Bonuses for Techs, Civics, and FFs

One thing we need to work up is what will the Bonuses will be through out the Mod. We have several different types and tons of options:

• Technologies
• Trading Perks
• Civic Option Types(in the works)
• Founding Fathers

I have compiled a list of the bonuses we have at the moment in a pdf. So, if anyone wants to review this list and help out with advice or suggestions or compile your own list then please do so.

In the original Mod, I added the bonuses myself and it was far from finished. When working up the first version what I did was went through all the Vanilla FFs and wrote down their Bonuses then I attempted to add the same ones or similar ones to M:C FFs. And then when I added Technologies, if a Tech and a FF had similar bonuses I would divide up the Bonus between them. So if travel time was -50% on the Vanilla FF, I would do -25% on M:C FF and -25% on Tech. I did this to maintain the original balance of bonuses.

Techs and Trading perks for the most part Unlock features such as Units, Promotions, Buidlings, etc, so most of them do not actually add any bonuses. In the pdf I did not show these Unlocks only the Bonuses.

For Civics I plan to add New Features mostly, instead of just more Bonuses. Civ5 has a ton of Bonuses in the game and it is almost overwhelming with all the choices, so to start with I want to keep the Civics few and simple.

I have one idea concerning FFs in M:C and this could work for the World History Mod as well. If we start to get to many bonuses adding up we can set it up so that the player has one Adviser from each of the FF categories that he can chose from. This would require a New Screen. The player would open the screen, click an adviser option and then he could choose which adviser he wants to fill that spot and only that Adviser's bonuses would apply. All others would simply be in stasis and at least your enemy doesn't have them, right If done this way, FFs could have more Bonuses than your normal FFs.

I was looking over some of Civ5 options and I really like the "Embark" ability. Basically, after you research Optics your units can Embark and travel along ocean tiles with out being in a ship, if in Friendly Territory. This could allow units to "Island Hop" without having to micro manage loading and unloading units to ships so I am considering adding this ability to M:C.

A long while back I started modding in a "Lost At Sea" feature that if certain Ship Units travel out to ocean they had a chance to be lost at sea. This wasn't going to mean they were gone for good, they would disappear for a time, but then may reappear a few turns later by the coast, damaged but still alive. Or, you may get a message saying they are gone for good.

With these two options we could add new abilities to Techs, such as a "Ships are no longer lost at sea" and you can increase movement speed of Embarked units and range like Civ5 does.

Kailric said:

I have compiled a list of the bonuses we have at the moment in a pdf. So, if anyone wants to review this list and help out with advice or suggestions or compile your own list then please do so.

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I feel like it would be better to write a perl script to generate tables like that because that will make it much easier to make an overview like that and update it without human errors.

Kailric said:

I was looking over some of Civ5 options and I really like the "Embark" ability. Basically, after you research Optics your units can Embark and travel along ocean tiles with out being in a ship, if in Friendly Territory. This could allow units to "Island Hop" without having to micro manage loading and unloading units to ships so I am considering adding this ability to M:C.

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I don't like that option. However I have come up with an alternative idea. We can build a ferry unit in a city. Then that unit can travel normally to whatever water plot we want. Here it can sacrifice itself to make a route improvement.

1. Land units can then travel there as we will make it so they can travel on any plot with a route even if they can't normally travel there (think RaR and mountain peaks+road).
2. If we set movement bonus to 1, then I think units will spend 10 movement points there meaning they all end turn by crossing water.
3. Only units of DOMAIN_LAND should be affected by routes. Your ships should be able to cross normally.
4. Ferry route can only be built next to land
5. Ferry route can't be built next to a ferry route
6. plotgroups spreads or doesn't spread across water
7. You need open borders with the plot owner to use the ferries

4-6 could be affected by technology level and we might even have to invent ferries in the first place.
7: we might split open borders, trade relations and use ferries into 3 different agreements.

I also prefer the ferry option

It is a solution to continue plotgroups across water and also your ships still have an important use.

If units could freely move through water, imagine cumulating tons of troops and then invade a not owned plot near the island of other civilization. It is more enjoyable to count on the troop transport factor.

Trade Winds said:

If units could freely move through water, imagine cumulating tons of troops and then invade a not owned plot near the island of other civilization. It is more enjoyable to count on the troop transport factor.

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Maybe there should be a limit on number of units transported each turn, like route info has an int of max land units on plot. If the number of land units on plot is (or exceed however that happens) the limit, then land unit can't move into the plot in question. We can then have multiple ferry route types giving different limits, possibly built by different units and unlocked by different techs. In fact maybe an increased capacity is upgrading the route on plot like RaR railroad is an upgrade to road and you can't build railroad directly.

This setup will allow free land unit movement while avoiding the 80 troops arriving from what looks like nowhere. Alternatively will the ferries be unable to handle military units for balance reasons.

Also most people think of big diesel ships when they hear the word "ferry". However the concept is quite old and in medieval times it was common to use ferries to cross rivers if they were too deep to walk across. In cases like that the ferry was often a common rowboat. In fact it looks we had commercial bronze age ferries. I have from a non-online source that the cargo capacity is estimated to be 80 sheep It was presumably rowed by 12 people and being found in Dover it is highly likely that it was rowing across the English channel. Who knows how many of those actually sailed there even though only one is preserved.

ferries might be cool for M:C, because on my world map I am planningto have 'sailable rivers' but my plan was to simply have a normal boat that you can sit somewhere if you want it to be a 'bridge'.

How often does a single plot of water seperate you from a plot of useful land in M:C? I don't think I have ever experienced it...

It seems like a fairly heavy addition for a not very major problem? (if there is a problem at all)

I quite like the current ship system for transport. You could have a few special units that could have the 'embark' skill, like explorers or contract merchants.

I am still wrapping my head around all of the possible choices of things we can do with civics, what code is available for manipulation and the kind of things it can manipulate..

Lib.Spi't said:

How often does a single plot of water seperate you from a plot of useful land in M:C? I don't think I have ever experienced it...

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It depends on the map generator. Way too many small islands are lame due to micromanagement. However ferries would make it an interesting game.

I'm not worried about coding this as most of the DLL code already exist. In fact I wonder if we could make a ship able to simply build roads and see if it can make working bridges. It might actually work already.

Nightinggale said:

I don't like that option.

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What are your reasons?

Trade Winds said:

If units could freely move through water, imagine cumulating tons of troops and then invade a not owned plot near the island of other civilization. It is more enjoyable to count on the troop transport factor.

Click to expand...

To address your concerns, the ability to Embark only works in friendly territory, or perhaps better, within your own borders, and you are only allowed to hang near the cost. Has any one actually played with the Civ5 concept? I haven't much myself. Anyway, Embark units can not "Invade" a not owned plot. They can however, move to an Island plot owned by the player.

Lib.Spi't said:

How often does a single plot of water seperate you from a plot of useful land in M:C? I don't think I have ever experienced it...

Click to expand...

What I am concerned about is not the one plot distant "Islands" but rather the two or more plot distant Islands. How many times in a game have you seen an Island plot with some good resources and you wished you could move it a bit closer (see the attached picture)?


If your borders could stretch all the way to the Island in the pic then your units could freely Embark to there. If there was an City there that you wanted to capture and your borders actually crossed to the Island then yeah, you could amass an army there, but you could still mass an army there otherwise it would just take you several turns to move them across on ships.

This would not eliminate the need for ships, only the need to set up Ships as the only means to Transport goods from such a settlement. Instead your Supply Wagons would auto embark to cross to the island to pick up goods, freeing up your ships to make more grander trading voyages.

The Ferry idea is not bad, though. It would basically be an Improvement type, like the opposite of a canal, but it wold not solve the issue unless you built two ferries in this instance.

Kailric said:

What are your reasons?

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There is one fundamental difference between civ4 and civ5 (one which is the biggest flaw in civ5). This is one unit on each plot limit. However that might also be what saves the embarkment feature. If you can only have one unit on each plot, then you can't move a massive army across water due to embarkment. You will be able to do that in the civ4 engine.

Also while playing civ5 I noticed embarkment becomes too much of a replacement for ships.

Kailric said:

If your borders could stretch all the way to the Island in the pic then your units could freely Embark to there. If there was an City there that you wanted to capture and your borders actually crossed to the Island then yeah, you could amass an army there, but you could still mass an army there otherwise it would just take you several turns to move them across on ships.

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Several turns is the key here. It allows the other player to respond and send in more troops. "I will be attacked next turn" is a pretty bad scenario and often your defense could have been a whole lot better if you knew that two turns earlier.

Kailric said:

The Ferry idea is not bad, though. It would basically be an Improvement type, like the opposite of a canal, but it wold not solve the issue unless you built two ferries in this instance.

Click to expand...

When I said route I proposed adding ferries to CIV4RouteInfos.xml. Plotgroups spread purely by checking that the route on the plot is not NO_ROUTE. Having a check for route and improvement type and info for one of them (or both) will severely affect performance of potential plotgroup split checks. Also this mean that plotgroup spread should work with ferries without changing any plotgroup code as there is a big don't care for plot being the wrong domain.

I don't see a problem in needing two ferries in that screenshot. In fact I mentioned that option even before you posted the screenshot.


While writing this I wondered about "wagon train" type of units. If they can randomly embark you will have no control of where they go. Imagine your transport taking a shortcut across water (a weird shortcut btw) and then you lose it to a pirate and you didn't intend to make anything move across water in that area as you know it has pirates.

Nightinggale said:

There is one fundamental difference between civ4 and civ5 (one which is the biggest flaw in civ5). This is one unit on each plot limit. However that might also be what saves the embarkment feature. If you can only have one unit on each plot, then you can't move a massive army across water due to embarkment. You will be able to do that in the civ4 engine.

Several turns is the key here. It allows the other player to respond and send in more troops. "I will be attacked next turn" is a pretty bad scenario and often your defense could have been a whole lot better if you knew that two turns earlier.

Click to expand...

You could put up your own restrictions, like one Embarked unit per plot. But, you can still have surprise mass amphibious assaults just by sending all your ships across at once, like William the Conqueror. If I ever did this I'd play test it first to see how it goes.

Nightinggale said:

While writing this I wondered about "wagon train" type of units. If they can randomly embark you will have no control of where they go. Imagine your transport taking a shortcut across water (a weird shortcut btw) and then you lose it to a pirate and you didn't intend to make anything move across water in that area as you know it has pirates.

Click to expand...

You have mostly full control where they go, they only go where you have Trade Routes establish between your colonies. In M:C you have to be constantly aware of your surroundings because there could be bandits, marauders or pirates lurking anywhere. So if you lose any unit to these then you best up your defenses and your night watch. If implemented this could just be a Trait to Seafaring civs, with limitations to keep it balanced.

I guess I just really don't see the need, in that attached screen shot I would just have a coastal trader connect the island, and put a city on it...

Lib.Spi't said:

I guess I just really don't see the need, in that attached screen shot I would just have a coastal trader connect the island, and put a city on it...

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Right, which isn't a bad way you just have to dedicate that ship to it. One thought though is those instances were a Trade Screen Route, such as The Silk Road, is on such an Landmass, just out of your reach, and the Landmass is mostly inhospitable for Cities. You could set up a town there just for Ship access or the Embark feature could come in handy for your Peddlers to reach the Trade Screen access. The Embark feature could be a promotion earned as well.

Kailric said:

Right, which isn't a bad way you just have to dedicate that ship to it. One thought though is those instances were a Trade Screen Route, such as The Silk Road, is on such an Landmass, just out of your reach, and the Landmass is mostly inhospitable for Cities. You could set up a town there just for Ship access or the Embark feature could come in handy for your Peddlers to reach the Trade Screen access. The Embark feature could be a promotion earned as well.

Click to expand...

And how many cities wouldn't be cities today if the terrain didn't give it the transport abilities it does/did? A lot of colonies in Asia was just a bunch of houses and warehouses where European ships came and (un)loaded and then local peddlers took care of the rest. The city itself wasn't much of a city. Manchester in England wasn't anything until the 18th century where they dug a canal from London to Liverpool (using rivers as much as possible) and one from Bristol to the north east (forgot which city). Manchester happened to be the location where the two canals crossed each other providing it with easiest possible access to everything in a pre railroad era.

I see nothing wrong in having to build bad cities to ensure trade routes. In fact it would be quite realistic to build a city, add city walls and add soldiers in strategic points all the way along a route often travelled by traders. Production in such fortifications comes secondary and if the local land will not provide the resources for a decent population and/or production, then so be it. Didn't the US draw lines on the map to go west and then they added forts every X miles to protect the road? I think I recall something like that.

Nightinggale said:

I see nothing wrong in having to build bad cities to ensure trade routes.

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I completely agree with this idea.

What it’s more, as we said here in the forums, even a foreign civ can trade with you the right to access to one of their harbours for commercial purposes (or other) as it happened in Chinese cities when they allowed French concessions and British concessions.

So port access is so important that it even can be turned into a tradable commodity.

Besides, to make things worse, I never liked the fact that any coastal city can harbour a harbour. The best harbour cities were founded in suitable locations as Plymouth in UK or Cartagena in Spain. So it wasn’t realistic to found a city and start admitting heavy maritime traffic with intensive cargo loading and unloading even without building a simple dock.

Well, but this last bit complicates gameplay a lot, so you can ignore that previous paragraph.

Trade Winds said:

Besides, to make things worse, I never liked the fact that any coastal city can harbour a harbour. The best harbour cities were founded in suitable locations as Plymouth in UK or Cartagena in Spain. So it wasn’t realistic to found a city and start admitting heavy maritime traffic with intensive cargo loading and unloading even without building a simple dock.

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So you are saying that cities and units (ships) should have iDockSize just like they have iTeachLevel? That way in the check to see if it can enter a plot, if the plot has a city, the ship can enter unless its dock size is less than or equal to the dock size in the city.

I don't think that would be hard to code. However that might screw the AI big time and adding this limitation to humans only isn't ideal either. Game balance is the hardest part of this idea.

Yeah I already as a matter of course build a city on a coast next to the silk road, to make a trade port for it.

It is actually one of my favourite jobs.

Nightinggale said:

I see nothing wrong in having to build bad cities to ensure trade routes.

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I have to actually agree too. That was my idea to start with when gaining access to some of these Trade Screens. I just haven't been able to play test it really.

Trade Winds said:

Well, but this last bit complicates gameplay a lot, so you can ignore that previous paragraph.

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That would be an interesting addition. But like Night said, the AI would have troubles not being able to move ships into a city to load/unload. For game play purposes we can consider the Ships "at bay" and goods have to be rowed out to them. I have an idea though, this "simulation" could more easily be coded in that say, without a dock it cost one move of the ship to Load or Unload. You can load or unload as much as you like, perhaps, but the Ship will not be able to move till next turn. I think something like this was mentioned before we someone brought the idea of one of those big Dock Crane thingys.

Kailric said:

I have an idea though, this "simulation" could more easily be coded in that say, without a dock it cost one move of the ship to Load or Unload. You can load or unload as much as you like, perhaps, but the Ship will not be able to move till next turn. I think something like this was mentioned before we someone brought the idea of one of those big Dock Crane thingys.

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That someone was me in the original M:C thread and no, I'm not going to read through that thread to find the post, but it's there.

I don't know if I like the delay docking.. An idea that I really liked from 2071 was where the dock produced and consumed silver, so it auto generates a bit of money, I like this for upgraded docks, representing private merchants and shipping, and the taxes and revenue from berths and trading, this could even be increased by a civic.

Lib.Spi't said:

I don't know if I like the delay docking.. An idea that I really liked from 2071 was where the dock produced and consumed silver, so it auto generates a bit of money, I like this for upgraded docks, representing private merchants and shipping, and the taxes and revenue from berths and trading, this could even be increased by a civic.

Click to expand...

Buildings can produce and consume yields in M:C. I added that feature (partly/mainly copy paste from RaR and Androrc). However so far nobody added this to XML meaning you will still not really see the effect ingame. This mean the change you propose is a change in XML only.