Imperialism Mod

[Lib.Spi't]

REWARD THIS!!

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Yeah I think what he is looking for is a diplomacy system like Imp.

In which you slowly get better levels of integration and better rewards from trade
(Cheaper goods and first refusal of purchase, etc.)

Spoiler :

Protectorate: Vassalage negotiated while at peace, and can trade its cities. Declaring war on this nation causes the protecting great power to intervene. Liege guarantees independence, protectorate controls its own military and gives no discount for yields.

Puppet State:Vassalage negotiated while at war. Can trade its cities. It is the surrendered vassal from BTS.

Colony: Vassalage which results in deeply discounted prices (or free) for yields for the master state. Military units also controlled by the liege state. You can trade the bonuses of vassal.

Annexed territory: Territory lost to the liege unwillingly in peace or as a result of war. There is a greater rebellion chance in annexed territory. Annexed territory has fixed borders, but with continued cultural transmission.

Dominion: Vassalage which allows some independence. Dominions control their own military and provide some discount for yields and somewhat higher prices for yield sales from the liege. Dominions can declare war and make peace as a sovereign nation. Dominions have a military alliance with their master.

I think we have most of these things already in broad terms.

Trade Rights (Traders and Missionaries?(monks) can enter territory to establish Posts/Missions and conduct trade)
Trade Posts/Religion Missons (Could become embassies that provide something?!?) (An improve relations mechanic maybe?) (or they could spawn 'Colonial' troops instead of converts? A bit like the Colony setting suggested)
Right of Passage (Troops and Others can Move)
Trade City
Alliance
Vassalage (Protectorate, formed by expanding borders, when borders absorb a minor nation city the request Vassalage. They get a fixed 8 square border. They are independent but part of your team, they have their own military. You can tax them with a tax collector, you can request goods from them.)
(Take Over) (I am not sure if we have this one when it comes to minor nations.. I think we do, I am sure there are three options 'destroy Settlement, Make Vassal, Take Control?' when your borders absorb a village.)

Then there is also the 'gifts' of yields from vassals and minor nations, and the 'tribute' that you can demand from vassals. As well as Tax from Vassals.

Do we have forced Vassalage in M:C? I have never had a major war I don't think so I am not sure. but that would just be some text edit if we do. Vassal by a different means/name.

So I think as you say night, some way or levels to actively improve pricing would more or less be all that is missing... maybe..

They just need rebranding when the time comes.

Also there is currently no real 'rebellion' system, in the terms of cities don't become unhappy and revolt.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

So I thought I would do a comparison of M:C Units to Imp. Units.

Imp. Units

Spoiler :

9 Classes. 27 Units.

Militia: Minutemen, Militia, Conscripts
Light Infantry: Skirmishers, Sharpshooters, Rangers
Regular Infantry: Regulars, Rifle Infantry, Modern Infantry
Heavy Infantry: Grenadiers, Guards, Machine-gunners
Light Cavalry: Hussars, Scouts, Mechanised
Heavy Cavalry: Cuirassiers, Carbine, Cavalry Armour
Light Artillery: Horse Artillery, Field Artillery, Mobile Artillery
Heavy Artillery: Artillery, Siege Artillery, Railroad Guns
Combat Engineers: Sappers, Engineers, Saboteurs,

M:C Units

Spoiler :

16 Units.
Militia: Armed Peasant

Light Infantry: Archer, Crossbowman, Longbowman

Medium Infantry: Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Pikeman

Heavy Infantry: Skirmisher, Heavy Skirmisher

Light Cavalry: Huntsman, Scout, Horseman

Heavy Cavalry: Heavy Cavalry, Knight, Heavy Knight

Light Artillery: Catapult

Heavy Artillary: Trebuchet

(There are also alternate armament versions of some of these, such as tools/weapons or armour types.)

Imp. Ships

Spoiler :

Trader
Indiamen
Clipper
Steamship
Freighter

Frigate
Ship-of-the-Line
Raider
Ironclad
Armoured Cruiser
Advanced Ironclad
Battle Cruiser
Dreadnought

 

[Nightinggale]

I think it would be wise not to rely too much on existing M:C units. They haven't been updated to make good use of sub-professions. At the same time it would be wise to think subprofessions into Imperialism.

A subprofession work like this:
Say we have a swordsman profession. The yield costs are only weapons (swords).
We make an upgraded version with leather armour. We could make a new profession. However the profession being nearly identical to the base, meaning it will have lots of duplicated data. Instead I added an array of subprofessions inside a profession. If we add Swordsman (leather) here, all we have to do is to make it, point to graphics, give yield costs and set combat strength. The rest of the data will be copied. On load, the game will expand this to a standalone profession, allowing units to pick either profession. The AI can also figure out how to handle both just fine.

When selecting a swordsman profession ingame, the professions are still linked. This mean you pick Swordsmen from the list and then you get a new window where you can select the variations of swordsmen. This allows making many variations of the same profession without cluttering up the profession list.

Currently M:C only has one subprofession whenever this feature is used because it is a redesign of an old (now removed) feature with the same intension, except that it could only handle a single alternative equipment profession. Subprofessions has no limit and you can make 20 swordsmen and the game engine will handle that just fine. It's another issue if players think it's a good idea with that many.

This mean planning subprofessions is a matter of making a plan for which professions to group together.

Writing this makes me wonder about free promotions. I'm not sure if subprofessions can handle those, but it would make sense to make a subprofession, which is identical to the base, except that it gets a free promotion, which in turn can give something like faster movement in certain terrain or first strike, well anything promotions can provide. This mean either free promotions is supported or it will be supported. Do consider them supported while you plan.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I think Profession subtypes are already in use, I think it was me that actually updated the xml many moons ago!

Infantry with Multiple Subprofessions:

Spoiler :

<ProfessionInfo>
			<Type>PROFESSION_INFANTRY1</Type>
			<Description>Infantry</Description>
			<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_PROFESSION_SOLDIER_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
			<Strategy>TXT_KEY_PROFESSION_SOLDIER_STRATEGY</Strategy>
			<Help/>
			<bNativesInvalid>1</bNativesInvalid>
			<bEuropeInvalid>1</bEuropeInvalid>
			<Combat>UNITCOMBAT_MELEE</Combat>
			<DefaultUnitAI>UNITAI_DEFENSIVE</DefaultUnitAI>
			<SpecialBuilding>NONE</SpecialBuilding>
			<bWorkPlot>0</bWorkPlot>
			<bCitizen>0</bCitizen>
			<bWater>0</bWater>
			<bScout>0</bScout>
			<bCityDefender>1</bCityDefender>
			<bCanFound>1</bCanFound>
			<bUnarmed>0</bUnarmed>
			<bNoDefensiveBonus>0</bNoDefensiveBonus>
			<iCombatChange>3</iCombatChange>
			<iMovesChange>0</iMovesChange>
			<iWorkRate>0</iWorkRate>
			<iMissionaryRate>0</iMissionaryRate>
			<iPower>100</iPower>
			<iAsset>0</iAsset>
			<YieldEquipedNums>
				<YieldEquipedNum>
					<YieldType>YIELD_TOOLS</YieldType>
					<iYieldAmount>50</iYieldAmount>
				</YieldEquipedNum>
			</YieldEquipedNums>
			<FreePromotions>
				<FreePromotion>
					<PromotionType>PROMOTION_FORMATION</PromotionType>
					<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
				</FreePromotion>
			</FreePromotions>
			<YieldsProduced>
				<YieldType>NONE</YieldType>
			</YieldsProduced>
			<YieldsConsumed>
				<YieldType>NONE</YieldType>
			</YieldsConsumed>
			<iFoundCityType>CITYTYPE_OUTPOST</iFoundCityType>
			<Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Civilizations/Colonization_Civilizations_Leaders.dds,2,10</Button>
[SPOILER][CODE]
			<ProfessionSubTypes>
				<ProfessionSubType>
					<Type>PROFESSION_INFANTRY_MAIL</Type>
					<Description>Infantry(Leather)</Description>
					<iPower>125</iPower>
					<ArrayEnable>022</ArrayEnable>
					<CombatGearTypes/>
					<YieldEquipedNums>
						<YieldEquipedNum>
							<YieldType>YIELD_LEATHER_ARMOR</YieldType>
							<iYieldAmount>25</iYieldAmount>
						</YieldEquipedNum>
					</YieldEquipedNums>
					<FreePromotions>
						<FreePromotion>
							<PromotionType>PROMOTION_ATTACK_LEATHER</PromotionType>
							<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
						</FreePromotion>
					</FreePromotions>
				</ProfessionSubType>
				<ProfessionSubType>
					<Type>PROFESSION_INFANTRY_ARMED</Type>
					<Description>Infantry(Armed)</Description>
					<iPower>145</iPower>
					<ArrayEnable>011</ArrayEnable>
					<CombatGearTypes/>
					<YieldEquipedNums>
						<YieldEquipedNum>
							<YieldType>YIELD_WEAPONS</YieldType>
							<iYieldAmount>50</iYieldAmount>
						</YieldEquipedNum>
					</YieldEquipedNums>
					<FreePromotions>
						<FreePromotion>
							<PromotionType>PROMOTION_FORMATION2</PromotionType>
							<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
						</FreePromotion>
					</FreePromotions>
				</ProfessionSubType>
				<ProfessionSubType>
					<Type>PROFESSION_INFANTRY_WELLARMED</Type>
					<Description>Infantry(Well Armed)</Description>
					<iPower>150</iPower>
					<ArrayEnable>011</ArrayEnable>
					<CombatGearTypes/>
					<YieldEquipedNums>
						<YieldEquipedNum>
							<YieldType>YIELD_WEAPONS</YieldType>
							<iYieldAmount>50</iYieldAmount>
						</YieldEquipedNum>
						<YieldEquipedNum>
							<YieldType>YIELD_LEATHER_ARMOR</YieldType>
							<iYieldAmount>25</iYieldAmount>
						</YieldEquipedNum>
					</YieldEquipedNums>
					<FreePromotions>
						<FreePromotion>
							<PromotionType>PROMOTION_FORMATION2</PromotionType>
							<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
						</FreePromotion>
						<FreePromotion>
							<PromotionType>PROMOTION_ATTACK_LEATHER</PromotionType>
							<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
						</FreePromotion>
					</FreePromotions>
				</ProfessionSubType>
			</ProfessionSubTypes>

</ProfessionInfo>[/CODE][/SPOILER]

It also makes use of free promotions by the looks of things.
I am not sure how unit(Profession) unlocks function can a subprofession be unlocked by a Tech? I think Professions can already be unlocked by Tech?

the Imp Units already come with classes for subtypes that are unlocked from techs.

So if a subtype can be unlocked with tech, then we could use the 9 classes and have each (more advanced) subtype unlock with tech and possibly require larger amounts of yields.

So you would pick 'Heavy Cavalry' as a profession then depending on techs you choose from 'Cuirassiers, Carbine Cavalry, Armour' as subtypes.

I was looking more as a comparison for game scale and eventually the balance that units have struck. (though this will probably change a lot for Imp.

So there are more units in Imp. but not many more!

I have just been trying to wrap my head around how units/professions/abilities/learning etc. are all linked together and how many different methods their are for changing 1 unit into another and how 'streamed' they can be.

Example:
Peasant--Work Yield X--Farmer
Peasant--Work Yield Y--Labourer
Peasant--Educate or Work Yield_Education?--Artisan

At the moment I am having trouble figuring it out exactly.

I know it has tags <EducationUnitClass>, <RehibilitateUnitClass>, <LaborForceUnitClass>.

I don't know how these are affected exactly.
For example does education require the Upgrading Unit to work in the School, or have a unit working in the school to produce education on it's behalf.

Rehab is connected to the YIELD_LAW I think, again I can't remember if the unit has to work in the law building pr just have someone producing on it's behalf.

I think labor is jsut if the Unit is working,but I am not sure if it relates to working a particular yield, like FEALTY(BELLS) or working it's bonus type or what..

 

[Kailric]

First thing I have learned from modding D2 is that all interested parties HAVE to have a shared vision, so I ask of you as part of the 'research':

Would you have time to give Imperialism I a through playthrough, er, testing?

Here are a couple of links: http://www.gog.com/game/imperialism
http://www.freegameempire.com/games/Imperialism

Wow, you all are doing a lot of chatter and I need to catch up.

I may not have that much energy or time to do a thorough play through. I can do some research though to see what the game is all about. You may have mentioned it but what exactly are the concepts or features in Imperialism that you would like to see in a Civ4Col mod of Imperialism?

Currently M:C only has one subprofession whenever this feature is used because it is a redesign of an old (now removed) feature with the same intension, except that it could only handle a single alternative equipment profession.

Subprofessions are used quite a bit in M:C? Are you saying that we have only branched off into one Subprofession for any Profession? Some like Knights would have more than one, but yeah, the whole Subprofession feature needs to be expanded upon as there are still many options available.

 

[Nightinggale]

I think Profession subtypes are already in use, I think it was me that actually updated the xml many moons ago!

You are right

Changed alt equipment into sub professions

CIV4ProfessionInfos.xml by Lib.Spi't
The rest by me (mainly scripted work)

I even committed it myself. I must be getting

It still needs reviewing though. It looks like PROFESSION_INFANTRY_MAIL is called "Infantry(Leather)" ingame and uses 25 leather armours as extra yield cost. It does get PROMOTION_ATTACK_LEATHER for free, meaning the free promotion is in place.

One has to wonder about the names though. There is "infantry(armed)" as well as "infantry". The latter would appear to be unarmed based on those names, but that isn't the case. It's armed with tools, not weapons, but that's not unarmed.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Did you see my above question Kail about education systems in M:C I am curious to understand the 'modding options' within education/unit upgrade.

Yes you are right, I think we got to a point with soldier stuff where we said we would do a thoruogh review of the situation when we got to a whole 'Military/Combat Overhaul', so what is their is a little muddled and incomplete.

I was just partly unsure of where your 'under used' statement was working from, whether there were newer things that had not been done, or if simply you forgot that we had integrated the idea to a degree.

There is also the possibility that my brain muddled one or more things up at the time of adding!

There isn't much in Imp. that isn't already sort of available in Col I don't think. Just adapting it into the Col. Mechanics with the Imperial/Industrial Age Flavour.

As well as figuring out the best way to use what M:C has, in a way that makes VIE, (I will keep pushing the name Victoria: Imperial Empires for now!) , a unique enough experience.

One of the main things of Imp. is the idea of a 2:1 production ratio. With three levels of 'Material'. Raw, Processed, Manufactured. (I made that up but that is more or less how it works)

So 2 Cotton (Raw) makes 1 Cloth (Processed) and 2 Cloth makes 1 Clothing (Manufactured)

Then there is a struggle to get enough raw materials to make enough of the other materials. Cloth being needed to make early ships and clothing being about 3 times more valuable than Cloth, as well as being needed to get new population.

The other thing that would make it interesting (and why I am looking at the upgrade/education methods for units) would be to have population moving through different uses and ranks like the PoP system in Victoria. I am just wondering what 'streams' are curretnly plausible to seperate different units into. So that depending on how you use people, they will end up being limited in the occupations they can do and the expertise they can gain.

 

[Nightinggale]

I am not sure how unit(Profession) unlocks function can a subprofession be unlocked by a Tech? I think Professions can already be unlocked by Tech?

the Imp Units already come with classes for subtypes that are unlocked from techs.

So if a subtype can be unlocked with tech, then we could use the 9 classes and have each (more advanced) subtype unlock with tech and possibly require larger amounts of yields.

Professions are unlocked by Techs (or CivEffects). The subprofessions are expanded to become normal professions internally before being linked together with the allow code. This mean from an allow/unallow point of view, it doesn't matter if it is two professions and one profession and one subprofession. In fact the expansion is done while reading the xml file itself, which mean there is absolutely no difference between subprofessions and professions unless coded specifically to make a difference.

9 subprofessions sounds like overkill. If that is needed, then you may have to consider disallowing some of them, meaning the early starts to vanish as the later appears. Alternatively you make all military professions some sort of subprofessions (not sure that would be a good idea).

We have those tags? I don't remember them at all. I looked into implementing journeyman where free colonists can become experts simply by working in the correct profession for long enough. I stopped as I ran into problems and will likely have to restart eventually.

Currently each school building has an iTeachLevel. This mean the school can teach units of the same or lower levels. A level 2 school can teach level 1 and 2 units, but not level 3 units. At the end of each turn (or start of next turn if you like) all units in a city is looped. They provide their unit type to the school, which mean it can start teaching that unit if the teach level of the school is high enough. It's the system from RaR, except I modified it to allow schools to learn units even when there are no students in the school.

That' pretty much explains the education system based on how I know it.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

There would be 9 Professions with 3 subprofessions each (At least when lifted from Imp.)

You can see from the list Imp Unit List I posted.

I don't know if we could diversify the combat enough to need them all, but they have defined roles in Imp. and the more advanced versions (3 sub-professions) are just better at that defined role.

the 3 tags I posted are connected to the new unit types that Kailric added from the Civic work. Things like Pages, who become Squires, then Knights when they work in a city, I am not sure if they are supoosed to only happen if they work FEALTY or Inside City or something else.

Rehab is Criminals and LAW I think.

 

[Nightinggale]

There would be 9 Professions with 3 subprofessions each (At least when lifted from Imp.)

Ahh, that makes more sense.

I don't know if we could diversify the combat enough to need them all

I have my eyes on the range attack thread in the SDK modding subforum(BTS). A short summary is that it allows units to attack units within x plots (x being an xml value, I think). It will then make one round of combat where the defender will not counterattack or something like that.

With this, cannons can be range units. Field Artillery would be weaker than heavy, but heavy might require spending a turn doing nothing before it can attack or something. Sappers can bombard in the sense that they damage city defences. Cavalry requires horses, but moves faster than infantry. Adding that they have different combat types and that promotions can give bonus against specific combat types, I say we can make combat diverse enough to allow all those units, possibly even more units than that.

Only two DLL features would have to be coded and that's the range attack and a range unit, which needs to deploy before attacking. Both would be suitable for catapults and as such, we would likely add those abilities regardless of Imperialism. The rest should be possible with the current abilities reachable from xml.

Rehab is Criminals and LAW I think.

Oh yeah, Kailric did something. I never looked at that code. Maybe it would be a good idea to make some sort of "unit change into unit" module where all education abilities are put together. It would provide a better overview. Clear speciality sounds like it could also fit there as well as event based "your master farmers tried to rob the major. As a result they turned into a unit of criminals" (talk about a nasty event).

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yes I was going to suggest Range combat, we use it extensively in FTTW.

It is basically the air combat mechanic, and it then gets converted to a ranged attack when applied to DOMAIN_LAND units I think.

You have 2 tags. I think they are iaircombat (damage) and iairrange (attack distance). (as well as some for max damage. I can be more accurate when the time comes)

It is an attack that does damage with no risk to the unit firing, but generally cannot kill a unit out right (as a balance).

Basically I think it just needs the whole air/range system lifting from bts. (For FTTW we changed how the damage math works because I felt the firaxis math was stupid and pointless! We also added some display functions so that units displayed their range strength and damage, you are welcome to go digging in there!)

But I am fairly confient we can create 9 roles in combat.

On the subject of Unit changing education, I was thinking this could be a good thing for meeting the units goods demand. So if for example you met a poor persons yield needs for X turns they can become a middle class person. Something like that. So you need to meet your peoples needs to have better/more intelligent/higher functioning people.

 

[Nightinggale]

It is basically the air combat mechanic, and it then gets converted to a ranged attack when applied to DOMAIN_LAND units I think.

Hmmm, using BTS air combat code. It might actually be better to just copy vanilla code than the code from some guy, who keeps on asking the forum for help. Now that you mention the air code, I start wondering why he keeps on having problems.

Speaking of ranged units, I just had an idea. Say we make archers ranged with a max distance of 1. It should then be possible to place them on a plot and instead for fortify, they go into ambush mode. This mean they will automatically attack if an enemy moves into range. Also if a group is attacked, the archers could get a chance of attacking prior to the attacker reaching melee distance, provided they didn't already attack that round.

That could make archers something brand new and quite interesting to use, particularly if it has no real defence, meaning you should place them together with melee units for protection.

Ambush would actually be pretty interesting for a stealth unit, like a sub. It would allow standing still, cause damage and possibly still not being seen. That would be annoying to fight against.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yes this Is another bts mod. Oppurtunity fire. We have it in Fttw. Virtually every gun has a range of one and fortified units get an Oppurtunity Fire when an enemy gets in range. I think it is from RevDCM mod. I can look for it at some point.

I think it stills works in Fttw anyway!

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Can't sleep... Make thoughts!

'Stand Out' Concepts for VIE:
(I think these can be done under the current code state, no additions required)
PoP System:

Spoiler :

Streamed Population Types. Units cannot 'jump streams'.
Move from Feudal Two Class to Industrial Three Class System
Noble/Peasant
Lower/Middle/Upper
Maybe have Imperialism levels of training skill?
Untrained/Trained/Expert for each type of lower class worker?

Lower:
Peasant (basically rubbish like a cottar/indentured servant type. Unspecialise to this for lower class retraining?)
Labourer(Raw Materials)
Farmer(Plants/Animals)
Craftsman (Mass Produced Goods)
Soldier (They shoot people)

Middle: (Start as Artisan, Education leads to the other types)
Artisan (Luxury Goods) (Maybe also can be trained as Master types for everything?)
Beuracrat ('Law' used to make 'Imperialism' a physical yield used to construct 'Admin' Buildings)
Clerk (Fealty (Production Bonus))
Clergy (Education/Research)
Officer (Would provide combat strength if Fealty effect gets split)(Maybe 'Military' Techs need an Officer to research them?)(Maybe has Great General 'Join Unit' Power) (Can become higher tier soldier types Guard/Heavy Cavalry Types?)

Upper: (Perhaps they accelerate productivity through 'personal investment')
Noble
Aristocrat (Perhaps builds 'Raw Boost' Home) (Maybe 'Societal/Cultral' Techs need an Aristocrat to research them?)
Capitalist (Perhaps build 'Factory' Home) (Maybe 'Industrial' Techs need a Capitalist to research them?)

Civic Type: National Focus
Encourage Citizen Type/Class
Effects growth unit type 'Stream Switch'

No Focus (Peasant)
Encourage Labourer (Unlocked with Tech)
Encourage Farmer (Unlocked with Tech)
Encourage Craftsman (Unlocked with Tech) (Has Maintenance Yields)
Encourage Soldier (Unlocked with Tech) (Has Maintenance Yields)
Encourage Artisan (Unlocked with Tech) (Has Maintenance Yields)

Province 'Levels':

Spoiler :

The basic principle is that each town has many levels and each level requires construction of an 'Admin' Building, and an Admin building requires the production and storage of 'Imperialism' to build it.

Imperialism will be a physical yield so that it can be stored and used as a construction prereq. It will be impossibly expensive to buy, to make the gold shortcut next to impossible to do for an admin building.
It will be made out of virtual yields like Law and Fealty. Only beuracrats will be able to make it, meaning you will need this particular unit type to improve the productivity of your empire.

Using the existing 3 City types(Town/Monastery/Outpost) cosmetically changed to make some kind of sense we could have different kinds of 'starting points' for a village that will effect what levels it gets and what productive things it can do.

My suggestions would be these:
Rural/Raw Town. (Get buildings that boost raw material production(Tiles))
Industrial. (Can have Factories)
Colony (Used 'Over seas' boost to 'colonial resources' that would be region specific, also the hardest to upgrade)

Levels might be:
Village
Town
City
State

Each becoming more productive and industrialised.

Continental Regions:
(Would need a mapscript for random games, but can make scenarios)

Spoiler :

Continental Regions have a specific resource that can only be found in that region. Made by having Continental Terrain Tile Sets. To begin with these will probably just fetch a high price in trade, but may lead to more strategic benefits. Alternativvely each region could have a luxury and abundant strategic resource. Example one area may have an increased amount of Iron, another Coal.

Initially I would suggest 4 main regions(as ideas):
Europe: Starting region. (North/Centre)
America: Tobacco and Cotton (West)
Africa: Gems and Coal (South)
Asia: Tea and Iron/Coal (East)

Sparse Yields: (Possible Imperialism Concept)
Many tiles could produce nothing(Or almost nothing) just like in Imperialism. You have Grassland that does nothing, Hills that contain nothing. Then you have Farmland(grain), Cattle, Sheep Hills, etc. This would spread out 'regions' and make town placement more important.

Yield List:

Spoiler :

Farmer/Raw:

Food/Grain/Fish(Grassland with bonus?)
Luxury Food (Fruit+Cattle)
Cattle (Plains with Bonus?)
Fruit (Grassland with Fruit/Grape Bonus?)
Wool (Hills with Sheep Bonus?)
Horse (Plains with Bonus?)

Labourer/Raw:

Timber (Forest)
Coal (Hills)
Iron (Hills)
Gems (African Hills/Mountains)
Oil (Desert/Sea)

Colonial/Raw:

Tobacco (American Grassland)
Tea (Asian Grassland)
Cotton (American Plain)

Craftsmen/Materials:

Tinned Food (Steel+Cattle+Fruit)
Cloth (Cotton Or Wool) [Not sure if this can be done?]
Lumber (Timber)
Paper (Timber)
Steel (Iron+Coal)
Fuel (Oil)

Craftmen/Goods:
Clothing (Cloth) [Used to make more advanced 'National Uniformed' Units]
Armaments (Steel+(Lumber?)

Artisan/Goods:

Furniture (Lumber)
Hardware (Steel)
Homeware (Tea)
Cigars (Tobacco)

Buareacrat/Product:

Imperialism (Fealty+Law)


Virtual:

Administration(BELLS)
Law
Research (Paper)
Education (Paper)
Crosses

Virtual Combo Yields:
Culture (Law+Crosses+Education)
Immigration (Crosses+Fealty+Education)

Building Concepts:

Spoiler :

Administration Level Buildings (Require Imperialism to build, required for higher levels of population and buildings)
Shop/Green Grocer/Store (can convert Tinned Food into Grain 1 to 4/6/8+ ratio) [Whatever makes sense]

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Warrrrrrh!!

I managed to SQUEEZE in all of the VIE yields into the existing M:C yields, 34 exactly! So I can do some test work without having to make a new .dll.

I don't hold out much hope for the AI with the hardcoded armours becoming 3 wood products(That's right I even got 3 alternate products to fit in one factory!), but we all know the AI is pants anyway!

 

[Nightinggale]

Link to video.​

Just adding a bit of imperialistic feeling. The reason... well do I even need a reason for adding such greatness?
The video is less than 1/3 of the size of the video in the game directory. Comparing those shows that the youtube one appears to be a bit more blurred. Both are 10 fps movies, hence the jerky movement of the train in the end.

Why such poor movie? It comes from the age of the game. It's 10 years older than Civ4 and it requires only a 75 MHz CPU. Since playing an mp3 file requires 100 MHz (yes just playing it while doing nothing else), no game back then used mp3s for music. Back then midi, mod and similar was used. Imperialism however had proper music quality. What it did was adding CD audio tracks. The CPU could then tell the CD drive to play track X. It would then do that in CD drive hardware and send the sound on a line out, which went strait to the sound card. The sound card hardware then merged it with the computer sound and send the merged signal to the speakers. The result is CD quality music and the CPU didn't have to do anything except to tell when to play another track. I would dare to say that Imperialism is a game belonging to the first generation of games with proper music. The system appeared in the mid 90s (fitting for 1995 Imperialism) and died around 2000. Despite the good music quality I never really liked it. The CD had to be present and you could not access data on it while the music was playing. It was especially bad for me since I had a laptop back then and an external CD drive, which was huge and always stayed at home. The external drive was not connected to the sound card either, meaning merging the two lines required extra external hardware.

The video has something quite interesting at 0:22, which is perhaps the most overlooked device for the industrial revolution: the centrifugal governor.

In 1780, the crankshaft was patented and steam engines could make a rotational movement. in 1781 James Watt patented the sun and planet gears, which did precisely the same as the crankshaft and looked very similar, but was just different enough to validate getting a patent of its own without violating the existing patent (still a total ripoff). However steam engines could break from rotating too fast and in 1788 James Watt patented the centrifugal governor. The principle is simple. When it rotates fast, the metal balls will move outwards due to centrifugal force, which in turn will pull on a string/pole. This pull will close the steam intake on the cylinder, which in turn will make it slow down and not break from running too fast.

However it quickly turned out that somebody came up with the idea to adjust the governor to the speed he wanted to operate at, not the speed that would break the engine. He could then open completely for the steam manually, the governor would go into overspeed, shut down the steam, the engine slows, reopens and the cycle repeats. If the load changed, it would automatically adjust the amount of steam it had to use to match the speed it was set to operate at. This world first constant rpm engine could really make constant rotation speed, something waterwheels or windmills or anything until that time had been unable to do. The constant speed is fundamental for the factory engine and the cotton industry couldn't really use any engine until this time because spinning and weaving is picky about rotation speed. If I should point to one point in history where the industrial revolution started for real, the constant rpm engine has to be it. The factories wouldn't really work without it and without the factories, the railroads would be a bit pointless with no big consumers demanding lots of freight trains to a single location. Prior to the big factories, production was well distributed, which meant no single point could handle multiple freight trains a day.

Link to video.
1946 US navy educational movie on governors​

The era of centrifugal governors ended in the 1990s where electronics started taking over. You likely encountered them without knowing it. The force of the burning fuel should be present when the piston goes down. Since there is a delay from powering the spark plug until the pressure is present, the spark plug needs to be powered in advanced. This delay is constant in time, but the engine powers the spark plug when the crankshaft reach a certain position. To get a fixed time, this position depends on engine rpm and until electronics took over, a governor adjusted the on timing.

I wouldn't be surprised if mechanical governors are still in use though. Well they are on old engines, but I meant on new stuff. On big expensive engines like locomotives, there are two governors. One controls the fuel and is most certainly electronic controlled for peak efficiency. Say the engine is designed for max 1000 rpm. When moving faster than that, the fuel pump slows down and at 1050 the engine runs without fuel. However in rare cases it still increase in speed (slow response time or malfunction) and at around 1100 rpm, a governor shuts down the air intake. This one will not reopen automatically and the engine should die quite fast. The air intake one could very well be purely mechanical meaning breaking an engine due to rotation speed requires both an electrical and a mechanical error to be present independently from each other.


That's it for now. I hope I inspired people to think more on how to make a tech tree. If nothing else, then at least hope you enjoyed reading this

 

[Lib.Spi't]

hehehe!

I was thinking of stealing the Victoria 2 intro that sees a little coastal town go all industrial.

I have been trolling the forums for Unit art as well.

I have successfully renamed all of the M:C Resources to VIE versions, now I am trying to make the terrain have the right things on them.

Though I am not sure how things like prospecting work... whether it can have more than 1 kind of prospectable yield in game, or if it is locked to just Ore.

Also hills don't seem to give any resources which is confusing... I would think they would boost things like STONE but I don't see it..

 

[Nightinggale]

Once I get CivEffects to work, I will likely turn my attention to yields. Ideally I can add a bunch of bools to Yield XML, which a perl script can then use to generate a header, complete with yield groups and everything. My goal is to avoid having xml modders having to touch the headers at all.

I'm not sure about the hills, but I do know that all yield production is handled by the dll. We can mod it into doing whatever we want, meaning if you need new xml features for yield production, there shouldn't be any technical reasons why we shouldn't be able to implement it.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Right now I am just matching yield types with terrain types.

Example:
Barley is now oil, so I am trying to move it from 'grassy' places to 'desert' places.

I just cnnot figure why hills don't seem to add anything to things like Stone... you get more stone from hills but from an xml perspective i can't figure out why or how??

I am also trying to experiment with the idea of moving most yields over to only happen when it's bonus is present, like horses, cattle, sheep, etc.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Night, with the unit consumption code, where they would buy goods for gold locally, is this currently still functional?

I am not sure how it all worked in the first place, I think Kail changed it so that you had to have a merchant working in a market place and then each merchant could set X goods for sale... I can't remember...

Anyway, the reason I ask is I am going to try an experiment where a lot of the yields (particularly virtual ones) will require gold to build, as a kind of 'Upkeep' so I was wanting to reintroduce the small constant stream of cash from domestic sales.

Maybe I need to ask Kail as he was the one that did it...

I am mostly just typing my thoughts now...