Roads and Lands (a call for the modder community)

Hi, to all!

Well, Keldath said we should open a thread for it...

Below I will give you an outline of a system of ideas to change and implement some rules to the game.
If anybody interested... let's discusss and see...

Find attached the word document (10 pages long), of which here is an extract (chapter titles):

document is updated: BtSv01 - July 28, 2007

ROADS AND LANDS

This mod aims at to give roads a more significant and realistic role. Coming from the realistic concept of road, such elements as tile improvements in city area and in the country, crossing rivers, separate imperial and economic road come into the picture.
Imperial road means supply for the units. There will be thus concept of attrition, and blocking of supply.
This involves forts and strongholds, which are important by their own right, too.
In the end, some ideas deal with units of military and the settler.

I. Economic roads and improvements of the land

I/1/a. Economic roads
I/1/b. Pillaging tiles in city area
I/2. Improvement of country (non-city area) tiles
I/3. Brigands capturing resource supply
I/3/a Captures and Trade
I/4. Blocking of resource supply by enemy unit
I/5. Pillaging of improvement out of city-area

II. Imperial roads

II/1. Creation of imperial road
II/2. Economic function of imperial road
II/3. Imperial road as means of supply

III. River crossing and Bridges

III/1. Crossing a river without bridging
III/2/a. Construction of a bridge
III/2/b. Destroying a bridge

IV. Forts and Strongholds

VI/1. The number of forts and strongholds
VI/2. Building and destroying of fort or stronghold
VI/3. Fort or stronghold as military base
IV/4 Fort or stronghold in peace - production
IV/5. Fort or stronghold as means to block supply
IV/6. Stronghold producing economy – the manor improvement
IV/7. Stronghold as cultural unit

V. Supply and attrition

V/1. Presence of supply
V/2/a. Supply blocked on land
IV/2/b. Supply by harbor
IV/2/c. Supply by ship
IV/3. Attrition – the result of lack of supply
IV/4. Starvation of units in own fort/stronghold or city
IV/5. The Medic I promotion

VI. Military units

there may be no idea here (on number restrictions)

VII Settler

VII/1 Settler and population

great! now lets hope we'll get help - ill start introdusing this thread

I was wondering what had happened to this V. Soma. You know I love this concept.

edit - Let me know about any new graphics stuff you might need guys. Stone bridges, forts, ect might be in my league.

I’ve had my head led go over the concept of roads several times now. I'd say the major thing I'm missing is the upkeep. Imperial roads are of strategical advancement, and like in a normal game, everything should have some upkeep (even if it's so small) just to force the leader of an empire to think what he's doing! The problem here arises, not only here but in CIV4 generally, in early games you are searching for each single gold piece while in later games you don’t know where to put the money. I think this concept of roads could add at least a part of the solution to handle this.
My contribution to this idea:
ROADS
1. Three (3) types of imperial roads, 1 tech to build the first
2. Two techs which allow you to upgrade your imperial roads

• Now the first Type could cost (1Gold/10imperial road tiles) this type of road only allows old ages units to cross bridges and use the road at all! Trebuchets etc are also allowed.
• The Upgraded road cost (1Gold/5Tiles of imperial roads) this type of road allows also heavier units to use them, canons, and such
• Last and final upgrade cost (1Gold/3Tiles of imperial roads) this type of road allows all units to pass and use its benefits, including tanks and such.

Economical roads should be considered free of upkeep from the national treasury since its being maintained by locals.

Forts and Strongholds
I miss the concept of spreading culture. AND, allowing more units.
1. There is the concept of a cap of units by any city (6max. is proposed), every fort should extend the amount of units allowed to build by +3 and strongholds by +5
2. There should be a max of units garrisoned in a city (4 I’d say) to force players not to fight in their own cities. Normal countries would favor defending their countries at borders/rivers/hills/Siegfried-line instead of inside their cities.

I can speak out of own experience with this, I use the computers stupidity!! He doesn’t understand if he has even a 2times larger army then I have, to beat me outside and not in my own cities. If he has i.e. 5cities with 45units, I have 3cities with 24units, I’ll move 20of my units in the city at the border where he’s attacking me. He comes with 30 of his 45units, and walks 80% of them units dead on my defenses. Giving a cap of 4units to garrison in a city will prohibit me from doing this and use my 24units more wisely in defending against a invader…causing losses to me too!! Since now, I wait for the comp to walk dead on my cities, and then after he lost his main battle force, I send in my troops, and I outnumber him many times because he walked dead on my city without causing me too much damage. This is not good for the fighting concept I’d say. Human players abuses this to fight a many times stronger computer.

3. To attack a city, you must first destroy the forts AND Strongholds within 3tiles of the city! OR, the forts and Strongholds between the city and the enemy border within a 45degree angle. I’m not sure which of the 2 concepts will be better, but to me it does make sense, you can first then attack a city after you destroyed the defenses around, or on your way to it. This will avoid armies passing by your defenses and just go for the cities.
4. Pillaging can only be done if all forts and Strongholds within 3 tiles of the to-pillaged tile are destroyed or captured. Strategically bombing can destroy improvements if less then 5 AA within 2 tiles. This will give you as player, and opponents the ability to defend against such. (use spies to find out where enemy AA’s are located and take them out first, either with bombing missions or spies)
• There should be a new bombing option “AA precision bombing” a campaign against AA units

I’m not sure if 4 is a great idea, but right now I normally bomb enemy oil fields constantly and in time I always win because of this…but it shouldn’t be that easy to keep your enemy from accessing his resources…it should take some well planed attack plan to destroy your enemies resources. At least it should cost you more then a few carriers and bombers.

5. There must be some “fortified colony”. It should act like a colony, spreading culture, and meanwhile of military importance +30 on defense, +2 units (CAP) allowed producing. Max garrison 4 units. It should be restricted to place only on some tiles, ice/tundra/desert I propose.
+2culture/turn with 1 unit garrison,
+4/culture with 2units garrison,
+8culture/turn with 4units garrison the colony,
-1culture/turn if left ungarrisoned.
5 airplanes are allowed to use the airbase; these however do not count as garrisoned units.
If at a coast, it also acts as a harbor, allowing up to 10ships harboring and being repaired (same fast as in a city)
Upkeep 2gold/turn if only garrisoned, if used as airbase +1, if used as harbor +1.
With a Max upkeep of 4gold/turn


On most maps there are vast regions of these tiles normally not good enough to establish a city, though claiming the land just for strategical purposes is normally the case. You shouldn’t build a city here, but there must be something to claim the lands. That’s what I propose the “fortified colony” for.

I hope someone will work out the ideas of the Roads and Lands thread and likes my ideas(or at least parts of them) I’m willing to help drawing, learn SDK etc to do this. But right now I’m studying for my exam 4th September so first after this date I’ll be willing to join any person/group who wants to do this mod.

Hi, mrgenie!

I guess many points of what you suggest should be taken into consideration

It will be nice to see the roads also evolve to something different.

I looked over my document to imagine how many modders I would envision to create this "package" called Roads and Lands.

the number is: four
(Or 1-4, since one can take the role of more than one)

The tasks:

1. Chapter I and II (biggest part)

improving a tile
economic roads
imperial roads
pillaging
brigands
resource supply
bridges

2. Chapter III (smaller)

fort and strongholds


3. Chapter IV (interesting part, medium size)

supply of military units
attrition (lack of supply)
starvation

4. Chapter VI (smallest)

military unit limits
settler

* * *

Naturally things are much co-dependent, so it would be a teamwork.

Well but it has one problem:its complex;ı mentioned more simply thing that prevent us build road on every tile we have;it can be done but how to?

V. Soma said:

1. When one of the 8 tiles around the city gets an imperial road, after that adjacent tile of these 8 tiles cannot get imperial road until this former is present.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if i got this right:
If you go out from a city as a starting point of an imperial road, you can place it on any of the 8tiles surrounding the city, after that, i have to consider the city itself plus this imperial road are both 1 tile of imperial road(say 2tiles).
I have on each side of the imperial road 7tiles left for an imperial road, i cannot place it on the tiles near the starting point(since it would create a loop) so only 3tiles are left for further development of the road. right? this is what you mean?

V. Soma said:

2. Imperial road tiles that are not around a city must be formed so that they do not contain a loop.

Click to expand...

why only for those not near a city? so you wanna make the rule as i made the example above, with the exception "if(tile == near city then allowed building imperial road)"? why, if i may ask? with just the 1st rule aplied, you say you can leave the city always on 2 opposite directions, not 3 or more..which is fine i think..forces you to think before you expand your empire

Mrgenie, you are right, my definition of rules for the imperial road was unclear.
Now, I tried to draw roads on paper and I got to a wonderful solution (I hope)

There is only one rule (!):

EDIT:
Any 3x3 tiles can contain 4 imperial road tiles as maximum (cities included!)

It will allow loops, but only big ones - and it is likely that the loop will include a city, and thus be not a real loop

just virtually tested it yes I think you should apply this rule, plus the rule you posted before you changed it into 3x3, the 2x2 rule..both should apply..
else you might have a loop like this

00100
01100
00100
00000

with the 3x3+2x2 rule you cannot make this, instead it would lead to
00110
01000
00100
00000

OK, both rules for imperial roads, then:

1.
On 2x2 tiles you can have 2 road sections as maximum (cities included).

2.
On 3x3 tiles you can have 4 road sections as maximum (cities included).

well, in coding, we'll have to check 4 cases of 2x2 every time the player wishes to put down a road section,
but only 1 case goes for 3x3 (with the wished tile as centre)

Still think this option is not ok.

00001
10010
01101
00010

on every 3x3 and 2x2 your rule is applied and valid, still a loop though. if you used 3max on a 3x3 you'll have less options to create loops.

00001
10010
01100
00000

it's mathematical simple, for every N x N fields with N+1 selection allowed you'l always create a loop of N-1 as minimal distance between the selected fields(havent tested this theory extensively, but my first hypothesis)
as long as the same rule applies for a M x M field with M = {0, 1, 2... N}

which means, if you want to allow only big loops, you'll have to make an exception. every single tile will be have to be checked NxN times.
so if you apply both rules,
N=2 with N x N Max=N
N=3 with N x N Max=N
you'll check every tile SUM( from N = 2 to N = 3) for N x N
which is 4 + 9 = 13times...you have 13evalutions for each time you gonna build a rule..shouldn't be that much a problem for modern processors.

what you need is to make a distance on which to brake the rule to have 1 extra imperial road...this would be complicated.

I would recommend(using the above statement which i made, if im right) that your minimal loop is N-1,
to keep the 2x2 with Max=2 as base rule
and then define the minimum loop you would like to allow in your mod.
let's say N-1=4tiles, then N=5
leading to 2 rules:

N = 2, for N x N tiles Max imperial road = N
N= 5, for N x N tiles Max imperial road = N+1

woudl cause something like this
0001000000
0010100000
0100011000
1000000100
1000000100
0100001000
0010001000
0001110000
0000000000
there are some free spots on the outside where you could connect any other road to this loop, but as far as i can tell, there is no option for any imperial road inside of this loop

could also say of course N=4 if you want a smaller loop, ..but your proposal N=3 allows very small loops i'd say

of course, the negative part, on a N=5 loops you have 25+4=29calculations made each time you wanna make an imperial road..but i still think modern computers can handle this

just found out, above rule is valid, though, doesn´'t exclude the 3x3 loop ..

so what you need is as many rules -1 for the minimal distance of your loop

if you want a loop, with at least 5tiles distance,
you need 4rules
2x2 max 2
3x3 max 3
4x4 max 4
5x5 max 6

= 54calculations for each imperial road tile..modern computer should still be able to handle this..but..if oyu have 18civs, everyone 4workers building roads, you have 216x17computercivs=alot of calculations.....I don't know how fast the civ routines are to handle such mathematical calculations...but this could start to slow down the game...however..later on in the game, I assume most roads be build anyway..so it shouldn't slow down on later earas


hmmm..tested this too..still not good...im writing my thoughts..maybe it'll help you too to come up with a solution

this tactic you proposed to solve this mathematical problem like this won't work.
if you have 2x2 max 2 and 4x4 max 5 you can build a greater loop, AND connect this to other roads
if you say 4x4 max 4, once created a maxed loop, you have no option to connect to other roads,
with these rules, you still might create the litte
010
101
010
loop..(thats the 3x3 restriction is for)
but, once you have your 3x3 restriction, and you created a loop like
0001000
0010100
0100010
1000001
0100010
0010100
0001000
you cannot leave nor connect this loop to other roads anymore, the 3x3 rule prohibits this,
allowing the 3x3 with max = 4 allows you the small loop
010
101
010 again...
so i don't think this will lead to a solution..another idea has to be put forward.

assume you have the 2x2 with max=2
and the 3x3 with max =3..you wont have the
010
101
010
loop...
this be perfect for the rule to not allow small loops, to define the minimal size of the loop
so you can use the
2x2
3x3
4x4 or even
5x5 rule..the problem is, you need to make a rule that allows connection to other road systems,

an exception! if you use
2x2 max=2
and 3x3 max =3
you'll get some minmal loop like this
001000
010100
100010
010001
001010
000100
so you have a nice loop which is not too small, it's the minimum, can make any larger loop then this, but not smaller...
then you must make an exception, in this case something like:
FOR ( N=6)
array= NxN
IF (selected tiles == 10 or Selected tiles == 11 ) then do not apply rule 2x2 max 2 and 3x3 max 3

i'm not sure how to program such a rule, but it would cause you to open the restriction twice and allow connection to other road segments
2 times...connect your loop at 2 points to another loop or straight road.

mmm, I'm gonna think about it

an idea: imperial roads to get connection only with SIDE of the tile, NO CORNER (NO DIAGONAL)...

and now: 4 tiles of roads on 3x3... (I am testing now)

it seems good, because it doesn't allow roads to CROSS (that would need 5 tiles in 3x3),
a road can only run into another existing one
EDIT: They can't even run into... only into cities... in fact, I like that

EDIT:

after testing.

Rule: Roads can be built only connected to a city or a previous road tile, and connected with SIDE

and:

1.
Taken the would be road tile as center, a 3x3 tile zone can have only 4 roads together with this center

2.
A 2x2 zone cannot have ALL tiles with road, cities taken as roads in THIS CASE

That would simplify things.

Hm, perhaps allowing "T"-crosses of roads would be favorable...
But it would need additional rules...

But it is not difficult:

Rule:
If around the 8 tiles of the tile in question, on either of the 4 sides,
both "corners" are roads, then 5 is allowed in the 3x3

some math:

if any of the tile pairs below are both roads (examined tile (x,y)),
then 5 road tiles are allowed in the 3x3 zone

1. x-1/y+1 and x+1/y+1
2. x+1/y+1 and x+1/y-1
3. x-1/y+1 and x-1/y-1
4. x-1/y-1 and x+1/y-1

Naturally, you still need the new road tile joining a previous one by side...

EDIT:
No good 5 in 3x3 can be exploited...

I would stay at 4 - and imperial roads are to connect cities. Likely not a far away one

read my doc please.

I have read it.

Sounds good (but I will ponder on the topic for some more)

Only thing:
Why would you allow for a city to have 4 exits? or why restrict to have 2?
I guess 3 is enough, so let the same rule (3 in 3x3 /plust the city/ apply here)