jtanner28
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2008
- Messages
- 97
I know that AND 1.75 probably is in a feature freeze getting ready for release, but here are a few ideas I had that I think would work well. Once I learn how, I might even try to mod some of them myself.
Idea #1. Besiegement: There is already a "Surround and Destroy" option, but this would work differently and in a complementary manner. If there is an enemy unit on a city tile, it cannot be worked and the route through that tile for purposes of trade is cut off. The player would get an announcement that the tile is besieged and once you looked in the city, you'd see that you cannot work that tile. The little circle indicating that a tile is worked would be automatically moved to another tile. If there are no more tiles available, it becomes a citizen specialist (the ones at the bottom of the specialist list). You could of course change it to another specialist like normal. If many tiles in a city were besieged, most of its population would end up as specialists... still eating and using up the food reserves. Hammer production and commerce would go down drastically. If all the routes out of the city are cut off, all trade routes are lost also. This is a less drastic option to pillaging, and changes the strategy of taking a city a bit. This modification also has historical precedents if you think about it. A stack-o-doom might be better put to use by spreading out to cover many tiles. It would also work well with...
Idea #2. Gain resources only on worked tiles: Pretty much what it says. It wouldn't matter if you built a farm on that plot of corn in your city. If you don't work the tile, you don't get the corn. But what about resources on tiles inside your cultural borders but outside of the city tiles? I'm glad you asked. There would be a new worker action: Work the Improvement. It would require that a worker stand there and actually work on the tile for you to gain the resource. He could be killed or captured (or you assign him different orders) and you lose the resource.
Both of the above suggestions would make resources have a new strategic value. During an invasion, one could obviously just pillage the improvement and move on, but in a campaign to take a city, I sometimes prefer to not do so much damage so that I have a viable city left when I am finished.
Idea #3. Minefields: There is now the option of terrain damage, so why not a tile improvement that does damage? I could have a probability of going off and causing collateral damage to units on it and then auto-pillaging itself. It could also be made to look like a normal tile improvement (farm, mine, etc.). This would make it especially fun to try to surround and destroy or besiege a city with these damn things all over the place. Maybe a new espionage mission could show you where they are and a new minesweeper unit could get rid of them. I was thinking that they would have a very low chance of exploding for spies. High chance for melee, mounted, and archery units. VERY high for wheeled units. Lower damage for armored units. Zero damage for nanites. No possibility of exploding for air units (obviously). Make them available after explosives. Oh! I almost forgot: WATER mines also! Put 'em in your harbor and along the coast to protect your shipping lanes.
Idea #4. Great Wall changes: I love barbarians. I like to have them streaming over the border in hordes. I am often kinda bummed whenever I get the Great Wall because they can't come in anymore. Here is what I suggest: make it where they simply can't cross the Great Wall. They can still go into your cultural borders and land their troops from sea. Also, lets give the tiles right beside the Great wall a 20% defensive bonus and make the movement penalty very high when crossing it so that it takes one full move to cross it. No zipping across real fast for anybody. Add this to the Zone of Control mods for forts (already implemented in AND) and the minefields that I just mentioned and the Great Wall becomes a formidable defense even later in the game.
Idea #5. Canals: Forts work like canals right now and it bugs the crap out of me. A fort is a land defensive structure, not a thoroughfare for ships. All this would take is copying the coding for the fort and making some key changes. Remove the ability for ships to enter forts. A canal would be able to move ships through it and also produce 3 commerce and 1 hammer. You could also add a new great wonder: The Panama Canal. Can be rushed by a great engineer. Can only be built by a civ that has at least 6 canals and it adds 2 commerce,1 hammer, and 1 espionage to each canal. Can only be built in a city that has a canal. Obviously, canals can only be built once a civ has researched Canal Systems.
Idea #6.) Customize Automated worker actions: Nothing bugs me more than building a fort and then finding an automated worker tearing it down to make a cottage. There should be a way to make a new dialog that would allow you to set what you want automated workers to build and what you want them to leave alone. There is only two options I've found that are related to this: Automated worker leave old improvements and Automated workers do not chop forests/jungles. I'd like to be able to narrow it down a little more. I'd like to automate them but be assured that my super-farm city is left alone, but if jewels pop on a tile, they'll automatically tear down whatever's there and build the right thing.
Idea #7. Economic Victory: I know this has been brought up before, but why the heck not? Arbitrarily large sum of gold + Multiple dominating corporations + large net positive gold gain per round + Banks/stock markets in most cities + Wall Street and other economic world wonders = Economic Victory. The details would need to be tested and balanced of course.
Idea #8. Migrating great specialists: Allow a great great specialist to "un-join" a city and become a Great Specialist unit. Labeled like this: "Great Specialist (Engineer)". This unit couldn't cause golden ages or lightning a tech, all it could do is go to another city and join it. This way you could start building that city up quicker on GP points and other benefits of GPs. What's cool about this is that the Great Specialists are essentially defenseless. They could meet with a nasty accident on the way like, I don't know, maybe an Assassinate Mission. Or maybe even captured by the enemy and end up working for another civ.
Idea #9. Great Doctors and Doctor specialists: Smeagolheart has brought the MedMod up to BtS 3.19 now and I think it would go great in AND with certain modifications. Even better if the doctor specialists could actually add +health to a city. I don't know about you, but these new three-tile radius city's end up being cesspools for me.
Idea #10. (Last one, I promise) Great Prophets found religions: Nothing bugs me more than setting up a great location for my first religion and then it pops in my new city in friggin' BFE. Most religions throughout history were founded by a specific individual anyway. Having this as a game option would be fantastic therapy for my city planning CDO. (CDO is like OCD, only it's in the correct order!)
Sorry for such a long post. AND is a great mod. I think these ideas would work well with it and are in the same spirit as it. Let me know what you think.
Idea #1. Besiegement: There is already a "Surround and Destroy" option, but this would work differently and in a complementary manner. If there is an enemy unit on a city tile, it cannot be worked and the route through that tile for purposes of trade is cut off. The player would get an announcement that the tile is besieged and once you looked in the city, you'd see that you cannot work that tile. The little circle indicating that a tile is worked would be automatically moved to another tile. If there are no more tiles available, it becomes a citizen specialist (the ones at the bottom of the specialist list). You could of course change it to another specialist like normal. If many tiles in a city were besieged, most of its population would end up as specialists... still eating and using up the food reserves. Hammer production and commerce would go down drastically. If all the routes out of the city are cut off, all trade routes are lost also. This is a less drastic option to pillaging, and changes the strategy of taking a city a bit. This modification also has historical precedents if you think about it. A stack-o-doom might be better put to use by spreading out to cover many tiles. It would also work well with... Idea #2. Gain resources only on worked tiles: Pretty much what it says. It wouldn't matter if you built a farm on that plot of corn in your city. If you don't work the tile, you don't get the corn. But what about resources on tiles inside your cultural borders but outside of the city tiles? I'm glad you asked. There would be a new worker action: Work the Improvement. It would require that a worker stand there and actually work on the tile for you to gain the resource. He could be killed or captured (or you assign him different orders) and you lose the resource.Both of the above suggestions would make resources have a new strategic value. During an invasion, one could obviously just pillage the improvement and move on, but in a campaign to take a city, I sometimes prefer to not do so much damage so that I have a viable city left when I am finished.
Idea #3. Minefields: There is now the option of terrain damage, so why not a tile improvement that does damage? I could have a probability of going off and causing collateral damage to units on it and then auto-pillaging itself. It could also be made to look like a normal tile improvement (farm, mine, etc.). This would make it especially fun to try to surround and destroy or besiege a city with these damn things all over the place. Maybe a new espionage mission could show you where they are and a new minesweeper unit could get rid of them. I was thinking that they would have a very low chance of exploding for spies. High chance for melee, mounted, and archery units. VERY high for wheeled units. Lower damage for armored units. Zero damage for nanites. No possibility of exploding for air units (obviously). Make them available after explosives. Oh! I almost forgot: WATER mines also! Put 'em in your harbor and along the coast to protect your shipping lanes. Idea #4. Great Wall changes: I love barbarians. I like to have them streaming over the border in hordes. I am often kinda bummed whenever I get the Great Wall because they can't come in anymore. Here is what I suggest: make it where they simply can't cross the Great Wall. They can still go into your cultural borders and land their troops from sea. Also, lets give the tiles right beside the Great wall a 20% defensive bonus and make the movement penalty very high when crossing it so that it takes one full move to cross it. No zipping across real fast for anybody. Add this to the Zone of Control mods for forts (already implemented in AND) and the minefields that I just mentioned and the Great Wall becomes a formidable defense even later in the game. Idea #5. Canals: Forts work like canals right now and it bugs the crap out of me. A fort is a land defensive structure, not a thoroughfare for ships. All this would take is copying the coding for the fort and making some key changes. Remove the ability for ships to enter forts. A canal would be able to move ships through it and also produce 3 commerce and 1 hammer. You could also add a new great wonder: The Panama Canal. Can be rushed by a great engineer. Can only be built by a civ that has at least 6 canals and it adds 2 commerce,1 hammer, and 1 espionage to each canal. Can only be built in a city that has a canal. Obviously, canals can only be built once a civ has researched Canal Systems. Idea #6.) Customize Automated worker actions: Nothing bugs me more than building a fort and then finding an automated worker tearing it down to make a cottage. There should be a way to make a new dialog that would allow you to set what you want automated workers to build and what you want them to leave alone. There is only two options I've found that are related to this: Automated worker leave old improvements and Automated workers do not chop forests/jungles. I'd like to be able to narrow it down a little more. I'd like to automate them but be assured that my super-farm city is left alone, but if jewels pop on a tile, they'll automatically tear down whatever's there and build the right thing. Idea #7. Economic Victory: I know this has been brought up before, but why the heck not? Arbitrarily large sum of gold + Multiple dominating corporations + large net positive gold gain per round + Banks/stock markets in most cities + Wall Street and other economic world wonders = Economic Victory. The details would need to be tested and balanced of course. Idea #8. Migrating great specialists: Allow a great great specialist to "un-join" a city and become a Great Specialist unit. Labeled like this: "Great Specialist (Engineer)". This unit couldn't cause golden ages or lightning a tech, all it could do is go to another city and join it. This way you could start building that city up quicker on GP points and other benefits of GPs. What's cool about this is that the Great Specialists are essentially defenseless. They could meet with a nasty accident on the way like, I don't know, maybe an Assassinate Mission. Or maybe even captured by the enemy and end up working for another civ. Idea #9. Great Doctors and Doctor specialists: Smeagolheart has brought the MedMod up to BtS 3.19 now and I think it would go great in AND with certain modifications. Even better if the doctor specialists could actually add +health to a city. I don't know about you, but these new three-tile radius city's end up being cesspools for me. Idea #10. (Last one, I promise) Great Prophets found religions: Nothing bugs me more than setting up a great location for my first religion and then it pops in my new city in friggin' BFE. Most religions throughout history were founded by a specific individual anyway. Having this as a game option would be fantastic therapy for my city planning CDO. (CDO is like OCD, only it's in the correct order!)Sorry for such a long post. AND is a great mod. I think these ideas would work well with it and are in the same spirit as it. Let me know what you think.
