Berries for VP 2.0

[Deljade]

Intro
This is a small scope mod that aims to introduce Berries to your VP game in the most seamless way possible.

Hopefully it can also make your map a little sexier!

Concept
The Berries are supposed to represent any fruiting bushes that humans may forage for food and, eventually, cultivate. More specifically I was inspired by species often found in wetlands and bogs such as Cranberries or plants of the genus Rubus, such as Raspberries in Forest and Honeyberries in Tundra.

Spoiler Cranberries :

photo from http://capecodonline.com

It also happens to be a concept notably missing from the game, as berry bushes have been very important to neolithic humans and found on pretty much every hunter gatherer's stomach in a timeframe well within Civ 5's. Foraging of berries remained important in many areas and some species developed into cash crops after the middle ages all the way to this day.
They should also breathe some new life to Marsh which is a bit of a forgotten tile, especially after Sugar spawning was moved into Jungles for the most part.
The textures (heavily edited from https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/horems-art-resources.473505/) and the icon (edited free image from https://unsplash.com/) were made so as to try and blend in with the rest of Civ 5 and VP -though I am looking to improve them, if there's interest, or someone with more talent that feels up to the task-
Working on a laptop, I would like to hear how the textures look on higher resolutions etc.

Spoiler Bushes and Plantation :

Changes
v 2 released! consider this a beta release

-Added a new resource; Berries
Can spawn on Marsh and Forest (especially Tundra Forest)
Revealed at Agriculture (so at the start)
+1 food when worked by a city
+1 gold from Plantation
+1 food from Granary/Ger
+1 food and +1 gold from Garden (hotfix; Candi as well)
+2 gold from Customs House/Hanse

-new (improved?) textures, to accustom forest spawning

-Adjustments to map generation to maintain food and resource balance
Increased Berries spawn rate in Marsh
Berries can now often spawn in Tundra, will also add a Forest to the tile
Berries may rarely spawn in Forests, non Tundra ones as well
Less Bison, they were spawning way too much anyway, there will still be way more than before 16-8 just not obscene amounts
slightly less Deer on Tundra
very slightly more Banana in Jungle

Instructions
The mod requires (1), (2), (5) and works with both EUI and no-EUI. The mod is not compatible with
Even More Resources for Vox Populi or other resource mods or mods that mess with AssignStartingPlots.lua for now.
I am including a Barebones version that does not override AssignStartingPlots.lua and does not make any yield changes, for those that just want to replace Marsh Bananas for thematic reasons and desire compatibility with most mods.
Just extract from the attached .zip /Berries for VP (v 2)/ or /Berrybones (v 1)/ for the plain version, and place it in your Civ 5 MODS folder, might need to delete cache to make it work.
Recommended maps are Tectonic, Pangaea, Fractal, Continents and any earth like map such as Europe or China but feel free to try others.Report any problems here for now.
Currently AssignStartingPlots is based on VP 8-16-2

Known issues:

 

[Deljade]

If there are users of the Berrybones version, I would like to know if you want to see the yield changes and tundra spawning implemented there. We'll be testing them in the main version for now.

Also there is base for compatibility with Even more resources for VP mod in assignstartingplots, I'll work on that later.

Post originally had balance proposals, reserved for discussion

 

[Tekamthi]

there are a few worthwhile mods recently that rewrite assignstartingplots (3 in mind that i'm interested in, actively being updated on these boards)... with 43-civ VP this potentially means 6 competing versions of this lua

is there any possible compatibility solution?

curious, what if you just swapped the bananas for berries after assignstartingplots was finished?

fwiw i like all the ideas you've outlined so far.. to my tastes, less is more for something like this.. you mentioned that bananas in marshes far from equator were the original inspiration for this mod -- i'd be happy using this even if it just made a simple swap for those resources, maybe with some subtle differences to later yields as you've suggested

 

[Deljade]

there are a few worthwhile mods recently that rewrite assignstartingplots (3 in mind that i'm interested in, actively being updated on these boards)... with 43-civ VP this potentially means 6 competing versions of this lua

is there any possible compatibility solution?

curious, what if you just swapped the bananas for berries after assignstartingplots was finished?

I think the mods would have to incorporate this one in them, or I could try to account for them but no promises, if you tell me which are the mods you have in mind I can try to look into it!

Swapping the Marsh Banana's after the fact is also a possibility, I will see if I can make it work when I have time again.

 

[Tekamthi]

this one, more resources, and more wonders all affect assignstartingplots. i like all of the mod ideas outlined in each, though their reliance on assignstartingplots has generally kept them off my mod list so far.

its possible that some of the more complex balancing that is sought via assignstartingplots is a good idea, on its own... for longevity of the mod, though, it may be better to find another way to accomplish what you're after, even if its another, independent lua.

off topic here, whenever i see one of these resource mods, I secretly hope someone's made some kind of food economy mod (wasn't there a past version of civ that gave some kind of health bonus to cities via the diversity of food they had access to?) cranberries strike me as being suited to some such bonus, though the underlying framework is absent

 

[InkAxis]

I think you can have berries as a reskin, but then if you change a setting then they will have actual gameplay differences. Or the other way around.

 

[Deljade]

this one, more resources, and more wonders all affect assignstartingplots. i like all of the mod ideas outlined in each, though their reliance on assignstartingplots has generally kept them off my mod list so far.

its possible that some of the more complex balancing that is sought via assignstartingplots is a good idea, on its own... for longevity of the mod, though, it may be better to find another way to accomplish what you're after, even if its another, independent lua.

As far as I can tell, changing bananas to berries after the fact is kind of impractical as I would have to do it via Events.SerialEventDawnOfManShow (right? is there a better way?) I might still do it separately for those that want the thematic change as well as More Wonders or More Resources modmods but it's low priority.
I would much rather try to flesh berries out as a proper bonus resource during map generation. That seems to be the proper way to go about adding a new resource to the game.

-Pillaged Plantations should show properly now, updated the .zip (changes the database)

Once I get around to incorporating the resource properly into AssignStartingPlots I will be testing some changes on my games to see how they play out. Currently planning the following;
-Have berries rarely spawn in Tundra and Forests (more commonly in Tundra Forest, rarer in Grassland or Plains Forest)
-Move 1 1 from Plantation to Garden.
-Move 1 from Plantation to the initial yield, the comparison in my mind was Flood plains Wheat (Initial yield 4, 5 on Granary, upgradable to 7 immediately, spawns on uncommon feature) and Deer for Forest and Tundra (same initial yields, Deer need 1 tech to reveal, upgradeable immediately upon reveal, without having to cut forest)
Compared to Bananas, Berries would be better early on and unimproved, improved Bananas would be better between Calendar and Theology and then they would be the same.
These would be both for gameplay and thematic purposes, so as to incentivise keeping the Berry's natural tile intact until later in the game, or until a relevant Pantheon or Policy is picked. So as to mirror forage Berries on Earth being important for early communities and being systematically cultivated as cash crops only in more recent centuries.
-Depending on how these play out I might (re)move the 1 from the Granary.
Of course the yields would be accounted for properly in map generation.
These I will only be testing myself for now so as to get a feel on them, the mod on the thread will remain the Marsh Banana "reskin" until further notice.

I think you can have berries as a reskin, but then if you change a setting then they will have actual gameplay differences. Or the other way around.

You mean as a game setting? That would still mean AssignStartingPlots.lua gets modified. It might be something I consider in the future, we'll see.

 

[InkAxis]

You mean as a game setting? That would still mean AssignStartingPlots.lua gets modified. It might be something I consider in the future, we'll see.

No, I just mean that if someone wants the berries to have no gameplay impact they can go into the files and just change a 1 to a 0 or something. Or you can make 2 mod files.

 

[Deljade]

Released a new version! Yield changes, new textures and map generation changes. Also a barebones version that should be compatible with everything but just changes Marsh Bananas to Berries, no balance changes.

With the yields my goal is to flesh out Berries as it's own resource, encourage players to keep the original feature (Marsh or Forest) and make them a good source of food for early cities. I paid a lot of thought to the balance but more testing is due, would love feedback.

Berries should now spawn more often in Marshes, this will mean that they should be more common in small patches and there may sometimes be two in bigger patches.
They should also be spawning in flat Forests. Rarely on plains/grassland forest, more commonly in Tundra Forest. This will only very slightly affect Lumber mills as Tundra Berries will bring a Forest to an otherwise boring Tundra tile, to not disrupt those sexy Lumber Mill triangles. Open Tundra will still be common.
Very Slightly more Bananas.
Less Bison (they were spawning waaaaay too much) and slightly less Deer to balance food.

Overall, in the current version, and depending on the settings (wetter and colder and flatter means more Berries) there should be half as many Berries as Deer and Bison, about the same amount as Wheat, Bananas and Cattle, and more than the number of Sheep in map generation. Overall less berries though, since they are not used to balance starts.

Most of them should be in Tundra Forest with a little less in Marsh and other Forest.
Most testing done on Tectonic but other maps look fine. Pangaea spawns a lot of Jungle therefore a lot of Bananas (rough terrain lovers might want to try a wet, cold Pangaea game)
Am very interested in feedback on spawn rates and how the Berries spawns feel.

 

[Deljade]

Deljade updated Berries for VP with a new update entry:

Small adjustments

-Berries will no longer spawn adjacent to one another.
-Fixed Customs House/Hanse text.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Deljade]

As of patch 10-8 this will not spawn berries in the new communitas map (and will possibly crash?) either way, I'll be testing the map generation without berries and wait for when it is stable to make any adjustments needed.