[Religion and Revolution]: Mod Development

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Converted Natives and (African) Slaves is probably enough.

I totally agree. I also don't like the idea of native slaves.

Forts: I played some games on the new "gigantic" maps and missed forts more and more.

Due to the feature "native raids" forts are very usefull now. Due to the raids a lot of buildings are destroyed in the cities and the natives attack cities very often. If you only build forts to control an area, you would not loose the work done to build all the buildings inside the city. In my opinion we should discuss the implementation of forts again...
 
The Advantage of Being Able to Build Forts

2 Points:
(Again ...)

1. A Fort can do nothing that a small city with a few defensiv buildings cannot do even better ...

2. AI does not know at all how to handle something like a Fort.
(Massive amounts of work implicated to have AI understand this.)

So seriously, we are discussing Forts again and again and nobody has ever offered solutions to these points. :rolleyes:

Forts are useless and problematic !

So once more:
Veto to Forts. :)

There already are European units that can pass mountains without a road:
(Native Mercenaries, Rangers)

Natives can do this anyways.
(They would simply walk past the fort and attack a city.)

The Fate of Troops When a City Abandons Their Leader for Another

Cultural Conversion will probably be implemented.
(It is just the question when. :) Probably in Release 3 or later.)

If troops will be converted or dislocated is pretty much open to me. :dunno:

This was just a first concept and really making a decision now is not necessary,
because it will take a lot of time until we get to really implementing this.
(Even when already implemented things can be changed if team members do not like it ...)

Preset and Realistic Promotions for the REF

Generally an interesting idea but it is totally ignoring lacking ability of AI to react on such differences.
Also it would totally destroy a lot of balancing concepts like "Native Mercenaries", "Rangers", ...
So having substantial differences considering terrain for basically the complete armies (Colonial and Contintental) really is a bad idea.
 
Native Slaves

I thought a little bit about that. :)

I would like to leave everything with Missioning as it is.
(Still producing Converted Natives.)

What is strange however is, that you also get Converted Natives when destroying a Native Settlement.

This is a little weird.
I mean you are killing their friends and families and destroying their home.
And they still happily accept christianity ? :rolleyes:

So suggestion is:

When destroying Native Villages, you get Native Slaves instead of Converted Natives.

Native Slaves would have production bonusses similar to Converted Natives.
However, they would use the Flee Feature of LbD, meaning they have chances of running away.
Also, they would use the Free Feature of LbD and could potentially become Converted Natives over time.

Efforts for implementing this would be very low, once we have the graphics for Natives Slaves.

Also, there might be a DLL-Diplo-Event, where Native Civs that are at War with another Native Civ
offer you war prisoners as Native Slaves in exchange for Weapons or Gold.

Feedback ? :)
 
Hi everyone,

Thank you Sanotra/Midehoff for your ideas. They are most welcome.
I'd like to give my opinion on your ideas...

But before that, I would like to remind everyone that we will implement a new feature, if and only if the four following conditions are met:
A) The feature must respect more or less historical facts.
B) The feature improves gameplay (in my opinion this condition is more important than first condition.
C) It is not to difficult to implement. (e.g. 4 months of modding is way too much for a very small feature)
D) The team likes it.

I - Native Slaves

A) Historically this sounds a good idea! If I understand correctly, Sanotra, this is a "2 in 1" idea :
- catholics and protestants would have a different unit when their mission is successful.
- Spain and Portugal would have slaves.
The problem is ... you forgot France! :nono:
I don't think France had native slaves... (I may be wrong, but I haven't heard of it)...

B) This could improve gameplay. Especially if we follow Ray's suggestion. We could you slaves when a native city is destroyed.
If you (Sanotra or someone else) wants to have two different sorts of converted natives, why not. (see A)

C) This seems not too difficult to implement (I think...)
D) For me: Why not?

II - Forts
A) Historically it sounds good.
B) That's the most difficult part...
2 Points:
(Again ...)

1. A Fort can do nothing that a small city with a few defensiv buildings cannot do even better ...

2. AI does not know at all how to handle something like a Fort.
(Massive amounts of work implicated to have AI understand this.)

So seriously, we are discussing Forts again and again and nobody has ever offered solutions to these points. :rolleyes:
I must agree. Until someone finds a solution to those problems, we're stuck... :(

Forts are useless and problematic !
I must say I disagree. And somehow, this is thanks to Sanotra. If Forts are allowed on peaks, there is something that a fort could do and not a city... So they are not totally useless. They could be something interesting if we add a zone of control, but I'm not sure

C) and D) That's the main problem. No one has yet found a really good idea. Once someone finds a precise concept, and manages to convince Ray ;)
So once more:
Veto to Forts. :)
then we can talk about Forts (again !)

III - Growing Improvements
Hum... I don't know about this. I'm rather not fond of this.:dunno: However, on Civfr.com a few members asked me to have multiple improvement of a same type. Each improvement could improve after researching a specific invention.
 
1. A Fort can do nothing that a small city with a few defensiv buildings cannot do even better ...

2. AI does not know at all how to handle something like a Fort.
(Massive amounts of work implicated to have AI understand this.)

1. A small city differs from a fort in three ways. 1. It requires colonists to be inside, whereas a fort only requires troops to sit on the top. 2. A small city creates territorial borders. Because a player wants to build forts along his border. A player would have to take on the extra food burden of manning the city with an elder statesman to produce culture. Why? Because a small border city with no culture, would be subject to the threat of cultural conversion, whereas a fort would not. So hence, a small city instead of a fort, has hidden complications which make it impractical. And lastly, building a small city instead of a fort to protect a narrow mountain pass, is not historical.

2. Does the Ai need to understand and use every feature put into the game? Plus, I'd imagine it would not be too difficult to tell the AI to do two things. 1. If you see a location that has impassible terrain on both sides, favor building a 'fort' there. 2. Favor stationing units in a 'fort'. I've only worked with the AI through a strenuous series of 'triggers' in the StarCraft world Blizzard made. I know that Civ is more complex, but these should work right?

There already are European units that can pass mountains without a road:
(Native Mercenaries, Rangers)

Natives can do this anyways.
(They would simply walk past the fort and attack a city.)
Good, this would make forts fun. Especially later in the game when your defending against primarily European neighbors.

Cultural Conversion will probably be implemented.
Awesome! :cool:

Generally an interesting idea but it is totally ignoring lacking ability of AI to react on such differences.
So having substantial differences considering terrain for basically the complete armies (Colonial and Contintental) really is a bad idea.
I don't understand how, but I'll take your word for it. ;)
 
When destroying Native Villages, you get Native Slaves instead of Converted Natives.

Also, there might be a DLL-Diplo-Event, where Native Civs that are at War with another Native Civ
offer you war prisoners as Native Slaves in exchange for Weapons or Gold.

Feedback ? :)

Excellent ideas! :goodjob:

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The problem is ... you forgot France! :nono:
I don't think France had native slaves... (I may be wrong, but I haven't heard of it)...

Sorry! :cry:
As far as France owning native slaves, I'm not sure, but I am inclined to believe they did, it fits the memo. They were accustomed to enslaving Huguenots back in France.

III - Growing Improvements
Hum... I don't know about this. I'm rather not fond of this.:dunno: However, on Civfr.com a few members asked me to have multiple improvement of a same type. Each improvement could improve after researching a specific invention.

I'd be interested in seeing a balanced production of this. Consider this. If one plantation currently produces 6 Tobacco. Why don't we instead make it produce 3? That way, we could have two slaves working it to make 6. Doing it this way, doesn't change the game at all, and it makes it feel more real and historic. You might say, it changes the game balance because it requires more population dependency. I would say that the cheap importation of slaves from Africa would balance this idea out.
 
Hi guys,

sorry but I still put a Veto to Forts.
(Please accept my veto here, I have accepted and always will accept your vetos, too. ;) )

So should we put this concept for Native Slaves on our list or not ? :)
 
Looking forward to native slaves. Would also be cool to make 50% of Jesuit missionary conversions slaves instead of just a convert, but it doesn't matter. :(

Onto the already discussed subject of pirates.

In this post I would like to approve of, or suggest 4 basic concepts.
1. Approve of the Royal Patrols Idea.
2. Suggest More Pirate Activity on Caribbean Map Scripts.
3. Suggest that the Frigate be Made Stronger, or Fixed.
4. Suggest Pirate Activity on Land, and/or Pirate Based Events.

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Approve of the Royal Patrols Idea.
I absolutely love this idea. :goodjob: Privateers are always causing me trouble in the game. The colopedia says that the Galleon can survive many battles at sea, but my Galleons are always being sunk by Privateers, among the other ships of course. Royal patrols is definitely a good, and realistic implement.

Suggest More Pirate Activity on Caribbean Map Scripts.
Historically it's the case. So let's make it so in game?

Suggest that the Frigate be Made Stronger, or Fixed.
I know it has been complained about before, and I've certainly seen it to be the case. I have more success sinking Privateers with Carracks than I do Frigates. And in all my history of playing the game, this seems to be the case (not the Carracks of course, but the weakness of the Frigate). Does any one know why, and can it be fixed?

Suggest Pirate Activity on Land, and/or Pirate Based Events.
It might be cool to have 'Privateers' on land, or land based pirates, either player controlled or cpu. I would settle for the idea of Pirate 'raids' similar to the system you're implementing for native raids in the events. Any go juice for this? :confused:
 
As I said ray, I accept your Veto regarding Forts. :)

Hm, I cannot give my undivided approve to the idea of getting native slaves by missionaries or in another way with the exception of destroying a native city.

Spain and Portugal tried to use native slaves for their growing plantation economy / on their plantations (and maybe also the Dutch on the West Indies? I'm not sure). But a short period after the beginning of the enslavement of natives they realized that native slaves were not able to do the hard work on the plantations. This is the reason why they started to bring a mass of negro slaves into the New World.

Compared with the number of negro slaves the number of native slaves were unimportant for the growing colonies in the New World. England and France had no native slaves (maybe there were inconsiderable exceptions).

This facts could be constituted by getting native slaves only when a native city is destroyed. But it would be historically incorrect to employ high numbers of native slaves. Furthermore native slaves should have a worse yield bonus and should be worse than negro slaves in cities, everything else would be incorrect.

Furthermore it would be weird to get native "slaves" by the missionaries. I think converts are correct and enough.

Due to the marginal effect of such a new Unit "native slave" we should ask ourselves if it really improves the gameplay (to quote ray: "A lot of efforts for very little benefit").
 
Royal Patrols Idea.
Approved. Nice and historically correct idea.

Suggest More Pirate Activity on Caribbean Map Scripts.

Approved. IF we will ever implement pirates in our mod I could live with this idea.

Suggest that the Frigate be Made Stronger, or Fixed.
Hm, my experience is that the frigate in R&R is strong. My privateers always loose their fights unless they have a lot of bonus. I also lost some ships of the line due to the attack of enemy frigates.

But I would suggest that we could have a look at this as far as we are at a stage of testing and fine tuning (after the implementation of new features for Release 1).

Suggest Pirate Activity on Land, and/or Pirate Based Events.

I could live with this idea, as long as it can be assured that pirate raids are only carried out in coastal colonies. I don't know if this can be programed.
 
Hmm some interesting ideas! I think some would be worth adding, but we also have to be mindful not to add too much more complications when there's so much already planned eg Techs and Religion etc. I agree with the viewpoint of Ray and Schmiddie on the native slaves. They would be good to have only as a replacement for Converted Natives created when capturing a colony, which wouldn't require too much additional work or create AI problems. I don't have any strong opinions about the Frigate.

Suggest Pirate Activity on Land, and/or Pirate Based Events.
It might be cool to have 'Privateers' on land, or land based pirates, either player controlled or cpu. I would settle for the idea of Pirate 'raids' similar to the system you're implementing for native raids in the events. Any go juice for this?
I think it is already planned to have a nonplayable Pirates civ that has its own ships and a few land-based Robbers. There could be a few hostile Animals as well when exploring the wilderness. If people like, once this feature is in I could work on a few Events that would have a chance to spawn a few Pirate or Robber units near you if you don't pay a ransom. :king: By the way a flavorful historic name for the Robber unit could be Highwayman. (I put some possible graphics for these in transfer/New Unit graphics.)

Royal Patrols Idea.
Approved. Nice and historically correct idea.
I also like the idea of some Royal patrol ships belonging to the King factions (I think maybe this was planned already as well.) It would be particularly great if a foreign King could enter war against you, allowing his patrols to attack your ships! :king: Perhaps this could be enabled through the existing diplo system (i.e. allow the standard option for requests to declare war to appear during the diplomacy screen with your King, so you could ask your king to help attack a rival you were at war with.)

I am thinking of working on a post-Revolution event where if you are friendly with a foreign King, he may offer support in the form of some Regulars / Hessians etc. But we also need some interactions with foreign Kings so its possible to build a good or bad relation.
 
It would be particularly great if a foreign King could enter war against you, allowing his patrols to attack your ships! :king:

As if the Privateers aren't a big enough nuisance already! :eek: :lol: Here we are discussing Royal Patrols as a means to protect a player from being utterly destroyed (trade wise) by pirates, and you're idea would make the threat even worst! :mischief:
 
Let me throw out a few corrections and/or suggestions real quick.

In comment #185, Ray suggested the implementation of 'Great Cathedrals'. I like the idea, but I'd prefer they'd be called 'Grand Cathedrals', for that's what large cathedrals are generally historically called. To prove my point. If you search Great Cathedral on Google, you will get 8 million results. If you search Grand Cathedral, you will get 107 million results.

Ray, I also notice that you say 'fractions' instead of 'factions', while we're on the topic of the way things are called. You are referring to a group which is opposed to another group, right? That's a faction. A fraction is a mathematical number, such as 1/2 or 3/4. I hope you don't mind the criticism. I'll keep quiet next time, if it's unwelcome. :(

In comment #199, there was mention of allowing trade monopolies in the colonies, as well as operas, 'great operas', and trains. It was also mentioned that these are not historically realistic for the time period. I agree, and I hope they will not find there way into the mod.
 
I've got two last preconceived suggestions (more like comments) I'd like to mention.

1. How to implement an "I'll give you x, if you give me y for twenty turns." system.
2. A 'domestic' market.

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How to implement an "I'll give you x, if you give me y for twenty turns." system.
This idea, which was discussed around comment #334, is agreeably difficult to see working in Colonization, with the need to transport everything via wagon train. If Sitting Bull wants to give me 3 Native Mercs in exchange for silver for 20 turns, how could we do that? Something that came to my mind, which may sound silly, is to force a unit to work a tile, and give sitting bull the produce of that tile, every time he sends a wagon train. Agreeably that sounds very difficult to implement, and sounds ever more preposterous as I type this out. :lol: Please disregard, unless you caught a sudden stroke of genius.

A 'domestic' market.
This idea, which I do not believe I saw discussed in the RandR thread, does not seem as silly as the last one. Simply put, every building desires certain goods every turn, which you don't have to provide. Your college desires 1 cigar every turn, and will pay 75-100% of what it would sell for in Europe. Your drydock desires 2 rum every turn, and etc. In effect, you're selling your own produce to the citizens in the colonies, instead of exclusively to Europe. The professors at the colleges are paying for and smoking cigars made right there in town, and the boys at the dock are getting drunk after a hard days work, and paying top dollar for a pint.

This idea would;
1. make it less difficult to organize logistics, because you would have less to export to Europe.
2. create a steady stream of income, from the colonists themselves.
3. add an atmosphere of realism to the game.
 
Suggest More Pirate Activity on Caribbean Map Scripts.

Sorry, but generation of Pirates will be in DLL and not in the Map Scripts.
So "no" to that.

Suggest that the Frigate be Made Stronger, or Fixed.

I really believe they are strong enough already in our mod.

Suggest Pirate Activity on Land, and/or Pirate Based Events.

We will need to see.
Since we will have "Wild Animals" it might be a bad idea to have even more "barbarian like" enemies on land.

But a definite "No" to have player controlled pirates.
(Same discussion as we had with player controlled Natives.)

A 'domestic' market.

This is supposed to become part of Release 1.
We even have a special thread for it. :)

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@Sanotra:
Please take a look at our Overview to see which things we already implemented, which we have planned and which landed in our archive. ;)
 
@team:

I am still not sure, if we should put Native Slaves instead Converted Natives from destroyed Native Villages on our list or not ? :)
(Everything else considering Missioning and Converted Natives would stay the same.)

Comments:
I think it would be the better solution considering authenticity / historical correctness.
The unit graphics are the most work, the rest is a piece of cake. :)
 
@team:

I have finally finished and uploaded to SVN the next package for new Yields and Productionlines. :)
(I was sick over the weekend and thus it took so long.)

Hemp, Ropes and Sailcloth

If you are working with the mod or testing, please get complete new revision,
because there are massive amounts of changes.
(DLL, Graphics, Gamefonts, XML)

Some remarks:

Specialists:
They are pretty much self explanatory.
One for every new yield / new profession.

Building for Production of Ropes and Sailcloth:
The Harbour Buildings.

New Bonus Ressource:
Hemp (on Grasland)

General:
Hemp is cheaper than Tobacco for example.
It is usually not worth producing it for selling in Europe.
Its main purpose is to be used for production of Ropes and Sailcloth.
Ropes and Sailcloth are needed in order to build Ships.
They are also not intended to be sold.
However, they might become very expensive over time if you always buy them.
At some point when building up a fleet, you should really consider producing your own Ropes and Sailcloth.
Their prices in Europe will reflect that.

------------------

Comments:

1. Balancing of Bonus Ressources Generation still needs to be done.
I will do that, once we stop adding new Yields for Release 1. :thumbsup:

2. I have tried to do the major part of texts / translations, however a lot of improvement can certainly still be done.
(CIV4GameText_RaR_New_Ressources.xml)

3. I have not yet split up the Yields into 2 rows. This will happen soon.

@Schmiddie:
Could you take a look at the buttons for Sailcloth when you got some time.
I am not totally happy with them.
(They are actually a combination of Rope and Sailcloth KJ once made for me.)

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@team:
Please somebody test, to make sure, that I did not forget to upload anything. :thumbsup:
 

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@team:

I am still not sure, if we should put Native Slaves instead Converted Natives from destroyed Native Villages on our list or not ? :)
(Everything else considering Missioning and Converted Natives would stay the same.)

Comments:
I think it would be the better solution considering authenticity / historical correctness.
The unit graphics are the most work, the rest is a piece of cake. :)

If it is not necessary, that the Unit must have a totally different look, the graphic is easy to do.
 
@team:
Please somebody test, to make sure, that I did not forget to upload anything.
Ok I downloaded and ran it; the new yields and professions look good so far Ray :goodjob: I like how it can take advantage of existing buildings.

However I did get one unexpected CTD 5 turns in. The logfiles don't show any cause, and I couldn't reproduce it with no problems since then, but still a potential concern I guess.

BTW maybe Master Fermentator could be called something else like Master Drier, since fermenting is making Beer or Wine. :beer:

Hemp is cheaper than Tobacco for example.
It is usually not worth producing it for selling in Europe.
Its main purpose is to be used for production of Ropes and Sailcloth.
Really? I heard it has a different main purpose in Amsterdam and Port Royale !:smoke::mischief:;)

I do like that game feature, but because we will have a large number of yields and units/buildings that can require various yields (sails/rope also stone, ammo, cannons etc in the future), my main worry is that the AI could have difficulty planning to have appropriate combinations of yields available when constructing buildings or units that require some yields. So in some circumstances it could get "stuck" needing to complete a unit, building, or profession and fall behind the human player.

Perhaps if the AI gets stuck building something, the game could allow it complete and subtract the gold cost of the needed goods?
 
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