Here's my idea on specialists:

Specialist (Civ4 default) - Bonus - Great Person - Bonus - GP Special Action

Serf (worker) - +1 :hammers:
Diplomat, Merchant & Artist: same as Civ4 (except for Scotland yard, no idea yet)
Priest (priest) - +2 :science: , +1 :hammers: - Bishop - +5 :science:, +3 :hammers: - #1 Build Shrine, #2 Election to Patriarch (Shrine must already exist):+2 diplomacy bonus with all civs of the same state religion at the moment of use, -1 diplo bonus with all other civs.
Architect (eng.) - +3 :hammers: - Great Architect - +6 :hammers:, +2 :culture: - Hurry production
Aristocrat (scientist) - +2 :gold:, +1 :science:, +1 :culture: - Noble - +3 :gold:, +2 :science:, +4 :culture:, -20% city maintenance - Noble Marriage: can be conducted in a foreign city of a country with same state religion. +2 permanent diplomatic bonus with that civ.

Here's my idea on specialists:

Specialist (Civ4 default) - Bonus - Great Person - Bonus - GP Special Action

Serf (worker) - +1 :hammers:
Diplomat, Merchant & Artist: same as Civ4 (except for Scotland yard, no idea yet)
Priest (priest) - +2 :science: , +1 :hammers: - Bishop - +5 :science:, +3 :hammers: - #1 Build Shrine, #2 Election to Patriarch (Shrine must already exist):+2 diplomacy bonus with all civs of the same state religion at the moment of use, -1 diplo bonus with all other civs.
Architect (eng.) - +3 :hammers: - Great Architect - +6 :hammers:, +2 :culture: - Hurry production
Aristocrat (scientist) - +2 :gold:, +1 :science:, +1 :culture: - Noble - +3 :gold:, +2 :science:, +4 :culture:, -20% city maintenance - Noble Marriage: can be conducted in a foreign city of a country with same state religion. +2 permanent diplomatic bonus with that civ.

So, if I'm following this correctly - there's a basic specialist, and then the second proposal is the great person?

The Great Architect and Bishop may be a little overpowered, but I like the names of both specialists and GP's. I do wonder about 'bishop' though - is there a way to retain flavor for different religions (i.e. for Islamic civs, replace 'bishop' with 'mullah'?)

The 'noble marriage' function I really like. Having a permanent diplomatic bonus is a nice advantage, at a moderate to high cost; it's a good way to build in the royal marriage proposal reasonably without having to change the diplomacy mechanics much.

Maybe the boost shouldn't be permanent for royal marriages, something like 100 turns would be better. Otherwise you could just spam a couple of aristocrats and make for example Ottomans your permanent friends when playing as the Byzantines. Or we could just have a limit of 1-2 royal marriages per country.

Maybe the boost shouldn't be permanent for royal marriages, something like 100 turns would be better. Otherwise you could just spam a couple of aristocrats and make for example Ottomans your permanent friends when playing as the Byzantines. Or we could just have a limit of 1-2 royal marriages per country.

That is assuming you manage to OB with the Ottomans. Also, couple of specialists for +4 diplomacy boost may actually be too little.

Here's my idea on specialists:

Specialist (Civ4 default) - Bonus - Great Person - Bonus - GP Special Action

Serf (worker) - +1 :hammers:
Diplomat, Merchant & Artist: same as Civ4 (except for Scotland yard, no idea yet)
Priest (priest) - +2 :science: , +1 :hammers: - Bishop - +5 :science:, +3 :hammers: - #1 Build Shrine, #2 Election to Patriarch (Shrine must already exist):+2 diplomacy bonus with all civs of the same state religion at the moment of use, -1 diplo bonus with all other civs.
Architect (eng.) - +3 :hammers: - Great Architect - +6 :hammers:, +2 :culture: - Hurry production
Aristocrat (scientist) - +2 :gold:, +1 :science:, +1 :culture: - Noble - +3 :gold:, +2 :science:, +4 :culture:, -20% city maintenance - Noble Marriage: can be conducted in a foreign city of a country with same state religion. +2 permanent diplomatic bonus with that civ.

I like the increase in hammer production for specialists. Without a whip, we would need good production so no more Paris or Pagan (those two had almost zero production).

Bishop or Great Priest (more generic to count for all Christians and Muslims) should have an option other than the Shrine building. Two of the four shrines start pre-build and the two others might be build upon religion founding. I will look at the diplomatic bonuses to see if I can implement that (something of the count of "past events have proven your good nature towards us".

The function of the Noble should not overlap with the Bishop. The idea is more or less the same as in the Bishop. One of them should have a different bonus.

I am in favor of keeping the Noble marriage and thinking of something different for the Bishops.

A couple of notes on balancing:
Priests, Aristocrats and Architects may seem more powerful at a first glance, but you should consider that these specialists are enabled by less buildings than artists and merchants and that probably there won't be civics to allow unlimited numbers for them. In case, there are such civics, especially for architects, the bonus can be lowered. The reason why I increased it compared to Civ4's engeneers is that I assume the player won't be able to run many of them as you can from the industrial age in Civ4.

@Byzantine marriage with Ottomans
- the condition is they share the same faith, so it is unlikely to happen in this case.
- +2 diplo bonus isn't enough to make permanent friends ;)
- you won't be able to spawn many Nobles due to limited aristocrats specialists, so you should choose carefully how to use them. For example, the bonus to settle them is also quite interesting IMO.

If you prefer, the bonus (of either settling or using for marriage), can regard stability. For example the marriage could give a permanent +1 diplo bonus with a civ, +2 permanent total stability.


Last thing on Priests. I tried to choose neutral terms but it's hard to make them work also for Islam (read Bishop). Of course if they can have different names that would be superb. I didn't mention it but the bonus for the Election to Patriarch would expire with the next election (ie: if another player uses a Bishop in this way).
Still on this action: I saw that Papacy is unplayable (originally I had the impression we were going for it to be playable). I don't know what will be its role, the question is does this action interefere with Papacy in some way or is it ok ?

I am in favor of keeping the Noble marriage and thinking of something different for the Bishops.

yes, a good observation. Then what about +X total stability for the Bishop's (Great Priest) action until next election ?

3miro and onedreamer: Oh, I see, now the royal marriage sounds a lot better. :)

yes, a good observation. Then what about +X total stability for the Bishop's (Great Priest) action until next election ?

A point or two for stability is good, but also extra happiness (maybe even permanent happiness). Initially there would not many happy resources and that would allow cities to grow larger. The only issue is that Catholics may have hard time getting all the way to Rome, but we may remove that requirement for now.

the requirement I had proposed is only that the shrine exists, not that you should go there. In case it doesn't exist, you have the mission to build it, in case it exists, you have this mission. Is it ok ?

I like the suggestions so far very much.

A couple of ideas:
-I think that originally we had a proposal where using a great prophet would allow a civ to take control of the AP or its non-Catholic equivalent until someone else took it over by the same method. That's basically what onedreamer proposed, and I'm in favor of it if it's codeable. As part of the takeover, you would gain a small diplomatic bonus (+1?) with all civs of your religion for as long as you held control of the AP or its equivalent. We could also add in a +1 or +2 happiness bonus as long as control is maintained.

-If we do that, let's increase the bonus of the royal marriage to at least +3 - if nobles are going to be scarce, and the settlement bonus is so powerful (I like the maintenance idea), there has to be a good reason to choose the other option. Even if we don't adopt my proposal, I agree with Miro that +2 may not be powerful enough.

-While there's no civic that allows a civ to run unlimited engineers/architects, there's likely to be more than one building that enables that type of specialist - forge, mill, perhaps others. On the other hand, as Miro points out, the lack of whipping means that there will be large cities with little production; a city like Lisboa or Paris may have to plan on settling a great architect to have any production value at all. Perhaps if we keep the massive settlement bonus and leave the specialist bonus at +2, we can make the tradeoff a harder choice.

-As an idea for a great spy function, besides the espionage bomb, we might have an 'assassinate leader' option, which creates a turn of civil disorder in all of that civ's cities and a large but temporary stability hit which decreases quickly with time. I'd also suggest changing the name to 'ambassador' from 'great spy'.


I'm not entirely clear on the role of the papacy as currently written, either. It's not playable, but what is it supposed to do?

double post due to lag >_<

All good what you said for me St.Lucifer. I like the assassination action. Basically, let's just say it causes a turn of anarchy in the hit civ. It may even be 2 turns without further instability (already included in the anarchy itself), if we want it to be more code-friendly.

Could some python magic make the specialist names print Bishop for Christian nations and Imam [or something more appropriate] for the Islamic?

Possibly even based on a check against state religion.

Could some python magic make the specialist names print Bishop for Christian nations and Imam [or something more appropriate] for the Islamic?

Possibly even based on a check against state religion.

In theory yes, in practice it would be hard.

would an alchemist specialist not be better to replace a scientist?

would an alchemist specialist not be better to replace a scientist?

It would fit better in some ways, but I like Onedreamer's suggestion on Aristocrats, as science really was a rich man's game for most of the era. Additionally, the choices presented by the unit are difficult, which I think of as a good thing - the more the choices/values of specialists are even, the better off we are in terms of gameplay. We'll obviously never be able to completely balance the value (and some civs will value some specialists and GPs more than others), but we should try wherever possible.

I see you point, science was a toy for the nobles, I saw a cartoon once from the time of the French Revolution where the aristocates were playing with there science toys, like looking in the wrong side of a telescope. Maybe it's beter to use the aristocrate.

well to be more precise in my proposal priests replace scientists more than aristocrats do. In the Low Middle Age knowledge in the christian world was almost completely in the hands of the clergy, and in the High Middle Age they opened many schools. It must also be said that many components of the clergy were aristocrats.

alchemists could be used as a random event:

"A great alchemist is born in your realm."
A great person that can help scientific advance or can join a city with + 6 science, +1 hammer and +1 gold

I know that I'm probably late on this, but IMHO the effects of noble specialist should be civic-dependent to represent the shifting position of nobles in the European society during the ages. Under the serfdom/vassalage they should produce XP for units, under merchant republic they would represent the trading aristocracy and provide gold and under Late civis (such as Constitutional monarchy/Free labor) they should entertain themselves with science/culture.

My 0.02 gold.

different civics already have different bonuses to specialists in general. Adding XP might be an exploit in human hands (imagine producing level 3 mounted units), but the concept is already somewhat there.

I know that I'm probably late on this, but IMHO the effects of noble specialist should be civic-dependent to represent the shifting position of nobles in the European society during the ages. Under the serfdom/vassalage they should produce XP for units, under merchant republic they would represent the trading aristocracy and provide gold and under Late civis (such as Constitutional monarchy/Free labor) they should entertain themselves with science/culture.

My 0.02 gold.

Don't specialists and civics themselves represent that already? +20%:gold: in Mercantilism doesn't tell us how it increases the additional gold income, but adding any more '+(commerce) per Specialist' would be unbalanced. Besides, reflecting the shifting position of specialists is impossible in Civ IV - Priesthood was sometime considered the top profession of the sophisticated world, yet we can't really convey that here. All we can do is set some bonuses and set a civic or few to enstrengthen them, like we currently are.

Regarding the Great Person specific buildings, would we construct rather Schools or Academies of certain areas of expertise or other buildings? In this light, the new buildings would Schools of Architechture and or Art Academies. Would renaming and reprogramming these buildings be okay so that they all follow a certain theme (School) or should they be named independently as Museums and such?

I haven't heard any objects to the basic re-classification of specialists (great people powers when not settled need programming later), and I think it's a pretty good one. To summarize:

Specialist (Civ4 default) - Bonus - Great Person - Bonus

Serf (worker) - +1 :hammers:
Spy, Merchant & Artist: same as Civ4
Priest (priest) - +2 :science: , +1 :hammers: - Great Priest (Bishop) - +5 :science:, +3 :hammers:
Architect (eng.) - +3 :hammers: - Great Architect - +6 :hammers:, +2 :culture:
Aristocrat (scientist) - +2 :gold:, +1 :science:, +1 :culture: - Noble - +3 :gold:, +2 :science:, +4 :culture:, -20% city maintenance

I'm taking a look at buildings in our mod now, and for some sort of thematic consistency I need to know what buildings should allow what specialists. I'm going to go with this basic plan unless anyone objects.

I have the idea of Priests (i.e. saints) to have an effect different from regular civ. The way I had it last implemented, all holy shrines were constructed in the holy city upon founding of the corresponding religion, so GPs are underpowered in general. I wanted to give them some powers towards the Crusades (for Catholics) and generically having the opportunity to become a saint (mahdi) and permanently increase happiness throughout the empire.

While you are looking at buildings can you reconsider having a building following Medicine? I thought were going to use the Hospital as in RFC. Maybe Arab Medicine could also enable another building or just allow faster heaking of units.

What do you mean "following medicine?" We have "Arabic medicine" and "Biology" as techs currently. I can add a hospital at Biology. I was thinking of moving the apothecary to Arabic Medicine and using a less Muslim-looking building "Herbalist" as a health building at Herbal Medicine.

What do you mean "following medicine?" We have "Arabic medicine" and "Biology" as techs currently. I can add a hospital at Biology. I was thinking of moving the apothecary to Arabic Medicine and using a less Muslim-looking building "Herbalist" as a health building at Herbal Medicine.

No what I meant was that Medicine should enable you to build the Hospital as in RFC. I was wondering why we've not done that. Your suggestion about the Apothecary and Herbalist would be fine too.

I haven't heard any objects to the basic re-classification of specialists (great people powers when not settled need programming later), and I think it's a pretty good one. To summarize:

Specialist (Civ4 default) - Bonus - Great Person - Bonus

Serf (worker) - +1 :hammers:
Spy, Merchant & Artist: same as Civ4
Priest (priest) - +2 :science: , +1 :hammers: - Great Priest (Bishop) - +5 :science:, +3 :hammers:
Architect (eng.) - +3 :hammers: - Great Architect - +6 :hammers:, +2 :culture:
Aristocrat (scientist) - +2 :gold:, +1 :science:, +1 :culture: - Noble - +3 :gold:, +2 :science:, +4 :culture:, -20% city maintenance

I'm taking a look at buildings in our mod now, and for some sort of thematic consistency I need to know what buildings should allow what specialists. I'm going to go with this basic plan unless anyone objects.


Serf (worker) - +1 :hammers:
Spy, Merchant & Artist: same as Civ4
Priest (priest) - +2 :science: , +1 :) - Great Priest (Bishop) - +3 :science:, +3 :hammers: +2 :):)
Architect (eng.) - +3 :hammers: - Great Architect - +6 :hammers:, +2 :culture:
Aristocrat (scientist) - +2 :gold:, +1 :science:, +1 :culture: - Noble - +3 :gold:, +2 :science:, +4 :culture:, -20% city maintenance


I think giving happiness to priests is fitting. Bringing happiness and contentment to the people was generally their purpose.

I havent been following the development, but i really hope you will not use these for the muslim civs:

Priest (priest) - +2 , +1 - Great Priest (Bishop) - +5 , +3

Immam and Ayatollah would be cool, but then I have no clue about it =)

Johan

I havent been following the development, but i really hope you will not use these for the muslim civs:

Priest (priest) - +2 , +1 - Great Priest (Bishop) - +5 , +3

Immam and Ayatollah would be cool, but then I have no clue about it =)

Johan

You can read the answer some posts above. In theory it's possible, but it's very difficult. And we haven't got modders right now.