Bonus Resources and Bonus Placement

[Deliverator]

For example, compare your ART_DEF_MARBLE against vanilla. In yours, there is no kfm file reference; in theirs, they define it. As a result, the kfm file in art/terrain/bonus/sulphur is unreferenced. Therefore the kf files and freezeNNNN.nif files are also unreferenced.

I guess I am pointing out that you may have a bunch of empty kfm fields in your artdefines; not sure if this is on purpose or not.

This is intentional. Not specifying the KFM tag simply means that I don't want the bonus to be animated, i.e. it will be static on the map. I'm sure a lot of these bonuses are going to be refined and replaced in time, and a lot of the currently static ones get animations. It may be slightly better to keep the unreferenced KFMs/KFs - in case we want to use them, but I'm easy if you want to delete them to keep things clean. I have copies of everything if I do need them.

 

[Ahriman]

Installed the patch. Lots of fun! This has a ton of flavor and the art is great.

Loving the , though the strategic resource requirements are pretty tough (maybe some of them should be builds 50% faster with X and have the unit cost twice as much, rather than be requires resource X?) Should I really be unable to build bladesmen because I don't have any iron ore? But I'm able to produce infantry with guns?

In particular, hover transports need to not require a strategic resource! What if you don't start on an archipelago with any sulphur? You're screwed, because you can never get a hover transport to let you expand to one that does.

Couple of things:
didn't see any hawks or insects spawn anywhere.
Camp and insect farm seem to be buildable anywhere (as in, without the bonus resource) but they do nothing.

 

[Ahriman]

Oh, and the no-roads needed for resource connection no longer works on the terraformed grasslands and plains; resources on these tiles give "requires route" message.

It seems like the resource is still connected, so it may just be the message.

Cottages are no longer buildable on grasslands (but solar farms are? if anything it should be the opposite; solar farms less effective once you start getting cloud cover and precipitation, but you are more likely to have towns that grow).

 

[davidlallen]

In particular, hover transports need to not require a strategic resource! What if you don't start on an archipelago with any sulphur? You're screwed, because you can never get a hover transport to let you expand to one that does.

Use a scout thopter? It is a little unexpected for an early game unit, but it can transport settlers and workers.

I have a similar experience with crystal and the maula mortar. I was unable to build any useful city attack units until I found an island at some distance, which has crystal.

 

[Ahriman]

Ah, didn't realize scout thoptor could transport... but still. Not really worth building a city if you can't transport any combat units to defend it.

Also, the resources on grasslands; if I had access before, I don't seem to lose it when it turns grasslands (or maybe I just have another nitrates resource somewhere, which I was using as my benchmark). But I had a sulfur resource spawn (at last!) on a mine tile on that had already turned to grassland, and it had the unconnected message and did not conntect.

I'd also suggest that the terraforming in general comes too early in the tech tree given the current rapid transformation, but maybe that will be ok if terraforming takes more time.

The terraforming buildings don't change desert (ie land-desert, not ocean desert wastes or deep desert).

 

[koma13]

Ah, didn't realize scout thoptor could transport... but still. Not really worth building a city if you can't transport any combat units to defend it.

Scout thopter can transport any foot units (infantry, melee too), in fact it's a cheap transport without any requirements. Another workaround would be building desert raiders. They only need spice and can move into deep desert.

I have a similar experience with crystal and the maula mortar. I was unable to build any useful city attack units until I found an island at some distance, which has crystal.

Bladesman and Elite Bladesman ignores city shields. You only need a maula mortar when you want to attack cities with infantry.

Edit:

Loving the , though the strategic resource requirements are pretty tough

Tough resource requirements aren't units' faults. Strategic resources are messed up. Crystal for example is aluminum, not iron. Soostone is marble, not horses. The normalizer for bonus placement (responsible for making sure you always have iron/bronze and horses next to your starting location in vanilla civ4) doesn't work because we have strategic resources that civ4 doesn't recognize as (early) strategic resources.

 

[Ahriman]

The inability to build improvements on grassland is particularly annoying after storms take out the improvements on them; you can't rebuild anything.

 

[davidlallen]

Bladesman and Elite Bladesman ignores city shields. You only need a maula mortar when you want to attack cities with infantry.

Thanks! Let us all drag each other up the learning curve.

Ah, didn't realize scout thoptor could transport... but still. Not really worth building a city if you can't transport any combat units to defend it.

I did not give a complete list. I do not think there is any display in the pedia about which units are transportable. You can look for SPECIALUNIT_PEOPLE in the unitinfos xml file. Oh wait, you don't want to look in xml files. It seems that all the foot units, including for example missile trooper, bladesman, and others can all go into the scout thopter.

The inability to build improvements on grassland is particularly annoying after storms take out the improvements on them; you can't rebuild anything.

Good find. All the improvements need to have terra_grass and terra_plains added as terrainbooleans.

 

[Ahriman]

How are you supposed to counter the Ordos saboteur? Hidden Nationality is one thing, but this is also invisible! Not even infiltrators can detect invisible units, so this guy is just running around my empire killing off my workers.

 

[davidlallen]

This is intentional. Not specifying the KFM tag simply means that I don't want the bonus to be animated, i.e. it will be static on the map.

OK, as long as there is a reason. I'm not sure why you want to turn off animations that exist in vanilla, but it doesn't matter that much.

It may be slightly better to keep the unreferenced KFMs/KFs - in case we want to use them, but I'm easy if you want to delete them to keep things clean. I have copies of everything if I do need them.

Cleaning stuff *out* of the release is actually tricky, it cannot be done with a patch. When we decide to make 1.4 with a new fpk file, it may be worthwhile to clean out unused things. I had sent a list of unused directories and files in my release note for 1.3.3; now there are many more unused directories. I can rerun civchecker to find unused directories when stuff gets a little more stable.

 

[davidlallen]

OK guys, let's try to use the 1.3 playtest thread also. I'd rather have a few bonus related comments over there, instead of a bunch of miscellanous comments here. That way we can go through the 1.3 thread to make a "fix list", rather than rereading the whole subforum.

 

[Deliverator]

In particular, hover transports need to not require a strategic resource! What if you don't start on an archipelago with any sulphur? You're screwed, because you can never get a hover transport to let you expand to one that does.

Just so everyone is aware, I have created the new strategic resources, but I have not gone through and reviewed what resources are required for each unit. If there is anything illogical or annoying about them, that is why. We can do this in the fixer upper patch.

 

[keldath]

deliverator,
if someone says he "hates" these,
tell me and ill kick they're ass

 

[Ahriman]

If there is anything illogical or annoying about them, that is why. We can do this in the fixer upper patch.

Fair enough. One definite thing; desert hawks seems to be using the Coal feedins, and consequently shows up in a lot of weird places.

Also: Core Mine (mine level 3) seems to be giving lower tile bonus than deep mine (mine level 2)?
(When on a regular hill tile, not on a bonus resource)

 

[Deliverator]

deliverator, if someone says he "hates" these, tell me and ill kick they're ass

Well, I did go slightly out on a limb with these, so I'm pleased that they've been well received and the ass-kicking won't be required!

I'll look to resolve any issues listed in this thread and add the imported goods in my next patch.

 

[davidlallen]

(EDIT: obsolete, see this post instead)

Who knew that Desert Hawks were a vital component in building tanks?

I wrote a script to crossreference the required techs and bonuses for each unit. I hope you have Microsoft Excel available, so you can see my results. I am not sure exactly what to conclude from the sheet, but it seems like we should (re?) design the required bonuses for each unit more carefully. I have sorted by the highest tech level (iGridX in the xml) so you can see which are early game units and which are late game units. Unfortunately the script did not handle xml comments, and koma13 has commented out a number of units; so there are some errors due to this. I tried to catch them manually.

Sulphur is revealed at tech level 3; Iron Ore and Crystal are revealed at tech level 4.

 

[Deliverator]

Thanks for this. david. I'll take a look and try and think up some sort of logic between the strategic resources and units.

Of course, the great bonus XML renaming would help with this a bit. Are you still intending to do that after keldath's patch?

Edit: Actually, David could you produce the same spreadsheet with the Unit Class and perhaps the Strength and Movement on there too? I'm thinking it makes sense to assign certain strat resources to certain unit classes, and the other numbers help with seeing at a glace what the better units are.

 

[davidlallen]

Of course, the great bonus XML renaming would help with this a bit. Are you still intending to do that after keldath's patch?

Yes, I plan to start a patch in 10 hours and finish in about 30.

Edit: Actually, David could you produce the same spreadsheet with the Unit Class and perhaps the Strength and Movement on there too?

It is pretty handy, isn't it. I did that in the text editor, mostly, so it isn't extensible, but I have a script from a few weeks ago I used for bonuses. I will try to put up both sheets in about 15 hours.

(Why do I say hours? We are all in different timezones; "tonight my time" requires too much interpretation.)

 

[davidlallen]

Some comments on health. In vanilla archipelago, it is pretty easy to get up to 8 health at all cities in the early game. I can usually find 1-2 coast food bonuses and a harbor (say, +2 or +4), 1-2 farm bonuses and a granary (another +2 or +4), 1 pasture bonus (+1), plus the starting value from game difficulty (+2 for Noble). So 8 is not hard, even before getting the midgame buildings like plantation, grocer, market.

In DW, in a couple of games I played, there is one health bonus nearby, and there is no building to amplify it. So my health gets up to a whopping 3: 2 from game difficulty and one from the bonus. If I am lucky, I can get one more health from my second city. Until I get a nutrient convoy, I have serious health issues, like -5 in each city.

You may ask, "So what?" That is actually a good question. I have enough water and windtraps that I have a water income of 16 by pretty early, which supports a population of 5-6 with the health penalty. Still in the early game, I can get a water income of 20 which supports a population of 8 at -4 health. It "feels" a lot different than vanilla; I feel bad whenever I have a city with significant unhealth. Maybe I should just ignore it.

Having this health issue makes me think twice about Sand Metal, which gives +1 unhealth in all cities, and also about the Refinery, which gives an additional +1 unhealth in its city.

 

[Deliverator]

I don't like the fact that health is limiting in this way. It is accidental not intentional.

I did actually think about health when designing these resources. Here's a bit from the text file where I was working things out:

Dew Resources(6) (4 health, 2 happy): Sword Grass (+1 health), Burro Weed (+1 happy), Spiked Paintbush (+1 health), Barrel Cactus (+1 health), Creosote Bush (+1 health), Sand Verbena (+1 happy)

Commerce Resources(9):
(4 health, 5 happy)
Incense (+1 happy) (Plantation), Coffee (+1 happy) (Plantation), Cereal (+1 health) (Plantation), Cotton (+1 happy) (Plantation), Etching Resin (+1 happy) (Insect Farm), Spice Honey (+1 health) (Insect Farm), Baradye (+1 happy) (Insect Farm), Desert Hawks (+1 health) (Hunting Camp), Desert Hares (+1 health) (Hunting Camp)

So I think the main issue is that we don't have the amplifying buildings like harbour and granary sorted.

Here's what I suggest:
1) Give the Groundwater bonuses +1 health.
2) Make the Water Cache amplify the health bonus from the Groundwater Bonuses, Sword Grass, Spiked Paintbush, Barrel Cactus, Creosote Bush
3) Make a new building called Stores (or something) that amplifies the bonus from Cereal, Spice Honey, Desert Hawks, Desert Hares

That should help ease things - then we need to make sure that other health buildings become available at appropriate stages of the tech tree.

If we find that there is too much water available or that health is still not right then we can revisit.

I am going to do a more detailed analysis of bonus placement. Once we have determined what are going to be the key strategic bonuses early, mid and late game, we'll need to factor that in to bonus placement as well.