City State Diplomacy Mod (Updated)

Here's 2.0 of the Merchant Mod I posted above. I changed quite a bit...its not really the same mod at all. Much better, in fact!

Now, each Merchant has a resource (Strategic, Luxury or otherwise) that it needs to be built. There are 10 merchants (Sheep, Wine, Incense, Silk, Spices, Oil, Coal, Cotton, Sugar, Fur) that vary from 50-70% for a production return depending upon the resource's general availability and value (i.e. Sheep have a return of 50% while Oil has a return of 75%). While active, the unit consumes the resource, so any happiness bonuses or strategic bonuses the resource had activated disappear while the merchant is around. Furthermore, the merchant has a high upkeep, so it is not cost-effective to have a bunch hanging around. All units cost 100 hammer regardless of age.

Once spent, the resource is returned to your imperial resource pool.

The units are scattered about in historically-relevant places (Wool and Fur are Ancient, Incense is Classical, Wine and Sugar are Medieval, Spices and Silks are Renaissance, Coal and Cotton are Industrial and Oil is Modern).

Gazebo's Mercantile Mod

What do you think? Download it and give it a try!!

There are two known problems: 1.) There are no unit pictures for the bottom-left circle. This is because I didn't want to make 10 merchant pictures from scratch. Sorry.

2.) By late game, the unit production menu will have 10 merchant units on it. This is a necessary evil, unless someone more gifted than I with LUA wants to show me how to add a new tab to the production menu list.
 
could you tie the unit creation so that the city building the unit needs that resource in its city bounderies? that way there would never be 10 extra units on the production screen. This would also add some complexity to city placement.

I think if you are going to include some resources you should include them all so that they dont become unbalanced. Maybe some like incense and silk could produce units that would need to go on trade missions with other civs or CS and others were local trade within your own empire or something like that. Sort of like the great merchants trade mission from civ IV (not sure if merchants in civV do the same thing as i never get them).

Anyway, looks good so far, cant wait to test it out!
 
could you tie the unit creation so that the city building the unit needs that resource in its city bounderies? that way there would never be 10 extra units on the production screen. This would also add some complexity to city placement.

I think if you are going to include some resources you should include them all so that they dont become unbalanced. Maybe some like incense and silk could produce units that would need to go on trade missions with other civs or CS and others were local trade within your own empire or something like that. Sort of like the great merchants trade mission from civ IV (not sure if merchants in civV do the same thing as i never get them).

Anyway, looks good so far, cant wait to test it out!

I scoured the available XML strings for a way to tie unit production to a city's resources, however I was unsuccessful. The way buildings handle resources is different from that of units. That was my intention, however it didn't work out the way I wanted (yet).

I only have 10 right now for testing. Plus, I don't want to have too many units flooding the unit production list until I can find a way to hide or move inactive units. Test it out and give me some feedback.


(Edit) An additional thought: Building on your comment rhammer, what if different types of Merchants had different purposes? For example:

Hurry Construction Merchants (weaker than Great Engineers):

Marble, Iron, Aluminum, etc. (Strategic and/or construction-related resources)


Cultural Merchants (drop culture bombs):

Incense, Wine, etc.


Diplomatic Merchants (same function as existing diplomatic units in CSD, but with larger gold payouts)

Silks, Spices, Pearls, Gold, etc.)



What do you think? I'm just brainstorming here.
 
I scoured the available XML strings for a way to tie unit production to a city's resources, however I was unsuccessful. The way buildings handle resources is different from that of units. That was my intention, however it didn't work out the way I wanted (yet).

I only have 10 right now for testing. Plus, I don't want to have too many units flooding the unit production list until I can find a way to hide or move inactive units. Test it out and give me some feedback.


(Edit) An additional thought: Building on your comment rhammer, what if different types of Merchants had different purposes? For example:

Hurry Construction Merchants (weaker than Great Engineers):

Marble, Iron, Aluminum, etc. (Strategic and/or construction-related resources)


Cultural Merchants (drop culture bombs):

Incense, Wine, etc.


Diplomatic Merchants (same function as existing diplomatic units in CSD, but with larger gold payouts)

Silks, Spices, Pearls, Gold, etc.)



What do you think? I'm just brainstorming here.

arg, thats too bad as its annoying to have so many units showing and clogging things up, reducing it to 3 units would be a good solution, it works a lot better then having a separate unit for each resource. Although i think diplomatic merchants should need to be sent to non CS AI civs to conduct mission. They would then just receive gold and no diplomatic points.

This also gives us a reason to not trade away all excess resources.

Would it be possible to do one that acted as a spy, for maybe the gems, silks, or something like that, that could conduct a mission in a foreign city to view through FoW in a certain radius for a turn or something?

ill keep thinking and let you know if i have any other thoughts
 
Alright so i was able to test the mod a bit last friday and I think the one merchant per resource is way too many and just isn't a whole lot of fun. If you are able to change it to the above method with only 2 or 3 or 4 new units or so that would be a lot better. Expecially because they have limited use currently. If each did something different it would be a lot more fun and seem less pointless. Good steps so far though
 
Alright so i was able to test the mod a bit last friday and I think the one merchant per resource is way too many and just isn't a whole lot of fun. If you are able to change it to the above method with only 2 or 3 or 4 new units or so that would be a lot better. Expecially because they have limited use currently. If each did something different it would be a lot more fun and seem less pointless. Good steps so far though

Like I said, it was just an experiment, and, in my opinion as well, somewhat of a bust as it cluttered the unit menu. I'm not really sure I'll go anywhere with it (for now), especially because you cannot do an OR modifier for resources, only an AND modifier. Lame.

G
 
Hey G, I just noticed in my last game that I was able to buy the WTO - oversight?
 
Can you possibly try to buff the Great merchant. It's rubbish at the moment. Maybe he should give 120 influence, or not be to do with city states at all. The gold bonus barely makes it better than messengers. And maybe you can make it possible to build diplo units from last era? I actually prefer messengers to envoys because they're cheaper.
 
Can you possibly try to buff the Great merchant. It's rubbish at the moment. Maybe he should give 120 influence, or not be to do with city states at all. The gold bonus barely makes it better than messengers. And maybe you can make it possible to build diplo units from last era? I actually prefer messengers to envoys because they're cheaper.

I can boost his gold payout, but influence amounts are a fixed quantity due to the game.

The reason I obsolete previous-era units is for balance purposes– otherwise, the cost would be too cheap late-game. It is a necessary evil. If you don't like it, feel free to delete the <Obsoletetech> string in the units.xml file.

G
 
I just downloaded the CSD the other night and I must say it's awesome. I have Info Addict installed as well and both team up to make a great experience. Sweet job Gazebo! :king:
 
I just downloaded the CSD the other night and I must say it's awesome. I have Info Addict installed as well and both team up to make a great experience. Sweet job Gazebo! :king:


Thanks! The thread is pretty quiet now that most of the bugs are ironed out. I'll probably fix the WTO purchase bug later this week and post a hotfix.

I never heard back from Thalassicus concerning CSDs implementation in his packs. Seems he has other plans, which is understandable considering the changes CSD would bring to his diplomatic model.

Anything else I missed the past week or so?
G
 
I never heard back from Thalassicus concerning CSDs implementation in his packs. Seems he has other plans, which is understandable considering the changes CSD would bring to his diplomatic model.

As long as the two remain compatible, I think it's fine - the changes here probably go beyond the scope of the Balance mods. And CSD is in CCMATII anyway, hopefully Sneaks will get that ironed out soon.
 
As long as the two remain compatible, I think it's fine - the changes here probably go beyond the scope of the Balance mods. And CSD is in CCMATII anyway, hopefully Sneaks will get that ironed out soon.

I agree. I'm not sure why Sneaks is having a problem with CSD– the unit graphics problem should be easily solved by copy-pasting the unique unit info from my file into a larger mod-wide file.

Also, hooray for CSD being one of the 5 mods featured in that new strategy magazine. Kind of weird, though, that they just copy-pasted my blurb from the Modbuddy. Can't complain about free press, however!


G
 
I am having major issues mainly because CCMAT now has some absurd file count. Everything "should" work as it is set up, but alas. I might have hit a snag in load order or somesuch.
 
I sent the monster-solution to Gedemon to look at, since it also includes R.E.D. and the only piece that seems to not function for CSD is the unit graphic itself.

If you want to take a peek, feel free to download the monster

http://www.mediafire.com/?29p8j6j59lxdal5

Will do later. I imagine its simply because the custom art defines are being overwritten.
 
There are two known problems: 1.) There are no unit pictures for the bottom-left circle. This is because I didn't want to make 10 merchant pictures from scratch. Sorry.

Want some?
Any plans on integrating it with CSD, btw.

PS; You'll need an 80x80 Mod_Icon decision to make for LeoPaRd soon, also.
 
Want some?
Any plans on integrating it with CSD, btw.

PS; You'll need an 80x80 Mod_Icon decision to make for LeoPaRd soon, also.

Zyxpsilon,

I appreciate the offer, however until I can make the units more useful, I probably won't use the merchant idea for a little while.

You'll need an 80x80 Mod_Icon decision to make for LeoPaRd soon

What do you mean by this? I have been away from the forums for a few weeks.
G
 
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