With 1.5.1 david added a new XML tag PowerCommerceModifiers to buildings. This allows us to add percentage Commerce type changes to buildings based on whether or not the city the is connected to at least one instance of a resource. Currently this is used for a building that gives +25% Research with Thinking Machines.

This is cool, but I would like to add to the abilities of buildings in another way.
It would be brilliant if someone could mod the SDK to allow normal buildings to work in the same way as Corporation branches in vanilla, providing changes to Yield or Commerce types that scale with the number of resources you have connected.

For reference, Yield Types are:
Food (Water in this mod)
Production
Commerce

Commerce Types are:
Research
Culture
Gold
Espionage

Some examples of buildings that we could have with this change.

Water Shipper (Building) +2 water per Polar Ice consumed *
New Spice Building +1/2 Commerce/Gold per Spice consumed **
Guild Research Facility (Wonder) +3 Research per Spice consumed
Prescience Chamber (Wonder) +3 Espionage per Spice consumed

* At the moment having more than one Polar Ice resource offers no additional benefit.
I'd like the player who controls more than one Polar Ice to be rewarded, and monopolizing the pole to be a strategy for big cities.
** Ahriman posted some ideas (which I can't find) on boosting the Pro-Spice civic using such buildings.

I'd love to have a set of XML tags, say iYieldProducedPerBonus and iCommerceProducedPerBonus that allows us to very simply add buildings like this.

Considering, we are getting to a point where we can be adding UBs and Wonders, this change would really extend the scope of what is possible and make for much more interesting buildings in my opinion.

So, anyone up for making this change? Otherwise, I can request on the SDK/Python subforum.

The idea was also raised here in a thread on modding corporations, so I'm sure others would appreciate this modcomp:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=254584

I agree that this would be a *fantastic* change. I bet other mods would use it too. I know some Dwarves and Skaven that would like to have some affinity for gold/silver/gems and warpstone resources....

I agree this is a great idea. Let's discuss exactly how it should work. I don't think you want it to work the same way as corporations. Suppose city A has NA number of these resources in its BFC, city B has NB resources in its BFC, and you have NC connected resources inside cultural borders but outside any BFC. You might also have ND connected resources outside your cultural borders due to an improvement with the flag to allow building this.

The yield of a corporation in A is NA+NB+NC, and the yield of a corporation in B is also NA+NB+NC. (ND is ignored, probably because the modcomp developer forgot about corporations.) This double-counting leads to huge yields.

We could easily define that only city A should get the NA resources. The game provides a mechanic to select what happens if two city BFC overlap on a resource; only one city can work it. But, how to allocate the NC resources?

I think that trying to split up the NA, NB and NC resources would be very confusing.
Suppose that NA=3, NB=2 and NC=6.

The standard corp would give 11X bonuses.

If A only got NA + NC, then the city would have 11 resources in its box, but would only be getting bonuses based on 9 of them. This would be very confusing for players.

I see no problem with just using the standard corp effect: a bonus based on NA+NB+NC. The trick is just in choosing the X value appropriately.
So for example, a spice building could give +0.1 gold per spice resource; so if you have 30 spice resource it gives +3 gold.
The water shipper could give +1 water, and +1 water per polar ice resource.
The Guild research facility could give +1 beaker per spice resource, and the prescience chamber could give +2 espionage per spice resource.

A city already gets an advantage from resources in its BFC; it gets the tile yield bonuses.

I don't understand why you would want the local presence to matter separately from this for the corporation yields.

Also, if you want to give local advantages, you can do that directly based on the improvement on the bonus. For example, if you wanted spice to matter locally, you could give the building 1 free specialist for each harvester within the city BFC.

I think the issue we are likely to run into that is most problematic is that if resources are "consumed", what happens if you have multiple buildings that use the same resource.
With corporations, they are designed so that they compete with each other, so they can't be present in the same city.
We could have something similarly exclusive; you can only have 1 think per city that consumes spice, either your house spice HQ, the Landsraad religion shrine, a new spice building, or one of your new spice wonders.

Personally, I don't mind that it is based on NA+NB+NC. You can always tune the effect scaling accordingly, using fractional values 0.25, 0.5, etc.

Edit: I see Ahriman has just made the same point.

Also, something slightly different - I was thinking of a Tuek's Sietch / Smuggler's Hideout type wonder that gives a bonus based on the number of *different+ offworld bonuses (Slig, Caladanian Wine, etc) that are connected.

I see no problem with just using the standard corp effect: a bonus based on NA+NB+NC. The trick is just in choosing the X value appropriately.

Really? We just had this whole discussion about spreading the existing spice corp to multiple cities, and I thought you were against.

If A only got NA + NC, then the city would have 11 resources in its box, but would only be getting bonuses based on 9 of them. This would be very confusing for players.

One slightly more obvious way is to have each resource outside any BFC contribute to the one city it's closest to, and resolve ties by picking one randomly. The player would not control that, but at least if you have a total NA+NB+NC, you would be able to see that the right total income was happening.

We could have something similarly exclusive; you can only have 1 think per city that consumes spice, either your house spice HQ, the Landsraad religion shrine, a new spice building, or one of your new spice wonders.

That is an interesting idea. There is an XML tag that building 1 can require building 2 (eg, forbidden palace requires courthouse, etc). We could add an XML tag which prevents another building. So building 1 would prevent building 2 or 3.

One drawback is how to highlight this choice to the player; it would be easy to put into the pedia. But when the icon for building 2 is greyed out in the city window, the hover help would also need to say something specific like, "Prevented by Building 1".

Another drawback is that there is no way to destroy a building. So if you built the wrong one, or your goals change, or you capture a city with the wrong one, there would be no way to destroy it and put the one you did want. I guess this is like national wonders -- if you build one in a city, then decide later you want it in a different city, you are stuck.

It would certainly be easier to implement if all such buildings in a city got the benefit.

The thing that makes this quite different from spreading corporations is that there is no additional compound-able headquarters income or additional maintenance going on.

I support the exclusivity of these buildings via an XML tag - I think it would have to be a list of buildings that prevent construction though.

Another thing that would nice is if the list of resources powering the building was a list in the XML. This is also just like Corporations where Sid's Sushi is powered by Fish, Clam, Crab or Rice resources. That would be handy if we wanted to have a building powered by plantation crops say.

Really? We just had this whole discussion about spreading the existing spice corp to multiple cities, and I thought you were against.

Yes, I am strongly against having the existing spice corp spread to multiple cities. But the existing spice corp gives ~+5 commerce per spice resource. So spreading that that to multiple cities would give far too much income.

But we're not talking about spreading the corp; we could have a separate building in each city that added only +0.1 or +0.15 gold per spice resource, and counted every spice resource you controlled.

The design goal is to have:
a) Most of your spice income be invariant to the number of cities you control, and depend only on the number of spice resources you control
b) A small increase in spice income from the number of cities you control and the number of resources you control.

So we can get a) from the existing spice corp mechanic, and then b) from having a building that can be constructed in every city that gives say +0.15 gold per spice resource.

One slightly more obvious way is to have each resource outside any BFC contribute to the one city it's closest to, and resolve ties by picking one randomly. The player would not control that, but at least if you have a total NA+NB+NC, you would be able to see that the right total income was happening.

This still seems confusing to me. If every spice resource can only be used once, in a single city, then you may as well just stick with the existing spice hq.
In my design, every spice resource can be used once *per city*.
Now, that use may be very valuable (from your house spice corp, or from the landsraad shrine, or wonders) or it may be of minor value (from a building contructible in every city).

Another drawback is that there is no way to destroy a building. So if you built the wrong one, or your goals change, or you capture a city with the wrong one, there would be no way to destroy it and put the one you did want. I guess this is like national wonders -- if you build one in a city, then decide later you want it in a different city, you are stuck.

I don't see this as a major problem.
Possibly we could manage with a spice building coexisting with ONE of [the house spice corp, or the shrine, or the research booster or the espionage booster].
You could also have the buildings be destroyed on city capture.

If every spice resource can only be used once, in a single city, then you may as well just stick with the existing spice hq.

Good point. But, if every city can use every resource, then the benefit from this grows exponentially (N^2) during the game. In the early game you have say one city and one resource, so you get one benefit total. In the mid game if you have 5 cities and 5 resources, you get a 25x larger benefit. In the late game with 10 cities and 20 resources, now you get 200x the benefit, 8x what you had in the midgame. It is hard to balance this. Of course you can make the constant a tiny number, but then it isn't even visible in the early/mid game.

Possibly we could manage with a spice building coexisting with ONE of [the house spice corp, or the shrine, or the research booster or the espionage booster].
You could also have the buildings be destroyed on city capture.

Managing "any two out of three" is even harder to show in the help and have the player understand.

But, if every city can use every resource, then the benefit from this grows exponentially (N^2) during the game.

This is why we have two mechanics, my a) and b) above, not 1.
The spice corp spread expands linearly as you increase spice resources, and is invariant to the number of cities you have.

The spice building expands exponentially as you say, but it isn't available until the midgame, and isn't worth very much until you have a decent number of spice resources, and still has a hammer cost for each extra city you wish to build it in.

And in the midgame territorial expansion (and thus new cities and new spice) tends to slow anyway.

So I think this could be balanced. For example: +1 gold, and +0.15 gold per spice resource, and 200 hammer building cost, and requires off-world trade tech.

The game is built around a number of exponential growth factors anyway, like all the +% buildings.


Managing "any two out of three" is even harder to show in the help and have the player understand.

Not what I meant. I meant that the spice building would be unrestricted, you could have it anywhere, and then one of the others.

Another problem with assigning bonuses so that they 'belong' to a particular city is what to do about bonuses obtained via trade. I think these should certainly count towards the effect like the do with corporations, but which city would you assign them to? I think it may be simpler to just go with the total number of resources connected approach.

Good point. This means that a typical result will be to see this bonus grow by a factor of 200 during the game (1 city 1 resource => 10 cities 20 resources). So the constant had better be tiny. So the effect will be unnoticeable in the early game.

So the constant had better be tiny. So the effect will be unnoticeable in the early game.

Agreed. 20 spice resources*0.15 = +3 gold per city. This is much less than a market or bank building gives, though the bonus stacks with them.

It looks like this guy might be trying to implement something similar:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=336730

It looks like he's trying to expand the realm of what bonuses you can give with particular resources, rather than give benefits that depend on the *number* of resources that you have.

Bumping this idea so that it doesn't get buried.

nice idea,

i would also object to corporations to spread,

the idea delverator raised is much much better.

my 5 cents - i like Deliverator's idea very much

i like it :D

especially this:

I agree that this would be a *fantastic* change. I bet other mods would use it too. I know some Dwarves and Skaven that would like to have some affinity for gold/silver/gems and warpstone resources....

We will definitely have a use for this in Warhammer, so hopefully this change will be easily transferrable once coded, or at least we could make a desperate play for assistance in tying it into our Warhammer sdk.

We plan for the Ogre faction to have a building which gives +0.5 food for each extra cow, sheep, pig, deer and horse resource, and many of the Ogre units will be expensive but will build with food. Eternal gluttons...

I have read this thread, but I never really understood it. Deliverator has recently added a CHOAM corporation which also gives income from spice. The maintenance cost of a corp can be adjusted to zero; it can convert any list of resources into any type of commerce or yield.

How is your request different from a corporation?

Corporations have all kinds of extra issues tied into them, they have maintenance (and that maintenance is very confusing), they are spread by missionaries, they have a "holy city"/hq aspect with a single founder, they have to be established by sacrificing a great person or by python, etc.
Plus, you can't have that many individual corporations: they take up UI space in the city screen, and display an hq icon on cities in the main screen.

The corporation mechanic works fine when implemented like the Dunewars House Spice Firm: a single building with one copy which can never spread elsewhere.

But what we want are buildings that can be constructed in every city that have effects based on the number of resources (not just the presence or not of a particular resource).

Like a Spice silo building that can be constructed anywhere that gives +0.15 gold per turn per spice resource in that city.

Or a Gargantuan Larder building that can be constructed anywhere that gives +0.5 food per turn for each extra pig, cow, horse, sheep or deer resource.

And we want any faction that meets the appropriate requirements (eg: civic = spice industry, or faction = ogre tyrants) to be able to build the structure, rather than having to rely on a corporation being founded somewhere.

The corporation itself doesn't really work well for this; it causes large gold maintenance costs for each resource consumed, and it is spread by missionary rather than by building.

If you can think of a way to get the effects we want straight from corps without the associated clutter, then that could work fine too.

Yes, we want buildings that provide a scalable bonus based on the number of resources connected without any of the other corporation mechanic clutter.

OK, just like corporations but simpler.

We went through this long discussion about the N squared behavior, and this is what you want. If I have five cities, and six copies of the resource, then I get 30 benefits. Each city, gets the benefit of all the copies of the resource. Right?

Correct.

As we said earlier you can always tune the effect scaling accordingly, using fractional values 0.25, 0.5, etc.

The point of the exercise is to give a benefit to controlling multiple copies of a resource rather than just one. For Dune Wars, additional benefits from multiple Spice and additional water from multiple Polar Ice would be the prime candidates.

I have five cities, and six copies of the resource, then I get 30 benefits.

Right. Hence why the benefits per unit need to be small.

So, 5 cities, 6 copies, 0.15 gold each = +4.5 gold per turn total.

8 cities, 15 copies, 0.15 gold each = +18 gold per turn.

This is the easiest way I think to make Spice more important, which many people have called for. The building could require Spice Industry civic too.

We can then easily tune the number per resource and building hammer cost up or down to balance.

This can also feed into the new list of Wonders. Ideas like these (maybe with better names and fractional values):

Guild Research Facility (Wonder) +3 Research per Spice consumed
Prescience Chamber (Wonder) +3 Espionage per Spice consumed

I am going to try and collate the wonder ideas this weekend, so I can throw a few of these it if this change is going ahead.

Guild Research Facility (Wonder) +3 Research per Spice consumed
Prescience Chamber (Wonder) +3 Espionage per Spice consumed

I like the idea of these, though I worry if +3 beakers per spice might be too high. GRF + 20 spice + library + university + academy = +120 beakers from one wonder. Maybe if its expensive enough hammerwise.

Removing the ability to build forts outside cultural borders (a human player exploit to get more spice) would help reduce the potential for abuse.

Removing the ability to build forts outside cultural borders (a human player exploit to get more spice) would help reduce the potential for abuse.

You have mentioned this a few times. It is a bit of a tangent, but do you mean, forts should only be buildable inside cultural borders? Or do you mean, forts can be built anywhere but they should not produce any cultural borders?

but do you mean, forts should only be buildable inside cultural borders

This is what I meant. So they can push your borders out, and the AI uses them like this, but they can't be used to claim resources (whether spice or others) outside your culture, which the AI can't do.

Or do you mean, forts can be built anywhere but they should not produce any cultural borders?

I don't think this would work as well, it would make forts uninteresting.

That is curious. In vanilla, forts can be built anywhere, and they do not spread cultural borders. So your preference is the opposite; only within borders, and spreading cultural borders. I guess the AI spreads its borders this way completely by accident; it will build forts on strategic resources that are not within any city's BFC. Some of these may happen to be on the edge of cultural control, so it spreads.

I agree that having both "build anywhere" and "spreads culture" leads to a human only exploit, but I would have thought that bringing it back to vanilla would be better.

Back to the original topic, the proposed new building type would replace both the existing spice corps and the choam corp, right? So we would have no corporations in the game. It doesn't matter much to me, but I am still testing my understanding.

Also, please consider how this should be reported. Suppose we give +espionage, or +food, or whatever from these buildings. Which all places should this be shown? It is more complicated if new subtotal lines need to be created.

That is curious. In vanilla, forts can be built anywhere, and they do not spread cultural borders.

In vanilla, forts are nearly useless and hardly ever see any play. I've never tried building them outside cultural borders, there was never really any gain from doing so.

I like the idea of culture-spreading forts, I just don't want it to be a human exploit.

The Dunewars AI also builds them on tiles that do not have a bonus resource (or at least, not one that has yet been revealed - maybe they had Stradvium or Uranium) on its borders in order to expand slightly.

the proposed new building type would replace both the existing spice corps and the choam corp, right?

No. As referenced earlier in the thread (posts 8, 10), these other mechanics would be *in addition* to the existing house spice corp. The house spice corp is good, it doesn't need to be removed.
Similarly, CHOAM would stay. The idea is to boost spice slightly, and make it more interesting.

However, I would block the Wonders from being in the same city as CHOAM shrine, House spice hqs, or each other. One major spice magnifier per city.

Also, please consider how this should be reported.
The yields should ideally be reported in the building list, next to the building, like for a religious shrine.

As referenced earlier in the thread (posts 8, 10), these other mechanics would be *in addition* to the existing house spice corp. The house spice corp is good, it doesn't need to be removed.

The new mechanism will duplicate the spice corps. We could use the new mechanism, so that everything uses the same mechanism. Or in the interest of minimizing changes, we could leave them unchanged. My point was, the *effect* of the spice corp is the same either way.

However, I would block the Wonders from being in the same city as CHOAM shrine, House spice hqs, or each other. One major spice magnifier per city.

Well, that is a separate project. The request in this thread is to allow any resource to produce any commerce/yield. If you also want to make certain types of buildings mutually exclusive, we can discuss that; how would you like that to work?

My point was, the *effect* of the spice corp is the same either way.

Oh, see what you mean. Thats a good idea; change the spice corps to use the new mechanic, and then they can just give +3 gold per spice resource. Make them a National Wonder limit 1 that requires spice to build. Have them auto-destroyed when the city is captured. That way, a faction who loses their spice corp can just rebuild it. We wouldn't even need 9 different versions; a single version could do fine for the House firms, and then another for CHOAM.

You're right, that is much cleaner than using a corp.

Well, that is a separate project.
Understood. Its lower priority.

we can discuss that; how would you like that to work?
I'm not sure technically the best way to do this; I thought it was already something easily doable. The way I would interpret it is:
If a city already has a "House Spice Corp" national wonder or the Landsraad religious shrine or Guild Research Facility or a Prescience Chamber, then you cannot build any of those other structures in this list.

(If you manage to build one of them in the Landsraad holy city before you create the CHOAM shrine through a great person, you should still be able to create the shrine).

If a city already has a "House Spice Corp" national wonder or the Landsraad religious shrine or Guild Research Facility or a Prescience Chamber, then you cannot build any of those other structures in this list.

Are you saying that only one building which uses a particular resource, can be built in a city? For corporations, each corp can use a number of different resources. For example, Sid's Sushi uses crab, clams, fish and rice. So a Sid's Sushi building (assuming we defined a building just this way) would prevent some other building which uses crab, gold, silver and gems, because they both use crab. Is that what you mean?

One problem is that there is no way to unbuild a building. So if you define two buildings which use the same resource but give any different benefits, the user may wish to unbuild the first to build the second, and there is no way to do that. How should we handle this?

I am not sure how the user would describe exceptions like "shrines should be buildable even if they use the same resource" in the xml. That seems to add a lot of complexity. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Are you saying that only one building which uses a particular resource, can be built in a city?

Not quite... this isn't something that should be built into the resource unit effect, it should be specificlaly implemented for the Wonders, for balance reasons.
So for example, there is no balance reason to block both a "spice silo" (+0.15 gold per spice) and a House Spice Corp (+3 gold per spice) from being in the same city.
But we should block having House Spice Corp (+3 gold per spice) and Guild Research Facility (+3 beakers per spice) from being in the same city.

So, the block is not built into the mechanic; it is defined only for very specific wonder combinations, for balance reasons.

The mechanic should be as general as possible; if a mod wants to have 5 different buildings that all give a bonus for a resource (like spice resource) and wants to allow them to all be in the same city, it should do that.

Similarly, there is nothing in the corporation mechanic stopping you from having multiple corps in the same city that use the same resource (I think), its just that the designers deliberately set corps that used the same resource to "compete" with each other, and thus not be present in the same city, for balance reasons. I don't think thats necessary though, is it?

So if you define two buildings which use the same resource but give any different benefits, the user may wish to unbuild the first to build the second, and there is no way to do that. How should we handle this?

a) The ordinary buildings shoudln't block, only the powerful wonders.
b) We handle this by forcing the player to plan; just like how in vanilla you have to plan because you can only have 2 national wonders per city. I don't see this as a problem. And the AI will just build the wonders in its best city that allows it to be built.

"shrines should be buildable even if they use the same resource" in the xml
Does this even need to be done in XML? I don't know how building blocks works, codewise.
But is creating a shrine from a great person the same as building it?

But I would imagine that the blocks would be set up for each wonder.
So: House Spice Firm cannot be built if CHOAM shrine, GRF or Presicence chamber are present in the city.
GRF cannot be built if HSF, PC or CHOAM shrine are present in the city.
CHOAM shrine can always be built (with a great prophet or trader), but only in the Landsraad holy city.
PC cannot be built if HSF, CHOAM shrine or GRF is already present.

The new mechanism will duplicate the spice corps. We could use the new mechanism, so that everything uses the same mechanism. Or in the interest of minimizing changes, we could leave them unchanged. My point was, the *effect* of the spice corp is the same either way.

Oh, see what you mean. Thats a good idea; change the spice corps to use the new mechanic, and then they can just give +3 gold per spice resource. Make them a National Wonder limit 1 that requires spice to build. Have them auto-destroyed when the city is captured. That way, a faction who loses their spice corp can just rebuild it. We wouldn't even need 9 different versions; a single version could do fine for the House firms, and then another for CHOAM.

You're right, that is much cleaner than using a corp.

It is not quite true that the effect of the spice corp is the same using these buildings. The amount of the bonus would have to be retuned since there would no longer be any corporation maintenance involved. So I think we need to be careful if we are thinking of removing the existing corps.

If we implement this using similar tags to corporations as I suggested in the OP, then there would be nothing to stop some of these buildings have a cost/benefit like +3 beakers and -1 gold from Spice, with the -1 gold represent the cost or maintenance of running the building. This might diminish the need to prevent two being in the same city.

The main thrust of this idea from my point of view was to provide bonuses other than more gold from spice.

So, the block is not built into the mechanic; it is defined only for very specific wonder combinations, for balance reasons. ... But we should block having House Spice Corp (+3 gold per spice) and Guild Research Facility (+3 beakers per spice) from being in the same city.

Not sure that this is really a big problem. Do we really need to go to all this effort to block some combinations of buildings and not others. Why not just keep it general and if there are any big balance problems we can look to address them later?

I don't want the main purpose of this idea to get lost beneath additional requirements and over-engineering. This idea of buildings blocking other buildings can be done as separate project if we really need it. It does add a lot of complexity.

The amount of the bonus would have to be retuned since there would no longer be any corporation maintenance involved.

IIRC the HQ building currently gives ~+5 gold, +1 beaker, and the corp gives +3 gold per spice, and some maintenance.
A buildnig that gave +3 gold per spice with no maintenance should be pretty similar to this, no?

This might diminish the need to prevent two being in the same city.
There is also a logical reason; the gold you get from the spice corporation represents you taking the spice and selling it off planet. If you're selling it, you can't also use it in a research lab or consume it to gain prescience.

Though of course... logically it doesn't make sense that the bonus a resource gives in a city isnt' diluted by the number of cities you have accessing that resource. So there is still a fudge either way.

Why not just keep it general and if there are any big balance problems we can look to address them later?
I could live with that, the blocks arent' a high priority. The priority is the core mechanic, we can leave the rest to balance testing.

IIRC the HQ building currently gives ~+5 gold, +1 beaker, and the corp gives +3 gold per spice, and some maintenance.
A buildnig that gave +3 gold per spice with no maintenance should be pretty similar to this, no?

It's probably pretty similar and easier to understand than corporate maintenance which has an insanely complicated formula (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=249397).

IIRC, most of the complications from corporation maintenance come arise when the corporation is spread to multiple cities. Its no so bad with just the single city corp.

Certainly, even with large numbers of spice resources, the spice corps don't seem to have sizeable maintenance costs.

IIRC, most of the complications from corporation maintenance come arise when the corporation is spread to multiple cities. Its no so bad with just the single city corp.

Certainly, even with large numbers of spice resources, the spice corps don't seem to have sizeable maintenance costs.

In my current game, with 40 spice resources the corporation maintenance is only 3.58 before the Tribunal cuts it in half. That is located in a pop 13 city (my capital, which turned out to be rather water limited so it is stable at this size with every possible water producing/modifying building and improvement).

This cost is pocket change.

This cost is pocket change.

Yes, corp maintenance is trivial *if* the corp is only in its headquarters city.

Hence, just switching to a wonder that gives +3 gold per spice will be almost identical, but much cleaner.

1.6.5 looks great, I'm looking forward to trying it, and it seems to have fixed many of our current issues. Can I suggest this thread's sdk changes as a priority for the next version? I think it would add a lot.

The Wonder paper design includes a couple of uses of this. Since we want the new wonders for 1.7, now would be a good time.

Not completely working yet, but here is a teaser.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=235466&d=1259259070

Nice work. I just noticed this thread. I'll have to "borrow" this feature once it's done. ;)

Not completely working yet, but here is a teaser.

Good stuff. :)

Well, it is working, but I need some suggestions on how to display the effect. I have attached the files you can use to try it; install over 1.6.5 only. If you build your initial palace and look at the help, you will see it has huge bonuses for all the yields and commerces. Now use WB to give yourself some spice resources and put harvesters on them. If you hunt around in the city screen, you can see the effects. For example, if you have five spice resources, you will see a lot of extra water and hammer income at the top of the city screen; you will see a high espionage per turn rate in the espionage screen, etc. All of the computations are working. The key new text in the building xml file is:

<BonusConsumed>BONUS_SPICE</BonusConsumed>
<CommerceProduced>
<iCommerce>200</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>300</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>400</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>500</iCommerce>
</CommerceProduced>
<YieldProduced>
<iYield>600</iYield>
<iYield>700</iYield>
<iYield>800</iYield>
</YieldProduced>

The four commerce values are gold, beakers, culture, espionage, and the three yield values are food, hammers, commerce. The values are divided by 100 before use.

In the city screen, when you hover over any building, you get a *static* help text. It says what the building does. It does not give you any actual rates. Every player and every city will show the same help. I can't think of any place where you can see values which are different for each building. Any suggestions?

I have overloaded some of the corporation fields so these building yields look just like corporation yields. That does not seem to help much.

If you also found your civ's spice corporation, you will see even more commerce income. At least for this one, there is a popup where you can see the effects. In the upper right part of the city screen, there is a list of all the corps in the city. The hover help for the corp does show the dynamic effect. That is, the commerce income shown there is multiplied by the number of resources you control. So for corporations, you can see all the values.

Where should I display the values for the building?

great job indeed :goodjob:

It sounds like its working, fantastic.

Where should I display the values for the building?

I'm not sure I quite understand the question.
i) Spice corps will just be buildings; we will remove the corporation aspect of them entirely.
ii) The buildings should display their yields in the building list, just like for religious shrines.

This may be a foolish question (I don't understand the technical issues), but can we also make sure that this gets released as a modcomp that can easily be plugged into other mods (and that it can work for any resource the mod designers want)?

but can we also make sure that this gets released as a modcomp that can easily be plugged into other mods (and that it can work for any resource the mod designers want)?

yes please :) we could really use this for warhammer :D

ii) The buildings should display their yields in the building list, just like for religious shrines.

Ah, thank you. I wasn't able to find an existing example where the yield of the building is dynamic. That is the example I was looking for. I can probably find how the shrine alters its hover help, and do the same thing. That will be the right solution.

can we also make sure that this gets released as a modcomp that can easily be plugged into other mods (and that it can work for any resource the mod designers want)?

It will work for any *one* resource the person writing the xml wants. I did not put in the more complicated code to allow a list of resources. I have done a number of very small changes, each of which is probably not interesting to other modders. This one may be interesting, so I will try to release it as a modcomp. It is not obvious how to do this, because the changes for this feature occur in files, which also have dozens of other dune wars related changes. In addition these files are (currently) built on an old version of RevDCM, so these files also contain dozens of RevDCM changes.

Once "we" figure out the best way to release, "you" (the Warhammer team) will need to merge my changes into your sdk. As I recall, you do not have any sdk programmers, not even for merges of modcomps, so this may be a problem for you.

I did not put in the more complicated code to allow a list of resources.

Unfortunate. Is this something that you might have the time to easily add, out of the goodness of your heart? Hopefully its mostly some copy and paste.

It is not obvious how to do this, because the changes for this feature occur in files, which also have dozens of other dune wars related changes. In addition these files are (currently) built on an old version of RevDCM, so these files also contain dozens of RevDCM changes.
Hmm, sounds challenging.

As I recall, you do not have any sdk programmers, not even for merges of modcomps, so this may be a problem for you.

We managed to acquire a part-time SDK programmer (Opera, who has worked on Orbis for FFH and the LENA modmod of Orbis), so hopefully we might be able to merge it in.

Based on Ahriman's observation about shrines, I have now added part of the missing information to the city screen. See this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=343716) for details and hopefully a solution. The civilopedia screen in the attachment above already gives enough information to show whether the new xml is correct, and the in-game effect is correct. So I'm not going to post the small improvement in the hover help; I will wait till I get the building list data correct as well. But, the internals are done, working, and ready for use.

After a tip from returning guru koma13, I have fixed the other part of the city screen, so the modcomp is completely working. Attached is a replacement zipfile which you can use to test the feature; it makes the palace a huge powerhouse producing everything. I have also packaged it as a separate modcomp in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=343761).

so the modcomp is completely working

Great job guys - thanks to David and Koma.

There are a few different threads I probably could have posted this on, but I assume most frequent readers follow all new posts. (If you are not reading this, please let me know.)

Since we have the yield per resource consumed capability in 1.7, it is time to remove the spice corporations and replace them with a direct yield per resource. This has been part of the game since certainly 1.1, possibly before.

So, you would think I understand how this existing capability works. But, I cannot figure it out. The corporation is defined to give 3 commerce per spice. So, I should just look in the capitol city screen to find the number of connected spice resources and multiply by 3 to find the corporation income. Then I should be able to check this number in the financial advisor, in the leftmost commerce column for corporations.

I have checked a few and I have no idea how this number is computed. In one late game I had 31 spice resources connected, and my corp income was 70. In one early game I had 6 spice resources connected and my corp income was 36. WTF ??

Perhaps I have forgotten something simple. I plan to remove all the corps and corp buildings, and instead give you a +3 commerce income per spice, on your palace building. That will be easier to understand, hopefully. But it seems I cannot predict what effect it will have on relative commerce rates, since I cannot understand how the corp commerce is computed.

Any simple reminders?

IIRC the HQ building currently gives ~+5 gold, +1 beaker, and the corp gives +3 gold per spice, and some maintenance.
A buildnig that gave +3 gold per spice with no maintenance should be pretty similar to this, no?

It's probably pretty similar and easier to understand than corporate maintenance which has an insanely complicated formula (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=249397).

We pretty much agreed earlier in this thread that a building giving +3 commerce per spice was roughly equivalent to the one city corporation approach. Cutting maintenance out of the picture should only make a small difference.

I'm wondering whether it might be interesting to keep CHOAM as a Corporation, rename the Landsraad Directorate -> CHOAM Directorate and have it produce corporation income for CHOAM. Alternately, go for the building approach as have CHOAM Directorate give a small amount of additional income per spice.

I have checked a few and I have no idea how this number is computed. In one late game I had 31 spice resources connected, and my corp income was 70. In one early game I had 6 spice resources connected and my corp income was 36. WTF ??

Very strange. Is that from the financial screen? In general the mouseover corporation yield in the city screen that has the corp seems to be fairly predictable.

We pretty much agreed earlier in this thread that a building giving +3 commerce per spice was roughly equivalent to the one city corporation approach.
I think I'd make it +3 gold, not commerce. So you can get a huge gold income, but still can't run more than 100% science and so there is some cap on how much you can power ahead.
I like the idea of spice maknig you rich, not making to technologically advanced.

I'm wondering whether it might be interesting to keep CHOAM as a Corporation, rename the Landsraad Directorate -> CHOAM Directorate and have it produce corporation income for CHOAM. Alternately, go for the building approach as have CHOAM Directorate give a small amount of additional income per spice.

I think the Landsraad religion works fine as it is. Having a trade religion helps keep it separate from Imperium, which is a culture, happiness and diplomacy religion.
I don't see any gain from trying to use corporation mechanics from it instead.
But the Landsraad shrine building should also get the +3 gold per spice.
And yes, Landsraad directorate should be renamed CHOAM directorate, which is what it was always intended to be called.

Very strange. Is that from the financial screen? In general the mouseover corporation yield in the city screen that has the corp seems to be fairly predictable.

Thanks for the suggestion, but the financial screen (which I used) and the corp hover help in the city screen both show the same value. It isn't anything like 3x the number of spice resources. I had not noticed this before. Could you look into any save game which you have, or any current game, and see if you see a 3x relationship?

I think I'd make it +3 gold, not commerce. So you can get a huge gold income, but still can't run more than 100% science and so there is some cap on how much you can power ahead.

That is an interesting suggestion. I suppose there was nothing preventing us from doing this a long time ago since corps can also yield gold directly. This seems to be a big play balance change since the only thing you can spend gold upon is offworld troops. How shall we test this change to see if it is well-liked?

I think the Landsraad religion works fine as it is. Having a trade religion helps keep it separate from Imperium, which is a culture, happiness and diplomacy religion. I don't see any gain from trying to use corporation mechanics from it instead. But the Landsraad shrine building should also get the +3 gold per spice.

@ deliverator, at some point I recall you were using corp mechanics for something else, before I implemented the sdk change of this thread. I can't find that in the current version so I guess it is gone now anyway. Please remind me of the details?

And yes, Landsraad directorate should be renamed CHOAM directorate, which is what it was always intended to be called.

The religion is called "Landsraad" and it uses the lion flag. Its three buildings are currently called "Landsraad Outpost", "Landsraad Directorate" and "CHOAM Headquarters". This is a little inconsistent. I used "Landsraad" in the names of the first two buildings in order to have some name consistency. Even players knowledgeable about Dune canon may not recognize that Landsraad and CHOAM are related. I am sure there was some debate about this a while ago, but since we have a trade religion, perhaps it should be called CHOAM instead of Landsraad, and the first two buildings renamed. The current situation is halfway between, which is not ideal. Changing the name should involve adding back the yellow/red/black CHOAM flag, including in the fonts.

I think I'd make it +3 gold, not commerce.

Not sure about this. If you control lots of spice surely you should be able to spend that wealth on research, culture or espionage - whatever you like. I know you can spend gold on deficit research, but overall surely changing to gold from commerce would make spice less important wouldn't it?

@ deliverator, at some point I recall you were using corp mechanics for something else, before I implemented the sdk change of this thread. I can't find that in the current version so I guess it is gone now anyway. Please remind me of the details?

The only other corporation in the mod apart from the House Spice corps is CHOAM, which we can replace by adding the +commerce per spice effect to the CHOAM HQ building.

The religion is called "Landsraad" and it uses the lion flag. Its three buildings are currently called "Landsraad Outpost", "Landsraad Directorate" and "CHOAM Headquarters". This is a little inconsistent. I used "Landsraad" in the names of the first two buildings in order to have some name consistency. Even players knowledgeable about Dune canon may not recognize that Landsraad and CHOAM are related. I am sure there was some debate about this a while ago, but since we have a trade religion, perhaps it should be called CHOAM instead of Landsraad, and the first two buildings renamed. The current situation is halfway between, which is not ideal. Changing the name should involve adding back the yellow/red/black CHOAM flag, including in the fonts.

I'm sure I disagreed with having CHOAM as a religion in the past, but these days I don't mind switching the religion name to CHOAM. It makes sense since the theme is trade anyway.

The gamefonts and icon are already there and being used for the CHOAM Corporation. The building icons would need updating.

Could you look into any save game which you have, or any current game, and see if you see a 3x relationship?

I will check, but I do not recall ever noticing anything other than the 3x relationship.

This seems to be a big play balance change since the only thing you can spend gold upon is offworld troops. How shall we test this change to see if it is well-liked?

Well, if you're at less than 100% science then the difference is not huge.
What it does is it makes your spice corp city a gold specialist, so its not also just "build all my big % multipliers in the same city".

I prefer encouraging more specialization; city A ix a gold city, city B is a science city, city C is a unit factory, city D is a GPP farm. As opposed to having a single capital super-city.

As for testing... no real way other than make the change and collect feedback, or make a poll.

@ deliverator, at some point I recall you were using corp mechanics for something else, before I implemented the sdk change of this thread. I can't find that in the current version so I guess it is gone now anyway. Please remind me of the details?

There used to be (a long time ago) some corps that used other resources, like the groundwater resource. I don't see any particular gain from these. In general I do not like the corporation mechanic as implemented in vanilla BTS, the costs and benefits are too non-transparent to the casual player.

The religion is called "Landsraad" and it uses the lion flag. Its three buildings are currently called "Landsraad Outpost", "Landsraad Directorate" and "CHOAM Headquarters". This is a little inconsistent. I used "Landsraad" in the names of the first two buildings in order to have some name consistency. Even players knowledgeable about Dune canon may not recognize that Landsraad and CHOAM are related. I am sure there was some debate about this a while ago, but since we have a trade religion, perhaps it should be called CHOAM instead of Landsraad, and the first two buildings renamed. The current situation is halfway between, which is not ideal. Changing the name should involve adding back the yellow/red/black CHOAM flag, including in the fonts.

The whole design is a little fuzzy. The problem is that we have competing design goals.
1. Have a religion that is a "status quo" religion (ie represents galactic power before the events of Dune). Since our religions represent "power allegiance" to some extent, Landsraad makes sense for this; its the main competing power group to Imperium.
2. Have that status quo religion give a unique functional effect. Imperium gives culture, happiness and diplomacy (because it spreads so widely). An economy/trade religion is a nice contrast to that.
3. Include the trading corporation CHOAM in the game somehow, and the power/prestige granted by a CHOAM Directorate. This need not use a corporation mechanic.

It seemed sensible to try to bundle these three goals together.
I would have no problem with renaming the Landsraad religion back to CHOAM, which was my original religion design proposal, and just having the Landsraad as the United Nations Council. The objection then was that this didn't fit with the "allegiance" view of religions as well.
But then, Landsraad allegiance doesn't work that well either, since most of the factions in the game are competing Great Houses.

but overall surely changing to gold from commerce would make spice less important wouldn't it?

Would it? Why? If nothing else, it would let me build all my gold boosters in one city, and then science boosters everywhere else and run 100% beakers. I wouldn't have to bother building gold boosters elsewhere.

I see the appeal in being able to funnel spice into culture (=political influence) and espionage (bribes, etc.) through commerce sliders.

But I dislike the tendency for the one-big-city that does everything. I don't like it how I want to put my Academy (from great scientist) and my Oxford Univeristy (+100% beakers) and my gold boosters all in the same city. Though I guess a single primary base of operations is kinda Duneish in terms of fluff.

I don't feel strongly about gold over commerce, I just wanted to make sure we had the discussion.

I would have no problem with renaming the Landsraad religion back to CHOAM, which was my original religion design proposal, and just having the Landsraad as the United Nations Council.

Since the flags and fonts are still around, I will try changing Landsraad to CHOAM for the religion and two buildings. The UN building I will leave as Landsraad High Council, the name deliverator added in 1.7. I will add +3 gold per spice from the CHOAM HQ. That will leave some minor graphical bugs; the CHOAM building icons will have the wrong religion inset and the LHC building will have the same style as the three CHOAM buildings.

Let's think about +3 gold vs +3 commerce a little more; my inclination is to leave it at commerce. If nothing else, this encourages spending commerce on espionage. But either way, *all* the corporations will be removed.

Could you look into any save game which you have, or any current game, and see if you see a 3x relationship?

Only compatible savegame I have, 15 spice with 45 commerce income.