Map Resources Ideas and Discussion

[0100010]

No limit, the description is just added to where the feature name is now with more /.


If you check the CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml file, any that have TileArtType that is not TILE_ART_TYPE_NONE will not work and any that have bRiverArt set will not work either.

As in you cant combine two features if more than one of them have a non-none art type or river side art but still combine it with None/no-river ones? Or does it mean that if any feature has a non-none, riverside art they cannot be combined with anything.

Not work as in will crash the game? As in will create a graphical glitch but carry on? Or as in will not be rendered but will remain functional otherwise?

Also how do multi-features decide yield adjustments and movement costs, cumulative? Highest one wins?

 

[AIAndy]

Not work as in will crash the game? As in will create a graphical glitch but carry on? Or as in will not be rendered but will remain functional otherwise?

They will not crash but not be displayed either.

Also how do multi-features decide yield adjustments and movement costs, cumulative? Highest one wins?

I don't remember for sure how I implemented it. I think at least yield adjustments are cumulative.
If there are actual uses of that system now beyond land storms we can improve those things on a case by case basis.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Interesting for several purposes would be to have an XML file that describes special players, their behavior in regards to several categories of game mechanics and their relation with each other.
So you could have a neutral player for units that players are not supposed to be able to attack, an animal player, a barbarian-like player that is not influenced by the great wall and so on.

While making that XML file would not be that difficult, the main effort would be to go through all current code places that reference players and make them do the right things for the special players.

Yeah... that's all solid gold stuff right there! I completely agree that's how to go about things there. When good ideas just make sense like this it makes it hard to sit on the project to keep from opening up that can of worms until other things are completed. This way to go about things has my fingers itching to move forward on that but I'll hold off to make progress where it needs to go for now. Still... really looking forward to that!

We'd considered splitting up the animals into predator and prey but Hydro pointed out that the fact that the food chain is not so black and white. I don't think we want a lot of differing animal 'players' but can anyone think of a good way to divide these groups so that we see tigers hunting deer for example? Perhaps an Alpha Animals group vs an Omega Animals group so that its not so much just about food chain?

Agreed, i think the AI would just stumble and fall over on this. I believe it would need considerable SDK work needed on this, Koshling?? What say you

AI work should actually be somewhat easier in some places and non-problematic in others. Sure, it could take some tweaks, but the isBarbarian tag currently reroutes a lot of ways the Barbarian player goes about things in the AI (usually to much simpler methods) and it would be possible, in AIAndy's concept to have multiple players designated as 'isBarbarian' and perhaps more such types of designations yet, some of which may replace the isBarbarian indicator, or even reroute to other AI routines at the same junctures. Generally special players like that have simpler AI processes in the first place. For example, unless we want animals to have caves as cities or something along those lines (which might get kinda silly) then we wouldn't need any city AI for the animal player(s) at all.

 

[0100010]

They will not crash but not be displayed either.


I don't remember for sure how I implemented it. I think at least yield adjustments are cumulative.
If there are actual uses of that system now beyond land storms we can improve those things on a case by case basis.

I think you missed my edited in question:

As in you cant combine two features if more than one of them have a non-none art type or river side art but still combine it with None/no-river ones? Or does it mean that if any feature has a non-none, riverside art they cannot be combined with anything.

At present only the following have non-none art types:
Ice, Jungle, Forest, Savanna, Ancient Forest.
Flood Plains is the only riverside art.

Has anyone ever tried to combine riverside and non-none art types?

Or would a separate flooded jungle/forest feature be a better idea?

Also I think your special player discussion needs it own thread before it gets too far out topic for this one which meant to cover just map related stuff.

 

[AIAndy]

I think you missed my edited in question:

As in you cant combine two features if more than one of them have a non-none art type or river side art but still combine it with None/no-river ones? Or does it mean that if any feature has a non-none, riverside art they cannot be combined with anything.

At present only the following have non-none art types:
Ice, Jungle, Forest, Savanna, Ancient Forest.
Flood Plains is the only riverside art.

Has anyone ever tried to combine riverside and non-none art types?

Or would a separate flooded jungle/forest feature be a better idea?

Also I think your special player discussion needs it own thread before it gets too far out topic for this one which meant to cover just map related stuff.

A feature you set with the old setFeatureType is considered the primary feature and that one can be any feature regardless of art type. Then you can combine that with any number of secondary features that you add with setHasFeature.
So as an example you can have a forest as primary feature and then add a storm.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

We'd considered splitting up the animals into predator and prey but Hydro pointed out that the fact that the food chain is not so black and white. I don't think we want a lot of differing animal 'players' but can anyone think of a good way to divide these groups so that we see tigers hunting deer for example? Perhaps an Alpha Animals group vs an Omega Animals group so that its not so much just about food chain?

The only problem I see with that is that the prey animals would need to spawn 20-200 times more often than the predator animals or the player will not see any prey animals! Then if there are no prey animals there should be a degradation in the support environment.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well, it would take some tweaking to balance right that's for sure. Obviously predators would have to spawn less and prey spawn more. Some AI and unit tags could even keep predators to only attacking those animals they would normally hunt.

Perhaps spawn rates for predators would be based on a sort of player food collection and consumption per unit. Thus, each predator in the field soaks a food, each kill adds to the food, the more food they have, the more they spawn, the less food they have the less they spawn so as to adapt to the rate they can be provided. If they run out of food, they could start dying out. If they reach a point where there are only a fixed # of predators in the game based on a map size definition, then they are immediately given some food to support some sparse spawning to get them back on track as a group and deny the ability for this mechanism to enable predatorial extinction.

Then the prey spawn at more constant rates based on available spawn points. Of course, they could be set to spawn faster and faster the more of them there are.

If we wanted to do a true ecosystem representation, I recall effects used for that in SimEarth but it would require EACH species had its own player assignment and that would not be functional for the civ engine. But if done as above, it would be similar, despite grouping all predators and all prey creatures into the same category.

But this would certainly have your hunters finding animals in differing degrees of experience. Even prey could survive numerous battles from defender withdrawal or effective defenses.

 

[Hydromancerx]

We'd considered splitting up the animals into predator and prey but Hydro pointed out that the fact that the food chain is not so black and white. I don't think we want a lot of differing animal 'players' but can anyone think of a good way to divide these groups so that we see tigers hunting deer for example? Perhaps an Alpha Animals group vs an Omega Animals group so that its not so much just about food chain?

Also we lack a lot of intermediary links in the food chain. Most of the animals you see are the large animals. To have a functional food web you would need all the small critters too. Not to meton doing a single biome food web is hard. Having a global one is insane. Believe me I have been making one for Sagan 4 for over 6 years. And its still very incomplete.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well... that's why I'm suggesting a really simplified version.

 

[0100010]

I don't think you need to make animal interactions anymore complicated that the possible future "Animal Kingdom" special player. And if you did, most players probably would not even notice it at best, break it at worse.

 

[0100010]

I have made new versions of BonusInfo XML and additional alterations to FeatureInfo for myself to test soon. I'll be working on making a table to post my proposed changes to post here soon.

Im going to try to get attachments of the files up before Mid-May, then you all can decide whats useable and whether or not you want some or all of it in v30.

After that, in June I'll try to go through all the improvements, as well as try out a map generator.

I'd also like to suggest separating out all the non-map resources out of BonusInfo XML, into its own file, just to keep it better organized.

I hope no one is planning to add more map resources before then. I just incorporated the Guava and Kava into my work since noticing they popped up in the SVN.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

I have made new versions of BonusInfo XML and additional alterations to FeatureInfo for myself to test soon. I'll be working on making a table to post my proposed changes to post here soon.

For BonusInfo, does this include revisions to iPlacementOrder? I've been going through them and noticed some of them don't make much sense, which might in turn explain why I'm not seeing resources like Diamonds on the map.

 

[0100010]

For BonusInfo, does this include revisions to iPlacementOrder? I've been going through them and noticed some of them don't make much sense, which might in turn explain why I'm not seeing resources like Diamonds on the map.

It includes placement rules, terrains and features, but I have not revised placement order yet.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

It includes placement rules, terrains and features, but I have not revised placement order yet.

While most of the existing placement order values might have to be tweaked depending on the rules/terrains/features changes you've made, there are a few that really stand out, and probably should be changed in concert with the changes you've making (for example, changing the values for Diamonds won't do much unless their out-of-whack placement order is also changed). These are the ones I would suggest:

Guava - Currently has a placement order of 1, which puts it among essential strategic resources, which makes no sense. I'd suggest changing it to 6, alongside other less-important bonus resources.

Guinea Pig - Same as Guava.

Kava - Though it's value is 3, it is basically the same as Guava, and should also be changed to 6.

Titanium - Currently has a value of 6, but this is too high, considering that Titanium is an essential strategic resource (i.e. some modern units can't be built without it). I'd reduce it to 2.

Llama - Currently has a value of 7 (the second highest value currently used). Since Llama does access a few buildings, it should be a bit lower, perhaps 5.

Diamond - Currently has a value of 9, which is the highest value used (i.e. Diamonds are the very last resource the engine tries to place on the map). Personally I think Diamonds should be a bit more important - I'd suggest a value of 5, the same as other 'gem' resources.

 

[AIAndy]

The importance of a certain resource is not the only thing that should be considered for the placement order. Resources that have conditions that are very rare on the map should be placed earlier than ones that have very common conditions.

 

[rightfuture]

This article may be somewhat relevant to the general resource conversation.


Expanding the Planet's Limits
http://io9.com/expanding-the-planets-limits-475944711


There are about a dozen potentially useful charts here.


and more

 

[0100010]

The legal placement locations for slot of resources has been expanded, most because they had never been updated for all the new terrains, features, and their combos. That said is there a list out there already of the "seems to never get created" resources, and ones considered rare or difficult and thus should require priority placement?

 

[stoferb]

I'd like to see that some resources are buildable simply depending on local terrain like for example wood and common clay already are. Mushrooms for example don't need a special resource on the map, they are common in all kinds of jungles and forests. Stone is another prime example of something that shouldn't be rare and doesn't afford the specialness of a map resource, especially as we already have marble. If there is rocky terrain in the city vicinity you should be able to build a quarry and have stone. I'm sure there are more of these kind of resources. It would leave the map open for other kind of resources.

 

[Nimek]

NOw we have glich in the game because not all resources comes from map as they should be (like flint). It is because we dont have place for them on map.

SO we need new functionality

Obsolete resources
- disappers from map
- disappears from trade routes/diplomacy etc
simply it vanish from game

It is obvious that some resources like ex flint, obsidian, stone, clay are very important for prehistoric times but have very little importance in other eras.

We could use that funcionality to place more resources on the map and remove them in later eras to make place for new ones.

Another solution is to have few resources ex flint and obsidian in one tile.

 

[Hydromancerx]

NOw we have glich in the game because not all resources comes from map as they should be (like flint).

Flint is not a map resource. Its a building made resource. It requires Obsidian + Stone in the city vicinity.