Beta Units Resources and Buildings

[drjest2000]

That is true, I actually didn't think of that. I keep thinking that buildings make the profession, but it is Professions tied to buildings. So, multiple Professions can work in the same building you just need a way to turn them on and off, which we just happen to have that.

Excellent!

I really like this idea and the idea of having Bonus Yields adding to Production. This could be made possible perhaps as mentioned above with added new Professions. If a Bonus Yield, like Books, is present then it will unlock a new Profession in Schools, Inventors House, etc. The Code will simply add and remove Professions of those already working their if the Bonus Yield is present. I'll have to think of the best way to code it though, as there may be a better solution. What if you are Producing Research that is consuming Books as a Bonus Yield, but you need cash and would rather Sell the Books. So, there would need to be some way to turn this on and off. Anyway, Techs/Civics could unlock these Bonus Yields too.

I thought about a Civics connection, but I need to play more of the new M:C to understand how they unlock and progress. If I recall rightly, books start being fairly reliable luxury goods about 1000-1100 AD in real European history and I wouldn't want to get them into the production pipe too soon. Yes, there were scribes fairly early in some places, but the illuminated manuscript bound into a book as we understand "books" aren't a very early innovation.

The Book of Kells for instance dates from about 800 AD and represents a very early version of illumination, but AFAIK the Book of Kells wasn't made as a luxury good. And the finest example of a full-blown and documentable luxury book, Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, dates from 1412-1416, which is at the tail end of the Medieval Period. Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry represents the the zenith of illumination, just before it becomes displaced by the printing press (although arguably block printing existed all along and was used extensively in the Byzantine Empire).

 

[Lib.Spi't]

For the building bonus yields:

I wonder if we could do something similar to the new market selling system..

So for buildings that have 'bonus yields' if you double or right click or some such on that building it starts using bonus resources. If there are multiple types of bonus yield for a building it could open a pop up like the market system and you pick the one or more bonuses you want to consume.. then you can do it again to switch them off or change.

This could potentially be expanded (Sorry Kail ) to work a bit like the armourer, where for certain buildings you could select what goes in, which changes what comes out.

So a coat maker could use:
Wool
Cloth
Fur

and depending on what one or combo you use you get a more valuable coat.

If all that can be hooked into the xml, then the limits are almost endless!

I think a best next step would be converting all your current great ideas, into as much xml as possible.

So:
Pilgrim system (spawn point and and 'magnet' building for units)
Armourer (Multiple output system for buildings)

Then hopefully that would give you a good design starting point for implementing these new systems from the xml.

Oh how exciting! (of course this goes without saying that this will be after you finish the culture system for FTTW )

 

[Kailric]

I am thinking of three new Routes:

Gold Coast-> Gold
Incense Route-> New Yield Incense
Amber Route-> New Yield Amber-> New Production Line Luxury Goods

Perhaps New Yield Gems as well

Luxury Goods are produced by Jewelers
Luxury Goods can be produced from Gold, Amber, and or Gems.
Perhaps 1 Gold = 1 Luxury Good, or 1 Gold + 1 Amber = 2 Luxury Goods, or 1 Gold + 1 Amber + 1 Gem = 3 Luxury Goods, and so forth with any combination.

 

[Kailric]

There is one resource that is absolutely critical to City building but hasn't really been introduced to any mods, Civ or Col. No city or civilization can grow without it, what is this resource? Simple put, water. Rome, Constantinople, and many of the other great cities where forced to pump in water in order to grow.

In Civ4/Col we just assume Cities are getting water, and if they actually have access to water they just get a bonus. It could be an interesting and realistic strategic feature to have your cities require YIELD_WATER as they grow. We wouldn't have Professions that draw water, rather it would require Improvements like aqueducts to pipe water to a city and Buildings like wells, that auto draw water each turn.

For WHM and perhaps M:C as well, founding your first city next to a source of water would be critical, as it was in real history. River access, and Buildings like Wells would help your City grow large, but for cities with no immediate access to water you would have to pipe water in and have a means to store that water, like the massive cistern system under Constantinople.

For WHM after a certain tech, perhaps the need for water then becomes obsolete, but we could then introduce Electricity and you would need to manage connecting all your cities to an electrical grid and build buildings that produced Electricity like Dams and Power Plants.

Anyway, if there seems like the Player needs more to do, this could be something interesting for them to manage.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I think right now water infrastructure is represented, just not as a yield.

In Civ Bts it is a component of the 'health' system, which ultimately leads to the size of city that can grow, so it is kind of assumed that everywhere has 'access' to water, it is just a matter of the scale of water that is available, and the requirement of new buildings (wells, aqueducts, etc.) that allows you to access larger quantities of water, and therefore the amount of people you can 'give' water in a local area per day.

I think M:C is already doing the right thing in terms of water, in that it directly effects the amount of people allowed to settle in a local area (like wells give +2 pop. or whatever), if you exceed that then people have to go off and make a new city/home in an area that has unused available water sources.

This could perhaps be expanded so that the kinds of water buildings you can have are effected by local terrain, if you found in a desert, you might be able to build a well but not an aqueduct, and your pop. is therefore capped at say 5.

In the WHM scale of things you could eventually build things like pipelines or desilinisation(been too long since I have read or spelled that word and I am too lazy to look it up!) plants for desert cities so in the modern eras you can have your Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi style mega cities.

Food is the expander, water is the limiter. I think a Water yield would be excessive, the system now, I think, is a much better one with +pop Buildings simulating water production and supply.

 

[Kailric]

I think right now water infrastructure is represented, just not as a yield.

This is true, especially when we think of Max Population as a yield. We wouldn't have to add a Water yield, just expand on that concept. Like having to Pipe water to cities where there is none before it can grow. I've just been watching the series "Engineering an Empire" on YouTube and it is full of great ideas, but they keep mentioning Water so it got me to thinking. About to take a break from studying and watch another episode.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yeah, Water Engineering has always seemed to be something of a 'major achievement' of any empire that is still talked about today.

Rome and the Acqueducts
Macchu Picchu and the Terrace Gardens and Drainage systems (I think that is the right name, the Aztec or Incan (Again forget which) city that is on the mountain..
Babylon and the Hanging Gardens
Egypt and the Nile Management
and on and on and on.

 

[Kailric]

Yep, just watched the Persians:EaE, and one of the first things they did was pipe water from the mountains underground to feed their city. Fun stuff.

 

[Nightinggale]

The Romans had lead pipes to distribute water inside their cities. We have a record where they tell that the lead makes people ill and continues on about research for replacement pipes. While the record doesn't explicitly mention those, replacement pipes have been found in an English city. They took oak tree trunks, drilled a hole though them vertically and then cut the ends to fit into each other. We don't know how widespread it was used, but it would appear that this small Roman city used it all over the place, indicating that it most likely worked better than the alternatives.

There is one water supply system, which is missing from your list. That's the water supply to Edo in Japan (later renamed to Tokyo). They made something like an aqueduct, but unlike the Romans, they didn't elevate it. Instead they just placed it on top of the ground and then routed it through the hilly terrain to make it get the correct water flow. The main reason for not making it elevated like the Romans is that such a design would not survive Japanese earthquakes. However while it isn't used as drinking water anymore, water is still flowing in this supply system, telling that it has survived countless earthquakes though the centuries with minimal maintenance. While it certainly doesn't look impressive, the engineering to get it to work that well most certainly is.

I saw (or rather read about) another water related achievement in Scotland. A farmer had to dig a hole in his field and came across some stones, it turned out to be a lot of natural shaped stones, put together to form some sort of pipe. The field wasn't level and a lot of water was flowing inside. Further investigation revealed that the whole field had those and since the stones had a "leaky" design, water from the ground ended up inside the pipe and ran downhill and ended up in the sea. Without this drain, the heavy rain in the area would make the crops rot due to being too wet, which tells why it was built in the first place. However dating the drain system wasn't very accurate since all it came up with was "very old". Still it was sturdy enough to handle the weight of modern farming machines without being damaged. Whoever built those in whatever century or millennia certainly knew what they were doing.

Macchu Picchu and the Terrace Gardens and Drainage systems (I think that is the right name, the Aztec or Incan (Again forget which) city that is on the mountain..

That's an Incan city. The Aztecs built a city in a swamp meaning they built on a whole lot of tiny islands. They could have as little as a single building on each island without room to spare. While it wasn't an issue regarding drinking water, it was still an impressive water related achievement.

Water yield
I think it would quickly become too complex for both implementation and gameplay. Sticking to population cap would be good as it is a rather flexible and well working system already. If we should implement water, it would most likely be in a form where terrain and rivers could add to population cap.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yeah that was my thinking too with water, that a refinement would be to make rivers and lakes do what they do in bts which is give 'access to fresh water' which is a +2 health boost I think. Meaning it can take two more pop before it becomes unhealthy, a +2 pop limit for rivers and lake access might or their presence gives access to extra buildings.

 

[Kailric]

Yeah that was my thinking too with water, that a refinement would be to make rivers and lakes do what they do in bts which is give 'access to fresh water' which is a +2 health boost I think. Meaning it can take two more pop before it becomes unhealthy, a +2 pop limit for rivers and lake access might or their presence gives access to extra buildings.

Yeah, we can add bonuses to Max Pop for building next to rivers and lakes, that is a good idea. Perhaps they also give bonuses to Wells and Aqueducts.

 

[Nightinggale]

I wonder how to code terrain population bonuses though. In theory it should be easy to do, but I want the setup in XML, which can be used to add terrain/bonuses we haven't thought of yet and it should be able to affect this, both positively and negatively.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I guess the first thing would be to look at how fresh water works in civ, as that informs you how you get effects from founded terrain.

 

[Kailric]

The Max Population system needs to be looked at in an update to itself. It is one of those features that is in the process of development. As of now, once you hit a Max Pop score of 10, you are then allowed to have any number of Population. This was so that the initial Max Pop feature could be tested, but not cripple city development.

I added several Help features so that players can understand the system, but there could be more added as well. As I mentioned, the whole system needs to be evaluated in its current status and then improvements can be looked into.

I am thinking of adding some Popup Help text, that appears on the screen (like many games have) so that when you attempt to do something that seems logical, but you don't quite have the tech or in this case the city infrastructure to house more people you get a message flashed to the screen that explains the problem and offers a solution and stays for a bit before vanishing out. This feature would be added to all the Commands/Missions/etc and such so that if you add this Help text in XML it gets added to the game. Also ,for instances where you try to drag a unit to a building or plot but for some reason they can not work that plot, this help text can explain why.