Adding Food to Future Tech

[Arkatreides]

I like the way researching future techs give you bonuses but I feel that the thing that is really limiting my city growth is not health or happiness but rather food. So I wondered whether it would be possible to add a +1 food bonus to farms to the future tech (like biology does).

I looked into the files and couldn't really figure out how to do this. Is there an easy way?

Also along the same lines, is it possible to add a +1 XP bonus to units to the future tech? That way you could continue researching on all-conquest maps to give you an edge over the enemy.

Thanks in advance.

 

[tdb]

Maybe split future tech into multiple techs which give different bonuses? e.g. one for happiness, one for health, one for food etc.

 

[Spindrift]

Maybe split future tech into multiple techs which give different bonuses? e.g. one for happiness, one for health, one for food etc.

I rather like this idea...

Future Tech: Food: Adds +1 bonus food per turn per city.
Future Tech: Happiness: Adds +1 bonus happiness per city.
Future Tech: Health: Adds +1 bonus health per city.
Future Tech: Arms: Adds +5% strength to all units.

 

[Arkatreides]

Yeah that's sort of what I had in mind, but I don't know HOW to do it.

 

[Arkatreides]

After tinkering around a bit I found that the following addition to the file \XML\Terrain\CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml works (the bit in red is new)

- <TechYieldChanges>
- <TechYieldChange>
<PrereqTech>TECH_BIOLOGY</PrereqTech>
- <TechYields>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</TechYields>
</TechYieldChange>
- <TechYieldChange>
<PrereqTech>TECH_FUTURE_TECH</PrereqTech>
- <TechYields>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</TechYields>
</TechYieldChange>
</TechYieldChanges>

 

[phalzyr]

You'd also have to have multiple techs since researching the same tech won't grant you anymore food per farm.

OP: Look in the assets folder\XML\Terrain\CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml

look for farm then near end is an area with biology tech in it, after making said techs above put them there in same manor as biology.

Arkatreides: HEY you bet me by a few second LOL

 

[tdb]

IMHO, adding food to farms cumulatively is too much. It's not uncommon to have 5-10 farms around one city. It's also not uncommon to research future techs at a rate of about 5 turns per tech in the endgame. You'd get ridiculous city growth rates in no time at all.

Adding food directly to cities is better, but even that has it's drawbacks... Namely newly founded or otherwise small cities. Those might not be that common late in the game, but it might still throw off teh balance to have a new city grow to size 10 in just a few turns.

I'm not saying the food bonus is a bad idea - I really like it too. I'm just pointing out some possible pitfalls.

 

[Arkatreides]

Well, farms is definitely too much, I tried it just now and it is unbalanced. I am however not quite sure how to add it to the city tile directly. If anyone knows this would be much appreciated.

 

[phalzyr]

I'm betting it can't be done by simple XML editing. I myself am adding a green House with my gardening tech, that will increase a cityies food output by 15% though I might up this value later, I'll have to play around with it. this way low pop cities don't get nearly as much extra food as those with more population cities ... Just a thought.

 

[maxpublic]

Low population cities won't get as much food anyway, as they won't be able to staff as many farms. They'll still grow faster in later eras - and they should, if you think about it. That's exactly the way it's happened in our own world, with improving health and agriculture allowing for the expansion of cities much more quickly than in previous ages. In 1000 A.D. there were only 265 million people in the entire world; today there are over 6 billion, and the U.S. alone has 285 million people. In 1000 A.D. 90% of the population was engaged in agriculture; technological improvements now allow less than 5% of the population to support the other 95% in terms of food production.

In Civ, if your populations grow beyond a certain level then every citizen after that point does nothing; he's just 'unhappy' and a drain on your economy. You can reflect all of the above by improving the output of cottages/hamlets/villages/towns with tech, so that two things happen:

- farms produce more and more food
- cottages/etc. become more viable as an improvement option

What this means is that it takes fewer and fewer farms to support population number X in a city, and you don't want more than X since the citizens will be unhappy and therefore wasted. So as your tech progresses you'll want to start replacing farms with cottages, since the cottages will grow into towns that produce hammers and commerce. Farms will just produce more food, which in turn results in more useless, unhappy citizens. Once you reach the Modern Era you might only have two or three farms per city, with the rest of your tiles towns/mines/whatever - just like we do in the real world.

This isn't just idle speculation, btw. I tried this out in my own playtest and that's how it worked. Even better, the AI seems smart enough to puzzle out the development for itself and start replacing farms with towns a time goes by.

Max

 

[DSChapin]

Well, farms is definitely too much, I tried it just now and it is unbalanced. I am however not quite sure how to add it to the city tile directly. If anyone knows this would be much appreciated.

I don't think you can do city tile directly... but you CAN have a building (low cost, if you like) that requires Future Tech to build.

 

[phalzyr]

Low population cities won't get as much food anyway, as they won't be able to staff as many farms. <cut>

- farms produce more and more food
- cottages/etc. become more viable as an improvement option

<cut>
Max

Yes true was just suggesting an alternative not saying my way was best.

I always thought the level for "being too crowed" would suggest building cottages/towns would give happiness to ofset that, it is only logical... Can that even be done? I don't see a happyness field in that xml

 

[tdb]

Now here's an idea... Make towns recude unhappiness due to the city being less crowded, but add an unhealthiness bonus (0.5/town?) in industrial/modern due to people traveling around with cars.

 

[maxpublic]

Now here's an idea... Make towns recude unhappiness due to the city being less crowded, but add an unhealthiness bonus (0.5/town?) in industrial/modern due to people traveling around with cars.

That's a really good idea. In addition to improvements to towns with advancing tech levels, allow the town to reduce unhappiness at the expense of health. Although not too much for either thing, just enough to encourage you (and the AI) to replace farms with towns as you progress to the Modern Era.

Max

 

[FexFX]

Your best bet would be a building that adds food such as the above mentioned greenhouse.
Otherwise you have no option but to offer a global increase to all farms because of the way the heirarchy is set up currently...
You can make that building free and automatic tho...look carefully at how the Palace is created as well as how prereqs work on buildings, and you will see that you can give a free building to every city automatically upon discovery of a specific tech, and that building can then give +1 food...
to do this more than once however each tech would have to be different...
The Tech Tree is open ended however, and you can add an infinite(in theory) number of techs to it.