Era of Miracles fantasy mod - developer diary

Pazyryk · Oct 23, 2011

It seems to me that market should be a very early building, possibly the very first a city can make. I think any gathering of people worthy of calling itself a city has a market of some sort, going back to the very earliest history. Currency is also a very old innovation (no one really knows how old, but certainly an early Ancient Era tech is appropriate). I have Currency and Mining as 1st tier techs that allow Coinage, which opens up subsequent money buildings and techs.

In my mod, market gives 1g for every resource tile and 1c for "cultural-type" resources (things that could be made into jewelry and fine clothing and such). It seemed logical to me that markets should also have a cultural dimension. Travel in any 3rd world country and you will see that a market is in fact the cultural center of a city. (Note that I don't feel constrained as base Civ5 that each building/wonder should only do exactly one thing. In fact, I even have almost every wonder contributing a good amount of culture ... I know this is a very radical idea.)

PawelS · Oct 23, 2011

2011-10-23

@Pazyryk: Looking at the early technologies (Hunting, Gathering, Stone Tools), it seems my mod begins deep in the Stone Age (perhaps it doesn't make sense to have cities in that age, but it's a fantasy mod after all

). I agree that Market is too late in the tech tree in normal game (in Medieval Era), in EoM it comes with a Tier 4 technology called Trade, which requires Domestication and Pottery. Of course some forms of trade were possible earlier too, and I think it could be in the form of exchanging various things for beads, hence my idea about the Bead Maker.

Note that I don't feel constrained as base Civ5 that each building/wonder should only do exactly one thing.

I think the same, I made some buildings give some additional effects too, for example Castle gives +1 culture in addition to defense, Infirmary helps the city growth but also increases the healing rate of units in the city, and the Town Hall gives many different benefits...

orlanth · Oct 23, 2011

This looks great PawelS; I am really glad to see a Civ5 total conversion mod getting made, especially one inspired by MoM and Age of Wonders :king:

If you want some good soundtrack music with a dark-fantasy theme, feel free to take some from the pack I made for the Warhammer mod, looks like its still available below.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WSL8S7K5

Alzara · Oct 23, 2011

orlanth said:
This looks great PawelS; I am really glad to see a Civ5 total conversion mod getting made, especially one inspired by MoM and Age of Wonders

If you want some good soundtrack music with a dark-fantasy theme, feel free to take some from the pack I made for the Warhammer mod, looks like its still available below.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WSL8S7K5

I might take some of those too for Naeralith if you don't mind?

Al

Ahriman · Oct 24, 2011

Jeweler is a building that can be built when the city is near Silver, Gold, Gems or Pearls resources. It will probably give +1 happiness, and some gold and culture. I'm not sure about the name - 'jeweler' means a person that creates jewellery, but how should I call the place where that person works?

Jeweler works fine. Its hard to think of something else that works for metals and gems and pearls.

I needed a building that gives gold before Market, and the only idea I had was Bead Maker.

I would use the name "village" for the map improvement, and call this building a trading post.

feel free to take some from the pack I made for the Warhammer mod, looks like its still available below.

As a former Warhammer mod team member with Orlanth, I would love to see this stuff get use. There were some fantastic sound tracks in there.

Feel free to pillage any of the other design ideas too. Some are in a private forum, but many of them are here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=334546

Ahriman · Oct 24, 2011

Here were some civic ideas:

Spoiler :

GOVERNMENT

Spoiler :

Military

Spoiler :

Society

Spoiler :

Labor

Spoiler :

Religion

Spoiler :

Here was the building design:

Spoiler :

PawelS · Oct 24, 2011

2011-10-24

@orlanth: I downloaded the music, some of the tunes sound really good and I think I'll use them, thanks for your offer

Ahriman said:
I would use the name "village" for the map improvement, and call this building a trading post.

Village will be another improvement, built by a type of great person called Village Founder (I don't have a better idea for this unit name so far). It will give a little bit of all yields, and, as a GP improvement, will be better than other improvements (at least those without resources). The Trading Post improvement will still be in the game, and I don't feel that 'Trading Post' is a good name for a city building, as for me it sounds more like a remote facility (but I'm not an English native speaker, so I may be wrong). Why do you think my Bead Maker idea isn't good enough to be in the game?

@Ahriman (post 146): Thanks, I'll use it as a source of getting ideas when working on buildings and policies (although they are from Civ4, so some things must change, as there are no health in Civ5, for example).

Pazyryk · Oct 24, 2011

trading posts

What's wrong with a village being just a small undeveloped city? Perhaps working a couple improvements of its own and contributing a unit every once and a while?

This is what villages are, after all. (I know "realism" is always a weak argument. I'm just pointing out that a "worked improvement" is not an inherently better representation.)
The AI really really really really really really want's to build these. Why fight it?

PawelS · Oct 24, 2011

Pazyryk said:
trading posts

Why? There can be both villages and trading posts, trading posts can give only gold, while villages (as GP improvements) can give other yields as well.

Pazyryk said:
What's wrong with a village being just a small undeveloped city? Perhaps working a couple improvements of its own and contributing a unit every once and a while?

This is what villages are, after all. (I know "realism" is always a weak argument. I'm just pointing out that a "worked improvement" is not an inherently better representation.)

The AI really really really really really really want's to build these. Why fight it?

Because I don't know how to do it?

But seriously, this is a good idea, although I don't know what would "working a couple improvements of its own" mean...

Pazyryk · Oct 24, 2011

PawelS said:
Why? There can be both villages and trading posts, trading posts can give only gold, while villages (as GP improvements) can give other yields as well.

I don't like the graphics (fixable) and don't really understand what they represent (my problem, I know). But the real reason is that I'm moving almost all gold to trade-based rather than tile-based generation. The only tile-derived gold will be from specific resources and their associated improvements.

PawelS said:
Because I don't know how to do it? But seriously, this is a good idea, although I don't know what would "working a couple improvements of its own" mean...

That just means that it is a city that is small, for whatever reason. It works a farm and maybe a mine or sawmill and that is about it. Maybe it is small because it is in the shadow of a great city, or perhaps it is bordered on all sides by forests (forests are not nice in my mod, at least not to most of the race of Man). My point is that the AI likes to build cities in crappy locations anyway. I know you're trying to cut down on the number of cities. I'm sort of being a pest in suggesting (once too often, perhaps; this is the last time, I promise) that small crappy cities are fine and flavorful for fantasy. (But complete and total land conversion to productive use is not...)

PawelS · Oct 24, 2011

Now I get it, I thought you meant some new game mechanics that would make village improvements work like small cities...

My point is that the AI likes to build cities in crappy locations anyway. I know you're trying to cut down on the number of cities. I'm sort of being a pest in suggesting (once too often, perhaps; this is the last time, I promise) that small crappy cities are fine and flavorful for fantasy. (But complete and total land conversion to productive use is not...)

I get your point, but if you can found small cities without penalty, nothing prevents you from grabbing all productive terrain with them, and I don't want it to happen, at least not in the early game. A few small cities would be OK though, but I still don't know how to implement the ability to build them, but not too many of them, in this mod...

Hmm, maybe I should make it a building that increases happiness but somehow prevents the city from growing too large... But the AI will have no idea where to build it...

Ahriman · Oct 25, 2011

Village will be another improvement, built by a type of great person called Village Founder (I don't have a better idea for this unit name so far). It will give a little bit of all yields, and, as a GP improvement, will be better than other improvements (at least those without resources). The Trading Post improvement will still be in the game, and I don't feel that 'Trading Post' is a good name for a city building, as for me it sounds more like a remote facility (but I'm not an English native speaker, so I may be wrong). Why do you think my Bead Maker idea isn't good enough to be in the game?

I don't understand the value of the village founder mechanic (to me great people should have 2 abilities, like the existing ones, either an effect or an improvement creation), but I'm trying to be less negative

You could rename the village to "town" and "town founder" or "colonist" or whatever, have the gold-bearing improvement be trading post or cottage, and have the gold-building be trading post.

I'm not fond of bead maker because it is very narrow. Beads aren't a culturally universal thing, and it starts feeling odd for all kinds of different factions and races to have beads as the foundation of their economy. Beads are also a very very small part of any economy, so it feels weird for it to be the main economic building of the early era. Whereas trading post is more generic. "Barter hall" or something could also work.

Another possibility would be to make "market" the first one, and then have a "great market" or "forum" or "agora" or "souk" or "caravanersai" or "trade center" or whatever as an intermediate step between markets and banks.
A market is just somewhere that trade is conducted, and we have had markets since the very first cities.
A market doesn't even require currency, you can still have barter in a market.

Ahriman · Oct 25, 2011

What's wrong with a village being just a small undeveloped city?

Because cities are, well, cities. Villages are very small, and usually in the hinterland of some other city. The name village by its nature tends to imply that there is something larger around; it implies that this thing is small relative to other settlements.
So to me, a realism argument goes the other way. A city is the largest concentration of people in its surrounding area. A village isn't. We might call something with 5,000 people today a village because there is a city of 100,000 nearby. In the medieval era they would have called something of 5,000 a city and a village might have had 300 people.
Basically, a city should feel different from just a village.

To me, a city in civ represents a major center. It covers not just the urban population, but the population in the surrounding hinterland. If I have a size 10 city with 3 specialists, 4 citizens working farm tiles and 3 citizens working trading post or mine tiles, then only some of the population is really "cityfolk" (the specialists, and maybe the families of people working on mines), the rest are villagers or farmers or townsfolk who live in the hinterland and sell their goods in the city. If a tile with a farm is being worked, those citizens live on that tile, not in the city, but they are still "attached" to the city in an economic sense and for a gameplay convenience sense. We don't separately model the rural/small town population, but they still exist, they're just the guys in the cities who are working tiles.

This is why I feel no need to have lots of small cities that are modeling villagers; better to have a village improvement that provides gold and citizens of the city that work there.

The AI really really really really really really want's to build these. Why fight it?

Its easy to stop mass spam of AI cities through minimum city distance of 3 and happiness constraints.

Now I get it, I thought you meant some new game mechanics that would make village improvements work like small cities...

No, I think what he means is that there are no different mechanics for a village or city, that there is no such thing in-game as a village, that he thinks a size 2 city is a village whereas a size 20 city is a city and a size 30 city is a metropolis.

Ahriman · Oct 25, 2011

Thanks, I'll use it as a source of getting ideas when working on buildings and policies

If there are any other aspects of the Civ4 game you'd like to see for ideas, let me know, we had almost the whole design done (though I'm not sure where the spell lists were....).
Check out the linked thread with all the various faction designs too. And I think I posted the tech tree earlier in this thread (I can dig it out again).

Pazyryk · Oct 25, 2011

PawelS said:
I get your point, but if you can found small cities without penalty, nothing prevents you from grabbing all productive terrain with them, and I don't want it to happen, at least not in the early game. A few small cities would be OK though, but I still don't know how to implement the ability to build them, but not too many of them, in this mod...

Here's the problem. In base Civ5, 1 pop in a large city is always worse (on a benifit/cost basis) than 1 pop in a small city. Just look at the equation for the food basket: food needed = 15 + 8 (n - 1) + (n - 1)^1.5 rounded down to the next integer (n=# of cities). So to go from pop 10->11 costs about 7 times more food (114f) than from pop 1->2 (15f). Is a citizen in a city size 10 really 7 times more productive? NO. Hence, small city population points are always better than large city population points. (Note: you can do deeper mathematical analyses, trying to factor in cost of settler, but you'll get the same basic conclusion.)

So, given a base system that strongly disfavors large city populations points, they then add strong punishments for small city population points: unhappiness/city and basically arresting social policy progression for growing wide versus tall. However, the AI doesn't understand. So they jack up AI handicap bonuses to compensate. Result: human ICS is prevented, but not AI (well, except for the hard tile distance limit).

To be fair, they have balanced it pretty well (post patch) so that wide and tall are both viable strategies for the human at least. However, I still don't think the AI deals with this well, and this forces a lot of extra AI bonus handicapping.

Alternative: remove multiplier and exponent (Edit: I set multiplier to 0 and exponent to 1, though the latter should work at 0) so that 1 pop in a big city is always better than 1 pop in a small city (assuming the big city has more building modifiers). Naturally, this requires a re-balance in tile yield and food/pop because the current levels would give you exponential growth to 30 (e.g., on farmed grassland), which you don't want. After this, you can remove a lot of punishment for small cities, in particular unhappiness per city and the social policy arrest.

In essence, I'd like to think I'm removing a lot of unnecessary "punishment." Punishment for growing big cities rather than spamming cities. Punishment for building that arctic outpost to claim a valuable resource. I should be building cities thinking about what the specific city can do (whether it be great or quite modest) rather than how it is going to hurt my social progression or growth of my larger cities. Of course, you have to pay the piper somewhere, and in my system it is in tile yield relative to food/citizen.

The desired effect (for me) is that you can build small cities wherever you need them. There aren't nasty indirect punishments (really, why should that arctic outpost hinder social policy progression or growth of my other cities? It's annoying and there is no sense in it). However, there is only a modest benefit, which in most cases is not greater than the opportunity cost (i.e., you could have built another building in your great city instead of the settler, and the great city is where you are looking to get the vast majority of your gold/research/culture/production).

The devil is in the details, of course.

Pazyryk · Oct 25, 2011

Ahriman said:
Its easy to stop mass spam of AI cities through minimum city distance of 3 and happiness constraints.

The minimum city distance works (though I dislike it). The happiness constrain on AI doesn't work at higher difficulty because it has been negated (for the most part) by happiness bonuses to AI. OK, it has an effect when the AI drives unhappiness to the level where it can't build settlers. But it isn't changing AI behavior as far as I can tell.

Actually, I really like PawelS's system of limiting settlers as part of the solution. Certainly I like it better than hard placement rules or jacking up unhappiness. I'll use this too, if I have to, though I think removing the huge big city penalty will remove the motivation to spam cities (for human at least; the AI might have to be limited so that it plays more optimally for my system).

Ahriman · Oct 25, 2011

Here's the problem. In base Civ5, 1 pop in a large city is always worse (on a benifit/cost basis) than 1 pop in a small city.

Thats not quite true. Yes, the food advantage favors the small city. But the large city is much more likely to be able to have lots of % yield modifiers, like the library, university, market, bank, workshop, windmill, etc.

So the yields from 1 pop in a large city are very often much higher than the yields in a small city.

So, you can get more population using small cities, but this takes a lot of happiness. You have smaller population using large cities, but each pop point is much more efficient while still only using up a single point of unhappiness.

The vanilla game to some extent and the VEM mod in particular really try to play up the viability of both of these approaches; the Wide Empire (lots of small cities) vs the Tall Empire (few large cities).

IMO vanilla is overly biased towards small cities because the % yields aren't large enough on some buildings (or the buildings are too expensive) and the unhappiness per city isn't large enough and there aren't enough food % bonuses. VEM is much better balanced and might even be slightly biased towards larger cities. But I think this kind of system of tradeoffs is the right way to go.
The system where each city has 10 unhappiness each removes the possibility of tradeoffs; it forces every empire to be Tall. The system where you can always easily build more cities also removes tradeoffs; it forces every (optimal) empire to be Wide.

Alternative: remove multiplier and exponent (Edit: I set multiplier to 0 and exponent to 1, though the latter should work at 0) so that 1 pop in a big city is always better than 1 pop in a small city (assuming the big city has more building modifiers)

I don't like the idea of one side always having an advantage over the other, I think it is better to allow multiple strategies, where different choices have advantages or disadvantages.

In essence, I'd like to think I'm removing a lot of unnecessary "punishment."

I think any good design has to provide carrots and sticks for various options; a good design is one such that decisions are never no-brainers.

The desired effect (for me) is that you can build small cities wherever you need them.

This wouldn't be my preference. IMO there has to be a limiting device that stops you from spamming cities everywhere and taking territory. IMO it should not be easy or costless to make an extra city to grab a resource; that should have an opportunity cost.
IMO happiness is the best way to do this; happiness is specifically designed in Civ5 to be the variable that limits expansion. Its easy to remove the AI happiness bonuses on high difficulty level; this has been done in VEM.

Terrain control is a valuable thing. Each city you build gives you 7 free tiles within your borders. You should have to pay for that with some kind of tradeoff.

Another thing with limiting settlers; the AI is really, really bad at protecting its settlers from barbarians, and this would be even worse if there is more wilderness. So with this system you would probably need to make settlers able to defend themselves.

[Another thing on wilderness and barbarians that could be considered; increase terrain costs of tundra and deserts to 2, and have barbarians that spawn in tundra/desert have an arctic/desert survival promotion respectively that lets them move normally in home terrain.]

Pazyryk · Oct 25, 2011

Ahriman said:
So the yields from 1 pop in a large city are very often much higher than the yields in a small city.

Umm... Did I say otherwise? What I said was that they were not 7 times higher, even though the "cost" (in food) is 7.6 times higher. There was a reason why I said "benefit/cost basis."

Ahriman said:
IMO vanilla is overly biased towards small cities because the % yields aren't large enough on some buildings (or the buildings are too expensive) and the unhappiness per city isn't large enough and there aren't enough food % bonuses. VEM is much better balanced and might even be slightly biased towards larger cities. But I think this kind of system of tradeoffs is the right way to go.

That's fine. VEM certainly works. To be honest, I think the current base Civ5 is perfectly well "balanced." What all of us are doing here is changing stuff (for various reasons) and then doing our best to get back to balanced.

Ahriman said:
The system where each city has 10 unhappiness each removes the possibility of tradeoffs; it forces every empire to be Tall.

I tend to agree. Though it depends on what other systems are in place.

Ahriman said:
The system where you can always easily build more cities also removes tradeoffs; it forces every (optimal) empire to be Wide.

No. I described very clearly that I am removing a huge penalty against large cities. You can say this won't work (and indeed, it is a radical change) but don't say that there is no tradeoff. I have presented the tradeoff.

Ahriman said:
I think any good design has to provide carrots and sticks for various options; a good design is one such that decisions are never no-brainers.

I'm sure that there is no modder here that wants to remove deep decision making. If I say that I don't like a particular stick or carrot (or I'm presenting alternative sticks and carrots), that doesn't mean I want no-brainers.

human machine · Oct 25, 2011

Ahriman said:
Another possibility would be to make "market" the first one, and then have a "great market" or "forum" or "agora" or "souk" or "caravanersai" or "trade center" or whatever as an intermediate step between markets and banks.
A market is just somewhere that trade is conducted, and we have had markets since the very first cities.

I like caravanersai. it has a certain 'je ne sais quoi'

in a mod I was working on I put the market earlier in the tech tree and was going to add either a Caravan Stop or a Trade Enclave. Good early gold building names are definitely hard to find.

Ahriman · Oct 25, 2011

Umm... Did I say otherwise? What I said was that they were not 7 times higher, even though the "cost" (in food) is 7.6 times higher. There was a reason why I said "benefit/cost basis."

I think we're confusing each other.
I'm talking about the yields-per-population point, which I thought is what you were talking about.

In general, a size X city will be much more than X times as productive as a size 1 city, because the size X city can have more yield boosteres. Economies of scale, basically. You can afford to build %yield boosters in a few big cities, you can't afford to build them everywhere.

So, in a small city, each pop point requires less food, but provides lower yields. In a large city, each pop point requires more food, but provides higher yields.

So it might be the case that for example 10 cities of size 4 (total pop 40) are somewhat equivalent to 4 cities of size (total pop 28) in that they might have similar overall net yields.

No. I described very clearly that I am removing a huge penalty against large cities. You can say this won't work (and indeed, it is a radical change) but don't say that there is no tradeoff. I have presented the tradeoff.

I'm sorry, I don't think I understand what you're saying here.
It sounded to me like you were saying that you wanted it to be basically costless to found a new city as long as that city never grew very big:
"The desired effect (for me) is that you can build small cities wherever you need them."

What is the large penalty you want to remove; the increasing marginal food cost for large cities?
I think that if large cities have the same food cost per person as small cities, then that would tend to massively favor large cities, because large cities get higher yields per person.

If there was a combination of low unhappiness per city and a flat or only very slightly increasing food cost per population point, then I would expect to see a few very large cities that build all the infrastructure and tried to be as large as possible, where all the production took place, and then lots of size 1 cities all over the landscape that were just taking up space and capturing terrain, and I wouldn't bother building structures in those cities (wouldn't be worth the hammer/maintenance costs). That would seem to me to be unambigulously the best strategy in such a situation.

Do you agree? Is that your desired goal? It is not my desired goal; my preference is to maintain a tradeoff where a new size 1 city is a net drain on your economy (because of unhappiness) and takes some time to be able to pay for itself (to slow down REx or ICS), and where there is a tradeoff between wide and tall where both are feasible and have different advantages or disadvantages.

IMO a better design is one that still has a significant increase in the food cost of new citizens for larger cities (though it could/should be slightly smaller than vanilla; VEM does this, and is a good model to follow) but allows various buildings to boost food yields; this way you can have a Tall strategy, but it requires investment in food infrastructure and/or social policies that promote a Tall playstyle. Also, change the domestic trade route formula to provide less gold overall and particularly less for small cities.

Era of Miracles fantasy mod - developer diary

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Tyrant

Ancient Druid

Deity

Ancient Druid

Deity

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