Ability to Build All Improvements

One thing that I've noticed a lot of modmods and individuals add is the ability to build improvements everywhere. I wanted to post my own and see what others have added and see what the community in general thinks of the individual improvements.

Introducing Mailbox's Improvement Mod-Mod:

Download v2.0 here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=8855

MIMM for FF current version:

So I've been playing around a bit more, and as I mentioned in the main modding thread, I'm trying to get Necromancy to enable the building of graveyards and barrows. However, my current code doesn't seem to be allowing it, despite the abilities showing up on the screen for necromancy. Anyone know what could be causing this?

You have to enable the building order for whichever unit should build it. Look at the tag <Builds> under workers or Adepts (or hunters) to see how it is done.

I'll have to sit down sometime and look over precisely how you set up the improvements here. I made a module which accomplishes this, but I just used the numbers which Sureshot had used in his modmod, I haven't thought about balance yet. If you don't mind trying it out and giving me feedback it'd be much appreciated

Have you added the build to CIV4BuildInfos.xml and given it to at least one unit (and are testing with that unit) ?

Does it show the ability but nothing is getting done? That would be the case if you gave the ability to build it to a unit without a workrate.

I realized when I went out to eat that I had forgotten to give it to a unit to test it. Is there an easier way to set it to workers (say by unitclass) or do I just need to stick to giving it to each one?

As for balances, I'm finding that rather hard to do. Wineries with +1f +1c end up getting spammed by the AI instead of being spread out and camps end up on every forested tile, even though they have negatives to production. I'm hoping that I can find a healthier balance, which will probably be in the form of later techs granting bits and pieces instead of front loaded (like most improvements are now).

By the way, since it's sort of related, I had this silly idea yesterday.

Make a map, remove all bonuses (except mana), make sure you're playing with a mod that allows you to build all improvements. Basically, if you need Reagents, better start spamming Plantations and hope you get lucky.

The trick is, of course, to set the spawn chance just right so you don't end up with a bonus in every improved tile. Any thoughts on that? How exactly is this calculated?

Falc said:

By the way, since it's sort of related, I had this silly idea yesterday.

Make a map, remove all bonuses (except mana), make sure you're playing with a mod that allows you to build all improvements. Basically, if you need Reagents, better start spamming Plantations and hope you get lucky.

The trick is, of course, to set the spawn chance just right so you don't end up with a bonus in every improved tile. Any thoughts on that? How exactly is this calculated?

Click to expand...

On normal speed, the discovery bonus is one in <iDiscoverRand>, which is increased by Earth mana (I think it becomes 1 in DiscoverRand/ (# of earth mana). This is set for each resource in the improvement infos, and for the main mod/vanilla civ 4, only is set to an actual number for mines.

Added version 1.0 (for .31c) to the first post, feedback is more than welcome!

there are other modmods with improvements everywhere other than mine and now this one? heh

good to see a version of this for 0.31, improvements anywhere makes the Creation map much more viable for those plains starts. tho i def recommend changing pastures to 1 / 1 since then theyre more competitive with wineries for those who need food but can't farm

I will probably remove my module and just link to yours next time I revise things, for now I'll just link to yours and tell people that it is better

Questions though: What did you do to the Unique Features & the Mana Nodes? I noticed they were in your file while making certain that the improvements CAN discover new resources and didn't take the time to analyze much.

If you didn't change anything on them, then you shouldn't need to include them. Except as needed to avoid the issue with Cottage/Village/Town's upgrading properly.

And on that note, have you tested to ensure that it all works properly as a Module? I'll give it a go myself this weekend, but make certain that those improvements which you want to have upgrading really DO upgrade.

ah, hadn't been payin too much attention and didnt notice the modular FfH thread

and yes, you need to include everything because of the fort/cottage upgrade issue unless something has changed heh

Sureshot said:

there are other modmods with improvements everywhere other than mine and now this one? heh

good to see a version of this for 0.31, improvements anywhere makes the Creation map much more viable for those plains starts. tho i def recommend changing pastures to 1 / 1 since then theyre more competitive with wineries for those who need food but can't farm

Click to expand...

I originally had pastures with food but I felt like if they had food they cut into the territory of farms. I've also changed the requirement for wineries to give food to feudalism so I might give pastures a + food with some tech or civic.

I'm thinking I might give pastures + 1 food and - 1 hammers with agriculture as to make them more similar to farms and also give cottages and their upgrades a penalty with agriculture to take away some of it's power.

I'm thinking I'm going to fool around with civics next, and give different civics a chance to change yields so that the civics you're running make a difference to the improvements you want to have. Slavery already gives a boost to quarries, which is a really cool and thematic change that I'll want to boost with the other civics.

Perhaps nerf city states by depowering cottage upgrades and give fort upgrades boosts with military state or conquest? I'll just have to see how it turns out.

Sureshot is also right about the improvements, if you cut it down to just the changed improvements, it gives all sorts of errors. Then again, it might be nice to give all the mana nodes a little boost in case they're in a city radius.

One semi-pleasant thing you can do as long as you are doing a full change is to make more than just cottages/pirate-bay/forts upgrade I had contemplated making essentially everything upgrade, and only be capable of discovering a resource at the final level of upgrade when I first ran into the annoying inability to do upgrades in a Module without changing EVERYTHING in the module so you line up properly.

Could be nice to have some offer eventual defensive bonuses (camps & Towns?), some become permanent (Mines, Quarries & Mana Nodes?) and a few of them do other nifty things.

You can also create new improvements with unique flavor, make them Cycle. So you could create a replacement for farms available with Sanitation or Engineering called "Rotating Crops (Profit)" & "Rotating Crops (Yield)". Each upgrades into the other one after 10 turns, Profit gives lots of money and Yield gives lots of food. So the trick is to get some set up to cycle opposite each other so that even though your tiles are continually shifting back and forth for what they provide, since they swap with each other the net effect is equivalent to 2 farms AND 2 cottages between those 2 tiles (but of course if you mess up the synchronization then you can starve or over-grow your city.)

Winery -> Vineyard
Camp -> Hunting Grounds (Bonuses with FoL civics/techs)
Plantation -> Estate (Bonus with Slavery)
Mine -> Deep Mine
Quarry -> Open Pit -> Strip Mine (give the latter two the ability to discover metals)
Pasture -> Ranch (Bonus with Agriculture)
Lumbermill -> Sawmill

I should start work on adding these in, and have the next version up in a couple of days. I'd also like to continue hearing ideas, especially for civic/improvement synergies.

Xienwolf, I really like that second idea and it could be used for a lot of interesting mechanics such as high yield farms that wear out then must be worked fallow to be high yield again or very high yield mines that are permanent but eventually collapse into uselessness.

Added v1.1 with new improvement upgrades to first post.

Mailbox said:

On normal speed, the discovery bonus is one in <iDiscoverRand>, which is increased by Earth mana (I think it becomes 1 in DiscoverRand/ (# of earth mana). This is set for each resource in the improvement infos, and for the main mod/vanilla civ 4, only is set to an actual number for mines.

Click to expand...

The effect of Earth Mana is also quantised, at 20, which is what's confusing me.

I know that setting iDiscoverRand to 10 makes the resources pop out within a few turns of the improvement being built. 100 is also rather swift but seems to be getting close to the rate I'm looking for. But if I could get the actual formula it'd be even nicer...

v1.2 for .31c

NEW IMPROVEMENTS

Engineered Ritual Nodes

- Able to discover raw mana (1/9000)
- Gives + 1 unhappy
- Buildable at Sorcery (with workers)
- Upgrades to Greater Ritual Node

Greater Ritual Nodes

- Able to discover raw mana (1/4500)
- Gives + 3 unhappy
- Upgrades to Unstable Ritual Node

Unstable Ritual Nodes

- Able to discover mana (1/1500)
- Gives + 5 unhappy

Note, new nodes must be pillaged before they can be turned into usable nodes.
Unhappy keeps them from being spammed but yet allows players to discover more mana if they are patient.
These abilities are given to workers as an abstraction and for simplification reasons. I'm assuming a society with the knowledge of Sorcery wouldn't need a whole unit of adepts to build a ritual node and the adepts are still needed to build the actual node.

Another thing is my text file doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me, even though I have it set as the modular text files I've seen.

You need all the other languages added to your text file, even if they are still just English text in them.

The new nodes seem nifty Can't wait to see what more you add in.

xienwolf said:

You need all the other languages added to your text file, even if they are still just English text in them.

The new nodes seem nifty Can't wait to see what more you add in.

Click to expand...

I'm still having problems with the name display. It works fine if I splice the entries directly into the CIV4GameText.xml file but won't work as a module.

Coolness. It's nice to know that I can quit including the other languages in my Modules if I want to save some time

Your problem is simply the file name. If placed in Assets/XML/Text the appropriate filename would be CIV4GameText_MIMM.xml However, if placed in a module, the appropriate filename is MIMM_CIV4GameText.xml

Change that and everything works just fine.

The idea of crop cycles is nice, but please make sure that you don't overload the mechanism with micromanagement. It's not entertaining to re-plant your farms every x turns!