Merging Super Forts

Sgtslick said:

I don't know, I guess I was just really angry coz Yu locked me out of some nice land and took over all the choke points

I managed to take over a couple in an inevitable war and build some more forts of my own so all good I suppose

Don't mind me

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Glad to hear it's working as intended then!

Dancing Hoskuld said:

If we are going to have these mini-forts that are just resource gathering outposts I don't think they should upgrade along the fort line but they should upgrade to the normal city worked improvement.

So a marble gatherer outpost will upgrade to a quarry if worked by a city.

We need some proper names for these things also. Outpost suggests a military presence.

Again thinking of Egypt - each year pharaoh would sent an expedition to a site in the Sinai to get turquoise. Eventually a temple to Hathor was built there. Then some priests started living at the temple. Eventually a very small village grew there to support the expanded cult temple. Turquoise mining was limited to the cooler month otherwise the colour went bad due to the heat. (Yet another example of why the population requirements for buildings just don't work.)

edit If someone can point me at a good improvement graphic I could set up a few of these so we can try them out.

edit 2 you know this sort of thing may fix all my problems with realistic cultural spread ignoring important plots that are essential for your nation eg have stone resource on them.

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Would it be possible for forts to upgrade into actual cities. Lots of cities have been built around forts. So could you put a settler on a fort and make a city there and then the city would have extra defense?

GiuseppeIII said:

Would it be possible for forts to upgrade into actual cities. Lots of cities have been built around forts. So could you put a settler on a fort and make a city there and then the city would have extra defense?

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I rather like this idea. Gives a city that has pre-built some buildings. The list of buildings it pre-builds could be defined in the fort's XML. Thus a regular fort might provide walls and pit traps, a bunker might provide castle/star fort, a (hypothetical new) resource-provider for animal resources (hunting encampment) could provide the relevant animal herd and or hunter's camp buildings.

Would need a little AI work but not hard I don't think.

Koshling said:

I rather like this idea. Gives a city that has pre-built some buildings. The list of buildings it pre-builds could be defined in the fort's XML. Thus a regular fort might provide walls and pit traps, a bunker might provide castle/star fort, a (hypothetical new) resource-provider for animal resources (hunting encampment) could provide the relevant animal herd and or hunter's camp buildings.

Would need a little AI work but not hard I don't think.

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I already have plans for cities to start with varying buildings depending on tech and player choice. This is because the idea of free at tech does not work well in C2C mostly because autobuild happens at the end of the turn where as free happens when you settle a city so many of the prerequsite buildings are not there so free does not place the building even though it should.

The biggest problem is that you wont qualify for any building that requires a population larger than 3 at best.

Latest SVN version now puts control of whether an improvement acts as a universal bonus provider (in the same way that cities do) or not in the XML.

Improvement schema now supports an extra boolean element:
If it's non-0 the improvement concerned will provide any bonus from the plot it is built on, as long as the owner has the necessary tech for trading that bonus (same as cities do, and forts did implicitly before this change)

I have given this tag to the 3 currently existing fort types, so currently there should be no observable functional change.

This tag should be all that is needed to define non-defensive, non-cultural improvements that act like forts for bonus provision.

I will shortly (probably tomorrow now) be pushing another slight tweak, which makes the culture provision of forts a generic improvement thing based ONLY on the <iCulture> and <iCultureRange> tags that Super Forts added. Specifically this will (after I push the change) NOT depend on the improvement also having 'bActsAsCity' - ANY improvement with <iCulture> > 0 will have the culture spread ability.

Taken together this allows things like a new 'hunter's encampment' (or whatever name) to act to provide certain resources (say deer, bison, rabbit) from OUTSIDE your current borders. It would be defined with:

That causes it to assert ownership on the plot its built on if otherwise neutral

It won't cause any culture to flow to OTHER plots

Provide the resource it is built on

The BUILDS that produce this improvement would be restricted to plots with the bonuses we want it to be valid on (rabbit, deer, bison)

If we go ahead with this the next step would be for someone (DH??) to define a few examples to act as test cases. I would then need to write some AI for them (though just having players use them for initial testing would be useful).

Note - giving an improvement an iCulture value will only be effective in taking the plot it is on if it would otherwise be neutral - it will NOT stop foreign cultural expansion from taking over the plot (and therefore the improvement). If you want to ASSERT that the plot belongs to the owner even in the face of a rival cultural expansion you still need to use <bActsAsCity>. However, until I move ZOC provision into the XML (tomorrow I hope) doing that will also give the improvement a ZOC.

bActAsCity also has the effect of adding the best route to the plot and connecting the plot to the trade network if on coast or island.

Yes, I'll make a few test cases, but it wont be for a couple of days yet. I am almost over the head cold but having to go out and vote yesterday did not help things.

Hi everyone. Kosh alerted me to this thread. I'll be lurking and am interested to see what you do with Super Forts.

Koshling said:

bUpgradeRequiresFortify - I think this means evolution happens if you have military units in it only when true, but it evolves anyway if it's false (but not 100% sure)

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Thats right. If you set the tag to true then the improvement only makes upgrade progress when military units are stationed in it (instead of when it is worked). If you set it to false then the improvement will upgrade in the normal way.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

bActAsCity also has the effect of adding the best route to the plot and connecting the plot to the trade network if on coast or island.

Yes, I'll make a few test cases, but it wont be for a couple of days yet. I am almost over the head cold but having to go out and vote yesterday did not help things.

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I just looked for the code for this (with a view to separating it also to a new tag), and what I found was code that only operated for true cities. To verify I added a fort in worldbuilder - it doesn't automatically get a route. As such this is not an issue (if we WANT (some) forts to get the best route automatically (like true cities) I can easily a dd a tag to do so (which will then work for any improvement))...

I am interested in how this is going to work with Realistic Cultural Spread. If I build a Resource Expedition on that stone resource in the second tier from my city, the plot will now be in my cultural borders and my city will work it. Will I lose the plot when the Resource Expedition upgrades to a stone workshop or mine as they don't claim the plot? The latter can't claim the plot because it can be built outside your borders already.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I am interested in how this is going to work with Realistic Cultural Spread. If I build a Resource Expedition on that stone resource in the second tier from my city, the plot will now be in my cultural borders and my city will work it. Will I lose the plot when the Resource Expedition upgrades to a stone workshop or mine as they don't claim the plot? The latter can't claim the plot because it can be built outside your borders already.

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Since I always play with realistic spread this is of great interest to me
But if one looses it due to the upgrade a simple solution would be to give the Expedition nothing to upgrade too. And once the plot is regulary within your borders you come along with a worker and do it manually.
Now that I typed it it seems pretty unelegant.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I am interested in how this is going to work with Realistic Cultural Spread. If I build a Resource Expedition on that stone resource in the second tier from my city, the plot will now be in my cultural borders and my city will work it. Will I lose the plot when the Resource Expedition upgrades to a stone workshop or mine as they don't claim the plot? The latter can't claim the plot because it can be built outside your borders already.

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No. Once the improvement upgrades (if it upgrades to something that doesn't have culture) is will cease to ADD further culture, but because your culture will already be there (at least unless overwhelmed by enemy culture) you'll continue to own the plot. HOWEVER, I was more intending that these things upgrade along their own lines, so a 'fort' (in the loosest sense) would always upgrade to another fort. I hadn't really considered having them upgrade to non-forts.

Koshling said:

No. Once the improvement upgrades (if it upgrades to something that doesn't have culture) is will cease to ADD further culture, but because your culture will already be there (at least unless overwhelmed by enemy culture) you'll continue to own the plot. HOWEVER, I was more intending that these things upgrade along their own lines, so a 'fort' (in the loosest sense) would always upgrade to another fort. I hadn't really considered having them upgrade to non-forts.

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Could the upgrade condition be split?
Let´s say you got a mining outpost. You garrison it, and it evolves to stronger fortified versions, but low yield.
If a city works it AND it is garrisoned it evolves to a weakly fortified version that gives yields only slightly lower then a "civilian" mine of the same development level ( maybe even civic dependent, militaristic goverment/power civics improving it to regular mine level)
And finally if a city works it and it is not garrisoned it evolves into a regular mine.

Same for other resources of course.

Complicated, but would give players a choice between going for a strong defensive position at reduced yields or a wide open, but high yield setup.

Il Principe said:

Could the upgrade condition be split?
Let´s say you got a mining outpost. You garrison it, and it evolves to stronger fortified versions, but low yield.
If a city works it AND it is garrisoned it evolves to a weakly fortified version that gives yields only slightly lower then a "civilian" mine of the same development level ( maybe even civic dependent, militaristic goverment/power civics improving it to regular mine level)
And finally if a city works it and it is not garrisoned it evolves into a regular mine.

Same for other resources of course.

Complicated, but would give players a choice between going for a strong defensive position at reduced yields or a wide open, but high yield setup.

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Perhaps eventually. For now it's all new capability, and keeping it (relatively) simple means there isn't too much AI to write for it. The more we complicate it the more work is needed for the AI to handle it, so better to see what uses we can make of it at this step first I think.

Koshling said:

Perhaps eventually. For now it's all new capability, and keeping it (relatively) simple means there isn't too much AI to write for it. The more we complicate it the more work is needed for the AI to handle it, so better to see what uses we can make of it at this step first I think.

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Definetley. Was more spinning wild dreams here. Which would mean way too much work that could be employed better elsewhere. ( Not just AI. 3 paralell upgrade paths would mean trice as many entries as well.)

Now when ZOC is in XML file can we separate land and water ZOC or tweak current ZOC to apply only to land tiles?

OK what I am planing on doing is

Forts and military outposts
Resources

@DH

Good ideas. But please don't add word remote. Wood tower or stone tower is enought.
Graphic for towers are in Total War mod


Remote mine or quarry cab be called mine colony or quarry colony.

Nimek said:

@DH

Good ideas. But please don't add word remote. Wood tower or stone tower is enought.
Graphic for towers are in Total War mod


Remote mine or quarry cab be called mine colony or quarry colony.

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I was going to use Kathy's graphics for towers.

I only put remote in the name because the pedia will not work if I call them the same thing as the building. I'll have to check what the name is for the city buildings.

Since the Remote Mine etc is likely to be in existence for only one turn what matters the name?

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I was going to use Kathy's graphics for towers.

I only put remote in the name because the pedia will not work if I call them the same thing as the building. I'll have to check what the name is for the city buildings.

Since the Remote Mine etc is likely to be in existence for only one turn what matters the name?

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Towers
- Frontier Outpost
- Fortified Outpost
- Watch Tower
- Guard Tower
- Keep Tower
- Bombard Tower
- Artillery Battery
- Auto-Cannon Battery
- Missile Battery
- Railgun Battery
- Laser Battery
- Anti-Matter Battery

Walls
- Palisade
- Earth Wall
- Walls
- High Walls
- Barricades
- Cement Barrier
- Metamaterial Walls
- Superstrong Alloy Walls
- Megastrong Alloy Walls.

Fences/Shields
- Abatis
- Fire Abatis
- Barbed Wire Fence
- Electric Fence
- Wireless Electric Fence
- Arcology Shielding
- Advanced Shielding

Regenerating Walls
- Nanobot Walls
- Smart Dust Walls

Dancing Hoskuld said:

@hydro could you add the alpha channel to the two buttons in the new tower improvements. Thanks.

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I could not find existing icon/buttons so I made these.