Railroad As Navigable River Gfx Request

Addendum for Erebras -

Sorry, I forgot to mention: Although perhaps a tad unsightly, I'm planning on placing rivers on both sides of the "Railroad River." This would further allow the placement of a fertile plain in selected tiles, thereby more realistically recreating a river valley.

Also, as, again, I'm focusing on the 18th Century, Roads & Bridges can both be in place and constructed.

-O.
 
I get that you are doing an 18th-century Eurocentric mod. If it's set in only a single century, then long-term terraforming would need to be modified to short-term terraforming tasks. Planting forests and clearing wetlands must needs become something else, if you wish to retain their utility, instead of merely making them unavailable. Airbases have no corresponding pre-industrial equivalent. In one of my mods I delayed the ability to make Barricades until star forts revolutionized the way bastions were constructed. Radar towers have been successfully repurposed for pre-industrial mods (I think they called them garrisons.)
You know all this, but I bring it up because I was curious how you plan to address these issues/non-issues.
If the mod is truly and specifically Eurocentric (from a geopolitical standpoint), rather than a mod reflecting European expansion and colonization, then it would free up several of your tropical terrains. One of my mods is set only in a Britain-like setting, so I was able to repurpose desert into chalk downs, flood plains into a sort of farmland, volcanos into snowcapped mountains, and jungle into deciduous forest (default forest was conifer/evergreen only for pine pitch resource for shipbuilding). I imagine you'd do something similar on a continental scale.
I don't use the more colorful terrain modpacks available, so I feel I'd be less than helpful about the terrain request, but it seems it'd be no large matter to modify the railroad pcx into a river and eliminate the river graphics of the rivers, deltas, flood plains, and waterfalls pcxs to either reveal the underlying terrain or create banks you'd be satisfied with. I believe, though, that a true riverbank would have to be included in the railroad pcx, rather than the terrain pcxs. (And was the purpose of running rivers alongside each railroad system to increase trade and permit irrigation, or did I miss the point?)
 
I get that you are doing an 18th-century Eurocentric mod. If it's set in only a single century, then long-term terraforming would need to be modified to short-term terraforming tasks. Planting forests and clearing wetlands must needs become something else, if you wish to retain their utility, instead of merely making them unavailable. Airbases have no corresponding pre-industrial equivalent. In one of my mods I delayed the ability to make Barricades until star forts revolutionized the way bastions were constructed. Radar towers have been successfully repurposed for pre-industrial mods (I think they called them garrisons.)
You know all this, but I bring it up because I was curious how you plan to address these issues/non-issues.
If the mod is truly and specifically Eurocentric (from a geopolitical standpoint), rather than a mod reflecting European expansion and colonization, then it would free up several of your tropical terrains. One of my mods is set only in a Britain-like setting, so I was able to repurpose desert into chalk downs, flood plains into a sort of farmland, volcanos into snowcapped mountains, and jungle into deciduous forest (default forest was conifer/evergreen only for pine pitch resource for shipbuilding). I imagine you'd do something similar on a continental scale.
I don't use the more colorful terrain modpacks available, so I feel I'd be less than helpful about the terrain request, but it seems it'd be no large matter to modify the railroad pcx into a river and eliminate the river graphics of the rivers, deltas, flood plains, and waterfalls pcxs to either reveal the underlying terrain or create banks you'd be satisfied with. I believe, though, that a true riverbank would have to be included in the railroad pcx, rather than the terrain pcxs. (And was the purpose of running rivers alongside each railroad system to increase trade and permit irrigation, or did I miss the point?)

I'm calling the mod, "World War Zero" which would have been perfectly applicable to the 7 Years War, yet not left much to do in the way of Tech research and building Improvements and Wonders in realistic time-frames.

I'd like to "echo" 1715 (after the War Of The Spanish Succession) through 1770 (the Boston Tea Party.) The historicity I'm sacrificing is (1) that Sweden and Russia were at war from 1701-21 (I'll set all the usual levels to make war between them likely) and I'll have to tinker with the locked alliances which were essentially in place, in a balanced fashion, as Great Britain essentially "switched side" between the War Of The Austrian Succession and the 7 Years War.

The global scope is not only to address global colonial tensions amongst Britain, France, Spain & Holland, but to reflect that the Qing (Manchu) Empire became (for China) unusually active / expansionist during this area. It's just annoying that about 1/2 of the ~256x~256 map will be essentially unplayable. Game play will be sped up by overseas trade limitations (Improvements such as Sugarcane Plantations will create goods to be hauled back to Europe ...

... And there'll be Pirates (Aaargh!) in the Caribe, Med (Corsairs) and around the Straits of Malacca.

I'm not certain about repurposing Airbases and Clearing Jungle and Draining Swamps and All That. I know (1) there will be "generic" impassable terrain (no Civs digging in in Australia) and (2) the map will NOT be wraparound, as the only significant trans-Pacific traffic were Spanish ships carrying goods home via Mexico.

- And, yes, the purpose of running rivers alongside each railroad system to increase trade and permit irrigation while also providing the traditional defensive advantages of River Valleys; I've quite a bit of research to do re: important navigable rivers in Europe (the Danube etc.)

Any suggestions were, are, and shall remain appreciated!


Cheers,

:)z
 
Ah, good, a sympathetic ear, or a captive audience...

Ozy, I recall a letter to the Queen in about this timeframe in a book of "primary source material" that was the textbook for some college-level world civilization courses I took. In it the emissary was describing some colony-worthy locations in some tropical region (whether the Americas or the Indies, I do not recall). He mentioned a list of suitable trade goods, among which was either the term "nitre" or "saltpetre" which stuck in my mind, because even though one could process such using everyday raw material, evidently it was still a valuable commodity when rich deposits were discovered.

As for the game itself, for aesthetic reasons, I recommend making the various impassable (so-called unusable) terrain types the palette with which to draw your forbidden zones. That is to say, your flood plains, tundra, and so forth could use the same graphics pcxs as plains or grassland or even hills and mountains, and you could approximately draw the continent of Australia or deepest, darkest Africa, or wherever you plan to have forbidden, and from an aesthetic point of view, it may work. Compare, for example, in MagePunk, where the desert tiles were slightly altered by adding hills to create a different, fourth type of highland terrain. (I don't remember if the screenshot previews on the scenario thread show this.)
 
Is it essential that the start date be in 1715? You regret not being able to simulate what wikipedia tells me is the Great Northern War, but why not begin the scenario in 1721 with the affected Baltic states in Russian hands, but populated with Swedish nationals? What would you be giving up, thereby?
 
In an unsubmitted precursor to my CivSpecific mod, I had replaced one of the civs with the Maritime Republics, with fairly good results. Although the individual republics were at war with one another at one time or another, the golden age unique unit was the Venetian galleass, and I believe they had galiots, galeases, and similar smaller vessels. Yes, most of the city-states had lost autonomy by the 18th-century, but Venice remained strong and influential until the French got their feet muddy. The reason I had lumped them all together was a presumption that they would unite against a common foe (such as Muslims in the Holy Land or corsairs on the Barbary Coast) --- why not? The Greek tribe in [c3c] is all united, despite historicity -- and, furthermore, an individual city-state is inappropriate for a whole tribe, so combining several maritime republics and their outlying colonies and client states seemed a way to go.
 
... yet not left much to do in the way of Tech research and building Improvements and Wonders in realistic time-frames...Any suggestions were, are, and shall remain appreciated! Cheers, :)z

Clearly city improvements, but more importantly small wonders, would have less to do with civil institutions that take decades or centuries to construct, and more about devoting time and resources to, say, a war effort or colonizing expedition.

Furthermore, small wonders and great wonders need not be high-cost edifices ranging in the 100s of shield production but require no upkeep. An opera house, or a national monument, or a government run enterprise would have similar effects to a wonder, and yet cost about the same as a standard improvement, and require upkeep to maintain. Small wonders disappear when a city is taken, but something that would persist even if hostile forces successfully invade would qualify as a great wonder. I'm even thinking of palaces such as Versailles would fall into this type of category.

The point is that instead of eliminating great wonders, repurpose them to add to the atmosphere and feel of the era. What great social forms or grand projects were completed during the 18th century while all this world war zero stuff was brewing? What revolutionary military doctrines were devised? Was the Catholic Church or the Protestant Reformation factors in events during this time?
 
Spoiler :
1701 Jethro Tull invents the seed drill (not the Aqualung, apparently.)
1709 Bartolomeo Cristofori invents the piano.
1711 Englishmen, John Shore invents the tuning fork.
1712 Thomas Newcomen patents the atmospheric steam engine.
1717 Edmond Halley invents the diving bell.
1722 French C. Hopffer patents the fire extinguisher.
1724 Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the first mercury thermometer.
1733 John Kay invents the flying shuttle.
1745 E.G. von Kleist invents the leyden jar, the first electrical capacitor.
1752 Benjamin Franklin invents the lightning rod.
1755 Samuel Johnson publishes the first English language dictionary.
1757 John Campbell invents the sextant.
1758 Dolland invents a chromatic lens.
1761 Englishmen, John Harrison invents the navigational clock or marine chronometer for measuring longitude.
1764 James Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny.
1767 Joseph Priestley invents carbonated water - soda water.
1768 Richard Arkwright patents the spinning frame.
1769 James Watt invents an improved steam engine.
1774 Georges Louis Lesage patents the electric telegraph.
1775 Alexander Cummings invents the flush toilet. Jacques Perrier invents a steamship.
1776 David Bushnell invents a submarine.
1779 Samuel Crompton invents the spinning mule.
1780 Benjamin Franklin invents bi-focal eyeglasses. Gervinus invents the circular saw.
1783 Louis Sebastien demonstrates the first parachute. Benjamin Hanks patents the self-winding clock. The Montgolfier brothers invent the hot-air balloon. Englishmen, Henry Cort invents the steel roller for steel production.
1784 Andrew Meikle invents the threshing machine. Joseph Bramah invents the safety lock.
1785 Edmund Cartwright invents the power loom. Claude Berthollet invents chemical bleaching. Charles Augustus Coulomb invents the torsion balance. Jean Pierre Blanchard invents a working parachute.
1786 John Fitch invents a steamboat.
1789 The guillotine is invented.
1790 The United States issued its first patent to William Pollard of Philadelphia for a machine that roves and spins cotton.
1791 John Barber invents the gas turbine. Early bicycles invented in Scotland.
1792 William Murdoch invents gas lighting. The first ambulance.
1794 Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin. Welshmen, Philip Vaughan invents ball bearings.
1795 Francois Appert invents the preserving jar for food.
1796 Edward Jenner creates a smallpox vaccination.
1797 Wittemore patents a carding machine. A British inventor, Henry Maudslay invents the first metal or precision lathe.
1798 The first soft drink invented. Aloys Senefelder invents lithography.
1799 Alessandro Volta invents the battery. Louis Robert invents the Fourdrinier Machine for sheet paper making.
 
This link mentions the strategy and tactics of the period, which you mentioned earlier in this thread. Probably the most interesting thing of note is how conscription gave way to mobile artillery and light infantry skirmish lines.

I bring it up here to explore the idea of using wonders and improvements to emulate the military doctrines of the day. You've already eliminated "strategy of annihilation" (scorched earth), so one need not be concerned with pillaging. Perhaps Napoleon's "Manoeuvre De Derrière" is simulated with radar towers, giving a combat bonus that could reflect the negative effect on enemy morale, or with zones of control that weaken forces moving near such troops (the one hit point reduction), likewise reflecting the troop's morale. I meant to bring up improvements and wonders, but I inadvertently began talking about unit abilities.

I wanted to say that large population centers could have an improvement or wonder that is a hotbed of impression/press gangs that autoproduce sailors or naval units, or army enrollment facilities that autoproduce conscript infantry. (I don't see how giving the dregs of society a job or sense of purpose can cause civil unrest, but I can see how forcing the populace into service via Draft can.)

As for the Spanish Main, what I recall is that until the sea dogs and privateers began raiding the shipping lane -- and there was only one, thus the name -- there was basically a giant, uncontested supply of revenue funneling into the coffers of the Spanish crown, and activities involving native american haciendas and work camps are largely to be ignored or have no immediate impact on Spanish society. Jesuits revealed the injustices being perpetrated, but the Crown basically had zero power in the New World. There were attempts by some groups of sailors to kidnap tribal women and found a colony, but the women refused to have their babies, so the attempts failed.
 
@Erebras - Thank you on so many counts!

In one point, you mention "what was brewing" in the time-period I'm covering (1715-1770.) Far and away was the Nation-State as opposed to Dynastic Monarchies (which led to the Austrian Empire comprising part of the Netherlands as well as The Kingdom Of The Two Sicilies.) How that plays out in my era ... :dunno: I stop in 1770 as the game engine doesn't allow for events like the American "Revolution" (actually, of course, a war of secession.)

For Techs, I'm pouring through two Truly Dense & Weighty Tomes: Usher's A History Of Mechanical Inventions and Derry & Williams' A Short History Of Technology ("Short," in this case, being 700+ pages) plus heavens only know how many hours of online searching - and I'm a damned good researcher.

So it goes ...


All The Best,

:scan:z
 
I've been offline for a little while -- no need to go into the mundane reasons for that -- but I've noticed this thread when I returned, and wanted to submit a small comment. You didn't really respond or react to my questions, so I suppose the points are moot.

I'm curious what technological advances or inventions of the period will make it into your techtree. It's such a narrow slice of history (80 years?). Then, presuming all parts being equal, each era would be a couple of decades. (I know the Conquests use only one or two eras, but I, personally, hate to see perfectly good eras going to waste.)

I wonder if the techtree would better serve as some sort of geopolitical outline, rather than spotlighting new ways to dig plowfield furrows or the invention of -- I dunno -- a harpsichord tuner. I'm no historian of the time, but certainly you can see that you don't necessarily need to have a tech advance called Social Contract Theory to put those ideals into motion. To put it another way, if I were making a World War II scenario, I would think to explore making the techtree simulate the progress of the war -- or the events leading up to it or the aftermath -- rather than making tech advances of Divine Wind, Personality Cult, Rocketry, Submarine Tactics, Jet Power, Combined Arms, Airborne Doctrine, blah, blah, blah. It's not that I wouldn't have fighter planes, long range bombers, and paratroopers, but I don't know if I would make tech advances specifically for them. But maybe I'd structure the techtree into a storyline, and it would give an overarching idea of political events happening in the world, but, yes, you'd run the risk of merely re-playing WWII instead of giving it enough wiggle room to explore "What If" possibilities. I just don't think, in my example here, that the AI would have what it takes to pull off something like a Normandy invasion or two successful, back-to-back atomic bombing runs. So getting back to World War Zero, would it be useful to have the techtree manipulate events in the game as techs are researched rather than merely spotlighting a brand new gizmo or troop tactic?

And I long considered game mechanics involving revolutions. In CivII it was easily achieved by the event editor, something sorely needed and sorely omitted in CivIII, but it can still be pulled off, I think. I've never tried. But consider these: 1)culture flips (although they are non-violent, and boring, and non-dramatic); 2) foreign nationals (these always cause unrest and war weariness when you're at war, and therefore better simulates a treacherous, ungrateful colony or colonies) 3) alliances at the scenario beginning which deteriorate into war later in the game (just make sure these aren't locked alliances).

That's it for now.
 
I've been offline for a little while -- no need to go into the mundane reasons for that -- but I've noticed this thread when I returned, and wanted to submit a small comment. You didn't really respond or react to my questions, so I suppose the points are moot.

Not at all; indeed, your thoughts & comments have been much appreciated :)

I've been up to my eyeballs researching the era, nudged, in part, by your suggestions.

General historical note:

"Commodities such as lace and woolens were seen as critical components of the new mercantilist economies of Western Europe. The wealth and power of kings was to be based on good stewardship of their realms, and access to a comprehensive array of resources: peasants to till the ground and harvest the food of the kingdom; skilled artisans to produce everything the kingdom needed for its own consumption; merchants to carry surplus produce and goods beyond the kingdom's borders and bring back the wealth of one's neighbours; adventurers to explore, plunder, and open up distant lands as future depositories of the burgeoning trade and population; ministers and bureaucrats to organise it all and ensure that the State received its due share; clergy to see to the spiritual needs of the king's subjects and to educate them on his Divine Right to rule over them; and soldiers... Soldiers: the unwanted and idle of the lower orders, led by an aristocracy with a birthright to wage war, and to consume that wealth so hardly won by the peasants, artisans, merchants, and adventurers, to such a degree that the king himself, his kingdom wracked and groaning under the taxation required to pay his army, might be reduced to penury. Thus the need for new markets, and soldiers to conquer them..."

On a macro-political level, I start in 1715 because the War Of The Spanish Succession is over, Great Britain is unified, and most of the rest of the period retains relatively stable alliances (yes, the War Of The Austrian Succession being the most notable exception re: Great Britain, but there I believe effective workarounds for that;) some I'm making "artificial" for play balance. The Great Northern War haunted me, but it ended in the 1720s and I didn't want Sweden at perpetual war; my attempted "workaround" is to (1) put Sweden and Russia into different Culture Groups (2) Make Sweden's "Least Favorite Gov" be "Tsardom" - Russia's will be "Ottoman Empire (3) Set Sweden's aggression to 5.

Civs to date are all the Usual European Suspects + Qing China, Mughal India, Persia, Afghanistan, Oman, whatever I decide to call the Uighurs/Khazaks, 2 SE Asian States TBD, Algonquian, Iroquois, Caribbean Pirates; others TBD.

4 "Fixed Alliances" 2 at perpetual war:

1 - Great Britain, Prussia & Portugal
2 - France, Spain & Bavaria
3 - Qing China v. 4 - Uighurs/Khazaks

Regarding military technology: "In general the period from 1700 to 1800 saw no major innovations in firearms and weapons in general. Some new ideas though helped to improve arms that were already in use. There was also a number of outstanding military inventions such as explosive-filled artillery shells, rockets, the 5.5-inch mortar-fired explosive projectile, the Shrapnel explosive sub-projectile shell, and a few more all of which were considered to be very cruel weapons and were disregarded. Eighteenth century armies used what they were issued with some refinement and cared for no major improvement."

Nonetheless, Techs to date (most certainly borrowing from your list!) (plus add the above-mentioned) -

MILITARY:
  • Letters Of Marque & Reprisal (“Privateers”)
  • French (first) introduced artillery including mounting the gun on wheeled carriages and the trunnion to improve aiming.
  • Linear Deployment (many armies still used massed deployment until well into the century.)
  • (Congreve) Rockets
  • Ballistic Pendulum (This gave gunners the ability to measure the power of a given quantity of gunpowder.)
  • Standard Sized Iron Ramrod.
  • Whole-cast cannon barrels.
  • Kentucky Longrifle
  • Light Troops (Austrian hussars first.)
  • Swedish Naval Reform (1756.)
  • Frederick the Great's development of the "Oblique Order" (7 Years War.)
  • Frederick the Great's introduction of horse-drawn field artillery (ditto.)
  • The introduction of the Division (combined arms) formation by the French in 1760.
  • Russian Military Reform.
Rather than 5 ranks of ambiguous comparison, Techs will allow "2nd Class" the "First Class" SOLs.



ECONOMIC/SOCIAL:
  • Increased Taxation.
  • Government Reform.
  • Central Bank (starting Tech for a few.)
  • Jacobite Rebellion
  • Many Types of Plantations/Mines
  • "Port Of Disembarcation" (generates New World Settlers)


TECHNOLOGICAL:
  • First Commercially Successful Iron Plough (1730)
  • Measurement Of Longitude
  • The Flying Shuttle (1733) doubled the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and weaving.
  • Sextant (1757)
  • Spinning Jenny


New Improvements & Wonders:
  • MUCH borrowing from timerover1951's suggestions :D
  • Mill
  • Playhouse
  • Slave Port (generates Slave Worker Units)


- Already Built
  • Several Central Banks
  • Hagia Sophia
  • Vatican


MUCH more to follow ...

-;)z
 
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