A Not So Modest Proposal Regarding Buildings, Resources and Units

[Praetyre]

This rough draft document is the product of many days worth of labour and research, and covers just about every single building, national wonder, world wonder, project and unit in C2C as of v20, and proposes the addition of quite a few new buildings and resources to boot, many with significant impacts on the core structure of C2C's military and resource systems. Since V21 is out and the freeze is over, I'm willing to share it with all of you for comment, constructive criticism, praise and most importantly, revision. Further explanatory info on the project may be posted if sufficiently requested.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Just so people know Praetyre let me look at this a few days ago. I have already given him some feedback on this and we have had many PMs back and forth about it. Thus my view on this is that some are good ideas and some are not, however since I have become more or less the keeper of the buildings for C2C I will try to meet him half way for things and possibly apply some of his good ideas he has in that doc but not everything word for word.

Much of what he proposes would take a very long time to implement. Practically everything I have ever made or tweaked is on there. I realize this is not a personal attack upon me and my skills, only constructive criticism on making C2C better.

In short Praetyre has some good ideas, and in time I will try to get some of them applied to the existing buildings. However they are low priority I think. Something that I can apply little by little rather than trying to take on all and once and thus halting all other more innovative projects that have not already been made yet.

Feel free to comment and add to his ideas. I already have myself by adding the Glass Factory and thus in turn the Fiberglas Factory which are now in the game.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I assume Tools is a new resource. It ends at the letter C or at last the copy linked to does so it seems a bit empty

Also if Hydro got rid of his force overwrite on buildings then it would be easier to release as a mod with just the changes making it easier to see what is going on.

 

[Praetyre]

I assume Tools is a new resource.

Correct you are. It would basically be a post-Prehistoric version of Stone Tools, with the accompanying much, much, much bigger gameplay impact of it's predecessor.

It ends at the letter C or at last the copy linked to does so it seems a bit empty

Can you explain what you mean here? The "New Buildings" tab is certainly short, but Buildings should have 684 entries, the last of which is the Zoroastrian Fire Temple. Others are shorter, but still in the triple digits.

Also if Hydro got rid of his force overwrite on buildings then it would be easier to release as a mod with just the changes making it easier to see what is going on.

Is this overwrite SVN-related, or is there something I'm not getting here?

 

[Hydromancerx]

I assume Tools is a new resource. It ends at the letter C or at last the copy linked to does so it seems a bit empty

Also if Hydro got rid of his force overwrite on buildings then it would be easier to release as a mod with just the changes making it easier to see what is going on.

Someday I plan to re-merge them back into the core.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The link I get just has old buildings up to cesium Mine in it.

The ForceOverwrite tag is a WoC tag it means you can't do additive mods of the building!

@Hydro, you have the only copy of the buildings, I removed the over written ones from the core because it was causing confusion. People would update the core building but nothing would happen.

 

[AIAndy]

The ForceOverwrite tag is a WoC tag it means you can't do additive mods of the building!

I think you can still add to that as long as the added stuff is loaded after the XML that uses ForceOverwrite.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The link I get just has old buildings up to cesium Mine in it.<snip>

Just D/l'd it and it ends with Zorastrian. Seems to be the full list now.

JosEPh

 

[Koshling]

Just D/l'd it and it ends with Zorastrian. Seems to be the full list now.

JosEPh

Praetyre offers lots of suggestiions and spend lot of time hre. Why not just join the modding team and propose and make chnages directly (with discussion where it involves changing things that loosely 'belong' to other modders first of course)?

 

[JosEPh_II]

Yes he does.

I also have a concern about this from the SVN thread:

Updates
- Culture requirement tweaks Australian = Sapphires, Goth = Rubies, Olmec = Sapphires
- Altered the gem buildings as requested by DH. Now there is no more need for gemstone resource.
- Removed Gemstone resource.

Was it also removed from Jungle camp? Which gives a % chance of discovery? If so then JC is getting weaker again.

In my current ongoing game (v20 into v21) I've had several JC's produce the different gemstone resources (Rubies, Jade, and sapphire iirc) beside the generic gemstone. Now that's being removed?

This should be moved to a different thread I think for discussion.

JosEPh

I've fought hard over the various C2C versions to keep JC's as a viable tile alternative to Cottage spam which occurred repeatedly thru out RoM's development until Vincentz introduced the JC.

Already JC's have lost a hammer thru the road upgrade changes. It still suffers from the unfair penalty, imho. Now if it starts to lose the chance to "spawn" a resource it will again become a 2nd class tile choice that the AI will ignore and chop down. Thus regenerating the Old base CIV IV problem of the AI chopping everything in sight for a short term hammer influx. Which in turn produced the aforementioned Cottage spam from the cleared land.

JCs need to be kept as stable as possible.

JosEPh

 

[Koshling]

Yes he does.

I also have a concern about this from the SVN thread:



I've fought hard over the various C2C versions to keep JC's as a viable tile alternative to Cottage spam which occurred repeatedly thru out RoM's development until Vincentz introduced the JC.

Already JC's have lost a hammer thru the road upgrade changes. It still suffers from the unfair penalty, imho. Now if it starts to lose the chance to "spawn" a resource it will again become a 2nd class tile choice that the AI will ignore and chop down. Thus regenerating the Old base CIV IV problem of the AI chopping everything in sight for a short term hammer influx. Which in turn produced the aforementioned Cottage spam from the cleared land.

JCs need to be kept as stable as possible.

JosEPh

Cottage spam!! C2C suffers from farm-spam. Cottages actually need a boost IMO. JCs might or might not also, but when did you last build many cottages?

 

[ls612]

Praetyre offers lots of suggestiions and spend lot of time hre. Why not just join the modding team and propose and make chnages directly (with discussion where it involves changing things that loosely 'belong' to other modders first of course)?

I think this is a great idea. Praetyre always has very well thought out and thorough ideas, but they unfortunately never happen because we are always busy. If he were on the team he could make these ideas a reality, especially the dates and timelines stuff, which I personally would like to see in v22. I assume he knows how to code all these changes in the XML.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Yes he does.

I also have a concern about this from the SVN thread:



I've fought hard over the various C2C versions to keep JC's as a viable tile alternative to Cottage spam which occurred repeatedly thru out RoM's development until Vincentz introduced the JC.

Already JC's have lost a hammer thru the road upgrade changes. It still suffers from the unfair penalty, imho. Now if it starts to lose the chance to "spawn" a resource it will again become a 2nd class tile choice that the AI will ignore and chop down. Thus regenerating the Old base CIV IV problem of the AI chopping everything in sight for a short term hammer influx. Which in turn produced the aforementioned Cottage spam from the cleared land.

JCs need to be kept as stable as possible.

JosEPh

With five gems - amber, jade, rubies, sapphires and diamonds recently added to the game to replace the generic gems it was time to remove the generic gems. Just before going to bed last night I made a note to myself to make sure the Jungle Camp was had the correct chance of discovering those resources.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Cottage spam!! C2C suffers from farm-spam. Cottages actually need a boost IMO. JCs might or might not also, but when did you last build many cottages?

I only build a few. Usually 1 per city. Nor was I saying that C2C suffers from CS Now.

But the reference to Cottage Spam was in this statement:

I've fought hard over the various C2C versions to keep JC's [as a viable tile alternative to Cottage spam which occurred repeatedly thru out RoM's development until Vincentz introduced the JC.

RoM went thru several balancing stages where the AI would build nothing But cottages. Once the JC was introduced and at a level that made the AI consider it then Cottage spam subsided.

Please remember I've been an active participant in giving Feedback in the Development/Testing/Playing of 3 Major Mods of which C2C has it's foundations. I'm warning against falling back into patterns that have already had historical occurrences thru both RoM and AND's development. Don't be doomed to repeat them. And if JCs continue to be eroded, and as you feel so adamant about now so is Cottages, then let's Not repeat the OLD pattern over again. Am I making myself clear?

JosEPh

Edit: Just saw DH's response. Thanks DH.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

OK, it turns out that I had to download the file to look at it. Looking at it online does not work for me. Now to look at it.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I d/l'd it in Excel and that worked great for me. There are like 7+ tabs/worksheets in the document. That was some effort from Praetyre!

JosEPh

 

[rightfuture]

Excellent, I hope we see more ideas like this

 

[Praetyre]

I am ready and able to implement these changes myself in the XML, though the new buildings and resources will have to be created seperately for reasons relating to lack of art and ability to add entirely new XML. I would certainly be honoured to join the team, as humble as my own skills in such matters are, and doing so would also help me keep my project on the up-and-up as far as new buildings and units (particularily alt. timelines) go.

One thing of note is that a couple of the things in my spreadsheet are not actually resource related; the duplicate Temples of Solomon and Grand Mosques of Djenne, and the Civic requirements for Central Bank come to mind. Some of these will require conscious design decisions that may overlap with the current or upcoming projects of others, and thus will need some special input.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I am ready and able to implement these changes myself in the XML, though the new buildings and resources will have to be created seperately for reasons relating to lack of art and ability to add entirely new XML. I would certainly be honoured to join the team, as humble as my own skills in such matters are, and doing so would also help me keep my project on the up-and-up as far as new buildings and units (particularily alt. timelines) go.

One thing of note is that a couple of the things in my spreadsheet are not actually resource related; the duplicate Temples of Solomon and Grand Mosques of Djenne, and the Civic requirements for Central Bank come to mind. Some of these will require conscious design decisions that may overlap with the current or upcoming projects of others, and thus will need some special input.

Please do your changes as modular. This will make it much easier for you to update and keep track of. I know some things you will not be able to do that way but the bulk you can. It also makes it easy it switch it off/on to see the effects on a particular game. If you need help with modular stuff I can do one or two examples for you to work from.

I think I have already added a folder for you in the Modules directory and put you in the MLF which controls access to.

While it may look like there are duplicates of duplicate Temples of Solomon and Grand Mosques of Djenne they aren't. Well I only checked mosque to ensure it is different, I forgot to check the temple. In both cases they represent different aspects of what in the real world is a great great wonder. In practice the name tag is different which means they are different even if they have the same name in the text file and pedia.

Edit rats I replaced your folder with one for platyping. Fixing now.

 

[Praetyre]

A huge number of my building revisions involve the usage of the new "Tools" resource; while the three Toolshop buildings can come later, the actual resource itself would need to be implemented before I can make most of these changes. The Projects and Units would also need to be able to require multiple buildings and resources, necessitating new tags.