning a unit(high elves only)

Workshops (+1 hammer, -1 food, +1 unhealthyness) -> (15 turns) +1 hammer +1 unhealthyness-> (30 turns) +1 hammer, +1 commerce

Mines (+2 hammer) -> (10 turns + worker) +1 commerce -> (20 turns + worker) +1 production -> (30 turns + worker) +1 production (dwarves, chaos dwaves, dark elves, skaven only)

Lumber Mill (+1 hammer, +1 commerce, another +1 commerce if it is next to a river, avaible in age of discovery) (not avaliable to woodelves and lizardmen)

Hunting camp (can only be built in forests, +1 food) -> (15 turns) +1 hammer -> (30 turns) +2 commerce (wood elves only)

Fishing village (can only be built on coastal sea squares, consumes workboat, +1 food)

Market Gardens (+1 food) -> (20 turns) +1 hammer

Ore Fields ( replaces mine for High elves and Wood Elves only) (+1 hammer) -> (10 turns) +1 commerce

Singing Glade (replaces lumbermill for Wood Elves only)(+1 hammer, +1 commerce, another +1 commerce if it is next to a river, avaible in age of discovery) -> (30 turns) +1 Hammer

High elves and wood elves get +1 hammer to all hills as they are more efficent at scavenging them.

Sounds good:thumbsup: i like it.

I was just thinking though, using those as a base, should we perhaps replace one improvement with a civ/group specific improvement? like the ore fields?
Perhaps Even just renames to add to flavour?
i was thinking maybe renaming 'farm' to 'estate' for Bretonnia, the empire, kislev, tilia, and estalia, and perhaps letting them all unlock a tech which gives all 'estates' +1 food in the 3rd age.

Perhaps undead could build a 'buirial ground' instead of a village, which acts exactly the same, as a village, just with different graphics? and can be built on any terrain (desert, tundra)

Dwarves, Dark Dwarves, Dark Elves and Skaven could upgrade the mine to an 'Underground Gallery' at the last phase of the mine.

Lizardmen and Amazons and Woodelves could get the 'Tree top Village' which is already in the game instead of the village. which acts exacly the same but can be built in forests and jungles only.

Ogres, Orcs, Goblins and Dwarves and Dark Dwaves could get 'Mountain Holds' as well as villages which can be built in Peaks, making them accessable.

Cathay, Ind, Nippon could get the Terrace farm as well as ordinary farms, which could be built on hills. (we could then put crop resources on hills that only they can see)

Albion and high Elves could build that 'monolith' thing in WH3 which could be built ontop of villages and lets the village recruit militia, instead of citizens.

Norsca, Kislev, Hung, Kurgan could build 'Out Posts' instead of hunting camps, and increases the Line of sight sround them.

Chaos, and beastmen could Build the Herdstone which could be built ontop of villages and lets the village recruit militia, instead of citizens.

This is, of corse, only contemplation for the future;)

I must say I'm against removing the concept of cottages alltogether. But we could changes their effects yes- since many poeple believe them overpowered to something like you mentioned with the villages. I see no problem making a cottage a less powerful village and keeping the developement path for it until town. Your villages are also improving in time(only much shorter).
The main reason is I like the frustration you get if towns that have grown in centuries get pillaged to nothingness(so that's a pretty nice reason trying to protect them). We also could tweak the AI building less cottages maybe and just disable the last step to town for civs that aren't civilized.
I like most of the other ideas though.:)

i like Ploes logic. i agree with him:)

But as it takes mines (and other improvements) ages to evolve, you would protect them with as much fevour as your towns. Just think of them as production cottages instead of commerce cottages.

bah! why does everyone have so many good points??;) i dont know who to agree with:sad:

But as it takes mines (and other improvements) ages to evolve, you would protect them with as much fevour as your towns. Just think of them as production cottages instead of commerce cottages.
Yes but cottages need a lot of time to grow not just 10 or 20 turns so I still think it's a bigger loss. As I said we could just reduce the commerce they provide a bit and giving them +1Food near watertiles and the hammer you want for villages(that I like).
Something like that maybe:
Cottage+1 commerce
hamlet +1commerce + 1 hammer
village +2 commerce +1 hammer
town +4 commerce +2 hammer
Normal time to grow.

Cottage+1 commerce
hamlet +1commerce + 1 hammer
village +2 commerce +1 hammer
town +4 commerce +2 hammer
Normal time to grow.

Doesn´t a vanilla town only give +3 commerce?? And if a town gives +2 hammers I´m likeöly not to build many mines, because towns will give much more benefits!

Yes? I thought it's 5 but that may be because I almost allways build them near rivers, heh. ok lets just have +1 hammer then.

change one of the last commerces to food?

Farms give +1 Food, so why build a Farm when you can have a town that produces them? And medieval Fantasy civs should rely heavily on Agriculture.

My approach would be the following: cut off the cottage chain by one (remove the last step) and give the new last step +1 hammer, small changes, but maybe it´s better to only change the vanilla system a little bit than totally revamping it, because it´s well thought out and very balanced IMO.

Of course this would mean we should also cut the Forest Cottages chain for Woodelves agin by one (so it´s only two steps, but woodelves wouldn´t build great settlemnts in the woods either) and here I´d suggest to give the last step +1 Food to compensate for not being able to cut the Forest and build farms an due to hunters searching the forest for food.

Why shouldn't we totaly revamp the system?

Surely thats the entire point of mod. I just think that cottages are distinctively un-warhammer like. If you think that the loss of the improvements above aren't enought, then simply increase the time it takes for them to grow. Also, a lot of them require workers to be sacrified, so they are an even biger investment.

Upscalable fortifications!
To protect against all those incursions.

(could small fortifications be built 'next to' an existing improvement?)

wooden watchtower: +1sightrange +5%defence for rangedcombat units. does not clear forest, can be built next to improvement.
Does not require stoneworks or construction, just a worker.

Small tower: a simple stone guardtower +10%def (req: stoneworks)
3turns to build
->
Fortification: +20% (req: smalltower + construction)
4 turns to build
->
Fortress: +25%, can bombard or fire on passing units. (req: fortification + construction + planning or somesuch)
4 turns to build

all are negated by airunits and siegemagics.
(maybe give all fortifications +1 sightrange too?)

that would be really awsome if that is possible. I think i remeber Ploe talking about that somewhere before.

Why wouldn't it be possible?
If scaling cottages are possible, scaling fortifications should be too.

ps maybe the lowest for of fortification should be an encampment encircled with dirt wall with wooden stakes poking out...? edit: or is that just a normal unit-fortifying?
maybe as early stoneage-fort-graphic....

I feel cottages and towns are extremely warhammer-like.
50% of the games I played were fought out in otr around small villages.

or you could make fortifications an addon to villages, so you wont have to worry about the fortifications being "next to" another improvement.
I agree, that villages and towns are important in WH, and i think we should make villages able to become important strategic positions after a lot of work. that would make players value them more and also protect them more.

Good idea.
a defensive bonus for cover/houese2house/streetfighting.

edit 6/01/07:
Upgrade villages/towns with a watchtower to gain benefits of tower (see next post).
I guess the 'Turns worked' will be lost, so maybe only make towns upgradable.
Walls are only allowed for cities and should remain so.
We need requiresImprovement: IMPROVEMENT_X to make this kind of things work.

Maybe have some upgrade for fortifications, that makes them a bit more usefull for resources too?
Nah, spacial Fortified mine would be more appropriate.

edit 17/11/06: How about an "Extractor" for warpstone? can be built on top of a normal mine/stripmine.

Stripmine:
twice as productive as normal mine, but...
creates pollution or -health in city if worked.
double resource bonus, but...
resources are also twice as likely to become exhausted.
also: requires a civic that incurrs negative relations modifier with WE.


Fortifications:
I have managed to modify some grafics to look like small towers.

However getting it to work in-game may require some scripting I'm not capable of (yet).

issues:
-Worker/Stonemason/Sapper BUILDS prereq fortification improverment.
-upgrading: how to give discount for upgrading from previous fortification?

-Manned lookout function.
LoS for dominant culture, so only INSIDE borders.
or
not improvement at all, but rather an imobile unit. (easiest solution actually,
but a bodge. Would require sappers carrying the tower to location or instant
summoning on the spot, which would req some scripting)

-Units in camp/fort/castle fortification should not be able to flee from tile.
attacking units get a free attack as normal if they defeat a defending unit.
-encampment/Fortress/castle need extra bonus.
Some artillery free bombard or protection bonus would seem appropriate.

----

Buildable -> upgrades to

wooden outlook. (2LoS, fast build) -> small stone tower (3LoS, +10%Def)
small stone tower -> Wizards Tower (3LoS, 15%def, see invisible, +1magic?)
small stone tower -> fort (30%def)
entrenchment / wooden pallisades (+15%def, fast build) -> fort
fort -> castle (+50%def)
----
Towers have limited defensive bonus, but give free LoS, and can be upgraded to Wizardstowers. Build on hills only.
Entrenchments have a decent defensive bonus, forts can be upgraded to powerfull castles.
Castles can only be upgraded to within friendly borders only.

Okay my thoughts on it...

I agree with Lord Olleus cottages are not really warhammerish, this might be a bit extreme but in actual fact there not even very real worldish.

I dont see the need for cottages, in actual fact i dont even see the point of having them... why would they generate :commerce: i was lead to believe that towns relied on farms to sell goods and services to and that they onsold goods and raw products to cities...

so at the bottom you have the primary producers, farms, mines, lumbermills etc they created the raw resources and maybe refine the ore down into ingots or cut the timber into boards...

towns need primary producers to justify there existance to sell services, goods and onsell stuff to cities...

With this in mind, perhaps giving mines, farms and the like commerce, and perhaps have levels even for farms?...

Just a thought

I still disagree.

Farms are nice because they represent people living in the province.

They also make you give a damn if an opponent is pillaging your tiles,
because they represent a significant investment.
eg working a tile that generates less food/prod for about 30turns, before a monetary return is generated.
They are also nice to pillage for money.

WHFB needs the gold to support the masses of units.

I agree that towns should not dominate the landscape.
Maybe limiting the production of a town by somefactor of the surrounding tiles or increasing production of surrounding tiles, while generating trade.
Or maybe make the investment even higher, by requiring at least 2-4 farms next to a hamlet for growth.
The easiest way to limit town prevalence would probably be to prevent towns existing next to eachother.

this may just be me but AI's pillaging my nation would be fairly new... :P

Yeah they do... but they take up what called a fairly large chunk of terrain... what i was proposing was amalgamating there function into farms and mines... and having them change in the way that cottages change

Clear Land---> Irragation--->Crop rotation? (whatever)

with the farms for instance giving a base +1 food and +1,+2,+3 gold for each level for instance

and the same for mines

and the same for lumber mills

it takes a while to generate the infrastructure needed to support large scale farming mining and land clearance. For farms to function there needs to be land to clear, good soil (civ is a bit silly in that respect.. a huge amount of land is not fertile enough to justify farming), mills, granaries, markets, wells etc infrastructure like that takes time to build up the same could be said of mines and lumber mills...

What im saying is that we treat villages and towns as part of the farm (which represents a large area... even assuming its only 20km^2 there could be easily a few villages, towns, cottages etc), mine or lumbermill

It would also help solve the money problem which is a big part of the game in the current version... and if that is fixed in the warlords patch it allows for a greater amount of money to be used for large armies..

Large armies are difficult to support as is, and they are fairly difficult to create not enough time... and to many wars to build up a big one but that might just be me.......

The system i envision is a slot based system (not sure if you can do it...) with the ability to build a lvl 1 improvement, lvl 2 improvement, lvl 3 improvement all the way to wherever..

With branches in the build possibilities... the ability for instance to go the full mining path

alluevial deposits--->open pit mine--->shaft mine etc

But with the chance of adding defensive upgrades to the path

--->defensive --->walled
outpost compound

With this you could for instance safeguard a rich deposit (i think hills,mountains etc should have a variable shield count when they are first mined.. some hills are richer some are poorer...) but it would take up land near the mine site limiting the ability to upgrade the mine it could if that proved to be to nasty take longer to upgrade the terrain with each sucsesive upgrade...

But you could also build better whatever you can come up with...

I have no idea if this is implimentable ingame.. maybe a modified cottage code?



even the idea of having fortresses taking up a square is a bit silly... i mean really how big can they be? a large fortress in the real world is a couple of square km...

with cottage code it would certainly be possible to have mines and farms upgrade over time.

The choice/varyable upgrades, would require the same modifications in buildable/RequiredImprovement that I suggested for the upgradable fortifications earlier.

Another funny thing would be to have farmingland degrade if not rotated.
(eg before 'crop rotation' is invented).
Degradation would remove the farm, requiring the player/AI to revitalise the soil with workers.
(This simulates the lying fallow of a few years or manual fertilisation)

the key i guess would be to make it not to labor intensive for the player... i think personally that this would help a player tailor there terrain.. on the border they may wish to build more defensive upgrades and garrison a unit there for instance in the areas away from the enemy they may only want to build upgrades to improve the shield count etc

I do agree that it might be interesting if farms could degrade (it would be another way to limit over expansion without consoladating your gains.. with your workers being overworked if you have taken over to much or built to many farms) the key is to do it without it being to annoying..

Is it possible when you build a mine to have a variable amount of new shields generated..? instead of having a base +2 for instance would it be possible to have between 1-5? for instance it might also be useful for the player to determine what they want to build on that mined tile (perhaps change the base shield count on mines into % based figures would make the player think more in terms of what should be mined and what shouldnt)

I dont see why farms cant be built in hills, its a bit silly really look at New Zealand for instance there are sheep on almost vertical Hills feeding on grass perhaps the food count might be a bit lower (but even that wouldnt be bad if it was variable :D)

Mines:
How about changing metal resources?

Higher chance of finding minerals when building mine,
but also faster depletion rate.

Dunno if this can be limited to luxury (silver/gold/gems/gromril) minerals only, depleting copper and Iron at accelerated rates could make it annoying.
But only increasing finding rates of these goods would undo the rush-factor.


Farms:
We could introduce a cheap serfs-unit that only builds farms, set it on automated....hmm maybe not. As it would probably try to farm EVERYTHING.
Unless we go more compex and erode farms to fallowlands/pollutoid-feature: = -2food.
Which these serfs can clean up.
We could use this same feature too for salted lands, dustbowls, etc. created by other destructive practices.

I don't know about the hidden fertility idea.
It would have to be known at map-generation, then revealed by farming.
Change it at random and you would need to remember the first result afterwards anyhow, to prevent people farming the same tile repeatedly to get the optimum results.


New:
I uploaded a simple textureswap for desidious forrest (full tile) for a dead wood.
I'll test out some jungle vines later.
edit: what is up with the .nif format not uploading?! weirdness.
edit: oh yeah: LINK http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/102073/deadwood_des.zip

I'm dead:
Probably not do much more this week though; that paper my sig has been whineing about is due this friday AND I stupidly signed up for a 9-17 practical course. Argh! My intern-supervisor is gonna be so mad at me. :scared:

I'm sorry but crop rotation screams micromanagement, and no one wants that. I like the idea of farms&mines generating more income across time to represent general stability. However, if we want to keep city specialisation which IMO is what makes city management interesting then we need to make specialists worthwhile, and/or add cottages to the mid game.

You are right about the micromanagement, that is why I suggested serfs as a remedy.
Soft healers eh?...I realise crop-rotation is too micro for the scale of civ.
At most, it could be a TECH/civic that gives a farming bonus.

Hidden foodboni... still not attractive.
Farmed tiles already have a variety of production efficiacy. Eg floodplains etc.
Perhaps development of a farmed tile over time, resulting in either erosion or improvement of soil, depending on a random-predetermined distribution.

p.s.
Check out the woods. ;)
I forgot to add the link.

personally i LIKE the cottages, but i dont think ill be able to convince anyone :(

yes ME.

I like them too. Just not sprawled alover the landscape like a medieval LA.

Also, towns should not take on too many functions of cities.

.....
hmm villages acting as cities...I saw a actsLikeCity-tag somewhere...probably resources or improvements.

could be interesting for nomadics.

ummm not me... i understand the arguement in there favor.. money

But when you can just jivvy with other terrain you can effectivly sign and seal there death warrant :D

I like them too. Just not sprawled alover the landscape like a medieval LA.

Which in my mind is reason to do away with them.. not matter the attempt to control this medieval LA arguement i dont think its going to work

yes ME.

I like them too. Just not sprawled alover the landscape like a medieval LA.



I think Blake better AI could help with this problem. Let's se what happens after we got that in the mod.

medieval LA syndrome... the reason why the warhammer world is so agro... its just the symptoms of to much time in the rat race, just with access to swords, guns, cannons, axes, adzes, maces, clubs and all sorts of other weapons (America with a medieval idea of the world, religious hatred, intolerance, nationalism, nobles, plauges and constant war :D)

Im sorry Masada, but what was that all about :crazyeye::confused:

You know what could be interesting, is if wee keep the 'village' (but not its upgrades) and allow some races (like High Elves, Empire, Brettonia, Orcs, Woodelves etc) to get the villaes to spawn units when enemies come in a certain distance of them.
(i like the look of the cottages etc and would like to keep them :p)
The villages could just produce 1 or 2 gold like normal.

we could then just have the upgradable mines and farms etc. for extra gold.
but then there would be the problem of civs that cannot really build mines (WE) and would rather heve forests. they should get improvement chains like Camp -> Fur Trader (+1 gold on furs) or Hunters lodge (+1 Gold on game)

it was a joke...

otherwise.. umm maybe we should move this discussion to the brainstorming thread... the key is not to make it to complex... sadly i dont tend to like mods with 50 million buttons doing nothing (not this mod :D)

Maybe villages just should not be buildeable next to each other.

Anyhow, my game crashed and I fear it was because I built an ancienttree improvement....:sad:

any clues?
ps Woodelf needs to learn how to make shadows. :p

i never mentioned buttons anywhere :confused:

not being able to build cottages next to each other would be good...

tell WE we will only help him with shadows if he comes back here :p
jk
(not that i know how to make shadows or anything;))

Shadows are easy once you get it.
(I hope, because as yet I have still to get a single model in-game!)

Just copy some from similar structures and plaster them together to for the basicshape of the shadow. Then open simmilar structure in nif-viewer/scope and replace the model files (obj) for ITEM and then SHADOW, get the right textures selected and save as NIF.

I may have been doing something wrong too ...but shadows should not flicker in a fluorescent green texture. ;)

(I think I have been using wrong texturefile references...)