Modder's Guide to A New Dawn

[<Nexus>]

Thank you Afforess, especially for the hint on Revolution.py file. Will look into that too.

An other question: Is there any documentation or some way to find all the XML tags that can be used in the game but were never used? For example slavery's capture chance or bTaxationAnger in the first post. bTaxationAngerfor example is not used anywhere but it works, I tried it.
So is there a way to find all those tags not yet used? One may find potential in them.
I tried reading the shema file, but... Got bired with it soon
I understand that some of those tags may not work as intended

 

[Afforess]

Thank you Afforess, especially for the hint on Revolution.py file. Will look into that too.

An other question: Is there any documentation or some way to find all the XML tags that can be used in the game but were never used? For example slavery's capture chance or bTaxationAnger in the first post. bTaxationAngerfor example is not used anywhere but it works, I tried it.
So is there a way to find all those tags not yet used? One may find potential in them.
I tried reading the shema file, but... Got bired with it soon
I understand that some of those tags may not work as intended

The definitive list of all tags available is in the C++ code. CvInfos and CvBuildingInfo are where most of them. Specifically this section:

pXML->GetChildXmlValByName(&m_bTaxationAnger, "bTaxationAnger");

Reads the XML file (pXML is the xml file) and assigns the value in XML from the "bTaxationAnger" tag to the variable m_bTaxationAnger. Skim that file to see all the tag names. You can largely ignore the code there, and just look for the strings of text. The "bTaxationAnger" is the game loading that specific XML tag, which is all you care about.

 

[SomeoneWhoCares]

I'm planning on making my own mod. So I'm asking permission if I could (or even should) use your mod, A New Dawn, as a base for my mod. I'm not making a sub-mod. It will be its own mod with added features which will involve adding/changing SDK and python code. And I'm also using my own technologies, units and building ideas.

A lot of the features that A New Dawn has I want in my mod. So I'm thinking it would be easier to use your mod as base instead of just working off DCM/Revolutions + Better AI.

But I'm wondering if that's even a good idea because you guys seem to have tweaked a lot of things. And you guys seem to have AI problems. So is your AI even better than the standard Better AI? Or does Better AI have the same, if not more, problems?

I assume your answer is that your AI is best suited for your mod and I should design my own AI for my mod. However, I don't plan on coding AI cause that's beyond my abilities. So what do you recommend?

 

[dbkblk]

A mod like that is a really huge task to build. What exactly do you want to achieve with your mod? Is there things that you dislike or would be improved? We better need devs to polish it even further than forks of the mod. Moreover, our mod features sub-mods capabilities (like the Mega Civ Pack) where you can alter many of the settings, add new units, new technologies, etc.

Regarding the AI, it is based on the latest Better AI, with some improvements based on C2C and many custom tweaks regarding the production, the diplomacy choices, etc. Coding the AI is not as easy as it looks like because many functions are independant (diplomacy, unit movement, unit production...). Of course, we have tweaked it to use the mod features.

For example, the C2C mod have forked A New Dawn a few years ago, and have taken a different path with different goals. That said, we try to collaborate when it's possible.

 

[<Nexus>]

The definitive list of all tags available is in the C++ code. CvInfos and CvBuildingInfo are where most of them. Specifically this section:

Obviously a stupid question, but... Where do I find those?
I ran a search for both in RAND directory, but found nothing

 

[dbkblk]

Obviously a stupid question, but... Where do I find those?
I ran a search for both in RAND directory, but found nothing

The sources aren't in the game directory but on the SVN server.
Have a look here:
http://sourceforge.net/p/anewdawn/code/HEAD/tree/Trunk/
This is the content of the server, including the C++ DLL sources. Download the folder and try to read some cpp files!

 

[<Nexus>]

The sources aren't in the game directory but on the SVN server.
Have a look here:
http://sourceforge.net/p/anewdawn/code/HEAD/tree/Trunk/
This is the content of the server, including the C++ DLL sources. Download the folder and try to read some cpp files!

Thanks! Reading those lines is a really herculean task p) but pretty instructive

 

[dbkblk]

Yeah, at first you'll say that you will never be able to do that, but with time, it is easier and easier to read.

 

[Arakhor]

As is using genuinely English lexis.

 

[Afforess]

As is using genuinely English lexis.

Lexis? A car brand? You mean lexicon?

 

[SomeoneWhoCares]

What do I want to achieve with my mod? Well, there's many features I want to add, on top of the features already present in A New Dawn. I'm mostly in the planning stages and won't have time to do much until the academic year is over. So I'm iffy about a lot of these ideas and they're subject to change. Also, quite a number of these features are inspired/taken from Realism Invictus. These said features will have a "See Realism Invictus" Or "See RI" beside them. Also keep in mind a lot of these ideas are designed for the Earth scenario and don't make sense to be used outside that. But here's the breakdown:

More Terrain Features like savanna, scrub, etc (See Realism Invictus)

Mines (The explody kind) that can be placed both on land and sea. Had a huge impact in WWII. Britian almost lost the war because of underwater mines. Don't know if I want to involve Python/SDK into this or just make it simple.

Fuel and food supply system. Both will work similarly.

More maintenance options for buildings. I liked how in Civ 5 the buildings cost a fixed maintenance. This doesn't make sense for all buildings and I don't want to go overboard with it. But for example, I take the subway every business day to get to uni. Subway systems cost a lot in maintenance annually and a portion of the city's budget goes to public transportation. No such thing in Civ 4.

Immigration/emigration system. Affected by war, famine, happiness, immigration policy, etc. There's already a mod for this. Don't know why big mods don't use it.

A mercenary system. The units available are based on what culture the tile your general is on. Works similar to how mercenaries work in the total war series. I'm not so confident about being able to code this tho.

Added XML tags for promotions. Such as a base change in strength. Promotion cost in gold (Can be used to simulate technical upgrades for mechanical units). Capturable promotions. Anti-promotions.

Tribal camps that can spawn units of a specific culture. Giving flavour to barbarians.

New types of client states, besides just vassals. Many players complain about how vassals in the modern age doesn't make sense. So I was thinking of making vassalage require the vassalage civic. And supplanted vassalage with a more modern system, such as puppet states. After you capture a city you're given the option to form a puppet state. Which forms a new civilization, similar to a colony, that is your puppet. Any new cities captured from the same enemy adds cities to the puppet state. Instead of forming a new puppet state. An example of this in history is Vichy France.

Sea bridges. Works the same as the underwater tunnel already in AND, but is limited to 1 tile in length. An early form of sea tunnel. Can be handy. Takes a long time to build tho and can be bombed. Which can be very inconvenient if you relied on that bridge.

Civ specific tech trees. The current tech tree is very Eurocentric. The techs are researched in the same order and time as historically in Europe. And some techs only apply to Europe, such as techs like enlightenment. A lot of these social techs, other civs just skipped. This would make the game unbalanced, but would give civs more flavor. For example China gets a form of gunpowder and crossbows early.

Adding to this is events that are triggered by techs. If only certain civs research a certain tech. You can give the tech a civ-related event. Such as the Dark Ages. Which I also plan to add. Applies only to European nations.

Land improvements with bombardable defenses and that can generate their own culture.

A different resource depletion system that is based on how much you use a resource rather than disappearing randomly.

Movement limit outside cultural borders, which is affected by tech. Specially for Earth scenario to stop everyone on earth from knowing each other by the medieval age.

Natural wonders. Also for earth scenario.

Certain civs limited to number of cities per era. Again for Earth. Mainly to stop civs like china, the mongols, persia, etc from expanding too much outside their historical territory and running away with the game.

Extra XML requirement tags for units. Such as having certain units require a certain nationality %. Mainly to stop newly captured cities from producing units that will probably be used against their former homeland.

Possibly an equipment system where certain promotions can represent armor/weapons which can be upgraded. Complimenting this idea, is allowing promotions to change unit art reflecting this upgrade.

Maybe adding seasons. I know that most turns cover many years. But it would work similarly to how it does in Rome total war. In RTW, each turn is 1.5 years. So it changes season every turn, even tho more than a year has passed. This way halve the game is in winter. All land tiles in a certain area will turn to snow, reducing their crop yield and dealing terrain damage. Making fighting in the winter strategic. Units can get winter outfits. However, turning most land tiles to snow probably is too demanding for the computer.

Proper capturing of fighters, ships, etc. You can make fighters capturable in XML, but if you capture a city with multiple fighters, you only get 1. So that should be changed to allow you to get all of them. With a certain chance of a few being sabotaged.

Dynamic Civ leaders.

Expand the election feature for the Revolutions mod.

Dynamic polar icecaps.

Being able to sack cities. Also razing cities take multiple turns, giving your opponent a chance to get the city back before it's razed.

If it's not already in AND defender withdrawal. This way most units, unless fighting a unit faster than it or unless the unit is cornered will retreat. This way if you really want to destroy a lot of units you need to corner them. Similar to how the Germans corned the British at Dunkirk (but they didn't actually kill them, they got rescued by ships). And maybe even a Prisoner Of War System, to make the game more realistic.

A fourth yield. Someone on Civ Fanatics has already done the dirty work and made a template for a fourth yield.

Buildings can consume and generate a certain number of resources a turn. Complimenting this, maybe allowing multiple citizens to work on a certain tile. You can use the fourth yield to show how many citizens are working on it. The more citizens working a tile, the more resources are extracted and the faster the resource is depleted. This system opens the door for many industry technologies can be added to the tech tree, such as thermal cracking, fluid catalytic cracking, fracking, etc. Who mainly improve the citizen to resource generated/extracted ratio. In the case of the example techs listed, the improvement of the extraction and production of oil. There's a lot to talk about this system, but I'll leave it at that to not make this post too long.

For the Earth scenario: Scriptable wars, civil wars, and horde invasions.

An officer system, where you can recruit commanders, sergeants, colonels, etc. Without the need of waiting for a great general to appear. Depending on the rank they will have certain control points. And the more exp they get, the higher their rank. But actual great generals can found doctrines (For doctrines see Realism Invictus). Adding to this idea, is a new officer specialist. And certain buildings, like the royal academy can allow for the training of more officers.

Fallout can create wasteland. Ultimately turning the world into something from a Sci-Fi movie.

A manpower system that is affected by population size, civics, propaganda, nationality ratio, national moral, your relationship with a certain Civ, battle wins/loses, cities captured/lost, etc

A more polished employment system to better reflect the transition from rural to city work, where you can employ and unemploy citizens based on your needs. Instead of being stuck with a citizen forever employed. For example you can employ a bunch of workers in a factory to generate a resource (The more citizens employed the more resources generated). Which are needed to build/supply units. Also, resources such as fertilizer and fuel for tractors and such greatly improve food yield. Thus allowing many citizens to move to city work without having the city starve. Complimenting this is an unemployment system. If there's too much population and not enough tiles to be worked and not enough buildings that provide jobs, you'll accumulate unemployed citizens which cause unhealthiness and unhappiness. Forcing you to build more industrial infrastructure.

An electrical power system. Power is more like a resource that industrial buildings consume and is generated by power plants, which in turn consume fossil fuels. So if you don't have enough power you can't properly expand your industry. And you become a third world nation...

And a lot of XML changes.

There's more, but they're a lot less ambitious and I can't recall them right now. And don't worry, a lot of these features have already been done by other modders. But that's ideas for my mod. With those aside, what I would like to see improved in AND is:

A better transition from modern techs to future techs. There's a lot of things you guys skipped. The future era is a bit too sci-fi in my opinion. It should be toned down and be more geared towards the near future. In addition, there's a lot of modern/near future units that you can add. I don't know too much about modern military technology, but nothing some independent research can't help.

I think simplicity is key. The techs and buildings in AND look all over the place and should go through a good purging. Get rid of techs and buildings that break immersion. I don't want to be researching a tech called "Super Strong Alloys". No offence but that sounds silly. The tech should either be renamed to something more technical/scientific or removed. Also don't have vague techs like Modern Warfare or Mechanical Engineering. Modern warfare is an umbrella term for many techs. What techs have made modern warfare modern? And there are so many techs that are involved with mechanical engineering. Put those techs. For buildings, you guys should take more advantage of the building tree and make more buildings upgradable. That way the player gets the sense that there's a real pattern to these buildings and that they're not just random. Not saying there is no sense of that in AND, just that it needs to be more consolidated. Look at Realism Invictus. I really applaud that mod for how professional it looks/is designed. Even tho RI is a little lacking in the gameplay features department.

Sorry for making this post too long. And I'm not trying to act ungrateful or condescending. I really admire you guys' dedication and love for Civ 4 and A New Dawn. You guys have really worked hard and done great work. And I also apologize if my English goes a little derpy in some parts. It's just that writing this much in one seating can make my brain go numb.

 

[dbkblk]

From my POV, you have some really interesting ideas (dynamic civ, polar ice, natural wonders...) but many shouldn't take place in a Civilization game.
I mean, I love Company of Heroes for example. It is a great RTS of WW2, and many of your features can take place in that kind of game (officers, civ specific tree, seasons). While I would love a seasons system in Civ, I really think it would be hard to manage from a gameplay view.

While my experience with the development of this game is still small (less than two years), I don't want to discourage you but you should be aware that adding that much features would be really hard. It's not about coding or adding those from chunks of code, but about polishing and fixing bugs. It is a great experience to learn development but balancing a game is a whole new world.
Our team is composed of four main members, 45°, Afforess, Vokarya and I but we also have some precious help from other devs (Platyping, Nightinggale, C2C team, BUG team) and of course, we have a great community of players who gives feedback and bug reports so we can improve the game even more. Even with 4 devs and that community, it is hard to fix everything, so we intuitively try to spread the work out on categories (DLL dev, balance, translations, events, launcher). Vokarya, for example, is mainly working on balancing the tech tree (including units and buildings) and finding better graphics. Without that essential work, it would mean the game would be unbalanced. I estimate that part of the game work is 80% thinking about smart changes and 20% about coding / changing values. The more feature you'll have, the more the balance work will be difficult.

Another aspect of what you've talked about is "I think simplicity is key". I'm exactly in the same mood and love Saint Exupery's quote "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". Theorically, that is about perfection. Practically, that mean you would like to add a whole lot of new features to a game that already contains a lot. That is a "dog pile". Everyone have a different coding style and we each add new features upon it each time. All of those features will generate bugs and unbalances and most of all -absolutely- (1), need to be usable for the players and the AI from a gameplay point of view. That's the worst part, because you have to decide whether a feature implementation is good enough to be easy to play and add value to the game or if it's just a developer dream. Just look at games like Battle for Wesnoth or OpenTTD, and how features are added slowly over time. Those devs don't want to add many features at the same time. They add some, then polish everything for months before to add new ones. They absolutely refuse to add something that is not almost perfectly coded before inclusion, and only then, they consider inclusion. In a small team like our, we cannot reach that because of manpower, but we can try to get close.

I don't know about the other members point of view, but I don't mind if you fork the mod as long as you quote our work and the work of the other devs and community members (take a look at the credits page http://anewdawn.sf.net). If you have some time, we would really appreciate that you describe what you didn't like in the tech tree design in the according forum thread, that would really help us to improve the game. By the way, maybe we would consider some of your features in the future! About your English, anyway, "derpy" is a new word for me, so...

(1) Do we quote words like this in English or is it French that want to make the word sublime, dear Arakhor?

 

[Arakhor]

Lexis? A car brand? You mean lexicon?

Lexis is a synonym (and cognate) of lexicon, yes. I'm sure that both would serve in this instance.

(1) Do we quote words like this in English or is it French that want to make the word sublime, dear Arakhor?

To non-Francophone ears, many things in French sound sublime, mon homme!

(The Latin equivalent would be: quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.)

 

[<Nexus>]

Reflecting to both dbkblk's and SomeoneWhoCares' post:

Seasons: Cool idea!
...but not for RAND. It only makes sense if summer and winter lasts more than just one turn. If it was a 1 turn periodical change you wouldn't be able to prepare for it (not to mention the "stupid" AI).
Maybe having longer period climate changes would make sense. Maybe...

I am curious about some things you mentioned:
-Food supply
-Immigration/emigration system
-A mercenary system
-New types of client states, besides just vassals (I wonder if 45 is still working on it?)
-Sea bridges
-Better resource depletion and consumption
I could imagine these things in RAND

 

[SomeoneWhoCares]

I honestly didn't give bugs much thought. At this point they're hard to foresee. You're probably right about them being the hardest part tho. But of course I won't do all the code for everything, and then test it once at the end. Only to find that nothing works. Instead I'm going to add feature, test, add feature, test, etc. A lot of work will go into testing. I'll see what features work and what don't. Not all them, as you mentioned, are even practical for Civ 4, like the seasons feature.

When I said simplicity is key, I wasn't talking about the number of features. What I meant was that you could have a lot of features, but the features you do have have to be simple enough for the player to understand and enjoy. A feature should still be logical and realistic to an extent, but simple. And it should feel just as much a part of the game as the core vanilla mechanics. It shouldn't feel like a piece poorly glued to the main body of the game. It should be interwoven with the other aspects of the game. So that the features play off each other. For example, I'm planning to make resource depletion and consumption/production interact with each other, and really be two parts of a single whole. Citizen employment also interacts with these features because more factory employment, lets say, increases resource production. Which has an unemployment mini-feature. And electrical power generation/consumption will work mechanically the same as the generation/consumption of any other resource. And the food and fuel unit supply system will interact with the resource production system, because food and fuel need to produced and then delivered to military units at the front by supply units. And I plan to make these supply units only capable of travelling on roads/railroads. For example, freight can only travel on railroads. Btw restricting units to only routes is a little feature you guys already have, but don't use.

I think I side-tracked a little there, but to continue off the simplicity thing, I try to make my features simple by making them work off other features and each other. If I had a whole system just for one feature, which didn't interact with the other parts of the game, then that would be complicated. Also what I meant by simplicity is that the XML parts of the game--the game objects: buildings, units, techs, corps, etc--should be simple. As in more units, buildings, techs, doesn't mean a better game. You should try to minimize the amount of outliers that don't fit into any pattern or tree. The ability for buildings to upgrade to other buildings is great. Take full advantage of that. Split your buildings (this applies to units as well) into categories and make trees out of them. I see you guys have a lot of trees made of only 2 buildings. When you put more buildings into fewer trees, you have only a handful of buildings in effect at one time, because most are being replaced by new ones. This way it becomes easier to balance the game because you don't have to factor in the effects of so many buildings. Looking at all your buildings I have deduced these building categories/trees.

Barracks Tree
Hospital Tree
Shipyard Tree
Harbor Tree
Jail Tree
Walls Tree
Palace Tree
City Council Tree
Arena Tree
Library Tree
Temple Tree
Tailor/Furrier Tree
Monument Tree
Forge Tree
Armourer Tree
Garden Tree
Market Tree
Zoo Tree
Festival Tree
Broadcast Tower Tree
Printer Tree
Lab Tree
Granary Tree
Public Baths Tree
Bank Tree
Stable Tree
Cannery/Food Processing Tree
Theatre Tree
Courthouse
Siege Workshop Tree
Herbalist Tree
Airfield Tree
Artisan&#8217;s Tree
Nobility Housing Tree
City Turrets Tree
Counter Intelligence Tree
Horse Racing Tree
Paper Maker&#8217;s Tree
Artist&#8217;s Studio Tree
Public Transit Tree
Factory Tree
Butchery Tree
Brothel Tree?

Some may be very similar, but each is at least slightly different in an important way. For example, the armourer tree is military based, while the forge tree is production based. Another example is that the Herbalist Tree is focused on medicine (healing/preventing disease), while the hospital tree is focused on healing already physically damaged units.

As for credits, of course I'll credit you guys. However, if the game is only really playable in a certain way, as in hot-seat only because the AI is broken, I might not make it public.

And I will suggest specific changes in the tech tree, buildings and units in the correct forum thread when I have time.

As for Sogroon's criticism of the seasons system. You're totally right, I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking of maybe instead of switching from summer to winter every turn, it cycles through all four seasons. So you have at least a few more turns to prepare for winter. But that's not the best solution either. I honestly don't know how to make seasons really work, without going crazy and changing core game mechanics.

You were also curious about some features I mentioned. And admittedly some, like the food and fuel system, lacked a lot of detail. The food supply system, as of now, will work like this: Each unit requires a certain amount of bread loafs (the food yield) a turn to survive. For simplicity's sake, while a unit is in a city or within cultural borders they don't consume food. But when a unit is outside culturally borders, they consume food in 2 ways.

They either get food from the land they're standing on or they get supplied food by a supply unit. The amount of food they're supplied by land is equivalent to the tile's food yield. So if a unit consumes 1 food a turn and the tile they're on is a farm and has a food yield of 4, then that tile can supply up to 4 units indefinitely. The unit doesn't remove the yield from the land because then you'd run out of food fast and that would not be practical. However, if you have more than 4 units on that farm, the rest start to starve. Starving removes a % of health and eventually kills the unit. This makes the scorched earth tactic a thing in Civ.

Another way of supplying the unit is through a supply unit. Supply units can range from trucks, to convoys, to freight, to cargo planes. So for moving large stacks through enemy territory, land isn't enough and supply units are needed. How supply units will work is that they'll have cargo space for a certain amount of food. So you'll potentially need to use multiple supply units per stack, if the stack is large enough.

Your cities supply these supply units with the food, taken from the city granary. Then these supply units travel to a stack of units and supply your stack with a certain amount of food. Each of your military units can store a small amount of food, similar to how a supply unit can store food. But a supply unit can't consume food, they can only give it, and can carry a lot more food. That way your supply unit doesn't have to follow your units everywhere. Your units can supply themselves for a limited amount, until their reserves run out. And you can just set up a fort where your stacks can go to get resupplied.

Same general idea for fuel. Same supply system, but only certain units need fuel and fuel is consumed per movement taken, not by a set amount per turn. And the penalty for running out of fuel is not damage, but rather just not being able to move. Effectively making your tanks useless. And fuel is also important for supplying these supply units. So if you run out of fuel, your planes stop working, your tanks stop moving, and you can't supply your units. Fuel is also generated by cities, based on how many oil resources you have, how many citizens are employed in your refineries and the techs you have. Tech is important because with higher tech comes more efficient ways of producing fuel. For example, an early process of making fuel was Thermal Cracking. Now more modern approaches include Fluid Catalytic Cracking.

Hope that wasn't too confusing and that I explained it well enough. As for emigration/immigration see:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=365768
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=3557

For mercenary system, I would like it to be like the mercenary system in Rome TW (the first one) or Medieval II TW.

For client states, you might be interested in this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=21826

Resource Depletion will work like this: Non-renewable resources have a set of amount of resource stored. Lets say a 100 units of oil. Based on your tech, you can extract the oil faster. So instead of extracting 1 unit of oil a turn, it would be 5. But once you've extracted all 100 units of oil, the resource disappears. You could also have an oil resource on one tile, start out will 500 units of oil, while another oil resource on another tile, start out with 100. So you can get lucky or not.

As for resource consumption/production see this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12851573&postcount=874
Just like that, but buildings generate the manufactured resources and consume raw resources that actual resources generate. And the amount of resources generated by a building is dependent on the amount of citizens employed.

Another long post, Oops.

 

[Afforess]

You might actually want to consider using Caveman 2 Cosmos as your base mod rather than RAND. They might have some of the hard work for your ideas already done.

 

[<Nexus>]

And the food and fuel unit supply system will interact with the resource production system, because food and fuel need to produced and then delivered to military units at the front by supply units. And I plan to make these supply units only capable of travelling on roads/railroads. For example, freight can only travel on railroads. Btw restricting units to only routes is a little feature you guys already have, but don't use.

This really doesn't sound simple. Have to manually micromanage "fuel units" to support my army? That's more tedious to play than coding the mechanism itself. Would never play with such a feature on.
On the other hand I'd love to see (and even fuel) work the same way as . You generate X /turn civ wide, consume Y /turn, and have a pool of that you can use for different purposes (trade away for other civs or feed starving cities). Of course this would require a different city growth mechanism that is based not solely on food.

I think I side-tracked a little there, but to continue off the simplicity thing, I try to make my features simple by making them work off other features and each other. If I had a whole system just for one feature, which didn't interact with the other parts of the game, then that would be complicated. Also what I meant by simplicity is that the XML parts of the game--the game objects: buildings, units, techs, corps, etc--should be simple. As in more units, buildings, techs, doesn't mean a better game. You should try to minimize the amount of outliers that don't fit into any pattern or tree. The ability for buildings to upgrade to other buildings is great. Take full advantage of that. Split your buildings (this applies to units as well) into categories and make trees out of them. I see you guys have a lot of trees made of only 2 buildings. When you put more buildings into fewer trees, you have only a handful of buildings in effect at one time, because most are being replaced by new ones. This way it becomes easier to balance the game because you don't have to factor in the effects of so many buildings. Looking at all your buildings I have deduced these building categories/trees.
(...)
Some may be very similar, but each is at least slightly different in an important way. For example, the armourer tree is military based, while the forge tree is production based. Another example is that the Herbalist Tree is focused on medicine (healing/preventing disease), while the hospital tree is focused on healing already physically damaged units.

I don't understand your problem about the building tree IMO Vokarya did a very good job with it. Logical and simple.

As for credits, of course I'll credit you guys. However, if the game is only really playable in a certain way, as in hot-seat only because the AI is broken, I might not make it public.

And I will suggest specific changes in the tech tree, buildings and units in the correct forum thread when I have time.

As for Sogroon's criticism of the seasons system. You're totally right, I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking of maybe instead of switching from summer to winter every turn, it cycles through all four seasons. So you have at least a few more turns to prepare for winter. But that's not the best solution either. I honestly don't know how to make seasons really work, without going crazy and changing core game mechanics.

You were also curious about some features I mentioned. And admittedly some, like the food and fuel system, lacked a lot of detail. The food supply system, as of now, will work like this: Each unit requires a certain amount of bread loafs (the food yield) a turn to survive. For simplicity's sake, while a unit is in a city or within cultural borders they don't consume food. But when a unit is outside culturally borders, they consume food in 2 ways.

They either get food from the land they're standing on or they get supplied food by a supply unit. The amount of food they're supplied by land is equivalent to the tile's food yield. So if a unit consumes 1 food a turn and the tile they're on is a farm and has a food yield of 4, then that tile can supply up to 4 units indefinitely. The unit doesn't remove the yield from the land because then you'd run out of food fast and that would not be practical. However, if you have more than 4 units on that farm, the rest start to starve. Starving removes a % of health and eventually kills the unit. This makes the scorched earth tactic a thing in Civ.

Another way of supplying the unit is through a supply unit. Supply units can range from trucks, to convoys, to freight, to cargo planes. So for moving large stacks through enemy territory, land isn't enough and supply units are needed. How supply units will work is that they'll have cargo space for a certain amount of food. So you'll potentially need to use multiple supply units per stack, if the stack is large enough.

Your cities supply these supply units with the food, taken from the city granary. Then these supply units travel to a stack of units and supply your stack with a certain amount of food. Each of your military units can store a small amount of food, similar to how a supply unit can store food. But a supply unit can't consume food, they can only give it, and can carry a lot more food. That way your supply unit doesn't have to follow your units everywhere. Your units can supply themselves for a limited amount, until their reserves run out. And you can just set up a fort where your stacks can go to get resupplied.

Same general idea for fuel. Same supply system, but only certain units need fuel and fuel is consumed per movement taken, not by a set amount per turn. And the penalty for running out of fuel is not damage, but rather just not being able to move. Effectively making your tanks useless. And fuel is also important for supplying these supply units. So if you run out of fuel, your planes stop working, your tanks stop moving, and you can't supply your units. Fuel is also generated by cities, based on how many oil resources you have, how many citizens are employed in your refineries and the techs you have. Tech is important because with higher tech comes more efficient ways of producing fuel. For example, an early process of making fuel was Thermal Cracking. Now more modern approaches include Fluid Catalytic Cracking.

Now that's way tooooo complicated. I think I remember seeing Afforess replying to the same (very similar) idea somewhere: "No chance to teach the AI to use it."
And let me add: It's hard for even human players to learn how to play it.

 

[dbkblk]

@SomeoneWhoCares:
About fuel and food consumption for units: it is a bit too complex to my taste. Unfortunately, as Sogroon underlined, it would require much more micromanaging. That said, as Sogroon also underlined, there might an idea there to use the extra food, but then again, it's too much complex. The sole idea of coding the AI to handle that is giving me headache. Our implementation is just a gold maintenance which increase when the army is out, which is simple and efficient.

About the building tree: I have to admit I think the same as Sogroon, I don't really understand what is the problem here :S Vokarya has made a great job. If there are things to improve, we're totally open to your suggestions.

About the broken features: Some multiplayer features are indeed broken and we're trying to fix them. However, that isn't a walk in the park due to the way the engine work. Maybe we should disable some, but ATM the consensus is to leave things as they are and try to improve it step by step when we have time.

About emigration and client states: These components are nice and can be discussed for implementation (they might already have been, IDK).

About resource depletion: Our implementation can be improved, but what you present here is an overhaul of the resource system consumption. Resources are acquired and shared, but not consommé. That said, a simple system where a resource can be exploited a limited number of turn is nice, but I haven't read the resource depletion code, so that might be already the case.

About resource consumption: This looks like the system from Civ 5. I like this and this can be discussed in the forum. I'm not sure other players will, and this can be a pain to implement and balance if we should make this optional. This idea should be explored.

As Afforess pointed out, the C2C mod might be more adapted to start as a base.
You seem to think a lot about features. Having creativity is a good things if you have some coding skills! We only want to point you out gameplay limitations.

 

[nionios]

@SomeoneWhoCares:
About resource consumption: This looks like the system from Civ 5. I like this and this can be discussed in the forum. I'm not sure other players will, and this can be a pain to implement and balance if we should make this optional. This idea should be explored.

I like this feature about resource consumption.It could make the surplus resources more significant.

 

[SomeoneWhoCares]

@Afforess
I was thinking about that. I noticed they already have natural wonders and a system where they turned education, fire and I think it was crime into a city-specific resource that accumulates a turn. I don't know exactly how it works. But I think I can re-purpose it. They also use culture as a resource? Also don't know how that works. And they have a heroes system. So it seems they have a few more features than AND. But what worries me is if AND has better AI? I think I recall you guys improved the X unit a tile system. Is that improvement present in C2C? Does C2C have all the computer optimizations AND has? Etc.

@Sogroon
I understand that the food/fuel system can require a lot of micro management and that there are simpler ways of simulating something similar. But, in my opinion, if the system was any simpler, it would not be realistic enough for my tastes. One of the main reasons I want to make this mod in the first place, is because I'm unsatisfied with the lack of realism Civ 4 has. Mods like AND, C2C and RI have added a lot of realism to the base vanilla game, but to me it's not enough. Like doesn't it disappoint you that there are aspects of war that had huge impacts, but aren't accounted for in Civ? Take the battle of Stalingrad for example. The German 6th Army was surrounded. They were getting little to no supplies. As a result most starved and froze to death. As Civ is now, you wouldn't be able to recreate this scenario very well. With what I'm proposing, you could cut an army's/stack's chain of supply, trap/surround it and watch it die.

Another example is how in WWII Britain almost lost the war early. This was because the Germans used a lot of underwater mines that severely hurt Britain's ability to supply itself resources, mainly oil, from outside. The British managed to counter these mines when a German bomber accidentally dropped one onto a beach near London. After disarming it, the British studied it to learn how it works. If the British never made a counter to these mines, the lack of oil would mean more than a lack of fuel for their planes, cars, and warships. The halt to their industry wouldn't even the worst part. The worst part is if their tractors and farming machinery don't get the oil they need, they can't make the huge surplus in food to sustain Britain's large population and many millions start to starve. Where is that in Civ?

I also mentioned how the food system would make the scorched earth tactic actually viable in Civ, because now enemy troops can't feed themselves off your farms. I also wanted a fuel system, because oil is extremely important to the modern world and in Civ you don't really feel that. In WWII the Germans were constantly worrying about oil. They planned to take the Caucasus for its oil and later the Middle East. To me that worry to find more oil and how it forces me to change my conventional Civ 4 war strategy is fun. By making the game more realistic, it naturally adds more micromanagement and can over complicate things. But at the same time, it adds a whole new dimension of strategy that you see in documentaries and read in books, but that you don't find in vanilla Civ.

However, I understand that it's probably more fun in my head, than in actual Civ. I haven't tried it yet. It's probably best to compromise. I've heard people propose a food/fuel system where the food/oil is stockpiled globally, similar to how gold is. And then the units automatically consume from that stockpile. That would save on a lot of micromanagement. It would be realistic in the sense that your army size is limited by food and fuel needs. One oil resource shouldn't be enough for an infinite amount of tanks. However, this simplified system doesn't account for logistics. How are units supplied? Not to sound patronizing, but do they magically siphon food from a stockpile stored in another dimension? The only solution to this that I can think of is if you have units treated kinda like moving cities where the computer would check if the unit is connected to the capital each turn. If the unit is not connected then it can't connect to the global stockpile. It sounds like it would slow down turn times a lot tho.

To address the whole building tree thing. I was mainly just talking in general. I didn't mean to belittle Vokarya's work. I'll have to take a better look at AND and play a few more games to find specific examples and come up with specific suggestions for changes. What'll probably do is, when I come up with the buildings, units and techs for my mod, I'll make a brief comparison and talk about what I changed and why. Maybe, you guys will like some of my changes.

And as for the AI thing. Yea, it would probably be nearly impossible to teach the AI the food/fuel system. But I plan, don't know if this is even possible, to have a lot of these features affect the human player only. The AI will play Civ normally, while the human player will be playing a much more complicated game. I understand that that sounds really unfair. But I think it'll give the human player a better challenge than just giving the AI more bonuses. I hear people talk about how incompetent the AI is at winning wars and how they steamroll the AI. The way people steamroll the AI would never work in real life. So by making war more realistic, it grants more immersion and evens the playing field for the AI. However, if you can't make this feature affect only the human player, then I guess the mod is hot-seat only.

As for human players learning how to play. It may sound complicated when I try to explain it in text. But it'd be a lot easier to learn when you see it in-game. Still a lot of micromanagement tho.

@dbkblk
"a simple system where a resource can be exploited a limited number of turn is nice"
The thing is that you can't make the depletion system any more realistic without overhauling the whole Civ resource consumption/generation system.

As for resource consumption, it'll probably be easier to implement something like in Civ 5. I think the linked mod component is better than Civ 5's system, because it lets you accumulate and stockpile resources per turn. Civ 5 doesn't. But what's not included in the mod comp, is the ability to have buildings generate and consume resources too, not just units. This way you can make maintaining and building industry a lot more resource dependent, which it is in real life. For example, Oil and natural gas are extremely important for industry and are used to manufacture many things. I think making resource management a lot more important, will make Civ more fun.

"We only want to point you out gameplay limitations."
I appreciate that. It's nice to have gotten this much feedback from you guys.