Advanced Improvements Proposal

[RidetheSpiral23]

Wanted to list out some thoughts on improvements and get some feedback on it. If people like it I can more than likely accomplish most of this. I will need some help if I need to add any new tags as well as probably some help with the new super forts stuff. Anyway here it is...

Advanced Improvements
Farms: can build types of farms based upon crops (For example, if your city has wheat you can build a wheat farm). Farms will still increase food at appropriate tech levels. Farms will start (at build) with maximum food output. At intervals of being worked by the city it will "downgrade" to partially harvested farm with less food output. After worked for too long the farm will degrade into normal output from that tile/resource. From there there a two good options; one you could have the improvement disappear and require a worker to build another one, or two, you could have the farm "upgrade" after a set number of turns while not being worked. The second would be nicer since it would effectively simulate crop rotation.

Mines/Quarries: I don't think much needs to change here. I like the current natural progression.
Cottages: the current system works fine. Might be interesting to add an ihappiness tag like there is for health for improvements. Could possibly add an interesting challenge to the game. You could get more growth if you have more places for people to reside.

Pastures: basically number of animals/food output increases as the tile is worked. Basically simulating breeding of the animals. Possibly combined with removing animal resources and creating placable pastures of certain animal types.

Windmill: haven't thought about this one much yet.

Watermill: again not much thought other than transferring quern to an early watermill improvement.

Forts: upgradeable forts! Types of forts obviously available based on tech. Ring fort, palisade, motte and bailey, keep and castle. Would love bombardibility, reduced upkeep for units stationed inside and bonuses for feudalism.

Lookout posts: progression of improvements based in tech. Sentry, wood tower, watchtower etc

 

[Koshling]

Wanted to list out some thoughts on improvements and get some feedback on it. If people like it I can more than likely accomplish most of this. I will need some help if I need to add any new tags as well as probably some help with the new super forts stuff. Anyway here it is...

Advanced Improvements
Farms: can build types of farms based upon crops (For example, if your city has wheat you can build a wheat farm). Farms will still increase food at appropriate tech levels. Farms will start (at build) with maximum food output. At intervals of being worked by the city it will "downgrade" to partially harvested farm with less food output. After worked for too long the farm will degrade into normal output from that tile/resource. From there there a two good options; one you could have the improvement disappear and require a worker to build another one, or two, you could have the farm "upgrade" after a set number of turns while not being worked. The second would be nicer since it would effectively simulate crop rotation.

Mines/Quarries: I don't think much needs to change here. I like the current natural progression.
Cottages: the current system works fine. Might be interesting to add an ihappiness tag like there is for health for improvements. Could possibly add an interesting challenge to the game. You could get more growth if you have more places for people to reside.

Pastures: basically number of animals/food output increases as the tile is worked. Basically simulating breeding of the animals. Possibly combined with removing animal resources and creating placable pastures of certain animal types.

Windmill: haven't thought about this one much yet.

Watermill: again not much thought other than transferring quern to an early watermill improvement.

Forts: upgradeable forts! Types of forts obviously available based on tech. Ring fort, palisade, motte and bailey, keep and castle. Would love bombardibility, reduced upkeep for units stationed inside and bonuses for feudalism.

Lookout posts: progression of improvements based in tech. Sentry, wood tower, watchtower etc

I just finished merging the Super First mod. That includes upgradability (though not by building things - by evolving the improvement like seed camps -> farms and so on), and bombardability, among other things.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Farms - I do not like your idea as it stands.

One thought we did have was that you should evolve your plants (and to a smaller extent your animals). This means that you don't discover wheat, barley, rice, corn or oats but a "supper grass" which you work and through working and techs it upgrades to the special plant. There would be very few of these. Then you would move them to other farming plots.

With animals you would start with a wildish herd that produced poor mounts, work and entertainment animals. You would then bread them for what you want to use them for. Basically equipment so an animal not bread and trained for war would produce a less good than a nation who had spent the time and effort breading (via improvements) and training (via buildings as is the case now).

Farms could be specialist grain farms, mixed farms or market gardens (truck gardens in the USA I think). Mixed farms (animal and grain eg sheep and wheat here in Australia) provide a number of resources but at a lesser quantity to the specialist farms. They do not have depletion of soil problems as much as the grain farms do. Market gardens (Vegetables and Flowers) provide a lot of the perishable foodstuffs and so more food than the others but also cost more and require water. The latter two would only probably be for Advanced Agriculture option.

Orchards traditionally these provide a range of similar fruit. Again we could start with a few of the ancestor fruit on the map and then bread them up. An orchard could provide a few different types of the base fruit eg apples and pears. Orangeries could be built in cooler climates to provide the citrus family etc.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

I just finished merging the Super First mod. That includes upgradability (though not by building things - by evolving the improvement like seed camps -> farms and so on), and bombardability, among other things.

Yeah I did see your post and I'm very excited for that additional. I'm at work now so I can take a look at the code later tonight. Do you already add/merge the progression improvements for the chain or just the basis for enabling chains?

Farms - I do not like your idea as it stands.

Fair enough. Would you care to elaborate on why exactly? I know you have ideas below which I will respond too.

One thought we did have was that you should evolve your plants (and to a smaller extent your animals). This means that you don't discover wheat, barley, rice, corn or oats but a "supper grass" which you work and through working and techs it upgrades to the special plant. There would be very few of these. Then you would move them to other farming plots.

I don't hate the breeding of crops I suppose but IMHO a tad unnecessary. I would probably prefer just having a few "ancient" sources of the crop which could be gathered and traded. Once you have access to it then you could place a farm for that crop.

With animals you would start with a wildish herd that produced poor mounts, work and entertainment animals. You would then bread them for what you want to use them for. Basically equipment so an animal not bread and trained for war would produce a less good than a nation who had spent the time and effort breading (via improvements) and training (via buildings as is the case now).

I do really like the wild herd thing, which follows along well with my developing pasture idea. It also opens up good options for distinguishing pastures that breed work, war, and food livestock. You could have a specific type of pasture for example warhorse breeding.

Farms could be specialist grain farms, mixed farms or market gardens (truck gardens in the USA I think). Mixed farms (animal and grain eg sheep and wheat here in Australia) provide a number of resources but at a lesser quantity to the specialist farms. They do not have depletion of soil problems as much as the grain farms do. Market gardens (Vegetables and Flowers) provide a lot of the perishable foodstuffs and so more food than the others but also cost more and require water. The latter two would only probably be for Advanced Agriculture option.

This could be pretty interesting. I guess I was just thinking that it makes more sense to have the farms separate. I am imagining a string of farm improvements as a "farm".

Orchards traditionally these provide a range of similar fruit. Again we could start with a few of the ancestor fruit on the map and then bread them up. An orchard could provide a few different types of the base fruit eg apples and pears. Orangeries could be built in cooler climates to provide the citrus family etc.

I forgot about orchards! Again not sure I'm fully seeing the value of breeding them. I would prefer the method I outlined for crops.

 

[Koshling]

Yeah I did see your post and I'm very excited for that additional. I'm at work now so I can take a look at the code later tonight. Do you already add/merge the progression improvements for the chain or just the basis for enabling chains?

Just the code for it - it's up to the people that work on buildings/improvements to decide how they want to use it (DH/Hydro probably)

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm liking both RTS and DH's farming concepts so after a while I'll return to try to figure out something that might work for both.