[Complex] (9-NS) Ocean fishery improvement (a fishing boat on ocean tiles)

[Cacaso]

Significant Coasts and Oceans
Motivation

Currently, coast and ocean tiles, if within the working range of a city, are weak in all yields. There are also few luxury resources for coastal cities (only 4 in total: crab, pearls, coral, and whales), and many cities in the game end up being coastal. There are also very few features (only the atoll), and improvements on tiles only occur on tiles with resources, which marks a very pronounced weakness when compared to land tiles.

Proposal

- Add an improvement called Ocean Fishery. It is built on ocean tiles (all of which are without features/resources) by a work boat consuming the unit and cannot be built adjacent to another Ocean Fishery improvement. It gives +2 and +1 to the ocean tile. The goal of this improvement is to turn an almost useless tile like the ocean tile within a city's working range into a minimally usable tile. This serves as a power-up for those cities on small islands/coastal cities in general.

• Pillage grants half the gold/heal plunder reward of a normal fishing boat.
• Unlocked by tech Compass, the workboats could already be sailing on ocean tiles within the cultural domain of cities to build ocean fishery improvements by the time caravels and explorers emerged. (IRL: the development of star-based navigation practices for fishing increasingly far from the coast was an important driver in the development of techniques/technologies that enabled the great European voyages of discovery)
• The Tech boosts:
  Navigation - +1 and +1
  Refrigeration - +2
• NO bonuses given by the seaport and harbor buildings (so that the tile doesn't become as strong as a coast tile with resources)

EDIT
1# AMEND
Due to the greater difficulties/work required to add the luxury resource variants to coastal tiles, this part of the proposal will be cut to keep only the "ocean fishery" improvement section.

Thus, even the proposal's name will change from "Significant Coasts and Oceans" to "Ocean fishery improvement (a fishing boat on ocean tiles)".

The improvement proposal has been supplemented with tech unlock information, pillage details, and tech boosts.


- Add some coastal luxury resources that would be "variants" of their respective land resources, so you would only need to get the images for the icons of these resources.

• Seal luxury resource - spawns on coast tiles adjacent to ice/tundra tiles (in the colder/polar parts of the map), is activated by the improvised fishing boats. It would be the "furs" resource but spawning on a coast tile, representing the 19th-century hunt for seals to extract their valuable fur.
• Amber luxury resource - spawns on coast tiles, is activated by the improvised fishing boats. It would be the "Amber" resource but spawning on a coast tile. It would represent the amber fishing that takes place in Baltic Sea countries.
• Murex luxury resource - spawns on coast tiles, is activated by the improvised fishing boats. It would be the "Dyes" resource but spawning on a coast tile. This would represent the purple dye that was worth fortunes in ancient times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple

The idea here would be to simply take resources that already exist in the game and then create variant resources that would produce the same luxury resource but from coastal sources because I find this part of the map very empty (since all the coastal areas of the map only have 4 luxury resources and the bonus resources fish and atoll feature)..

Since the Ambar and Murex resources are static, it would be simpler to represent them on the map. The seal resource, being an animal, could be more complicated, because if it remained completely still, it might look bad.

 

[hokath]

This is one of those ones where there's loads of backend things to work out. Spawn rates, altitudes, other map population stuff.
Then the pillage gold of the new improvement. How does it affect naval combat by increasing the availability of pillageable tiles.
Are the coastal luxury variants separate (different monopoly) or just the land ones spawning in water with a different name and icon? (not possible atm afaik)
Then the graphics. I think Seals do exist, and maybe snails too though that I think is maybe just an icon? (These things have to exist or the rest of it cannot be implemented.)

I think it's too speculative atm, you need to have a working modmod, like this one

[Extension] Thread 'Additional Luxury Resources for VP'

Sep 25, 2024

DOWNLOAD​

This mod adds 4 new luxury resources.

Resource	Terrain	Base Yield	Improved Yield	Building Yield	Monopoly Bonus	Corporation
Alpaca	Hills	+1 Food, +1 Production	Pasture: +2 Gold, +1 Culture	Customs House: +3 Gold	+2 Culture from tiles	Giorgio Armeier
Camel	Desert	+2 :c5food...

• jarcast2
• alpaca camel luxury resources quartz vox populi
• Replies: 65
• Forum: Mods Repository

• 

before we can consider this sort of change

 

[Cacaso]

Are the coastal luxury variants separate (different monopoly) or just the land ones spawning in water with a different name and icon? (not possible atm afaik)
Then the graphics. I think Seals do exist, and maybe snails too though that I think is maybe just an icon? (These things have to exist or the rest of it cannot be implemented.)

Just variants, they would be part of the same monopoly (to try to keep it as simple as possible). In fact, even the resource icons could be the same. Since Dyes is a bottle of ink (the pink/purple one, which coincides even more with Murex ink), the amber icon would be exactly the same, because after amber is fished it is polished and transformed into jewels (as in the resource image). Only the fur icon would look a bit strange, as it's a drying land animal skin, but if there's no better one, it would be the same. Since they would only be variants (that is, exactly the same resource but spawning on coastal tiles), then the differentiation would be quick/easy for the user. The side effect would be to increase the number of resources available, which would make it more difficult to monopolize them earlier in the game.

I think it's too speculative atm, you need to have a working modmod, like this one

Okay, I understand. Since I don't know how to mod, without these graphical resources from another source it would be really difficult to execute. Perhaps in a future Congress more luxuries/resources/features could be added to the coastal tiles.

This is one of those ones where there's loads of backend things to work out. Spawn rates, altitudes, other map population stuff.
Then the pillage gold of the new improvement. How does it affect naval combat by increasing the availability of pillageable tiles.

But do you think that if it were just the improvement, it would be exactly the same as the fishing boat but on ocean tiles without resources? Would it be very difficult to implement? Since the "ocean fishery" couldn't be built on adjacent tiles, the maximum number of improvements a city with a single land tile surrounded by coast and the rest all ocean tiles would have is a maximum of 12 tiles with improvements. In practice, since the number would be much smaller (see an example below where I took a very bad city (only one land tile) and the maximum number of ocean fisheries I could get was 7 tiles), then perhaps the imbalance due to having this new improvement on ocean tiles wouldn't be so great.

I would be willing to change the proposal just to leave the improvement on ocean tiles with the working boat to facilitate implementation.

Spoiler :

 

[hokath]

Yeah I think the ocean fishery could be fine by itself.
What's the pillage gold value, same as fishing boats or lower?
What tech does it unlock at -- needs to at least be Astronomy I guess since your Work Boats can't (usually) enter ocean yet.
And the tech boosts, does it have any?

 

[Cacaso]

Yeah I think the ocean fishery could be fine by itself.
What's the pillage gold value, same as fishing boats or lower?

It should offer half the gold plunder reward of a normal fishing boat. Because for a ship (like a caravel/pirate or other) to enter a city's area on the third tile before the arsenal building is installed, it might be in a spot outside the attack range of the cities/units, so the invader could plunder without taking any damage. Therefore, to balance this, the plunder reward needs to be lower because the risk is lower.

What tech does it unlock at -- needs to at least be Astronomy I guess since your Work Boats can't (usually) enter ocean yet.

I think the unlock tech could be Compass (ocean fishing has been practiced since antiquity IRL). Since as soon as the caravels are unlocked in the game (ships capable of sailing on ocean tiles), then workboats could already be sailing on ocean tiles within the cultural domain of cities to build ocean fishery improvements.

And the tech boosts, does it have any?

The Tech boosts would be similar to fishing boats:
Navigation - +1 food and +1 gold
Refrigeration - +2 food

The bonuses given by the seaport and harbor buildings to coastal resources (fish, coral, pearl, crab, and whale) would not affect the ocean fishery, so that the tile does not become too strong.

 

[paul_soryu]

I like Ocean Fishery improvement because it adds risk/reward kind of situtation, where you can get more yields from your Ocean tiles which is pretty cool, but you also risk giving an invading fleet much more tiles to heal from. Generally I think there is usually way too few Water tiles to pillage, and even the Promo which gives full heal from pillage isn't worth it (except maybe on your frontliner ships), as there is just too few tiles. With Ocean Fishery this Promo could become good.

Also this would indirectly buff Naval city sieges, possibly adressing some part of the reasoning behind the proposal to give Battleship 3 range. On the other hand, too many improvements to pillage might give an invader too big of an advantage. There's no roads in Water so invader and defender have the same mobility, you can't just retreat and heal, the remaining ships would get outnumbered and destroyed.

I think sea tiles would benefit from 1-2 new Bonus Resources (currently there's just Fish), Luxuries would add variety but won't change much. Seals can be a great bonus resource boosting Food-starved Tundra and Snow cities.

 

[Cacaso]

I like Ocean Fishery improvement because it adds risk/reward kind of situtation, where you can get more yields from your Ocean tiles which is pretty cool, but you also risk giving an invading fleet much more tiles to heal from. Generally I think there is usually way too few Water tiles to pillage, and even the Promo which gives full heal from pillage isn't worth it (except maybe on your frontliner ships), as there is just too few tiles. With Ocean Fishery this Promo could become good.

Also this would indirectly buff Naval city sieges, possibly adressing some part of the reasoning behind the proposal to give Battleship 3 range. On the other hand, too many improvements to pillage might give an invader too big of an advantage. There's no roads in Water so invader and defender have the same mobility, you can't just retreat and heal, the remaining ships would get outnumbered and destroyed.

I think sea tiles would benefit from 1-2 new Bonus Resources (currently there's just Fish), Luxuries would add variety but won't change much. Seals can be a great bonus resource boosting Food-starved Tundra and Snow cities.

To avoid exploits, I decided to only give half the plunder of these improvements compared to a fishing boat.

Perhaps even in the healing aspect, we could consider giving only 25% of the healing of plundering a normal fishing boat. But then I don't know if that would be excessive, as it would give very few HP points.

 

[hokath]

I'm thinking this is database but actually I don't know about AI workboat purchase logic
(If work boats didn't exist it would be fine! )
@KungCheops would this need DLL changes?

 

[Recursive]

Pretty sure AI is programmed to use Work Boats on resources only.

Database + DLL + possible artwork changes required.

 

[KungCheops]

Would need to train the AI to build work boats even when none are needed, other than that it should work fine I think.

 

[hokath]

I had a go at implementing this with workers and unfortunately the sea resource art defines are like camps: they dont show up without a resource on the tile.

 

[hokath]

I fixed it!

Ignore the tooltip, I didn't change it yet.
It's a separate improvement made valid by ocean with NoTwoAdjacent, then we make a new art define that copies the fish one.
Same tech/policy/trait/building/etc. buffs as normal fishing boats but with +1 Food/+1 Prod base yields (it has +1 Food on Compass so +2Food/+1Prod base for most people)

I sponsor this

 

[azum4roll]

Hope you don't actually put the unlock and the tech boost on the same tech...

 

[hokath]

I guess there are two options
1) its presented to the player as a fishing boat improvement, the truth is hidden from the pedia and tech tree
2) its presented as a separate improvement that just looks and acts identically to a fishing boat (up to possible policy/belief/etc. interactions) but has a different name

 

[paul_soryu]

If it will be allowed to be adjacent to normal Fishing Boats (which I assume it will) then I think it should be a separate entry with a different name (Ocean Fishery, like in the OP), and probably have a separate text for tech buffs to avoid confusion. Fishing Boats can be adjacent to each other so I don't think there's a way to make Ocean Fishery seem the same as Fishing Boats.

Later for example Imperialism could have buffs specifically to Ocean Fishery.

 

[hokath]

Yes the implementation has to have a separate improvement for the adjacency part.
So cleanest way is to have separate improvement and take the hit on art being identical (not a huge deal I guess -- fish are fish)

I forgot though that we need the work boat part. I don't know how to do that so right now it's not fully sponsored.

 

[azum4roll]

Well it's literally proposed to have a different name.

 

[hokath]

Indeed

 

[stormfallen]

So this can only be built on ocean and not coast? Little weird.

 

[Cacaso]

So this can only be built on ocean and not coast? Little weird.

The idea of allowing this improvement only on ocean tiles is to make them less common. In a city that is only one land tile (where it was founded) and the rest water, the maximum you will achieve is 8 such improvements.

If this improvement were also allowed on coast tiles, it would become more common and this could compromise the game's balance.

Because currently it is already difficult to protect a coastal city with three or more tiles that can suffer attacks from naval melee units, if the invading fleet had several tiles to plunder and recover health, it would become even more difficult. In the player's hands, naval attacks would become ridiculously easy; it would be too easy to take coastal cities from the AI by plundering to heal + bombardment with naval ranged units and only then start spending your army to fight the rest (inland cities + units). It would be too unbalanced to allow it on coast tiles (more common in the 3rd ranged tile workable by the cities).

Yes the implementation has to have a separate improvement for the adjacency part.
So cleanest way is to have separate improvement and take the hit on art being identical (not a huge deal I guess -- fish are fish)

I don't think there's a problem with the art/animation being the same. Doing something different would be a lot of work (although it would be good for visual differentiation more quickly), but if it's too much work/not possible, then there's no problem at all.

I forgot though that we need the work boat part. I don't know how to do that so right now it's not fully sponsored.

If the DLL programming (or other necessary things) doesn't work out, letting workers handle the improvement instead of the workboat makes it much cheaper. This is because you wouldn't need to buy the workboat unit (and I say "buy" because I don't think anyone builds with production; gold is a cheaper yield than production).

Since you've already managed to implement it through a worker unit action, if switching to the workboat unit becomes too much work, you can leave it as is.