Improvement Ideas and Discussion

Excellent work on the Hydro dam improvement Sparth.

0100010, I think the three camps need more to differentiate them. I am really disliking the fact that I get so much food now from the desert.

On logistics, i have often thought that hunting camps should upgrade to Royal Hunting Preserves at some stage. In England only the King got to hunt them but in times of war they were used to supply the army and navy.

1. I moved a little HydroDam to be more accurate
2. Attached two new camps: desert and wetland
3. DH, you asked me about karst terain. Please look at screenshot. Its ok?
4. Im working about new model for tall grass, tomorrow I post screens.

Sparth said:

1. I moved a little HydroDam to be more accurate
2. Attached two new camps: desert and wetland
3. DH, you asked me about karst terain. Please look at screenshot. Its ok?
4. Im working about new model for tall grass, tomorrow I post screens.

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Thank you for this.

the camps look great.

The karst terrain looks good to me but Hydro and Primover are the ones who need to approve it. Unfortunately it does not look good against our second terrain set which is the one I use

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Unfortunately it does not look good against our second terrain set which is the one I use

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Saturation of colours is too high?

Dancing Hoskuld said:

0100010, I think the three camps need more to differentiate them. I am really disliking the fact that I get so much food now from the desert.

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That's fine, my main goal was to get them in place and attach some resource spawns to them. What specific changes do you suggest?

I think Quarries should have an upgrade chain also, perhaps Gravel Pit and/or Modern Quarry. Upgrade at the tech that gives concrete, and another tech but not sure which.

Sparth, how do I incorporate the new graphics, do they need to be packed into the FPK or can I just drop them in by themselves somewhere?

Sparth said:

Saturation of colours is too high?

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I will post some images. I need to do so as advertising for both types anyway.

0100010 said:

That's fine, my main goal was to get them in place and attach some resource spawns to them. What specific changes do you suggest?

I think Quarries should have an upgrade chain also, perhaps Gravel Pit and/or Modern Quarry. Upgrade at the tech that gives concrete, and another tech but not sure which.

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I was thinking that jungle was indeed while marsh and desert but beyond that I have no ideas.

Quarries have been neglected, luckily the art for them does upgrade with era. I don't agree with Gravel Pit except as perhaps a different improvement since it is not gravel you want from a marble quarry.

edit: @Sparth, I may just be having one of those days but I can't get your art for the Hydro Plant or either camp to work.

Copy all XML from Watermill improment, change path to NIF and KFM and should work

Sparth said:

Copy all XML from Watermill improment, change path to NIF and KFM and should work

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That is exactly what I did but it gets an error message and does not display anything in the pedia. As I said I am probably just having one of those days and I should go an get a hair cut or something, anything rather than mod.

Jungle Camp gives a base +1F, +1H. (and +1H on Hills, and +1C on River) The +1F offsets the -1F that the jungle feature causes. I believe the Jungle Feature also causes the loss of the +1C for a river, so the +1C for river turns that back on. (I don't know why Jungle Camps give +1H for hills, that doesn't make sense to me.)

I gave +1F, +1C base to Desert Camp, and +1H, +1C to Wetlands Camp.

Apart from reducing the production gains from route types to +1H at maximum, I kept all the same tech upgrades for each camp as Jungle. These could be changed up some.

Remember that desert camps in particular, require adjacent freshwater or irrigation to be bulidable, so you can't put them on any desert like tiles.

Desert Camps are valid on Desert, Dunes and Scrub if near fresh water or an irrigated farm. I'd like them to at least keep one +1F. IF they were on a scrub cactus, they would up it to 3F. 2F for Cactus and other the other desert types, and only 1F all other times. Unless of course you have Flood plains or an Oasis, which already have their own higher value base food yields. However most of the time, it will be better to build some other improvements besides a camp on those features.

Sedentary Lifestyle and Hunting Tactics are the ones that can up the food yields again for (currently) all camp types. To me this makes sense for hunting tactics, but perhaps not so much for sedentary lifestyle for wetlands and Desert camps.

Other Improvement Idea: (well actually a route)

Ferry Service:
Can be build on coastal terrain (but not on Reefs/Coral) It must be adjacent to land and must have (land, land) or (land, coast) on 'opposite' sides. (Opposite means at least two tiles away from the land square and not adjacent to it.) This extends your road network across The coastal square. Potentially Linking two ferries lets the road network extend two tiles out.

I think there was once sea tunnels (is this what Tunnels is now?). what are known issues with routes over water? Is this feasible?

0100010 said:

It must be adjacent to land and must have (land, land) or (land, coast) on 'opposite' sides. (Opposite means at least two tiles away from the land square and not adjacent to it.)

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Not sure what you mean by this? Wouldn't this still work if it's restricted to any coast terrain with no other restrictions, since then you could still have 1-2 tile routes to nearby islands? A couple of additional ideas too: give the route -1 due to the boat traffic scaring away fish and so that the AI doesn't spam them everywhere. Also make the route take extra moves for land units and give a defense penalty so that attacking land units embarked on a ferry with a warship is easier and more likely to succeed.

This could be an interesting improvement on coastal tiles in the TH era:

Wind turbines and concentrated solar power are installed on the topsides – while on the undersides, flash-evaporated seawater is used to drive turbine generators, in turn producing drinkable water.

A single 250-megawatt OTEC plant can meet the energy demands of 250,000 households and provide 600 million litres of drinkable water each day. Surplus water is used to support local agriculture and industry. These islands also feature housing developments, fish farms, greenhouses and eco-tourism complexes, in addition to the water and power production facilities.

Sparth said:

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Sparth said:

3. DH, you asked me about karst terain. Please look at screenshot. Its ok?

Click to expand...

The karst terrain looks good to me but Hydro and Primover are the ones who need to approve it. Unfortunately it does not look good against our second terrain set which is the one I use

Click to expand...

Saturation of colours is too high?

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I don't think it blends well with the standard terrain we have. Something looks off about the texture.

Also could you give me some more info about the Karst terrain? Such as what would its yields be? What would the movement be? Defense?

Seems to me that Karst could already represented by putting Caves on a Rocky terrain. But if you fell like we need this type of terrain represented the we need a better looking graphic.

About Karst: dunno about mechanics, I just do graphics
I can retexture caves model to looks more like white rocky terrain of Karst.

Sparth said:

1. I moved a little HydroDam to be more accurate
2. Attached two new camps: desert and wetland
3. DH, you asked me about karst terain. Please look at screenshot. Its ok?
4. Im working about new model for tall grass, tomorrow I post screens.

Click to expand...

Sparth said:

Saturation of colours is too high?

Click to expand...

Hello Sparth,
DH PM'd me for feedback. Karst topography should be a feature, not a terrain. What you have done here is a GREAT start, but it needs to be converted into an overlay that allows that underlying terrain through.

Karst terrain of the type you have illustrated here can be found in any environment that receives enough rain. The sinkholes and a not-quite as saturated moss green can be part of the overlay as you have it. But the "moss green" should blend with the underlying terrain color. The following types of current terrain should allow for the feature:

TERRAIN_GRASS
TERRAIN_PLAINS (to some extent)
TERRAIN_LUSH
TERRAIN_MUDDY
TERRAIN_MARSH (non-coastal)

Karst topography also appears in arid, chaparral, and even desert regions. However, we already have a feature that will suffice for this (caves).

Coastlines that have the Karst feature may use a a different graphic (or not. Based on odds that will be used in the GeoRealism engine.). The second graphic will be more complicated. It would look similar except that tower karst would also poke up from the land and occasionally out of the water close to the shore.

This is what tower karst looks like:

Sparth said:

About Karst: dunno about mechanics, I just do graphics
I can retexture caves model to looks more like white rocky terrain of Karst.

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Honestly, I like the sinkhole look. It is more appropriate for wet regions. You may want to play with the color though to make it look a bit more natural

primem0ver said:

Honestly, I like the sinkhole look. It is more appropriate for wet regions. You may want to play with the color though to make it look a bit more natural

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Ok I think its clear now. Ill send screenshot of new Krast today.

0100010 said:

Jungle Camp gives a base +1F, +1H. (and +1H on Hills, and +1C on River) The +1F offsets the -1F that the jungle feature causes. I believe the Jungle Feature also causes the loss of the +1C for a river, so the +1C for river turns that back on. (I don't know why Jungle Camps give +1H for hills, that doesn't make sense to me.)

<snip>

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It doesn't have to make sense to you, sorry for being blunt. But the Jungle Camp Modmod has been developed and added for very specific reasons. And maintained for a long time. That -1F for Jungle Feature should have never been added in either. But ppl keep trying to tinker with stuff all the time. And the 1G should have never been changed to C (commerce either).

Background:
Jungles in BtS vanilla are wasted tiles. Vincentz, the author of the Jungle Camp Modmod, created it because in real life Jungles are a Rich resource (he actually lived in the Jungles of Thailand for many years). Whole Civilizations prospered and flourished because they lived in Jungles. Food, Wood, Minerals of all kinds are almost always Abundunt in Jungles. But for some reason Firaxis and Sid decide they were only good for chopping in the vanilla Civ world.

At one time the Jungle Camp provided 2F, 1H and 1G for a grassland or Plain tile Jungle. If the Jungle was on a hill it provided 1 extra H. And if a Jungle tile was bordered by a River it provided 1 extra G. So it could provide up to 2F, 2H, and 2G if on the right tile. The Jungle Camp was supposed to also Remove the -1Health that Jungle Tiles give in vanilla BtS. I bet that has been messed with too, I hope not.

I've been the Advocate for JC since it's inclusion into RoM, then thru AND, and into C2C. I've had DH's support on this from the very earliest days of C2C and SO's too. Just so you know.

So when ppl start degrading the JC I speak up (not saying you are degrading it....yet).

JosEPh

BTW belive in last patch Realism Invictus add civlization specific improvments and they are great. For example when im playing Zulu Empire i can choose normal path to my civlization (agrarism with lots of farming) or Nomadism with special, zulu improvments which are some special Pastures. Normaly Nomadism its a medicore (at best) choose for civilization but combined with this special improvment its powerful.

JosEPh_II said:

It doesn't have to make sense to you, sorry for being blunt.

<snip>

So when ppl start degrading the JC I speak up (not saying you are degrading it....yet).

JosEPh

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It's ok to disagree about things. Just to clarify, I didn't make any alterations to the JC, I just looked at what state it was currently in.

Perhaps the current model of 'Jungle' is too broad to represent all the variations we want to show, and a wider variety of biome features is needed to model different types. I actually agree to an extent with what you are saying because I hate starting location in the middle of a jungle. I've considering a Tropical Forest as a healthier, more positive version of the 'Jungle'.