[GS] Add ‘Wheat’ as a strategic ressource

[Morningcalm]

I think they should instead return to giving basic resources like Wheat and Bananas extra bonuses beyond tile yields, just like in Civ IV, where they gave empire-wide bonuses and were fun to trade with AI.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

How would you separate what is used locally and what is traded, and what would be the difference in benifits? I like this idea but i'm not sure what the in-game choice you would be making is? Perhaps you have two different improvement for tiles one for production and one for trade.

To piggyback on your idea I would like to see civ's be able to specialize in a resource. I proposed in another thread that the first civ to get two of a luxury would specialize that and get 4 amenities and other civ's would then only get one. You could then trade for the specialized 4 amenity resource. I think these too mechanics would really work with the idea of wheat and rice as trade-able commodities.

Well each unit of the bonus resource would give a fraction of a point of benefit per city (maybe even make the fraction based on the number of cities in your empire), if you trade away a unit of the resource, then your empire loses that fraction of a point.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

and mercenaries. Some of those peasants became professional soldiers and of course laws were passed requiring a certain amount of peasants to own arms and practice with them. There was no disarmed populace in Europe like there was in the East.

That depends on when you're referring to. At the very beginning of the 'Middle Ages', societies as different as Saxon England and Merovingian France/Germany required a certain percentage of the population to be armed. In England, for instance, in the 8th - 9th centuries, every 5 families had to provide one man for the Fyrd, armed with a leather or wooden shield and spear. Note: no armor, no sword, no 'heavy metal-working' requirement at all. And, he could only be 'called up' for about 60 days a year.
This peasant infantry completely disappeared by the 12th century. Reason: they were simply 'knight fodder' once knights began charging with couched lances between 1067 and 1100 CE. The regrowth of the 'armed population' is related to knights and the real limiting mechanism on them.
The essence of both Knighthood and the feudal system was that the knight was a full-time warrior who was also equipped as well as the technology allowed: heavy horse, full body armor, sword, shield, lance. The individual feudal knight provided all of this himself. To give him the income to pay for all this (especially the horse: a Destrier heavy horse could cost more than all the rest of the equipment combined) and the time to train, he was given land, and all the families, mills, pastures, etc. on it, from which he could extract a percentage of the income for himself.
Even with this, the feudal knight could only be called up for a certain amount of the year (it varied, but was usually between 60 and 120 days a year) so he could keep an eye on his 'business' back home. Consequently, within a relatively short time, the knights and the king or liege lord realized that it made more sense for the knight to stay home All the Time and send a mercenary replacement when the king called. The king got a full-time trained warrior with equipment whom he could keep in arms almost all year, and the knight got to stay safely at home piling up the cash for himself and to pay his replacement. After about the middle of the 13th century, virtually all the 'feudal' armies consisted primarily of 'sergeants', not knights - a Sergeant originally being simply a man armed just like a knight who was not of 'noble' birth - a mercenary.

So, most of the mercenaries were knights, not peasant foot soldiers.

And the limitation on knights was that for every knight, the king essentially was giving up the income from X Tiles of his own territory. Get the relationship wrong, and the king ended up a 'John Lack Land' as in England, with little or no income of his own and the real power in the kingdom shifted to the richest of the Knights - the Barons, Dukes, and other 'promoted knights'.

In Game Terms, make the Castle an Improvement which provides 1 Knight Unit whenever war is declared. The Knight costs No Maintenance, but the Castle not only makes the tile it is in Unpillageable, it cannot be worked - all Resources in that tile are going to support the Knight. Castles have to be built on a tile with a Resource Of Any Kind in it. Knights automatically disappear when the war ends. If they get promotions during the war, you lose them when it ends. Too many knights and castles, and you will starve your cities. Once you get enough Gold coming in, it will be cheaper in the long run to build Knights normally and pay maintenance - just as the 'real' monarchs discovered in the 13th century CE.

Back to the foot soldiers for a moment. The real shift back to them was with people Outside the feudal system: Scots, Swiss mountain herders/farmers that were always too poor to support knightly castles, and the growing commercial cities. The cities supported 'militias' of apprentices, younger sons and merchants, and the Swiss and Scots had their old 'fyrd-like' levies of common foot. Only by the beginning of the 14th century, they were all carrying pikes or halbard pole-arms instead of short spears.
Bad News For Knights all happened very abruptly:
1302 CE: Battle of the Spurs, where Flemish city-militia pikemen massacred an army of Knights.
1314 CE: Battle of Bannockburn, where Scottish half-pike-armed Schiltrons massacred an army of knights
1315 CE: Battle of Morgarten, where Swiss pikemen and halberdiers massacred an army of knights.

- as you can see, there is a pattern here...

Note also that all three of the Pike Disasters were inflicted on knights a generation Before the first great Longbow Disaster at Crecy in 1346: the Longbow as a weapon type was much less important in the demise of knights than the pike, one of the few things that Civ VI got right over previous editions of the game.

Now as to Food Resource Requirements for Knights.
Wheat can be used, in the sense that land planted in Fodder is not available for Wheat, so you are indirectly trading Wheat for Horse Feed. For War Horses, that includes both Oats and Alfalfa, and to get the big, aggressive beasts required to carry a fully-armored knight you need lots of both: 20 pounds a day of oats in addition to hay for bulk and the alfalfa, which apparently acts like Speed to horses, for 'liveliness' and aggressiveness.
Iron is not such a good Maintenance Resource: While Iron and, especially, pretty sophisticated metal working is needed to manufacture articulated plate armor, Great Helms, horse armor, high-quality swords and such, except when you face armor-piercing weapons like muskets and metal-spring crossbows, the stuff lasts forever: witness all the swords 'handed down' as family heirlooms or the suits of armor cluttering up museums all over Europe.

Drat. Long winded as usual, and haven't even touched on Food as a Tradeable Resource, which could be linked to Balanced Diet as a requirement for Amenities in your cities...

 

[Phrozen]

If I am not mistaken a lot of the armor in museums in Europe is jousting armor rather than actual battle armor. Jousting armor was more ornate, heavier, and thicker then battle armor and would likely see much less exposure to the elements. Battle armor would be plainer, usually darker in color to help resist rust, and be lighter since being the balance between mobility and protection was much sharper.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

If I am not mistaken a lot of the armor in museums in Europe is jousting armor rather than actual battle armor. Jousting armor was more ornate, heavier, and thicker then battle armor and would likely see much less exposure to the elements. Battle armor would be plainer, usually darker in color to help resist rust, and be lighter since being the balance between mobility and protection was much sharper.

Much of it, yes, but not all: then consider how many modern weapons of any kind other than a bayonet would still be serviceable after 500 years: armor held up pretty well. Especially considering that articulated plate armor represented a major advance in metallurgy and metal-forming techniques: NASA consulted the armorers in the Tower of London for pointers on designing joints for astronaut suits because the late-medieval armor in the Tower Museum had armored joints better than anything they had managed to design on their own!
As an aside, the widespread use of articulated plate armor also coincided with stories about a 'black knight' lone ranger-type character, who was always alone. Reason: his armor was some of the new plate armor that was enameled or lacquered to protect it from the elements, and so didn't require 1 - 3 squires or servants to keep it polished and rust-free.

So, Maintenance Costs should still represent the cost of a full-time warrior who doesn't have time to earn his keep other than fight and feeding his horse, which will require a major agricultural investment in farm and pasture land. Original 'building' costs should reflect cost of raising and training a 'heavy horse' and manufacturing some pretty state-of-the-art metalwork for the time. It's all relative, of course, since it takes more iron to build a single mile of railroad than it would to equip several thousand knights, but given the Era, perhaps 2 - 3 Iron per Knight raised to reflect the 'manufacturing costs' and 1 - 2 Food or even an on-going Wheat Resource to maintain the knight and his voracious horse.

 

[Zaarin]

Much of it, yes, but not all: then consider how many modern weapons of any kind other than a bayonet would still be serviceable after 500 years: armor held up pretty well. Especially considering that articulated plate armor represented a major advance in metallurgy and metal-forming techniques: NASA consulted the armorers in the Tower of London for pointers on designing joints for astronaut suits because the late-medieval armor in the Tower Museum had armored joints better than anything they had managed to design on their own!
As an aside, the widespread use of articulated plate armor also coincided with stories about a 'black knight' lone ranger-type character, who was always alone. Reason: his armor was some of the new plate armor that was enameled or lacquered to protect it from the elements, and so didn't require 1 - 3 squires or servants to keep it polished and rust-free.

So, Maintenance Costs should still represent the cost of a full-time warrior who doesn't have time to earn his keep other than fight and feeding his horse, which will require a major agricultural investment in farm and pasture land. Original 'building' costs should reflect cost of raising and training a 'heavy horse' and manufacturing some pretty state-of-the-art metalwork for the time. It's all relative, of course, since it takes more iron to build a single mile of railroad than it would to equip several thousand knights, but given the Era, perhaps 2 - 3 Iron per Knight raised to reflect the 'manufacturing costs' and 1 - 2 Food or even an on-going Wheat Resource to maintain the knight and his voracious horse.

This makes me want to go play the King Arthur Pendragon RPG...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This makes me want to go play the King Arthur Pendragon RPG...

Uh, I hope that's a Fantasy RPG, because the original Arturos would have thought a suit of articulated plate armor was an Alien Visitation. in his time, late-Roman linked mail shirts and crested helmets with a nasal protecting your face was the height of Personal Protection technology.

Of course, that's lost on all the film makers - and Civ VI's Barbarossa, for that matter...

 

[Zaarin]

Uh, I hope that's a Fantasy RPG, because the original Arturos would have thought a suit of articulated plate armor was an Alien Visitation. in his time, late-Roman linked mail shirts and crested helmets with a nasal protecting your face was the height of Personal Protection technology.

Of course, that's lost on all the film makers - and Civ VI's Barbarossa, for that matter...

The game starts historical and becomes more fantastic as the game progresses so that 1) magic shows up when Arthur takes the throne and 2) Arthur's 40 year reign spans the entire Middle Ages technologically, so where it's accurately sixth century at the start of the game it's roughly the 15th century by the end. (IMO the "real" Arthur is 12th/13th century when the major works depicting him take place; the historical 6th century Arthur is of little consequence by comparison.)

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Please return to the thread topic.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I experimented with the idea of making agriculture more realistic. I can’t remember why I never released the mod but I’m thinking about revisiting it. It’s a simple idea actually.

Here’s how it works:
There are two types of builders. Builder-1 can improve wheat and rice but not build farms on empty tiles. Builder-2 has Wheat or Rice as a requirement and can build farms on empty tiles. So basically if you don’t have Wheat or Rice in your possession you can’t spread agriculture. Wheat and Rice would become strategic resources so that they can be traded.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I experimented with the idea of making agriculture more realistic. I can’t remember why I never released the mod but I’m thinking about revisiting it. It’s a simple idea actually.

Here’s how it works:
There are two types of builders. Builder-1 can improve wheat and rice but not build farms on empty tiles. Builder-2 has Wheat or Rice as a requirement and can build farms on empty tiles. So basically if you don’t have Wheat or Rice in your possession you can’t spread agriculture. Wheat and Rice would become strategic resources so that they can be traded.

That really is restrictive compared to agriculture as it existed and exists.
First, because the earliest evidence of cultivated crops isn't either one, it's Taro dating back almost 20,000 years earlier than the grains (mind you, this is still controversial in the Official Circles, but I find it convincing that it was in the Solomon Islands/New Guinea area, so the techniques were 'invented' in isolation, and never spread the way wheat/grain cultivation did later).
Second, it leaves out some very important crops like potato and maize that were the basis for an entirely 'alternate' agriculture system in the Americas (actually two of them: the maize-squash-beans Trinity of central Mexico and to the north, and the potato in the Andes), both of which are examples of pretty sophisticated Botanical Engineering being applied to make marginal plants into very efficient food sources.

My own idea was to rename 'Wheat' as 'Grain', representing all the non-Maize, non-Rice grasses like wheat, rye, barley, millet, oats, etc. which can be used similarly to make some kind of staple bread and later, distilled into useful alcoholic Trade/Amenity Resources like whiskies or vodka. Then add Maize and Potato to 'round out' the Basic Bread food groups.

Then, after development of suitable technologies (most pretty early) you could 'replant' Maize, Grain, Rice, or Potato crops on any suitable terrain. To keep everybody from simply planting 'mono crops' of one type everywhere, Balanced Diet would grant Amenity based on having at least one Food Resource from each of three categories:
Basic Bread: Rice, Grain, Maize or Potato as above.
Protein: Fish, Cattle, Sheep, Horse, Crab or Deer
Flavor: Spices, Cinnamon, Cloves, Salt, Cocoa, Coffee, Tea, Sugar, Truffles
Having at least one of each gets you 2 Balanced Diet Amenities.
Having at least 2 out of 3 gets you 1 Balanced Diet Amenity
Having only 1 gets you -1 Amenity because your people are getting really sick of a constant bland diet.

Just my thoughts on the flexible resource dilemma (like, the fact that Flexible - Replantable.spreadable Resources in reality are not in the game)

 

[Phrozen]

Some of those things should be harder to replant and spread than others. Coffee for example can be grown in a wide variety of places but Cocoa is a much harder plant to spread with only some regions in Central America, Mexico, and Africa where it thrives.

Pretty much anything with carbs can be turned into alcohol. Even among the 6 basic spirits you have:

Brandy: Any fruits but grapes or apples are the most common. Aged in wooden casks.
Gin: Grain with juniper berries and other botanicals. Not aged.
Rum: Leftover sugar cane byproducts from sugar manufacture. Aged in oak barrels.
Tequila: Blue agave. Aged in wooden barrels.
Vodka: Grain or potato. Not aged.
Whiskey/Whisky: Grain or corn. Barrel aged in charcoaled barrels.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Some of those things should be harder to replant and spread than others. Coffee for example can be grown in a wide variety of places but Cocoa is a much harder plant to spread with only some regions in Central America, Mexico, and Africa where it thrives.

Pretty much anything with carbs can be turned into alcohol. Even among the 6 basic spirits you have:

Brandy: Any fruits but grapes or apples are the most common. Aged in wooden casks.
Gin: Grain with juniper berries and other botanicals. Not aged.
Rum: Leftover sugar cane byproducts from sugar manufacture. Aged in oak barrels.
Tequila: Blue agave. Aged in wooden barrels.
Vodka: Grain or potato. Not aged.
Whiskey/Whisky: Grain or corn. Barrel aged in charcoaled barrels.

Just a couple of corrections from someone who drank far too much of all of this stuff while on active duty in the US Army...
By the legal definition, Vodka is 'grain spirits of wheat' - no potato involved. But potato products are frequently used as additives in distilled alcohols, and Irish 'poteen' is distilled spirits of potato.
Whiskey or Whisky is any of several grains, mixed or in combination, such as rye, barley, ('John Barleycorn' as the old songs go) or wheat, while spirits of maize/corn are Bourbon, a distinctly American product, and spirits of Rice are Saki and similar alcohols.
The aging process, by the way, was a Later Invention, not added to the process of making whiskies until several hundred years after they first appeared - to quote one of my sources, 'renaissance whiskey was pretty raw stuff...'

Bottom line, though, is that Distilled Liquor as a separate Amenity and Trade Good can be realistically linked to the Grain (Wheat), Rice, Wine/Grape Resources, available at about the second tier of Medieval Era Techs (first 'brandy' or 'burned wine' is mentioned in France about 1300 CE as 'medicine'). You could even link it to Military Engineering, since that Tech reveals Niter, which is simply naturally 'distilled' sodium salts and falls in about the right level of the Tech Tree...
Also, the earliest alcoholic distillations, in Europe at least, started in Monasteries, so the Monasteries that City State Armagh allows could be 'linked' to a Distilled Spirits Resource.

There are also a whole bunch of potential 'Wonders' that could be linked to this: the Old Bushmill's and Jamieson's Distilleries spring to mind...

Given the profit that countries like France, Scotland, and Canada (all now in the game!) have made out of distilled spirits in Trade, it seems a shame not to have them in the game...

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Just a couple of corrections from someone who drank far too much of all of this stuff while on active duty in the US Army...
By the legal definition, Vodka is 'grain spirits of wheat' - no potato involved. But potato products are frequently used as additives in distilled alcohols, and Irish 'poteen' is distilled spirits of potato.
Whiskey or Whisky is any of several grains, mixed or in combination, such as rye, barley, ('John Barleycorn' as the old songs go) or wheat, while spirits of maize/corn are Bourbon, a distinctly American product, and spirits of Rice are Saki and similar alcohols.
The aging process, by the way, was a Later Invention, not added to the process of making whiskies until several hundred years after they first appeared - to quote one of my sources, 'renaissance whiskey was pretty raw stuff...'

Bottom line, though, is that Distilled Liquor as a separate Amenity and Trade Good can be realistically linked to the Grain (Wheat), Rice, Wine/Grape Resources, available at about the second tier of Medieval Era Techs (first 'brandy' or 'burned wine' is mentioned in France about 1300 CE as 'medicine'). You could even link it to Military Engineering, since that Tech reveals Niter, which is simply naturally 'distilled' sodium salts and falls in about the right level of the Tech Tree...
Also, the earliest alcoholic distillations, in Europe at least, started in Monasteries, so the Monasteries that City State Armagh allows could be 'linked' to a Distilled Spirits Resource.

There are also a whole bunch of potential 'Wonders' that could be linked to this: the Old Bushmill's and Jamieson's Distilleries spring to mind...

Given the profit that countries like France, Scotland, and Canada (all now in the game!) have made out of distilled spirits in Trade, it seems a shame not to have them in the game...

My mod is meant to be a streamlined solution using the existing resources. I’m not a fan of generic farms, so my mod connects them to improved resources. It could also be used naturally by the AI and made compatible with some of the resource mods so that maize and potatoes could be utilized. There is a mod on Steam that allows replanting resources but it’s too complicated for the AI.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

My mod is meant to be a streamlined solution using the existing resources. I’m not a fan of generic farms, so my mod connects them to improved resources. It could also be used naturally by the AI and made compatible with some of the resource mods so that maize and potatoes could be utilized. There is a mod on Steam that allows replanting resources but it’s too complicated for the AI.

Sigh. Know where you're coming from. There is a 'Herdsman' Mod that allows repositioning of herdable animals (horses, sheep, cattle, etc) but eery time I use it I know I'm cheating in a way because the AI is Clueless about it.

But about generic farms (or mines, for that matter). The way I see it, generic Improvements keep us from having to model Everything: the US Strategic Bombing Survey identified over 50 'critical' raw materials that the German war economy needed, and there is no way I'd want to play a game that made me have to deal with all of them!

 

[killmeplease]

Uh, I hope that's a Fantasy RPG, because the original Arturos would have thought a suit of articulated plate armor was an Alien Visitation. in his time, late-Roman linked mail shirts and crested helmets with a nasal protecting your face was the height of Personal Protection technology.

Of course, that's lost on all the film makers - and Civ VI's Barbarossa, for that matter...

actually theres a text by Notker the Stammerer (lived 840-912) mentioning the Charlemagne's plate armor:



maybe its a wrong translation tough
but there definitely were lorica musculata made of iron in the Roman times (several have survived to this day)
its also said that Richard the Lionheart weared an iron plate under his mail
so maybe at least some knights had iron breastplates

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Please remember that this thread is about Wheat as a strategic resource. Back to topic.

 

[monstercat]

How about instead of having just 'Wheat', make each unit have a new 'Supplies' variable, that decreases every turn the unit spends out of friendly territory, and when it reaches 0 the unit receives a Combat penalty and may mutiny and become a barbarian unit?