3UC/4UC for VP: Project Coordination Thread

[pineappledan]

Regarding the latifundium:
We certainly can reduce the number of turns on the resource spawn, but I think there would need to be a trade-off.

Spoiler :

Latifundium (new parts in bold)
available at currency
Can be built on any resource that can be improved by farms or plantations
+1 Food, +1 , +2 Gold
+1 at Civil Service
+1 , +1 at Economics
+1 at Fertilizer
+1 to adjacent to Farms and +1 to adjacent Plantations
If possible, a free copy of the resource beneath a Latifundium appears adjacent to the Latifundium after 10 turns of being worked. Spawned resources are improved when spawned automatically
If a resource spawns in unclaimed territory, Rome automatically claims the tile. The free resource prioritizes spawning on unclaimed territory over claimed territory.
Latifundia DO NOT IMPROVE RESOURCES
Latifundia CANNOT BE REMOVED
Pillage gold for latifundia is 25 (higher than a great person tile)

I think what I have proposed above strikes a neat balance between what @adan_eslavo and @David de Vasconcelos are suggesting
I think it would be possible to lower the prereq tech to calendar, but I prefer it where it is for a couple reasons:

• I actually like all Rome's stuff coming in the Classical
• Giving Rome its 1 non-military UC after it gets all its conquering stuff feels more in line with Pax Romana

If it only takes 10 turns to spawn a second copy of a luxury, Rome would basically have a better version of an East India Company 1 era early and in every city.
If we effectively doubled all plantation-based (read:most) luxuries for Rome, we might end up refocusing them as a mercantile civ on the level of Indonesia or Dutch

NOTES:

• If it spawns a second copy then you get to keep the original number of luxuries you were always going to have
• get bonus tiles, expand faster
• extra yields from 2 luxuries instead of 1.
• resource's priority to spawn in unclaimed tiles means the bonus is more likely to spawn outside the workable range of a city.
  • This will make settling in previously undesireable lands close to your existing cities more attractive. This feeds into Rome's Infinite City Sprawl, which the UA encourages
• Tech is 1 era after plantation; you will have to remove old plantations, replace them with latifundia, and then build the new plantation.
  • This would be precisely 1 tech level after all their military techs, gives 'Pax Romana' flavor. Conquer first, then civic improvement
• The improvement would effectively delay the acquisition of the new luxury resource by 10 turns after you had made the original improvement.
  • This mimics a worker action to set up new plantation and then improve it.

Regarding Legionnaire:

• Any changes we make to the legionnaire shouldn't increase its battle-performance, it's already a very powerful unit in its own era.
• I like the +50% if in range of a GG, because the policies don't increase the work time of legionnaires, and 50% would put it at parity with the best workers at the same tech (if you got the progress policy and built pyramids, your workers are already at +50% improvement time.
• It fits Roman history well. The army built the roads and forts in Rome, and this would mollify those who want to see the GG have a more flexible role in Rome's playstyle; it gives GGs a role in Roman civics and infrastructure.

Regarding the Ballista:
I really like david’s Idea with GGs giving both UUs a special ability, but I think we can do better than indirect fire. Ballista shad effective ranges of only a few hundred meters, and their firing trajectories were quite flat.
What about having the GG radius deny a different siege debuff? Like giving double movement in foreign territory, or removing siege inaccuracy?

I kinda like that all of Rome's stuff hits in Classical, and it's actually very difficult to justify their UCs existing outside that era.

• With Byzantium in-game, any medieval Roman UC automatically is more Byzantine than Western Roman.
• Roman Empire is more or less defined as post-Greek. Anything prior to that might still be Latin, but it would feel more Etruscan

These two factors hem Rome in mightily, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. After all, within Western Canon, Rome IS the Classical Era; its destruction marks the beginning of the medieval, and Byzantium's destruction marks the beginning of the Renaissance.
Being the only civ with ALL its UCs in one era can be seen as a unique flavor. It makes Rome's power spike very prominent, and then it has nothing else in later eras to help keep that lead. I think that feels right for Rome, as a civilization. The Empire feels like it was swallowed up less by barbarians at the gate, but more by Time itself.

Moving the Ballista forward would make it contemporary with the Greek Hoplite. As has been mentioned before, Ballistae were created by the Greeks, and the Romans perfected them, so Rome having more-or-less stolen technology contemporary with the civ that they stole it from would look a-historical.

 

[David de Vasconcelos]

CONS

• the bonus resource's priority to spawning in unclaimed tiles means the bonus is more likely to spawn outside the workable range of a city.
• Tech is 1 era after plantation; you will have to remove old plantations, replace them with latifundia, and then build the new plantation.
• The improvement would effectively delay the acquisition of the new luxury resource by 10 turns after you had made the original improvement.

If Latifundium does not necessarily need to be a localized improvement above the resource?
The copy of resourse would be under the latifundium, latifundium do not improve resource but keep yields.

 

[pineappledan]

What if the resource was next to 2 different eligible resources, how would would you decide which one it should spawn under it?

You would have no mechanic by which to justify the land-grab then

a player could offset these with villages, and just stagger them across their entire empire. It would be too powerful for a UI whose only requirements are 1) flat land, 2) not adjacent.

If it could be built anywhere like that then you would have to take away its adjacency bonus to farms, since it would be 2x as good as the normal farm triangle, and easier to accomplish.

The solution, of course, is to make it "cant be adjacent to another latifundium", and "only adjacent to a luxury resource". but that is the exact same requirements as the chateau and Hacienda, and it all starts to look the same at that point

 

[David de Vasconcelos]

Ok, we keep it as you suggested.
Maybe the copy can be generated already improved.
The problem would still be tiles outside the workable range of the city.

And if the copy can be generated the instant the latifundium is finished?
Rome would not feel the impact of declane of happiness (if single resource), for a long time.

 

[pineappledan]

The outside workable range is mitigated some by the land grab always guaranteeing you have it improved, and the latifundium gives better yields that a plantation.

At the bare minimum you would still get the luxury, but with more territory and more tile yields. Maybe you plant a second city in that direction to take advantage of the resources you spawn; Rome is a bit of an ICS civ anyways

I definitely think the tile should be improved automatically, especially if it spawns that quickly. That is only slightly longer than it takes for a worker to create a different improvement, then come back; it's just busywork and micromanagement otherwise

 

[pineappledan]

Maybe the delay is unnecessary if it doesn't double your access to luxuries... I kinda like the delayed benefit thing though, It feels more like a process and less like a culture bomb. You could also think of 10 turns as being equivalent to the amount of time it would take to create and improve the new resource, essentially making it akin to a free worker action.

What do other people think?

 

[David de Vasconcelos]

The outside workable range is mitigated some by the land grab always guaranteeing you have it improved, and the latifundium gives better yields that a plantation.

At the bare minimum you would still get the luxury, but with more territory and more tile yields. Maybe you plant a second city in that direction to take advantage of the resources you spawn; Rome is a bit of an ICS civ anyways

Thinking of this case, the latifundium would help to make bad places in good places for new cities.

 

[Jarula]

Latifundia the way you describe it is kind of doing not that much for Rome.

A UW that provides a huge buff for the capital synergizes with the UA.

 

[pineappledan]

Another problem is what if people replace their latifundia with regular plantations so that they can double their luxury count? Or worse, could they simply remove and then rebuild latifundia to get multiple triggers?

Build latifundium => wait 10 turns for new resource => delete latifundium and rebuild => wait for ANOTHER new resource in 10 turns

Now you have 3 resources where before you had 1

If your latifundium is already 4+ tiles from your capital this would be a no-brainer. If it's in workable distance from your city, you would have to decide if better yields are worth sacrificing for a second copy of a resource.

To fix this, we would have to check if a few things are possible

• Is it possible/fair/desireable to make latifundia impossible to remove?
• Can we delete resources spawned by a latifundium at the same time as a latifundium is removed?

I considered maybe having latifundium "consume" the resource it is on top of if it spawns a new one, but then you could simply "walk" with your latifundia, and eat up new territory:

Build latifundium => wait 10 turns for new resource => delete latifundium => build latifundium on top of spawned resource, rinse repeat

At least the 10 turns of waiting does a small amount to discourage behaviour. It makes abusing this system for free tiles take too long to make much difference.

 

[David de Vasconcelos]

Another problem is what if people replace their latifundia with regular plantations so that they can double their luxury count? Or worse, could they simply remove and then rebuild latifundia to get multiple triggers?

Build latifundium => wait 10 turns for new resource => delete latifundium and rebuild => wait for ANOTHER new resource in 10 turns

Now you have 3 resources where before you had 1

If your latifundium is already 4+ tiles from your capital this would be a no-brainer. If it's in workable distance from your city, you would have to decide if better yields are worth sacrificing for a second copy of a resource.

To fix this, we would have to check if a few things are possible

• Is it possible/fair/desireable to make latifundia impossible to remove?
• Can we delete resources spawned by a latifundium at the same time as a latifundium is removed?

I considered maybe having latifundium "consume" the resource it is on top of if it spawns a new one, but then you could simply "walk" with your latifundia, and eat up new territory:

Build latifundium => wait 10 turns for new resource => delete latifundium => build latifundium on top of spawned resource, rinse repeat

At least the 10 turns of waiting does a small amount to discourage behaviour. It makes abusing this system for free tiles take too long to make much difference.

It seems we already have a reason to justify the delay of 10 turns.
The second option sounds good to me.
But the tile must remain as territory of the city

 

[pineappledan]

I am leaning towards the second option as well, with the caveat that we increase the resource copy's spawn delay to 12-15.

We must summon a competent coder to make our conversations less dumb and hypothetical

@Blue Ghost! @Blue Ghost! @Blue Ghost!

 

[David de Vasconcelos]

I am leaning towards the second option as well, with the caveat that we increase the resource copy's spawn delay to 12-15.

I think that the delay of 12 turns is ok
It would be possible that only during the delay the latifundium has +1 production?

 

[adan_eslavo]

Issues:
1. Aquiring tiles after creating resource has one problem, there can be no place to put new resource around latifundium. Better way is automatic aquiring tile and then putting resource if possible.
2. Your suggestion that one under latifundum will stay and the other is improved has also con: what if you could not place any resource? You would lost bonus from improvement.
3. Delaying is also unnecessary complication. You need to take into account game speed. And as David said you can improve all tiles around until it spawn.
4. Just prioritize more latifundia and AI should put one on top of plantation. Then also later tech is not a problem. Isuggested this because I wanted to make bigger spread of UCs through era.
5. There is possobility to make improvement perma (look at embassy). But it means that if you put another improvement on top of it there will be 2 improvements on 1 tile.

So in conclussion, the best way would be similar to what I suggested: automatic aquire tile, then try to put resource and if latifundia was deleted, then resource should not be deleted if we use delay (just an reward for waiting).

 

[Jarula]

I don't think any of you have played with pompeys Rome. Often you get copper and more copper if anything from uighars Rome take the traria

 

[Jarula]

Give Rome trariai

Spearman with extra combat strength grants nearby units extra combat strength when at full health

And give Rome campus Marius.

The more time I spent on Rome trying to learn how to mod should have UW that can only be built in capital. Roman Latifundia is meh. Rome should be rolling in culture early game...

 

[pineappledan]

1. Aquiring tiles after creating resource has one problem, there can be no place to put new resource around latifundium. Better way is automatic aquiring tile and then putting resource if possible.

In my mind, the goal is to make the free border expansion contingent on the resource. If there is not place to put the resource then they don't get a resource AND they don't get a tile expansion.

2. Your suggestion that one under latifundum will stay and the other is improved has also con: what if you could not place any resource? You would lost bonus from improvement.

In that case you have to decide if you need the yields more than the luxury. Do you have enough copies of that luxury, that the better yields from a latifundium are better? If not, you can just build a plantation.

3. Delaying is also unnecessary complication. You need to take into account game speed. And as David said you can improve all tiles around until it spawn.

The delay prevents abusive tactics though. If this requires us to modify the number of turns needed based on game speed then so be it. Unless we make latifundia permanent, the only thing preventing people from using latifundia as culture bombs and endless border-walking is the prohibitive amount of turns that would take.

4. Just prioritize more latifundia and AI should put one on top of plantation. Then also later tech is not a problem. Isuggested this because I wanted to make bigger spread of UCs through era.

I'm confused by this point. If the AI can put down a latifundium then it should. Are you suggesting that we make an improved plantation an actual prerequisite for placing a latifundium? So the worker has to build 2 improvements on the same tile, like the Kibbutz from the Israel mod? I don't know why that would justify moving the tech further back, even if you did do that.

5. There is possobility to make improvement perma (look at embassy). But it means that if you put another improvement on top of it there will be 2 improvements on 1 tile.

How are you going to put 2 improvements on top of something? Embassies prevent new improvements from being placed there, I don't know of any way of 'stacking' improvements, outside of the aforementioned Israel mod.

So we have established that making permanent UIs is possible, thank you, @adan_eslavo

Is it also possible to make removing a latifundium remove the extra copy of the resource that it spawned adjacent to the original? If that is possible, then it prevents players from using the newly spawned resources to "leapfrog" across the map using the UI. I don't think we can even begin to consider removing the delay in the luxury spawn unless that new copy can be removed. The only thing that prevents abuse would be the cost in game time

So in conclussion, the best way would be similar to what I suggested: automatic aquire tile, then try to put resource and if latifundia was deleted, then resource should not be deleted if we use delay (just an reward for waiting).

That would allow them to claim ocean tiles with latifundia, and other silliness. I think the UI should only claim tiles IF they can place a resource on it, so make the border expansion contingent on placing a new resource.
If the resource is not deleted then you can just build/destroy/rebuild latifundia for endless supplies of resources. If you built/destroyed/rebuilt on resources that spawned 2 tiles from the original spawn, you could start spreading new free luxuries accross the map like creep in starcraft.

 

[adan_eslavo]

If you build embassy and then reasearch uranium on top of it, the cs can build mine, liquidate embassy but its bonuses stays.

If you make things depending on what you actually want: plantation with improved resource or latifundium with extra one then Ai wont know what to choose. You need to make latifundium better prioritize it over plantation. Then AI will biuild lat where it can, then fill the gaps with farms and plantations because lat will have adhacency restriction.

If you wont give lat automatic ability to claim tile then there can be situation when you build few lats and no border expand. It will be then so useless we can delete it. It is not so op (lat has adjacenct restriction and one tile is not much, many of them will be built inside your territory).

Deleting any resource after overwriting lat would mean lost of resource when lat earlier did not created one.

 

[pineappledan]

If you build embassy and then reasearch uranium on top of it, the cs can build mine, liquidate embassy but its bonuses stays.

In our case we don't have to worry about "hidden" resources because the UI would only be able to be initially built on "known" luxury resources, which would never have a hidden luxury beneath them.

New resources spawned adjacent to a latifundium can't spawn on top of hidden resources. Maybe this would give away the position of a source of coal or oil early, if your latifundia actively avoided expanding to a certain tile, but its better than the alternative.

If you make things depending on what you actually want: plantation with improved resource or latifundium with extra one then Ai wont know what to choose. You need to make latifundium better prioritize it over plantation. Then AI will biuild lat where it can, then fill the gaps with farms and plantations because lat will have adhacency restriction.

That's fine. In cases where a human player would weigh the cost/benefit of a latifundium vs. a plantations, the AI would therefore always pick Latifundium. I would predict this would be the most common choice for a human player anyways.
Plantation-based resources are usually not 1-offs in the empire, unlike Marble or diamonds, which spawn chaotically sprinkled across the map. The chances of you having only 1 copy of a plantation resource across your empire is rare, and having that single copy be in a place that can't spawn adjacent resources is rarer still.

The AI would therefore just be forced to take the most advantageous choice in the overwhelming majority of cases. Even if its choice is suboptimal, AI suffer much less from unhappiness than human players do, and its not like latifundia are useless without a tile claimed

If you wont give lat automatic ability to claim tile then there can be situation when you build few lats and no border expand. It will be then so useless we can delete it. It is not so op (lat has adjacenct restriction and one tile is not much, many of them will be built inside your territory).

It's not useless if it can't claim a tile, it still gives better yields.

Deleting any resource after overwriting lat would mean lost of resource when lat earlier did not created one.

So, let me see if I am understanding this:
2 naturally occuring plantation resources on a 2 tile island, surrounded by water
you build Latifundium on 1 of the resources, it doesn't spawn a new resource because of water
You then remove the latifundium
In this case, it would take the naturally occurring adjacent resource with it?
Is there no way of "tagging" a spawned resource so that removing a latifundium could only delete those "marked" resources?

This is beginning to sound needlessly complicated, especially with the knowledge that permanent Latifundia is possible and easy to do.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Is there no way of "tagging" a spawned resource so that removing a latifundium could only delete those "marked" resources?

Yhat's the main problem. Idon't know the way ho we could do this. We could save coordinates in global variables but I dont like using it generally. And I did not do this before. Maybe @Blue Ghost has better knowledge in this aspect. But even if you did this, then imagine 5 latifundias and every of them made additionl resource saved as global coordinates. After some time you decide to delete one of them. How can you choose which one of five is tied to your deleted one? Then you say, ok, search for closest one. Ok, but imaging hardcore situation when you put 3 lats around 4th one and all 4 additional resource spawn around that 4th one. Then you decide to delete 4th one and... all of them are closest ones. I know, it is hard to understand, but when you code you need to analyze every context, every possible outcome.

It's not useless if it can't claim a tile, it still gives better yields.

Yeah, but comparing to other improvemtns that have guaranteed bonuses, in latifundia you get 2 additions that may not work over whole game. That is lot of unused resource and making it work involve making AI using it. Unfortunately we cannot teach them. If we give them guaranteed tile aquiring then it is not 100% sure that it aquire that tile, but at least it is not tied to resource generation.

@pineappledan maybe that's stupid question but why did you create additional workerfor kampung? Using something like this:

------------------------------              
-- Unit_Builds
------------------------------              
INSERT INTO Unit_Builds  
            (UnitType,             BuildType)
VALUES        ('UNIT_WORKER',        'BUILD_SPAIN_HACIENDA');

did not work? And why code says that it upgrades to lancknechts?

INSERT INTO Unit_ClassUpgrades
        (UnitType,                    UnitClassType)
VALUES  ('UNIT_CL_MALAYSIA_WORKER',    'UNITCLASS_LANDSKNECHT');

 

[pineappledan]

Yhat's the main problem. Idon't know the way ho we could do this. We could save coordinates in global variables but I dont like using it generally. And I did not do this before. Maybe @Blue Ghost has better knowledge in this aspect. But even if you did this, then [very difficult things to code with unintended consequences and a lot of calculation load for the computer making it prohibitive]

Fair enough. I think we should just make the latifundia a permanent tile then. make the resource spawn at 8/10/12/15 depending on game speed to simulate the time it would take for a worker to set up a plantation.

Yeah, but comparing to other improvments that have guaranteed bonuses, in latifundia you get 2 additions hat may not work over whole game. That is lot of unused resource and making it work involve making AI using it. Unfortunately we cannot teach them. If we give them guaranteed tile acquiring then it is not 100% sure that it acquire that tile, but at least it is not tied to resource generation.

This is something I'm really not that worried about, especially for a UI. Generally you build UIs at every chance that they are available because they are just plain better than anything else. I feel the proposed yields on Latifundium accomplish this, even without taking into account its adjacency bonuses, its resource spawning, OR its tile grabbing

Latifundium (full tech, Urbanization ideology):
5/2/3/1
Plantation (full tech, fresh water, herbalist, goddess of springtime, Exploitation, Urbanization):
6/2/2/1/1
monopolies, granary and tile yields are tied to the base, unimproved resource. I have ignored them. Urbanization was chosen because the ideology boosts UIs and plantations by the same amount.

So that's 1 less&, and 1 more than a plantation. This ignores all other possible benefits of Latifundium and assumes your plantation is on a river, and you got all the appropriate policies and pantheons which boost plantations.

I think it's matching up reasonably well. Perhaps we could add an additional +1 at fertilizer though?

My point is, sometimes you don't get to use every special ability for every one of your UCs, and having more UCs is just going to make that more of a problem. I have had games as Shoshone where I didn't get to use the damage from encampments because I was always on offense.
I've had a game with Polynesia where I never built a single Maori warrior because My neighbours weren't aggressive towards me, and I found good real estate off-shore, so I never competed for land in medieval.
I've had a game where I didn't get my first source of iron as Russia until medieval.

Not being able to take every advantage of every UC all the time in every game is simply not something I can, or am interested in promising.

@pineappledan maybe that's stupid question but why did you create additional workerfor kampung? Using something like this:

You have to have a unique worker so that Indonesia can build Kampungs. Normal workers aren't able to build improvements while embarked

did not work? And why code says that it upgrades to lancknechts?

That is a holdover from the Malaysia mod. Malaysia's UU is a landsknecht replacement that you can upgrade workers into, and doesn't have the policy requirements for landsknecht.
That actually needs to be deleted. I forgot about it because I've never gone down the authority tree with indonesia before