Slider Specialists Mod

[Sneaks]

Slider Specialists Mod v.1 by Sneaks

Based on the thought that the Slider mechanic in Civ 4 made cities more dynamic and easier to specialize, this mod creates 6 new Specialists that act as citizen sliders.

Bureaucrat: +4 +4 -4 -4
Aristocrat: -4 -4 +4 +4
Magistrate: +4 -4 +4 -4
Philosopher: -4 +4 -4 +4
Monk: +4 -4 -4 +4
Inventor: -4 +4 +4 -4

Each specialist has custom colored icons and has a unique building and national wonder that they work with.

Building List:

Spoiler :

100 production - 0 maintenance
Statehouse: 2 Bureaucrat slots. Cannot be built in a city with a Villa - Civil Service
Villa: 2 Aristocrat slots. Cannot be built in a city with a Statehouse - Currency
Magistrate's Office: 2 Magistrate slots. Cannot be built in a city with a Lyceum - Philosophy
Lyceum: 2 Philosopher slots. Cannot be built in a city with a Magistrate's Office - Mathematics
Convent: 2 Monk slots. Cannot be built in a city with a Inventor's Laboratory - Engineering
Inventor's Laboratory: 2 Inventor slots. Cannot be built in a city with a Convent - Theology

National Wonders:
100 Production - 0 Maintenance
Parliament: +4science +4production Requires 4 Statehouses. 2 Bureaucrat slots. - Economics
Chateau: +4gold +4culture Requires 4 Villas. 2 Aristocrat slots. - Navigation
Supreme Court: +4:gold +4production Requires 4 Magistrate's Offices. 2 Magistrate slots. - Banking
National Academy: +4science +4culture Requires 4 Lyceums. 2 Philosopher slots. - Printing Press
Abbey: +4culture +4production Requires 4 Convents. 2 Monk slots. - Acoustics
Great Workshop: +4gold +4science Requires 4 Inventor's Labs. 2 Inventor slots. - Astronomy

As you can see, each building/specialist has a mirror which is mutually exclusive, forcing the player to choose the focus of that city. These national wonders also only require 4 of their base buildings to create, meaning they work for empires large and small.

Beware that the negative values can add up fast, and you can easily accidentally send your empire into vast negative culture, science, etc.

Also Included:
New Unique Buildings for America, England, and Japan
Replaces B25, Ship of the Line, Zero.

Dojo: Unique Armory
Added +3 culture
Only 2 gold maintenance
Doesn't require a Barracks

Textile Mill: Unique Windmill
It can be built anywhere, unlike the Windmill.
Improves nearby sources of Sheep, Cotton, Fur, and Silk by +1 production
25% production bonus. (Up from 15%)

Immigration Station: Unique Seaport
Can be built in any coastal city.
Added +2 culture and 15% food.

Known Issues:

Spoiler :

--The +2 science per specialist Policy needs to be tweaked to work better with this.
--The TopPanel will display "+-" when an empirewide value goes negative. I am delaying fixing this due to compatibility issues with PWM and Thal's Modpack if I do.
--The building graphics are dreadfully ugly. I could use a hand.

Compatibility Issues:

Spoiler :

--Will not work with any mod that edits CityView.lua
--Might have issues with any mods that edit England, America, or Japan's uniques.

FAQ:

Spoiler :

--Can I use part/all of this mod/graphics in my mod?
Absolutely. Just give credit.

--How can I disable the Unique Buildings? I just want the specialists.
In the Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization V/MODS/Slider Specialist folder, DELETE the Leaders folder.

 

[Sneaks]

Reserved.


Feedback desperately needed and wanted!

 

[rhammer640]

Looks really interesting! Are the new buildings tied to certain techs? If not i think it would make it interesting and give more incentive for people to go for different techs instead of the same 3 or 4 that everyone shoots for.

Also Ill have to test it out, but i know a lot of people on these forums feel that the different resources are not equal, so for example 4production is much better than 4gold, etc so that it might be worth changing the values of each to match their worth. I think Thal had a chart somewhere in one of the balance mod threads, I think it was the city development one, not sure.

 

[Seek]

This looks interesting, I'll definitely give it a whirl soon! I'm kind of torn about the removal of sliders; at first I really liked it, but it led to some interesting decision-making at times. That you can't build culture in cities is something I really miss as well - so this will help alleviate that as well. Agree with rhammer640 that maybe the yields should perhaps be balanced based on their relative value: at first glance, both 4 and 4 seem a little OP, but I'll get back to you once I've played it.

Also curious for more details about the new buildings (not the UBs) - do they have any other functions? What are the tech reqs? What are their costs, both in terms of hammers and maintenance? Of course I could/will find out from the xml, but it would be nice to have that info in the first post.

So you got the art in OK? Good to hear

 

[Sneaks]

The yields are most probably off right now, which is one of the reasons I will need to get some feedback to properly balance this bad boy. I will add the requirements/tech etc to the first post.

And yep, once I realized what I was doing, art was a snap. Mind you, most of the icons look less than beautiful.

 

[Ahriman]

What happens when yields go negative, particularly culture?
Magistrates and inventors seem dangerous if you have a city that doesn't bother constructing any culture buildings.

 

[Sneaks]

They are dangerous.

Negative culture from a city will basically create a culture deficit in that individual city which would need to be filled before border growth could happen again. That negative culture would also subtract from the total culture output per turn. It would be possible to go negative in global culture per turn, basically adding to culture costs much in the same way adding new cities would. This obviously sounds potentially rough, but so far has played enjoyably.

As far as gold, it work just like running a city deficit now if you produce too many buildings. Science cannot go negative empire-wide, so that simply bottoms you out to zero if it gets that low. Production simply stalls out.

Obviously, as has been mentioned, I certainly would not be averse to either decreasing the +/- or altering the values relative to each other.

 

[bobbyboy29]

This is a really great Idea but it definately needs some work to fit into the game.

4 Simple questions:
1) Shouldn't there be a net gain from running a specialist? I really like the added flexibility but if you are sacrificing 2 food to run a specialist you would like to gain more than you lose.

2) Do you feel that you need to factor in the relative usefulness of hammers vs commerce vs research vs. culture. I'm not sure where the balance will lie though so it may make things tough, but it's pretty clear that hammers are more valuable than commerce, and in certain situations culture can be virtually ignored if you want.

3) If you're introducing new specialists then shouldn't they provide GPP like the other specialists? Potentially they could contribute towards 2 types of Great People like say, for instance, a bureaurat may give 2 Great scientist points and 1 Great engineer point.

4) Do the AI's use these? I can definately see an AI screwing itself over by completely bottoming out it's science or something like that.

 

[Sneaks]

1. I am thinking of adding 2 food/specialist. The issue is this: The AI will see the net gain from specialists and run them all the time even if it runs counter to what its goals are. I really am not sure where you come out even yet. As it stands, it would be possible to throw in specialists to boost science by 24 a turn per city if they had 1 of each science boosting specialist building in that city. To me, as of now, that flexibility should have some inherent downside.

2. Yes, they need to be looked at. Frankly, I did not want to fine-tune until I had some outside thought on the matter. Finding that sweet spot is a goal for this down the road.

3. The reason I did not add GPP is for two reasons. First off, great scientists are wildly overpowered, and until the GPs are balanced it is always risky to delve in. Second, as it stands, a specialist can only contribute to one type of Great Person. Given that, I decided to let it pass for now. If I get better at Lua coding, I may create new Great People instead.


Final Thoughts:
Another option I thought of exploring, and still may decide to delve down is this: Remove the negative values altogether from these specialists, and instead make them cost an extra 2 food each.

 

[Ahriman]

Negative culture from a city will basically create a culture deficit in that individual city which would need to be filled before border growth could happen again. That negative culture would also subtract from the total culture output per turn

Sorry, I was unclear.

What I mean is; I worry about the danger of being able to exploit the fact that negative yields often are meaningless.

For example:
I could choose not to build anything in city X (and just buy gold and science boosters), not build any culture buildings, and only work farm and trading post tiles, and stock it full of inventors.
-7 hammers is basically the same as -1 hammers or 0 hammers.
So if I go into negatives, I basically manage to get the benefits without the losses.

If negative culture still subtracts from the nationwide social policy accumulation, then that's not so bad, but if I don't need any more tiles from culture acquisition, then being unable to get more is harmless.

 

[alpaca]

What are you trying to achieve with these specialists? A short-term conversion of resources into other resources, or a stronger city specialisation?

I personally never enjoyed the sliders. Being able to change the whole outlook of your civ on a whim kills suspension of disbelief and therefore feels very gamey. We do have ways to boost one type of resource at the expense of others: Moving citizens to other tiles and running specialists. This is fairly micromanagement-intensive if you want to do it perfectly but not so bad if you just set the city focus to something else temporarily (which is quite easy to do if you use CivWillard, a mod I heartily recommend to everyone).

If you're trying to improve city specialisation, I would rather have more buildings and different kinds of national wonders (that don't require a building in all your cities) for an effect that I feel is more natural. I could see a specialist transforming gold into science at a more powerful rate than a scientist (change the scientist to a philosopher or teacher and make the scientist yield +5 sci, -4 gold) but the rest just seem very artificial to me.