[MOD] Plantation Economy

Plantation Economy v0.9 BETA - released june 15 2009



Summary:
The idea behind the mod is to enhance and diversify the game play by adding new bonus resources and yields. In time, I also want to add new products from first and second transformation of raw resources as well as from combinations (i.e.: Cloth and Indigo used by a Tailor to make fine cloth).

Wiki:

"A plantation economy is an economy which is based on agricultural mass production, usually of a few staple products grown on large farms called plantations. Plantation economies rely on the export of cash crops as a source of income. Prominent plantation crops have included cotton, rubber, sugar cane, tobacco, figs, rice, kapok, sisal and indigo."

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More Yield Types Module
To add new yield type, the use of modules is necessary. But this mod is only partially modular as some features cannot work in modules (i.e.: the PlotLSystem). I will post a detailed tutorial for modders on how to add yield types to your own mod later on.

Food Crops Diversity Bonus Resources (no gameplay impact)

Grains:
Seafood:
Livestock:

New Bonus Resources

Staple crops:

Building material:
Precious metal:

New Tradable Yields


Improvements

Improvements changes:

New Improvements:

City Buildings

Interface

Download and installation

Installation:

• Download from one of the following link.
• Unpack the Mod to your Colonization/Mods directory
• Load the mod from the game menu or create a shortcut with the target mod folder like this example:
  

  "C:\Program Files\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\Colonization.exe" mod="PlantationEconomy_v0.09"

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Downloads:

Screenshots

Just loaded it up and tested it out - looks good! I'll play through a normal game later and post back.

This looks like a good idea! Unfortunately, my computer isn't working right now.

Looking great! I hope it will be easy to implement it into AoD2.

Aymerick said:

In time, I also want to add new products from first and second transformation of raw resources as well as from combinations (i.e.: Cloth and Indigo used by a Tailor to make fine cloth).

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Whooot, this sounds sooo good.

Some (personal) comments.

Aymerick said:

Food crops diversity (no game play impact):

Cereal:

• Wheat (not implemented yet)
• Rice (not implemented yet)
• Barley (not implemented yet)

Seafood:

• Clams (from Civ4) (Yields food)
• Crustacean (i.e.: Shrimp, Lobster or Scampi) (not implemented yet, looking for a model)

Livestock:

• Buffalo (not implemented yet)

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Mabe a little bit to much? I would suggest only adding wheat and buffalo, but maybe its just me.

The following sounds pretty cool to me as well:

Aymerick said:

Staple crops:

• Indigo (*New) (Yields indigo)
• Coffee (*New) (Yields Coffee)

Building material:

• Prime timber (*New) (Yields lumber)

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Very interesting idea. I am all for expanding the scope of things to do in C4C. The problem may be that unless it is integrated with AoDII, it will not hold the attention of the players used to the plethora of changes therein.

@bcr1776

Very interesting idea. I am all for expanding the scope of things to do in C4C. The problem may be that unless it is integrated with AoDII, it will not hold the attention of the players used to the plethora of changes therein.

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Yes, this mod can be easily implemented into any other mod as it is modular and only requires minor SDK and python changes. I plan on making an addon for AoDII when a more polished version is ready.

@henryMCVII

Mabe a little bit to much? I would suggest only adding wheat and buffalo, but maybe its just me.

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My idea is to be able to trade those food crops, not just food. This mean, for example if you have a banana bonus within your colony, you have a choice to produce food (you'll need a farm improvement for max production) or produce bananas as a tradable good (you'll need a plantation improvement for max production). As of now, you can't really base a economy on food trade as the price never goes up but, even if those food crops won't sell at a price as high as tobacco or sugar, you'll still be able to make some money out of them. Of course, if you choose to produce bananas instead of food, you'll still need to make sure you produce enough food to maintain or grow your colony population.

Played about 200 turns, no problems at all. I don't use sound, so I can't report on it. Moved some public maps over and had no trouble using them. This is looking very promising.

did you have to modify the python or anything to show more resources? i got a crah with mare nostrum when i tried it

Yes, there's both python and SDK changes. Look for my "MORE_YIELD_TYPES" comment to see what i've added...

As for Mare Nostrum, adapting the XML could be a little more complicated since the yields and civilizations have already been modified. And there's also the gamefont to modify...

I'll make a complete tutorial on how and what to change to add yield types as soon as my plantation improvement model is done...

Aymerick,

This is actually one of my favorite MODS so far. I applaud you. Unlike most folks, I actually enjoy a slower game with a stronger economy to base the play around. I think you've got a lot of cool options. I'm looking forward to the rest of the implementations.

Two comments:

1. I have not yet seen the prime timber that was mentioned. Is it a relatively uncommon feature?

2. Is there a possibility that you'd be interested in adding in something akin to a Custom House? While the Warehouse Expansion sells certain things, it would be nice to be able to choose what things are being sold and who you're selling to (rather than just going directly to Europe).

In any case, good MOD. I'll be playing this pretty regularly from now on.

Oh! I just thought of something else. What if you added in a Brewery for Barley and/or Wheat to turn into Beer?

master_akura said:

This is actually one of my favorite MODS so far. I applaud you. Unlike most folks, I actually enjoy a slower game with a stronger economy to base the play around. I think you've got a lot of cool options. I'm looking forward to the rest of the implementations.

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Great! I'm glad you like it! I'm also an economic player rather then a militaristic one...

master_akura said:

1. I have not yet seen the prime timber that was mentioned. Is it a relatively uncommon feature?

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I've been having problems with the placement of this bonus resource. On smaller maps, only one or two will appear. But on large ones (especially with the FaireWeather map script) you'll get way too much! The model isn't working right either, it's too big and crossing over oceans and lakes. I need to adjust this, hopefully for the next version...

master_akura said:

2. Is there a possibility that you'd be interested in adding in something akin to a Custom House? While the Warehouse Expansion sells certain things, it would be nice to be able to choose what things are being sold and who you're selling to (rather than just going directly to Europe).

Click to expand...

I'll see what I can do, this might need some coding but I agree with you, it would be nice to have a custom house city building that acts similar to the one from the first colonization

master_akura said:

Oh! I just thought of something else. What if you added in a Brewery for Barley and/or Wheat to turn into Beer?

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That would be a good use for barley! But I first need to implement the food crops yield options (meaning the option to produce food for population grow or produce wheat, fish, bananas, barley, etc. as tradable goods).

Thanks for your input, if you have any other great ideas, let me know!

Aymerick said:

That would be a good use for barley! But I first need to implement the food crops yield options (meaning the option to produce food for population grow or produce wheat, fish, bananas, barley, etc. as tradable goods).

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This mod is going good so far, I've played it a bit now. I definitely enjoy the expanded resources as I also am a more economic/diplomatic/build player.

It would be interesting if the base settlement only began with a town hall and craftsman's shop (the one that becomes the lumber mill - the exact name escapes me now). To take the alcohol route as an example, then you could choose to build for relatively cheap either a rum distillery, a whiskey distillery or a brewery (just examples off the top of my head). Then each of those would have their own unique upgrade path like in vanilla. Rum would require sugar, whiskey would require rye and beer would need barley or wheat.

Then each of the base buildings could have their own flavor depending on what resources are available. Another example would be rather than simply have cotton/cloth you could have that and wool/felt, hemp/rope, hide/leather (which would free up that building slot for something completely original).

This could add a new element of building strategy into the game also in the sense that you might have good access to both hides and wool, but are only able to nurture one industry. Which one do you choose? And what happens when you choose hides which are worth more than wool, but wool shoots up in price whilst hides' prices are plummeting?

And I was about to end this, but something just caught my attention. Was beer even shipped back to Europe? Wouldn't it spoil on the way? What if you had certain yields that Europe would not buy at all, but would be worth a lot to the natives and other Euro colonists? That would be interesting.

Fortuente said:

It would be interesting if the base settlement only began with a town hall and craftsman's shop (the one that becomes the lumber mill - the exact name escapes me now). To take the alcohol route as an example, then you could choose to build for relatively cheap either a rum distillery, a whiskey distillery or a brewery (just examples off the top of my head). Then each of those would have their own unique upgrade path like in vanilla. Rum would require sugar, whiskey would require rye and beer would need barley or wheat ... This could add a new element of building strategy into the game also in the sense that you might have good access to both hides and wool, but are only able to nurture one industry. Which one do you choose? And what happens when you choose hides which are worth more than wool, but wool shoots up in price whilst hides' prices are plummeting?

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I was thinking about nearly the exact thing today at work. I think that it would be really neat to be able to pick the industries you foster in your city. I imagine that it would take a bit of programming to do so, but it would certainly make your placement of cities and your economy much more important. If you have three cities that can all specialize in indigo, then you're going to have a fairly predominant role in the trade of that item.

And I was about to end this, but something just caught my attention. Was beer even shipped back to Europe? Wouldn't it spoil on the way? What if you had certain yields that Europe would not buy at all, but would be worth a lot to the natives and other Euro colonists? That would be interesting.

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No, they wouldn't have. I think that it would definitely be more viable to have it worth a lot to Natives or other Europeans.

Also, and this is completely off topic, but you guys seem to be my kind of player: what are your thoughts on the influence ring in Colonization? I appreciate it's importance in Civilization, but influence seems to do very little outside of taking over Native settlements, which you never get any benefit from. It seems to me that something better could be done with that, because at the moment it's a pretty useless aspect to the game.

Very good guys! I like this idea of having to choose one type of industry for each city!

Little update... I've completed the "Plantation improvement" model and I'm starting work on the texture so it look good. Once it's ready, I'll get to work on the "Ranch/Pasture improvement" and on the LPlotSystem for the new wheat bonus..

Here's a little preview of the Plantation (with temporary texture...):

I have to say I'm particularly impressed with the quality of the execution of this mod. From the 5 language pedia translations to the unit reskins it's really well done.

I'm now following your technique of having each unit's button as a separate dds file and trying to get organized in a modular way.

Looking forward to seeing this mod expand too...

Any Idea if this is compatiable with AoD II 1.10?

master_akura said:

I was thinking about nearly the exact thing today at work. I think that it would be really neat to be able to pick the industries you foster in your city. I imagine that it would take a bit of programming to do so, but it would certainly make your placement of cities and your economy much more important. If you have three cities that can all specialize in indigo, then you're going to have a fairly predominant role in the trade of that item.

Click to expand...

i started to do this with MareNostrum. essentially i used the discover rand to create a grape, olive, or sheep bonus that provides one of those resources. I kept some on the map (but leaning towards removing completely).

the problem with it is that i wanted to just add a tile imp that would add the bonus but the colonization code doesnt allow that. if the base terrain produces 0 of a yield then the only way to add that yield to the tile is by a bonus that has to appear. quite annoying.

It looks like there is a problem with these modular unit buttons - you have exactly the same issue I do with the pink icons when you scroll off from the unit. Maybe this is another one of those things that doesn't work in modular.