Advanced Improvements

[abresch]

This mod adds high-quality improvements with later techs, so that you can keep improving your terrain as you advance. The instant buffs that some techs gave to all improvements have been removed and replaced, so no techs give quite such an enormous buff to anything, and instead you just can start making steady improvements once those techs are available.

New Improvements
- Irrigation: +2 food, requires water (civil service)
- High-Density Farm: +2 food, +3 with water (fertilizer)
- Logging Camp: +1 hammer (engineering)
- Factory Farm: +1 more food than a pasture (fertilizer)
- Industrial Mine: +2 hammers (railroad)
- Modern Plantation: +1 more gold than a plantation, except for sugar which is +1 more food (electricity)
- Mall: +3 gold (mass media)
- Commercial Fishery: +1 more food for fish or whale, +1 more gold for pearls (biology)

Modified Improvements:
- Lumber Mill: +2 hammers, gained from steam power, not engineering
- Oil Well/Offshore Platform: Gains an additional +1 gold
- Fishing Boats and Fish: The fish resource provides 1 less food, but fishing boats supply +1 food/+1 gold when placed on a fish resource

Tech Changes:
- Civil Service: No longer grants +1 food to farms alongside fresh water, costs 300 instead of 400
- Steam Power: No longer grants +1 hammer to lumber mills
- Fertilizer: No longer grants +1 food to all farms

Current Issues (Yeah, this is the first version, still has problems)
- No New Icons: All the new improvements still share the icons with what they replace. Just haven't gotten to this yet.
- Graphics Don't Always Work: The graphics for some reason only display partially in many cases. For example, irrigation and high-density farms show the farm buildings but not the plowed fields. Malls don't display at all, but industrial mines and logging camps work properly. So, it can be weird trying to spot whether a tile is improved.
- No Difference in Graphics: Currently, even if the graphics display, they aren't distinguishable.
- No Button Icons: The icons for worker actions display as blank buttons.
- No Tech-Tree Icons: The new improvements are invisible in the tech tree.
- Too Many Buttons: The game doesn't actually replace the worse improvements, so workers get a whole mess of actions available.
- Happiness: The new improvements add to the total food available, but the happiness available remains the same, which can be troublesome.
- Have to Replace, not Upgrade: I haven't found a way to make it so you can upgrade an existing improvement instead of replacing it. So, when you have a farm and want to make it a high-density farm, it spends several turns not existing and takes as long to make as if being made from scratch. This is mostly a problem with plantations and mines on resources.


Well, I hope that you like it. This is my first attempt at modding anything, and I think it's coming along alright. Hopefully I'll get some of those kinks worked out soon.

 

[alpaca]

Got a question: Did you ever see the AI building any of these? I added some improvements in my mod (actually just resource-specific copies of existing improvements) and the AI never built any of them.

 

[abresch]

I have seen the computer build them.

I'll have to do some testing, but at a guess, I'd bet they don't often replace improvements. I usually do starts in the later ages, so they start with some available and make those, but if you start at the beginning it might not work right.

Also, it is often hard to tell that they made them, since the farms and malls don't display properly, so you really have to switch to the strategic view and look for the icons, then hover to check which is which. I'll try to add new icons soon, which should make it more obvious.

 

[alpaca]

I have seen the computer build them.

I'll have to do some testing, but at a guess, I'd bet they don't often replace improvements. I usually do starts in the later ages, so they start with some available and make those, but if you start at the beginning it might not work right.

Also, it is often hard to tell that they made them, since the farms and malls don't display properly, so you really have to switch to the strategic view and look for the icons, then hover to check which is which. I'll try to add new icons soon, which should make it more obvious.

My improvements are actually specific to certain resources. What I did was to split, for example, the mine into mine and gold mine and add a culture yield to the gold mine. The AI never built one. Maybe I made some mistake but I copied all places where I found mines mentioned. I don't really have time to test your mod but I was curious because I couldn't find anything I did wrong. From looking at your code, you might want to pay attention if the AI builds these improvements and if so, if it also builds them on resource tiles.

For the build icons, you need to edit ActionIcons.lua

 

[abresch]

Well, I've determined that they build the AI builds the better improvements some of the time but not all of the time. I'm still looking for a reason behind the pattern, but there is a bit of a pattern, so at least there's that.

On regular terrain, they do build them. On most strategic resources, they do build them. On some (I believe just uranium) they do not. On luxury resources, they usually don't build them, but they sometimes do build them.

My improvements are actually specific to certain resources. What I did was to split, for example, the mine into mine and gold mine and add a culture yield to the gold mine.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your mod, as I haven't actually tried it out, but is there some reason you're making entire new improvements for resources, rather than just changing the extra bonuses for certain resources when improved in the Improvement_ResourceType_Yields table?

 

[alpaca]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your mod, as I haven't actually tried it out, but is there some reason you're making entire new improvements for resources, rather than just changing the extra bonuses for certain resources when improved in the Improvement_ResourceType_Yields table?

Yes, I wanted to add culture by improvement, which is done in the main improvements table (quite stupidly, I might add)