Crafts

[Jabie]

I almost got his one working. There's still a slight bug, but I figured i'd share it with the community anyway.

After reading a comment somewhere in one of the forums (Grand Menagerie Scenario, I think) about someone having to build and disband warriors because they had no good builds left and didn't want to create a large army that would drain the economy, I thought I'd look at the XML and see if there was a simple solution.

My concept was simple. Following researching the Crafting tech a city would have the option of Crafts, a build which converts 15% of Hammers into Science, Commerce and Culture. Not quite as good a rate of return as Wealth/Research/Culture builds, but advantageous for a hybrid and it would appear a lot earlier in the game. I choose Crafting as it is an early game tech and hence probably the most likely occasion to come across build/disband loop. (It's possibly too high, but I'm not sure it would be worthwhile at 10%)

The file is enclosed and replaces the civ4processInfo.xml under XML\GameInfo, but in order to use it you'll need add the following text to the bottom of the Civ4GameText_FFH2 file in the XML\Text directory.

<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_PROCESS_CRAFT</Tag>
<English>Craft</English>
<French>Craft</French>
<German>Craft</German>
<Italian>Craft</Italian>
<Spanish>Craft</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_PROCESS_CRAFT_STRATEGY</Tag>
<English>Craft represents the general working practices of a city which is not inclined towards a specific goal. As such it offers a moderate boost to Science, Commerce and Culture.</English>
<French>Craft represents the general working practices of a city which is not inclined towards a specific goal. As such it offers a moderate boost to Science, Commerce and Culture.</French>
<German>Craft represents the general working practices of a city which is not inclined towards a specific goal. As such it offers a moderate boost to Science, Commerce and Culture.</German>
<Italian>Craft represents the general working practices of a city which is not inclined towards a specific goal. As such it offers a moderate boost to Science, Commerce and Culture.</Italian>
<Spanish>Craft represents the general working practices of a city which is not inclined towards a specific goal. As such it offers a moderate boost to Science, Commerce and Culture.</Spanish>
</TEXT>

I used the production hammer for an icon, which works OK but I'm running into a size error when it tries render the icon in the circular city bar window. As I have no art tools and suck at art (so must therefore rely on the core files), does anyone know if there is a better icon I can use?

Bonus XML hack

I also found that Assets\XML\Terrain\CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml contains City Ruins. Changing IMPROVEMENT_CITY_RUINS tags iAppearanceProbability to 225 and SpawnUnitType to UNIT_SKELETON mean that the undead will occasional pop up out of any razed city.

[cyther]

Looks interesting, Jabie. Could I use it in my modmod?

[Jabie]

Please feel free and go right ahead.

[cIV_khanh93]

great idea. though 15*3=45, which is almost the full return of building wealth, culture, or science. aking it 10 would be appropriate, as you would only get 60% of the return. It should be significantly weaker than the others since it comes at crafitng instead of writing, mathematics(?), and drama. Also you said commerce, did you mena welath (as in the golden stuff you use in diplomacy and unit upkeep)

[Jabie]

Yeah, I meant Wealth

I'm still not sure about the values. 12.5% is quite nice. In a split of eight hammers on the "pure" options you get four of either Research, Culture or Wealth. With craft you'd get one Research, one Culture, one Wealth and lose one, which fits as it comes earlier in the tech tree.

It's a shame that it can't be limitted by Civic/Civ. The Dural (from FF) or running Arete could then give a better rate of return.