Naval Mod Creation - Discussion

Okay I've been playing CIV to death and I've decided that the naval & sea in general could do with some improving. In this respect I thought I would try my hand at making a complete mod to change the seafaring aspect of the game.

Basically what I could do with knowing is
1) has this already been done (quick search of forums suggest not) and
2) what features would people like to see

Things I've already started on.
1)Making coastal tiles and ocean tiles all useful by introducing "Shipping Lanes". Idea being that the ocean should provide wealth by shipping and military ships should be used to protect the seas.

Currently I've introduced this by making Workboats create shipping lanes that add -1 food +2 commerce on the tiles. Coastal towns can now either have quick growth or generate a lot of revenue.

2) Introducing the same ideas as in the http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144726&highlight=caravan caravan mod and adding them to naval units (currently the priveteer) so that naval units can make merchant trips and generate revenue from far off lands.

3a) Reducing the costs of military units to enable the creation of proper fleets. In vanilla CIV I find it impossible to create an invasion army AND an invasion fleet until very late on in the game. Perhaps being British my experience of history is that nations have always been able to land fleets filled with troops on distant lands.
3b) Linked to this I aim to either create new naval units and/or bring the time until carvel etc. are discovered to earlier in the game. Currently find by the time you get worthwhile military units you don't really need them as you've already done all the expansion you need as you are forced to by the game.

Things I'd Like To Do
1) Work out if it's possible to create trade routes between two cities seperated by water that generates gold provided no enemy unit is on any of the tiles along this route. Currently have no idea if this is possible or how to do it. Any help would be appreciated.

2) Create new and diverse naval units. Suggestions welcome.
i) Viking Long Boats... AEGIS Cruiser... have been done so I'll try and seek permission to use them.
ii) Thinking more interesting and unique units. Maybe a Pilgrims/Mayflower/Plymouth national wonder that allows you to create settler boats... a boat that could land on a land coastal tile and build city (saving the need to build boats and then load a settle onto it)
iii) East India Trade Company wonder that boosts trade.
iv) Trade Ships (mentioned above)
v) Prison Ships that add+1 happiness in city in which its built and when unloaded, unloads babarians (or anarchists like in Civ2)

Obviously they are just some ideas off the top of my head and im not sure if they can be implemented but thats the kinda divercity im interested in making into a mod.

3) I seem to remember theres a mod which has the eurotunnel wonder... would like to find it and seek permission to use it.

4) Investigate the possibility of creating a General and Admiral Unit who cannot attack but adds bonus to units on the same tile i.e. medic bonus & defence bonus.

5) Find somebody/learn myself how to create a bouy tile improvement graphic.

6) Any other suggestions. Naval units and battles have played a large part in history and should be reflected in the game.

Thanks for your time reading this and I'd very much appreciate comments/suggestions/help.

I have never been too impressed with navies in Civ. Civ 4 has made them alot more important than in previous versions, but they can still feel somewhat lacking.

The Butler said:

1) Work out if it's possible to create trade routes between two cities seperated by water that generates gold provided no enemy unit is on any of the tiles along this route. Currently have no idea if this is possible or how to do it. Any help would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, I thought it was like this anyway - you can only have a trade route with somebodies city if you can trace a safe route to it.

The Butler said:

ii) Thinking more interesting and unique units. Maybe a Pilgrims/Mayflower/Plymouth national wonder that allows you to create settler boats... a boat that could land on a land coastal tile and build city (saving the need to build boats and then load a settle onto it)

Click to expand...

Now this is an interesting idea. But, maybe it would be better to add an action allowing any non-modern era ships to land on a coastal plot and build a city. To refine this idea, if the ship is a warship (strength > 0) then they could build a fort? if the ship is a non-warship (strength < 0) then they could build a settlement, not a city, that overtime could evolve into a city or a settler unit could build a city on it, the resulting city would have one or two extra citizens, those citizens would be from the civ that created the settlement. So what do you think?

The Great Apple said:

I have never been too impressed with navies in Civ. Civ 4 has made them alot more important than in previous versions, but they can still feel somewhat lacking.

Hmmm, I thought it was like this anyway - you can only have a trade route with somebodies city if you can trace a safe route to it.

Click to expand...

I'm refering to turning it back to a case where sea trade routes are visible and can be pirated. Personally I like the fact that land trade routes are now invisible and are just there when you connect cities by road coz trade by road is not usually cut off by anything but I think sea trade routes should be visible and able to be tampered with. Naval blockades have often been used to disrupte trade during war time and as a way to reduce the fighting capacity of a nation but short of putting a naval unit on every ocean square around a city you can't do that in CIV. The way I'm imagining it is like roads on water which naval units can pillage to break the trade route. I've tried turning on roads for the workboat but all that happens is that you just build roads in every ocean tile. What I want to work out is a way so that you have a "road" direct from one city to another in a line. This way your battleships have to defend the entirity if this trade route.

TheLopez said:

Now this is an interesting idea. But, maybe it would be better to add an action allowing any non-modern era ships to land on a coastal plot and build a city. To refine this idea, if the ship is a warship (strength > 0) then they could build a fort? if the ship is a non-warship (strength < 0) then they could build a settlement, not a city, that overtime could evolve into a city or a settler unit could build a city on it, the resulting city would have one or two extra citizens, those citizens would be from the civ that created the settlement. So what do you think?

Click to expand...

hmmm thats a good idea... maybe not a fort but create an outpost or colony that has a few other bonuses... such as maybe a 1 square radius like a city which can't expand but can be worked providing resources for the outpost... i.e. for those times where your on an island with no horses but there's a horse on a small island, too small for a city but you can build a boat that lands and becomes and outpost to supply you with that resource - what about that? possible?

Increasing moves a bit would help (it did wonders in RoCX when we pumped the ship moves. Suddenly everyone wanted a navy to move their troops along).

Rather than a solid bonus, why not make the little widgets a growing bonus like towns are for land tiles. start it off so its +1g, then have it grow over time to +4 or so.

I have always agreed that there needed to be visible trade lines in the water, but I have a feeling this would be a very time consuming endeavor. Instead, just co-opt the idea you have linked to above. Can't be that hard, and would work great. Just up the cash per unit of production a bit (maybe 2 or 3 x the land equivalent) and I have a feeling that people would _just maybe_ want to make it

Hi,
I also think your Sea Settler is a great idea...you could really make a cool mod out of that idea alone, not to mention all your other ideas.

Patricius

I like the idea of an ocean-faring promotion. I suggested it in the following thread, but have not investigated it further.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=153154

I also think that sea movements should be expanded based upon map size... perhaps naval units recieve varying extra movement via promotions using python scripting, and based on map size.

I'm interested in expanded ships, and a greater variance in capability and usage... ei transport galleys as opposed to war galleys. As well, more units earlier then galley... galleys seem to be in the game too long (curragh perhaps?).

Additionally, I would like to see naval units that allow any unit attacking from them to gain the amphibious promotion... this would nicely simulate the such diverse ships as longboats (especially suited to amphibious actions because of shallow draft), and WW II type landing craft used in Normandy. The infantry there certainly were not marines, yet invaded well-enough... I think it was the landing craft rather than inherent in the units... therefore, an amphibious promotion attached to the particular naval unit, rather than the embarking unit seems more relevant. Marines should, of course, still enjoy some sort of enhanced role in amphibious assaults, beyond those given by the ships... perhaps additive. A naval unit based promotion could also be a stand-in for coastal bombardment they might have provided in support of an assault.

Speaking of which (coastal bombardment)... maybe a promotion creating some such ability?

Giving naval units some sort of zone of control might be a good idea... perhaps the zone of control could block sea trade in addition to coverage of the particular tile the unit is on.

That's some suggestions for now.

Some of the thoughts posted here are some of the things I'd like to see, but never found a viable way of doing...However I can say that making a Transport Galley vs. a Warship Galley is possible, along with being able to modify various details of it. You would need to find the Galley listing in the civ4unitsinfo.xml and copy/paste and edit the details you need altered. You could technically do just that, but you need to make a separate function call for the creation of the second galley, which is located in CIV4ArtDefintes_Unit... There's basically alot of minor gunk that is need to be coded in, but is definately something I'm looking forward to helping with if you peeps need help.

Progress Thread

Thanks for all your comments. Craig_Sutter I agree with pretty much all your comments and am looking to implement them as best I can. The Zone of Control is a really neat idea however after some playing around I have as yet been able to work out how to do this. It seems that cIV isn't as easily moddable as they would have you beleive. Been trying to work out a way that a certain ship can "Blockade" it triggers a feature effect (like fallout from a nuke) that reduces all the resources that tile is bring in. Haven't worked out how to trigger a feature from a command but am working on it.

Naval promotion will be done to some extent.

Aeon221 will experiment with the incremental idea although I don't really want to simply create "cottages on the sea". Maybe two-tier but I can't think of a nautical equivilance that would upgrade to "shipping lanes"

Ship movement has been tinkered with and I was just wondering what kind of change were appropriate... doubling ship movement? Thinking of balancing issues.

As to features I've added so far
New Units
A Slave Ship which is available after with Bronze Working & Compass
Can "Hurry Production"

Upgrades to Merchant Ship (available with Currency & Optics)
Can "Hurry Production" & "Trade with foreign Cities"

"New World" World Wonder
First to Discover it receives 3 Merchant ships +1 Trade in coastal tiles of discovering city

"Pilgrims" World Wonder
First to Discover receives 1 Gunpowder units, 2 Settlers, 1 Explorer and 1 "Mayflower" Ship (fast movement, no attack.

"Channel Tunnel" National Wonder
Allows you to build "Tunnel" unit. Builds railroads under water. High unit cost to produce and building railroad consumes unit. Only three allowed at time. Not wishing to unbalance the game I didn't want tunnel creation to be easy so its more like the Space Program, a time consuming challenge if you want to build a tunnel across large sea areas or relativley easy to build a tunnel across connecting one island with another over one tile (as it should be)
Based on Monument 0.2 by GIR http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144408&highlight=tunnel

New Improvement
"Shipping Lane"
Adds +2 Trade -1 Food to Water tiles when built by workboat

To Do
Alter the placement of Astronomy on the Tech Tree and bring it forward slighlty. This will then be the pre-requisite for the merchant ship.

Add more Sea units & Balance Costs & Movements

Add Great General and Great Admiral

Investigate if its possible to land a Sea unit on land. Any suggestions on how to do this?

Anything more I can think of. Feedback is more than welcome

Add Prison Ship Unit

Add Naval Promotions

(Was sick the other day so ignore my post from before...)

Naval units do have a inherent movement enhancement bonus applied as development proceeds in the research field in-game. I believe Optics and Refrigeration are the 2 that increase movement, along with the exploring the circumfrance (sp? hope not.) of the map. The promotions themselves seem like they would be fairly easy to code in from review.

As for sea-settlers... You can almost have that working at this very moment on any naval unit you wish, except for the problem of the .py file (Which I've yet to find.) that is attributed to the building a city function. A couple things that would need to be added in in such a case would be : Animations for boat-to-sea-city conversion, animations or related materials for graphical art for sea based city expansionism, (By this I mean lookin at how the normal cities expand and note that and find how to do the same within the sea... Technical, but most of it can be bypassed.) allowance of harbor/lighthouse being prebuilt within the sea-city, as it would make no sense for a sea city not to have a lighthouse or a harbor if it's at sea...

The 'Blockade' effect occurs in two instances that I can think of and one is land and other is sea... possibly python coded... (Not a python coding person yet.) A in-game example would be doing a trade route blockade of a person by covering every tile that is considered his according to the harbor/dock situation. I mean, say the harbor has N,W,NW as the points to launch, and you have all 3 blockaded in, then you have whatever resources they would need from those squares blocked, along with disabling their trade. (Which is similiar to what you mean I think?) I'll see if I can dig into a possible location for this... The land-based version I think most of us know is just have a military unit in one of the spots and it'll disable trade for that section.

If I think of anything else to help out, I'll post to let ya know.

How about a Minesweeper (or add that function to the destroyer) either way it would go hand in hand with the Mine Layer. It'd be like a tile improvement for the sea (should have an upkeep cost I think). This could also be an idea for land improvements too.

Naval Blockade ability would be awesome...
All trade routes could be cut off, and it could have an unhappiness penalty as well, since populations don't like to be under siege.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Warships should be able to bombard other ships and ground units...could be called a gunfire or gunstrike mission.

jlocke said:

Naval Blockade ability would be awesome...
All trade routes could be cut off, and it could have an unhappiness penalty as well, since populations don't like to be under siege.

Click to expand...

Right I've got this done by allowing a boat to create "Blockade" which basically adds fallout to a tile (tile doesn't produce and causes ill health)

However I've run into a bit of a problem... I can't work out how to configure the game to allow you to build tile improvements outside of your cultural radius. It must be possible coz you can build roads and railroads outside of your cultural borders but I don't know how they do it. Please help!

Or at least point me in the direction of a mod that allows improvements to be built in other civs cultural borders

Crighton said:

How about a Minesweeper (or add that function to the destroyer) either way it would go hand in hand with the Mine Layer. It'd be like a tile improvement for the sea (should have an upkeep cost I think). This could also be an idea for land improvements too.

Click to expand...

How do you envisage a minelayer working?

I'll look and see if I can find anything today for this Butler.

** It seems within some python coding, (Looking at CvEventManager.py atm...) There are some codes for possible long distance notification or alliance type assistance flags for building improvements and routes? (Still trying to get more info...)

**** Ok I think I have a answer to the question now... Roads/Railroads are considered 'Route' type items whereas farms, hamlets, etc. are considered improvements, and are under some kind of restriction as to not being able to make them OUTSIDE the cultural borders. As I look further into this, and I find a way of possibly fixing this, can you see if there is a way to add a worker function to make 'lodges'? Back in civ 3, they had workers be able to make routes to resources that were in horrible spots and turn them into... permanent encampments or whatnot. (Until a rival idiot plants a city near it and removes you little encampment. )

Interesting. But, you know, in usual Civ4 game 4000 BC - 2050 AD navy doesn't play an important role.

I'm interested to see how the Settler-boat shakes out, for my own mod...

Fighters should be able to destroy ships. This would simulate the important role of carriers.