RADICAL CONCEPTS (to change the game)

Radical Concepts

"If only more modders would be like you and would release some radical concepts as modcomps for others to enjoy."

- Colonel_Zation, in regards to the 1492 Codex mod by KJ Jansson​

Introduction
In a hope to fulfill the desire for more intriguing and radical concepts for the benefit of the game, I now launch what I hope will be a touchstone thread for the Civ4Col community to inspire new ideas for future development. I hope that all modders find the ideas which will be published herein helpful in inspiring potential works. Disclaimer: This thread does not belong to a particular mod, but to the community.

The thread will be organized with a table of contents in the original post, found below. Time will tell if this thread becomes well developed, but I fully intend to do so, which is why I have reserved the first 3 comments after this original post for potential development. With that said, now on to the first Radical Concept which I hope will be the foundation of more to come.

Table of Contents

1. Rebel Fists and Colonial Bells (Radicalness: )

Without the Change
The Liberty Bell serves multiple purposes in current play. It produces; culture which expands your borders, political points which win you founding fathers, rebel sentiment which increases production by it's percentage, and lastly it arouses the anger of the King, who in turn taxes you, demands money, and increases the size of his REF (Army). Once a colony wide rebel sentiment of 50% has been achieved, the player may declare independence, which is only made possible by ramping up production of Liberty Bells.

Reasons to Change
"We are already greater than the king wishes us to be, and will he not hereafter endeavor to make us less?"

- Thomas Paine, Common Sense​

Imagine growing your colonies with your king's help. Imagine having a decently sized colony, and still having a relatively low tax rate and the favor of your king. Imagine being able to grow unmolested by your king until your country approaches a real ability to declare independence and sustain itself. Imagine saying goodbye to 40% tax rates and -(some crazy #) favor with your king when all of your combined colonial possessions are laughable in size and strength. That's the premise of this change.

The king does want his New World colonies to be successful, just not so successful that they threaten to be autonomous. Currently the player can make the king furious and be penalized with a stiff tax rate with just a minuscule amount of settlements. The change detailed below will change all of that and give the player a grace period throughout the majority of the game until a time of his choosing, in which a more clear focus on independence will provoke the end game. Namely, maxing out the combined strength of the colonies and posing a clear threat to the king.

The Change
The Colonial Bell would replace the Liberty Bell. Unlike the Liberty Bell, it does not produce a rebel sentiment %, but instead Colonial Strength %. Colonial Strength would benefit the colonies in every way rebel sentiment currently does, but without the overwhelming negative repercussions from the king. Producing Colonial Bells would produce the positives such as; culture so as to expand borders, political points so as to win founding fathers, and Colonial Strength so as to increase production by its %. Producing Colonial Bells will still have the effect of angering the king, but his anger will be much more delayed than in the current Liberty Bell system. This delay is because Colonial Bells don't produce infuriating Rebel Sentiment %, but instead a more emotionally neutral Colonial Strength %. The player would receive relatively light treatment from the king until an extremely high level of bells are achieved. This is where the Rebel Fist comes in.

As the colonies grow to such a degree as to start making independence somewhat of a feasible option (I'm thinking of a combined 50% Colonial Strength to 75% Colonial Strength), the king will start to harass the player with unnecessary taxes, financial demands, and the sort. Up until this point (50% Colonial Strength) the king would have been primarily passive, and would have imposed extremely light tax rates (a maximum of 20%).

As the Colonial Strength % (of the combined cities) gets higher, so would the maximum tax rate and frequency of harassment. I'm thinking;
1-50% Colonial Strength would mean a maximum tax rate of 20% (leader or nation traits would cause slight variance).
51-60% Colonial Strength would mean a maximum tax rate of 40%.
61-75% Colonial Strength would mean a maximum tax rate of 60%.
Finally 76%-100% Colonial Strength would create a maximum tax rate of 90%.

The player will want to escape from the increasingly difficult king who wishes to suppress the newly feared growth of the colonies, and at some point (detailed below) will start producing Rebel Fists which in turn create a rebel sentiment %, which will lead to independence as it does now.

The first city in your colony to produce 100% Colonial Strength will automatically produce a building called Revolutionary Presence (or Rebel Activity). This building will produce +1 Rebel Fists automatically, and can have colonists of any type assigned to work in it to produce even more Rebel Fists, up to 3 spaces. Rebel sentiment will be a percentage multiplier which increases production in the same way it currently does in the Liberty Bell system and stacks on top of the production multiplier the new Colonial Strength % provides. Rebel Activity will afterwards be automatically built in every city which attains to 75% or more Colonial Strength.

The last sentence in the above paragraph is subject to additional info in revision 1a...

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1. Rebel Fists and Colonial Bells
1a. Rebel Press and Pamphlets

"Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously because of its treasonous content. Printed and sold by Robert Bell, Third Street, Philadelphia, it sold as many as 120,000 copies in the first three months, 500,000 in the first year, going through twenty-five editions in the first year alone." - Wikipedia

As detailed in the aforementioned concept, the first city to achieve a 100% Colonial Strength percentage will automatically build the Rebel Activity building which will enable the production of Rebel Fists and therefore Rebel Sentiment.

Once a city has Rebel Activity in it, it enables the building of the Rebel Press, which is a form of the newspaper but does not replace it. Rebel Activity is required to build Rebel Press. Colonists can be assigned to work at the Rebel Press, and they will be transforming wood (paper) into Pamphlets. Pamphlets cannot be bought or sold in Europe or elsewhere, they are strictly a specialty item used to kick off the endgame. Once a city has printed off 100 Pamphlets, the player may transform a colonist into a Pamphleteer in the same way that guns and horses are required to transform a colonist into a Dragoon.

The Pamphleteer is a missionary type unit, in the sense that it seeds Rebel Activity in other cities. In the aforementioned concept, I detailed that every city following the first to achieve 75% Colonial Strength would automatically build Rebel Activity. This idea has been scrapped in favor of the Pamphleteer. Basically the player will produce Pamphlets out of wood, and then make Pamphleteers out of Pamphlets. The Pamphleteer will travel to neighboring cities and attempt to stir up the inhabitants into engaging in Rebel Activity. The odds will be high but not absolute. He will have a certain percentile chance to establish Rebel Activity (a mission) just as Missionaries to native settlements currently do.

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1. Rebel Fists and Colonial Bells
1a. Rebel Press and Pamphlets
1b. Rebel Units

Along with the introduction of the missionary like Pamphleteer, I would also like to suggest the introduction of certain Rebel Units which might be of some interest to the player as well.

Consider the Armed Rebel, who costs the same as a Musketman but requires 50 Pamphlets as well, meaning that he cannot be built without Rebel Presses dishing out Pamphlets to the colonies. The Armed Rebel would be a Musketman but would have certain bonuses that the Musketman does not have. Namely bonuses to fight in the woods or in the mountains or swamps which will come in handy during the revolution.
Consider the Smuggling Ship, which can be built in any port city which has Rebel Activity in it. The Smuggling Ship would require 100 Pamphlets in addition to the costs of shipbuilding in order to produce. The Smuggling Ship would be able to sell boycotted goods to Europe and sell to Europe without the taxes (As seen in RaR).

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In Conclusion
The aforementioned concepts, 1. 1a. and 1b., all serve to create an Endgame feeling to game play. Under the current system, the player kind of stumbles into Independence instead of actively ramping up for it. A normal game consists of a large number of liberty bells being produced to increase culture for borders, gain political points for founding fathers, increase rebel sentiment for the production multiplier, and in general dominate the European neighbours. However a player cannot currently excel at doing these things without fiercely angering the king and triggering a need for independence perhaps a little too soon than what someone would like. Which is why in general, the introduction of Rebel Fists instead of liberty bells to produce rebel sentiment creates a time of independence more to the players choosing. The player may for the most part enjoy a long game of high Colonial Bells and good culture along with the other benefits, and start to trigger independence when he wants to.


2. Standing Army (Radicalness: )

“A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen”

- James Madison​

This less radical idea revolves around making the king to quarter soldiers amongst your cities during peace time. The foreign unit (belonging to the King's faction) would fortify in your city, and would trigger a harassment event every certain amount of turns, such as 'the king's soldiers have confiscated 50 guns in Boston' or 'a bar fight between the locals and the king's soldiers has increased rebel sentiment in the city.' The king's units would have the positive effect of defending against Native Raids and attacks. Therefore the presence of a standing army would be bittersweet to the player. The king's soldiers would defend the player's cities, while causing small problems (some beneficial) in the process. When a foreign player, native or European declares war, the king's soldiers will help to defend the colonies, but a pop up might appear that will tell the player that some of the kings soldiers have been conspicuously called elsewhere on 'important matters' effectively leaving the player a little more vulnerable and responsible for their own defenses.

The standing army would also not be present at the beginning of the game, but would grow with the colonies, until there are many of the king's soldiers present within the player's cities near the time for declaring independence.

When independence is declared a city with 5 of the king's soldiers and 0 soldiers belonging to the player, will automatically be conquered by the king. If the sides are even, the king's soldiers will be forced one tile out of the city, and then made to fight like normal. If the player has twice as many soldiers in a city as the king, the king's soldiers will retreat from the district (meaning they will be pushed 4 or 5 tiles away from the city). If there is only 1 or 2 of the king's soldiers in a town or city with say 7 or 8 soldiers belonging to the player, then those soldiers will disappear or be captured as slaves automatically, with a small chance that one of them will convert to the players control.

In Conclusion
A standing army will provide the player with the positive effect of noticeable security during the game from native attacks and foreign powers, while creating both negative and positive events in the cities. During the preparation for independence, the player will have to take note of where the king's soldiers already are, and adjust their plans accordingly. This should add more excitement to the game.

3. A Real and Educational Game Economy (Radicalness: )

Without the Change

Here is an example of an economic line from the current economic system, 3 ore may be mined out of the ground by a miner, 3 tools may be made out of 3 ore by a blacksmith, 50 tools may be exchanged for a pioneer, or in RaR, 3 tools may be turned into either 3 guns by a gunsmith, or 3 cannons by a cannonsmith. 50 guns or cannons can then be used to recruit certain units.

Reasons to Change


What's wrong with this current system? A complete and utter lack of reality, that's what. Yes, this change idea is a realism one first and foremost. But I believe this, the most radical change yet common sense change I've thought of, will radically change the game's realism level, and also drastically improve it's 'fun factor'. So let's proceed. 1 ore -> turns into 1 tool -> turns into 1 gun/cannon. Wait... what? 1 Unit of ore can turn into a cannon or a gun? Doesn't it take thousands of pounds more metal to make a cannon than a gun, why then in RaR does one ore = both ten pounds of metal and 3,000 pounds of metal at the same time? But there's more, one ore unit (undefined in weight and value), turns into one unit of tools. This one unit of tools can turn into either a ten pound gun or a 3,000 pound cannon? Congratulations player, you just turned a hammer and a pick into a 3,000 pound cannon. In a few turns, you'll be producing enough cannons to conquer the whole of Europe!

For this example I picked on a very specific exchange in RaR, but the problem is much more widespread in RaR and every other mod as well. The game's economy is cartoonish. And therefore everything in the game is drastically out of ratio with reality. A cannon regiment is worth roughly the same as a group of guys with guns, despite the fact that their real military value far far exceeded an infantry column. The colonies can mass produce Ships of the Line and in some instances, sink the entire Royal Navy before the post independence invasion begins, despite the fact that the American colonies only had one Ship of the Line at the time of independence, and were absolutely no match for the Royal Navy.

These cartoonish misrepresentations would be drastically curbed if a real and educational economy was implemented. Imagine playing the game, and actually getting a feel for how valuable a cannon was. Getting a feel for just how valuable tobacco plantations were to the colonies. Just how valuable the fur trade was. Not in outlandish and exaggerated proportions, but in a very real and thought out replication of the world's economy during the age of exploration and colonization. Imagine balancing your real economy, as all the pieces work as the would in the real world. That's the change that this ambitious concept endeavors to provoke.

The Change

So now imagine the alternative situation, we define how much one unit of ore weighs; ten pounds. Ok great! And then we define how much one gun weighs; ten pounds. And one cannon; three thousand pounds. Ok... that means we make 1 Ore = 1 Gun (+1 unit of lumber), in game, and 300 Ore (+10 units of lumber for the cannon's cart) = 1 Cannon in game. Ok, next we find out how many men made up a typical infantry column, let's say 200 men, so 200 guns to make an infantry unit. How many cannons were usually grouped together at once? Let's say 4, so that would be 4 cannons (which cost 1200 ore and 40 wood to make), +40 horses, because it takes 10 horses to pull each cannon. +20 guns, for the men assigned to defend the cannons.

Furthermore, what was the average amount of ore mined out of a typical mine in the New World? That will determine how much a miner is able to bring out of the earth, and therefore how many guns and cannons a player can realistically make.

In addition, how many cannons were placed on ships? An average Ship of the Line was outfitted with 60-100 cannons. So to make a Ship of the Line, imagine investing 18,000 ore into it's cannons alone! Now you might understand why the American colonies only had one Ship of the Line during their revolutionary war. That's not including the thousands of lumber units (wooden planks) that would be needed. Or also the thousands of units of sailcloth (measured in meters), and rope (measured in coils), that would be needed, or even the gold cost to commission the construction!

In Conclusion

As you can see, this is indeed a radical change! It would effect every area of the game, as every yield would need to be measured for accurate value. The modder(s) who would like to undertake this ambitious task, would need to research the entire economy of the time period, and record proper measurements of every yield featured in the game. If successful, the Civ 4 Colonization engine will serve as the number one vehicle for simulating and playing and educating from a real economy. Perhaps the most educational and fun simulation the world has ever seen... Good luck!





4. Changing Leader Heads (Radicalness: )

Without the Change

A player chooses a leader out of a few choices, to represent their colony at the begining of the game, based upon: personal preference, what type of game they want to play, what bonuses they receive, etc. That leader, and his bonuses remain unchanged until the end of the game. An animated "Leader Head" represents the leader graphically.


Reason to Change

Tired of looking at the face of a colonial or tribal leader who obviously found the New World's fountain of youth? I mean seriously, these guys are in their prime from the beginning of the game until the game's end. They're immortal. On top of that, their expertise never changes, despite a few hundred years of colonial development and leadership experience.

The animated immortal leader head which rattles off comical sayings represents one of the most cartoonish elements of Civilization Colonization, and Civilization in general. Maybe we should get rid of it altogether, and replace it with something different? Something more practical and useful, and maybe a little more realistic for a change?

The Change

Introducing, changing leader heads! I know this idea isn't new. Indeed I tried to do some pioneering work on it in Civ 4, and different people have brainstormed about how to most optimally implement changes to this area of the game. Suffice it to say, it's a radical concept that belongs in this thread.

My idea for implementation is short and simple.

• You pick a leader at the beginning of the game (based upon preference and traits).
• That leader ages.
• After awhile, the leader dies (along with the bonus traits he gave your colony).
• When the leader dies. You choose a new leader (based upon preference and traits).
• That leader ages.
• After awhile, the leader dies (along with the bonus traits he gave your colony).
• When the leader dies. You choose a new leader (based upon preference and traits).

Get the idea?

Each new leader has leader traits that benefit your colony in a different way. This can be useful for the player looking to change their game plan as they go along depending on how the game is unfolding for them.

For example: the player choose to have a 50% bonus against natives at the beginning of the game, but he notices that it's more useful to trade with the natives in his neck of the woods and pursue peace. So when his leader dies, he chooses a new leader that has traits that benefit a peace relationship with natives and not a war relationship with natives.

Or vice versa: the player was hoping for peaceful trade with the natives at the begining of the game, but notices that the natives won't stop being aggressive. So when the player gets the option, he chooses an iron handed leader with a 50% bonus against natives to help him establish order amongst "the savages."

This plan for change hinges upon two different questions (that I can think of):

1. Who or what does the Leader Head represent?
2. How often does the Leader Head age, die, and therefore change?

Question 2 depends on question 1. I can think of two answers for question 1. The Leader Head represents either an individual or a community.

The current Leader Head represents an individual. Albeit an immortal individual. An individual as a changing Leader Head would live as long as individuals would be expected to live. If the Governor (or other name for this Leader), would likely be 20 years old to 50 years old before taking office, then a player is choosing a 20-50 year old individual. That would therefore mean that after a Leader Head is chosen (assuming the max age is 70), the LH would be scheduled to die in 20-50 years, randomly. Those years would be translated into equivalent game turns, and implemented.

Another understanding for the Leader Head could be that it represents a community, not an individual. In this case, the Leader Head could represent the American Colony (or some other variation of name). This one would require some thought to get times and names correct. It hinges on the idea that the player starts out with a small group of colonizers with a colonial charter from their king, and the nation itself slowly evolves into a different type of colony/country. At the beginning think to choose between: English Puritans or English Anabaptists or English Catholics (each with different traits), or alternatively, think to choose between: Fur Trading Company or Sugar Plantationers or New England Loggers.

In each example above, the names would have to be carefully chosen to allow for variation between choices every time the Leader Head is set to change. Additionally, unlike individuals, communities would be set to age slower and die slower, thus the option to change would occur every 100 years or so instead of every 20-50 years.

A variation on the Leader Head as community, could be alternatively be fixed instead of multiple choices following multiple streams. In this alteration the player would choose at the begining of the game for example, "Spanish Explorers", they could only choose to play as Spanish Explorers, but they would be able to choose from several different Leadership Trait combinations. And then, in 100 years, "Explorers" would die, and the LH would automatically be renamed to "Spanish Colonists." The player would be prompted to choose different traits for the nation, but not a different name. In 100 years the "Colonists" LH dies, and it would be renamed to "The Spanish Colonies" and prompted with trait choices and so on.

In Conclusion

The benefit of doing things this way, is that it allows the player to change or update the direction of their company throughout the game, either every 20-50 years or every 100 years or so. It also adds more realism to the game, getting rid of a cartoonish and immortal Leader Head that never changes Leadership traits and benefits to the player. The player would experience the same kind of interesting decision they experience as they choose national traits (slavery or not, democracy or not) at the time of independence. They would be experiencing these types of trait changes every 20-100 years instead of one time at the end of the game. What do you think? Do you have any additional ideas to improve this radical concept?

Under Development 2

Under Development 3

Sanotra said:

Hi Commander Bello, I see you like KJ Jansson's Codex mod. Have you looked at my recent thread Radical Concepts? I know you probably don't have the time or the ability to create the concept I detail 1. - 1b. (similar to Codex) but what do you think of the idea? Feedback in the thread is surely welcome.

Click to expand...

As promised...

I feel honored by the fact that KJ Jansson actually picked one of my ideas (sorry, its in German) as inspiration for his "Codex" modcomp.
Maybe tomorrow I will translate it to English and post it here, if you don't mind. Therefore, I would like to postpone any more detail answer until this has happened, as by then my original idea will be clear and I can make comparisons between your ideas and mine.

I look forward to reading it. I don't mind if you post here, this thread is meant for discussion. Eventually I hope to list other peoples Radical Concepts in the Table of Contents and link to them, if I like them.

Sorry, my response may take some more time.

I have to apologize.

The last days I was busy on daytime and in the evenings, I was just too lazy. I will try to come with my answer in the next day(s).

Hello Forum!

There have been some serious and significant modifications to the first two posts in this thread. I recommend reading through these radical concepts to change the game, and be inspired!

Let me know what you think!
Sanotra

I read the real and educational game economy part. Although I'd like to see a Col mod that tries to be as realistic as possible, maybe even educational as you say, there's always a certain limits how realistic these kind of games can become.
For example, it's hard to get the unit movement speed to realistic metrics and still maintaining the game balance, especially since this is turn based game. Even though, if you really wanted to experiment with it you could slow down the calendar and speed up the ships and see how it becomes.
Also, realism in games is always little bit artificial anyway.

It still could be interesting to define real world metrics for all the yield. At least in theory I could see the "Realistic Colonization" mod could be possible.

Talking about realistic economics, I would really like to see a Col mod that tries to simulate real economics, maybe even simulate currency. A system where prices are defined by supply and demand and goods are consumed by the people.

Good comments and thoughts Fullerene. Yeah, to be honest, realism is a huge factor in what makes a game fun... to me. Colonization inspired me to study the time period, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing a simulation of history. But as I studied the time period, and the economy, I quickly lost interest in playing this game, even the best mods available. Because at their core, they simulate a cartoonish reality which teaches very little and offers very little in terms of administrative difficulty. To me, the adminstration aspects of the game teach the player to be good at managing a fictional and cartoonish economy/military/society. As such, the player gets real good at nothing. To be the overseer of a simulation of a realistic economy/military/society the player would begin to get a real feel for how manufacturing works, how militaries are funded and used, how religion and other social factors spread and effects a societies behavior and identity. All of these benefits are too large to ignore. Which is why as soon as I had the radical concept of a real and educational economy come into my brain, I immediately stopped playing Colonization, out of mere disgust for the status quo. lol. Call me crazy, but yes I'm a radical.

Thanks Sanotra for this feedback. I'm only discovering this thread now.

I totally agree about the educational value a game like Civ4Col could bring. What I appreciate the most about it is how it focuses on economical History. I don't know how it is in the US, but here in France economical History is often neglected despite being key to really understand the evolution of the world.

Now about your concepts, I agree with fullerene. Of course time and proportions are not correct, but if the game evolves the way you propose, there's a big risk it becomes unbearably tedious. Furthermore I'm not convinced that is where lies the main educational value. If you play a full RAR game on gigantic map and marathon speed, you'll realize that the game can already be very, very big. As a player, making the game even bigger is not my priority anymore.

However, I agree with you there's something flawed in the military concept. As it is in RAR 2.2, the most efficent strategy is to focus on building light and heavy artilleries. Foot and even horse units aren't as efficient and thus there's no real incentives to focus on them.

An idea I had but which is maybe too "radical" to be implemented would be to make cannons strictly "bombard units", but when they bombard, they don't only reduces city fortifications, they also damage units. In the same way, when attacking a stack in which there are defensive artilleries, we should get damaged because of bombard first before fighting land units. If artilleries could only bombard, then there would be an incentive to build other land units...

Marla_Singer, I agree. The economical side of history is definitely an integral part in understanding why things in history have happened they way they did.

I understand the thought that you have that the game might become unbearably tedious. But perhaps I'll remind you that that seems like much the same criticism some had of RaR. The increase of yields and features seemed like unnecessary expansion of the game and too much tediousness for some. For the rest of us, RaR is what Colonization should've been to begin with. To me, its much the same with Economical History. At the outset it may seem like such a huge change could ruin the game, but once its done, I feel like people would think as highly of it as we currently do of RaR and its ambitious changes.

On a technical note, RaR and it's new features were more predictable. We had a good feeling we knew how its changes would effect the fun factor of the game. For such a sweeping change to the economy of the game, I feel like the radical concept I proposed is too unpredicatable to make a judgment on. It could make the game "larger" (like you said) in some areas, and much simpler and smaller in other areas. We just don't know. If the changes were ever implemented, only then would we know how radically it would effect the game, and if it improved or ruined the game. I'm inclined to think it would improve.

I like your cannon bombardment idea. I don't think it's super radical though. In the sense that the change could be implemented in an hour and played around with right? Have you tried giving it a go?

Howdy Sanotra, I haven't had the chance yet to fully examine your opening posts but it is on my todo list. Your post has been quoted from a few times already in the Medieval:Conquest forums so I figure I need to get up to date on the latest talk. I'll give a proper reply sometime later (posting this subscribes me to this thread).

Sanotra said:

The Change
The Colonial Bell would replace the Liberty Bell. Unlike the Liberty Bell, it does not produce a rebel sentiment %, but instead Colonial Strength %. Colonial Strength would benefit the colonies in every way rebel sentiment currently does, but without the overwhelming negative repercussions from the king. Producing Colonial Bells would produce the positives such as; culture so as to expand borders, political points so as to win founding fathers, and Colonial Strength so as to increase production by its %. Producing Colonial Bells will still have the effect of angering the king, but his anger will be much more delayed than in the current Liberty Bell system. This delay is because Colonial Bells don't produce infuriating Rebel Sentiment %, but instead a more emotionally neutral Colonial Strength %. The player would receive relatively light treatment from the king until an extremely high level of bells are achieved. This is where the Rebel Fist comes in.

Click to expand...

This is a good idea and it is something similarly we have done with the M:C mod. We have split Culture into its own Yield and it works quite nicely. In Vanilla it is quite a pain trying to raise your Rebel Sentiment early on to get the bonuses and having to suffer the Kings demands when your Colonies are still fledglings, so a new balance here would be nice.

In regards to the "Pamphleteer", would a better term like Patriot work better, or Revolutionary?

I am not so sure about the mentioned term "Armed Rebel", considering any soldier you recruit would be considered an Armed Rebel by the King when fighting the War of Independence.

The Standing King's Army ideas sound really cool and I believe I may have mentioned something similar in a thread somewhere. The King could actually take these units from the REF and when war is declared any king units that are in a Colony with no Rebels are allowed to Flee and join the REF, if there are Rebels present there is a chance the Rebels will capture the King units just like the King can capture any ships in transit to Europe.

The changes for Realism would be quite radical indeed but they do sound interesting. It is a tricky thing adding realism to a game as people will point out that while it may sound cool at the time it just ends of being extremely tedious and not fun. We had this experience recently with an addition to M:C. We added in Limited Resources where some Yields like Ore and Furs would deplete over time and you would have to go in search for or trade for more. This obviously is realistic but the initial implementation of this ended up being more tedious than fun, so we had to rebalance it.

Over all I like where you are going with this. I'm not sure how much you know about modding/coding and such but you should flex your mind and creativity and start to produce some of these changes yourself

Sanotra said:

300 Ore (+10 units of lumber for the cannon's cart) = 1 Cannon

Click to expand...

The 1->1 system works quite nicely from a gameplay point of view. It is quite simple and people can figure it out without too much attention (from other aspects).

It can be changed using just XML (at least some of it). However it will dramatically change game balance and the game will quickly end up being unbalanced and as we all know, unbalanced games are no fun to play.

If it takes 300 ore to make a cannon and it takes 40 cannons to make an artillery unit (I think that's the demand in RaR), a unit will cost 12000 ore. Selling the ore at 1 gold/unit will then give you 12k gold, which is enough for around 10 artillery units. It varies depending on how many you already bought and taxes, but clearly building them yourself should not be more expensive than buying them.

I'm not totally against the concept of getting one unit of cigars out of two units of tobacco or whatever, but the numbers you came up with are gamebreaking.

Nobody said 1 unit of yield A weights the same as 1 unit of yield B. The concept of yield weight could be interesting, but it would presumably be a lot of work. Warehouses only care for size while ships mainly cares for weight, which could be an interesting contrast.

Interesting fact about modern ships: if you fill up a cargo ship with steel plates, it will use 15% of the cargo volume for 100% of the cargo weight capacity. They are usually loaded something like 10% steel and them something light on top, like cotton to fill up all the spaces in the cargo rooms. I'm not sure what the ships visiting the colonies did in this regard, but obviously the same physics applies.

Nightinggale said:

The concept of yield weight could be interesting, but it would presumably be a lot of work. Warehouses only care for size while ships mainly cares for weight, which could be an interesting contrast.

Click to expand...

The slot-system for all transport units looks stupid.

Really, the Galleon has 6 slots, but if you load only one type of goods in each slot (1 food, 1 tool, 1 gun, 1 ore, 1 silver, 1 cloth) your galleon will be FULL!!!

WHY???

Don Senglar said:

The slot-system for all transport units looks stupid.

Really, the Galleon has 6 slots, but if you load only one type of goods in each slot (1 food, 1 tool, 1 gun, 1 ore, 1 silver, 1 cloth) your galleon will be FULL!!!

WHY???

Click to expand...

To make it easier to code. Each slot has two ints, YieldType and amount.

DoaNE has solved this by saying that each slot can contain 30 yields and you can use it however you like. Due to their closed source policy, we can't tell how they did it, but if we really want, it should be possible to code it ourselves.

I imagine something like having a JIT cargo yield array and store the cargo there. It then blocks the transport's cargo slots and it uses the number of slots: combined cargo / (max capacity in each slot + (max capacity in each slot - 1))

Nightinggale said:

To make it easier to code.

Click to expand...

Easier doesn't mean better, unfortunately.

Nightinggale said:

Each slot has two ints, YieldType and amount.

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Sorry, Nightinggale, I have a stupid question. How about to remove one of ints, namely YieldType check during the transportation?

Nightinggale said:

..... if we really want, it should be possible to code it ourselves....

I imagine something like having a JIT cargo yield array and store the cargo there. It then blocks the transport's cargo slots and it uses the number of slots: combined cargo / (max capacity in each slot + (max capacity in each slot - 1))

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It would be really RADICAL change of gameplay. As minimum we'll have much simplier transportation system when each transport unit could transport as many types of goods as we have in the game.

Don Senglar said:

I have a stupid question. How about to remove one of ints, namely YieldType check during the transportation?

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You are right. It is a stupid question

If we remove YieldType, then we will end up knowing we loaded 42 units of something, but we don't know if that something is tobacco, cigars or weapons. We need to store how many of what kind of yield or it would make no sense.

The change I proposed deals with this in a different manner. It stores an array of all yields, essentially we allocate memory like we load 0 of each yield. Here we can omit storing the YieldType because we know the yields are stored in the same order as they appear in XML, hence type is just a matter of counting. Import/export/threshold relies entirely on this concept.