C2C - Building Review Thread

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The National Smelters come much later when you have the ability to transport the material. They are not a loop hole they are a nod towards people who insist on placing their cities so far apart. The down side of that strategy is that you have to do without those resources.

A suggested solution was to have an improvement that once worked became a normal mine but until then it produced the smelted ore. Unfortunately improvements don't give resources they just make the one they are on available to the trade network if there is a route there.

BTW the mine building is necessary as it allows access to other pseudo mines for other resources. Our maps are too small and we don't have enough graphics for all the resources needed.

 

[Whisperr]

So I can build the National Smelter when I reach Ship Building, how does that help me get my copper from my mine to the city?

The Copper Mine building shouldn't be named the same as an improvement, all you are doing is creating confusion. When a pre req is a copper mine, the first thing you think of is the improvement not a building. And with the copper mine building, what am I building? It sounds like I am building a mine in the city.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

So I can build the National Smelter when I reach Ship Building, how does that help me get my copper from my mine to the city?

The National Smelter (should) only require copper anywhere in your nation. When you build it you get access to the buildings to build the rest. the smelter gives you ingots that lets you build the forge which lets you build the wares building.

The Copper Mine building shouldn't be named the same as an improvement, all you are doing is creating confusion. When a pre req is a copper mine, the first thing you think of is the improvement not a building. And with the copper mine building, what am I building? It sounds like I am building a mine in the city.

I and others have been complaining about that since version 9 or there abouts. No one has come up with a better name.

 

[Whisperr]

The National Smelter (should) only require copper anywhere in your nation. When you build it you get access to the buildings to build the rest. the smelter gives you ingots that lets you build the forge which lets you build the wares building.

But you are saying it is a transportation issue that requires you to reach Ship Building or Road Building.

The National Smelters come much later when you have the ability to transport the material.

This is why I am saying Ship Building is not going to help me transport my ore. Also to transport by road you would need access to horses, donkeys, mules etc. without access to an animal to pull carts you would still be up S*** creek.

So if you want to make transportation the big issue, you have to consider all aspects of transporting the ore. Roads, animals etc. And if you require Road Building, shouldn't there need to be a road route built from the mine to the coppersmith?.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Yes. Shipbuilding or Road Building. How it is accomplished in the same way that trade routes are, ie by the invisible merchants that keep the trade routes going. Or the runners that get the details of what your explorers have discovered back to your nation.

The extra complexity of requiring beasts of burden was not seen as necessary but could be added if you want. Just need to add a stable as a requirement or an equivalent ship building that can only be built by a suitable ship.

Requiring the correct connection between the mine and the National Smelter would require some dll work and our very busy dll programmers probably wont thank you for the suggestion.

 

[Whisperr]

All I was trying to say is that if you want to be very particular about requiring roads to be able to transport it should include everything for transportation or nothing. Or just let me have access to my copper from the third tile as soon as I have built my copper mine improvement, simple

And yes I know of one dll programmer that doesn't like that suggestion. But if I worked on him enough, it could be done. (happy wife, happy life)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

maybe we should require you build a merchant for each trade route... interesting idea.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok, 2 things I do think we should do here.

1) Change the name of the mine buildings to Mining Administration or Mining Company. Thus, Copper Mine (the building) becomes Copper Mining Administration or Copper Mining Company. The stats can stay as they are because I'm making sense of the methods being applied.
@Faustmouse: I know what you're saying about the transportation an' all but to go about it otherwise would be tough.

2) I want a game option - 3rd Rung Always Counts as City Vicinity (as long as its inside cultural borders). This would seem to suit our needs here. Normally I'd say it shouldn't be... but then again I don't like how the copper bonus needs to be inside a city radius until way down the line with Road Building or Ship Building. Ack... It's only tolerable if the 3rd rung of the city radius counts as vicinity so long as the culture extends that far.

That's probably the easiest thing. Given all that's been explained about the thinking behind the structure here - I must admit it's a little better thought out than I'd first thought but I didn't realize we had the national wonder sources that could get around the problem.


This discussion has really made me of the firm belief that some techs should not be researchable without access to particular resources. Ex: Elephant Domestication - why are we able to (or must we) learn how to domesticate Elephants if we've never encountered an Elephant? Why do we develop Bronze Working if we've never encountered either Tin or Copper or both? Seems there's a lot of techs that were only developed because we had the ability to develop them thanks to having the materials to work with in the first place.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Perhaps we need to change vicinity to within the cultural range of the city. No that wont work...

Vicinity = 1 or 2 up until Ship Building/Roads then 3 until railroads when it becomes 4? Cultural boarders permitting.

This discussion has really made me of the firm belief that some techs should not be researchable without access to particular resources. Ex: Elephant Domestication - why are we able to (or must we) learn how to domesticate Elephants if we've never encountered an Elephant? Why do we develop Bronze Working if we've never encountered either Tin or Copper or both? Seems there's a lot of techs that were only developed because we had the ability to develop them thanks to having the materials to work with in the first place.

This will require a major overhaul of the tech tree. You would still need to be able to get Iron Working without Bronze Working for example. As I have mentioned before the Nok of Africa are reported as going from stone tools to iron tools without messing about with copper or bronze.

Another mod reduced the cost of techs that you had the materials for. So if you had and worked a source of copper then Copper Working and Bronze Working were cheaper than if you did not.

edit We do have the ability to require a building for a tech to be discovered.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Perhaps we need to change vicinity to within the cultural range of the city. No that wont work...

Vicinity = 1 or 2 up until Ship Building/Roads then 3 until railroads when it becomes 4? Cultural boarders permitting.

Well... from what I recall, vicinity (which is generally only a prereq clause) is not the same as workable radius so it's not expanding the workable rung at all. I can see why some would like vicinity to only be defined as workable radius and others to have it defined as cultural range - that MIGHT be possible - I THINK the map can show how far out the city itself has influence and if I can tag to that it'd be the best way to define it imo. Based on option anyhow.

This will require a major overhaul of the tech tree. You would still need to be able to get Iron Working without Bronze Working for example. As I have mentioned before the Nok of Africa are reported as going from stone tools to iron tools without messing about with copper or bronze.

Another mod reduced the cost of techs that you had the materials for. So if you had and worked a source of copper then Copper Working and Bronze Working were cheaper than if you did not.

edit We do have the ability to require a building for a tech to be discovered.

A tag that follows the same exact programming except evaluating access to a resource (or a number of resources in an OR relationship potentially) rather than a particular building being present somewhere in the nation shouldn't be too hard.

The harder work, as you point out, would be to rework the tree so that there are ways to bypass those techs that need to be skippable if you don't have the resource that's required for it. Would be a very cool project for someone to take on though. It would go a long ways towards making the mod not only more strategic but more historically accurate as a model.

For some things we might also want to rethink what came first, the chicken or the egg? For example: Poultry Domestication opens up our ability to get Eggs from certain animals like Ducks but if Poultry plot bonus or Eggs was required for Poultry Domestication tech, (which it probably should be) then we'd have to make it possible to get the eggs and such before hand but would not be able to make them worth any food or gold until we had the Poultry Domestication tech.

 

[Faustmouse]

You can have eggs with an Egg Thiev (or Nest Thief?) building before Poultry Domestication for example.

This would be indeed a very cool project, we just need someone who is willing to rework the techtree

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Well... from what I recall, vicinity (which is generally only a prereq clause) is not the same as workable radius so it's not expanding the workable rung at all. I can see why some would like vicinity to only be defined as workable radius and others to have it defined as cultural range - that MIGHT be possible - I THINK the map can show how far out the city itself has influence and if I can tag to that it'd be the best way to define it imo. Based on option anyhow.

All I meant was it (vicinity) was the same as it is now in the work radius + cultural border + improvement + route.

At road building vicinity adds in the 3 plot in the same way but it is not workable by the city until City Admin.

At railway you get the forth plot as vicinity. Just fir those people who don't like their city work areas to overlap. Personally I like having some resources in the vicinity of two or more cities because of the benefits. In my latest game the land is such that I have to place some cities only 3 plots from each other to get the resources.

For some things we might also want to rethink what came first, the chicken or the egg? For example: Poultry Domestication opens up our ability to get Eggs from certain animals like Ducks but if Poultry plot bonus or Eggs was required for Poultry Domestication tech, (which it probably should be) then we'd have to make it possible to get the eggs and such before hand but would not be able to make them worth any food or gold until we had the Poultry Domestication tech.

We can already achieve this. We just make eggs and feathers available for trade at scavenging and make a new improvement for the poultry resource - a scavenging camp like building early on that upgrades to a Poultry Farm at Poultry Domestication.

 

[Hydromancerx]

1) Change the name of the mine buildings to Mining Administration or Mining Company. Thus, Copper Mine (the building) becomes Copper Mining Administration or Copper Mining Company. The stats can stay as they are because I'm making sense of the methods being applied.
@Faustmouse: I know what you're saying about the transportation an' all but to go about it otherwise would be tough.

1. No because we also have Mines for non-map resources such as Pyrite Mine, Tungsten Mine and Cobalt Mine. Also many of them come so early that there is no such thing as "Administration" or "Company".

2) I want a game option - 3rd Rung Always Counts as City Vicinity (as long as its inside cultural borders). This would seem to suit our needs here. Normally I'd say it shouldn't be... but then again I don't like how the copper bonus needs to be inside a city radius until way down the line with Road Building or Ship Building. Ack... It's only tolerable if the 3rd rung of the city radius counts as vicinity so long as the culture extends that far.

2. We have that, its called requiring a resource. The whole point about city vicinity is so only cities near a resource get the resource. Not I am still not that happy that building with a resource count as city vicinity too.

This discussion has really made me of the firm belief that some techs should not be researchable without access to particular resources. Ex: Elephant Domestication - why are we able to (or must we) learn how to domesticate Elephants if we've never encountered an Elephant? Why do we develop Bronze Working if we've never encountered either Tin or Copper or both? Seems there's a lot of techs that were only developed because we had the ability to develop them thanks to having the materials to work with in the first place.

Even if you don't have Elephants or Camels you may still encounter them from your enemies. Thus it makes sense for you to research a tech about it.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

1. No because we also have Mines for non-map resources such as Pyrite Mine, Tungsten Mine and Cobalt Mine. Also many of them come so early that there is no such thing as "Administration" or "Company".

There would be someone in charge so there was "Administration" of some kind even if it was an overseer, foreman or manager.

Even if you don't have Elephants or Camels you may still encounter them from your enemies. Thus it makes sense for you to research a tech about it.

And yet if you lived on Earth in the Americas you would not have encountered anyone who would have seen any of the three; Horses, Elephants and Camels and yet you need to know how to domesticate all three to get to masonry.

 

[Faustmouse]

Even if you don't have Elephants or Camels you may still encounter them from your enemies. Thus it makes sense for you to research a tech about it.

And how do your enemies know it then? Someone HAS to be the first.
We have that awesome Tech requires building tag, why shouldn't we use them?

 

[Hydromancerx]

There would be someone in charge so there was "Administration" of some kind even if it was an overseer, foreman or manager.

And yet if you lived on Earth in the Americas you would not have encountered anyone who would have seen any of the three; Horses, Elephants and Camels and yet you need to know how to domesticate all three to get to masonry.

1. Even so all the mine and quarries should be kept constant. Meaning since since we cannot have map resources for every possible mineral we use the resources vicinity combos. Which means that some buildings will be named like Copper Mine while others are Cobalt Mine. The first has a map resources while the other has none. However since there is no improvement called Copper Mine we should be fine. We just happen to have a Mine improvement than can sit on top of Copper Ore resource.

2. True, but having promotions like Anti-Elephant or Anti-Camel on those techs would be perfect. Thus even if you did not have resources to get Elephants or Camels you could still benefit from the tech.

Likewise if you get Camel Domestication you still benefit from the Llamas. And chances are unless you are on an Earth map you will encounter some kind or animal resource from one of those 3 techs.

Also you don't need to know Equine Domestication, Camel Domestication or Elephant Domestication to get Masonry. All you need to know is Animal Husbandry.

 

[Thunderbrd]

All I meant was it (vicinity) was the same as it is now in the work radius + cultural border + improvement + route.

At road building vicinity adds in the 3 plot in the same way but it is not workable by the city until City Admin.

At railway you get the forth plot as vicinity. Just fir those people who don't like their city work areas to overlap. Personally I like having some resources in the vicinity of two or more cities because of the benefits. In my latest game the land is such that I have to place some cities only 3 plots from each other to get the resources.

I guess the one issue I have with this (thanks for explaining how vicinity currently works though) is that AGAIN we require Road Building which is so far down the line in techs - Classical era! - to get the third rung into vicinity. When we generated this prereq structure for animals it's not so bad because you often find the animals and get local access when you make the herd buildings but for mineral resources it's too great a crapshoot whether you're going to have access to that absolutely critical resource as it is that if it's inside your nation anywhere it really pisses you off when you have to wait til the Classical era to actually access it! I mean, in theory I actually like all the arrangement there but when you've got like 5 copper on a Giant map it's not frequent enough to make this work imo. The thing that makes it so frustrating is its not like you can see the stuff when you begin to build your cities so strategic planning is not the issue... we're just basically outright trying to strongly motivate players to pack cities in together so there's tons of overlap once the third rung is finally reached. I think Joseph's argument of 'stop trying to force me to play a particular way' is ringing in my ears on this one.

I'd much prefer it if vicinity were simply defined as the cultural reach of that city alone. That's it. Nothing more to it. If that means it reaches to the 4th or even 5th rung due to massive cultural influence I would not be against that still. Culture is already undervalued a great deal (even Developing Leaders hasn't completely fixed that fact when playing that option.) Such an adjustment (even if only by option) would help culture to expand in value a bit more.

We can already achieve this. We just make eggs and feathers available for trade at scavenging and make a new improvement for the poultry resource - a scavenging camp like building early on that upgrades to a Poultry Farm at Poultry Domestication.

Pretty much exactly. I was just giving an example of the shift in thinking we may need to take when approaching some techs is all.

1. No because we also have Mines for non-map resources such as Pyrite Mine, Tungsten Mine and Cobalt Mine. Also many of them come so early that there is no such thing as "Administration" or "Company".

I like DH's point about the term 'administration' as what he said there was exactly what I was thinking about the term. I'd also given some thought to the proxy resource source buildings like Pyrite Mine etc... and what we'd simply do would be to call them Mine and Administration. That way the player would get the clearer picture of what the building actually is.

2. We have that, its called requiring a resource. The whole point about city vicinity is so only cities near a resource get the resource. Not I am still not that happy that building with a resource count as city vicinity too.

And I'm saying our current definition of vicinity is too restrictive. Restrictive of the sort that removes fun by adding cruel frustration. The player cannot see these resources when planting their cities so its not strategic, it's luck and we're stacking the deck against access to resources that are more of a national need than a want. IMO, nearly all nations should find access to these types of resources quite easily. (I'm talking mostly about the mineral ones.) Animals and crops aren't too hard to come by but mineral ones can't currently be gained by anything but the whim of the map placement and hoping it pops up within a city radius - if the concept of vicinity was a bit wider we'd not have such an issue with this. And it would also make getting access to cultures a bit more prevalent which I think would be good as well. Additionally MORE of those proxy resource buildings would come into play and it's always fun to see those become available. I don't think anything could make them 'commonplace' but having them unlock more often would be nice.

Even if you don't have Elephants or Camels you may still encounter them from your enemies. Thus it makes sense for you to research a tech about it.

Not always. Imagine a map that didn't get any elephants or camels anywhere. Not just on your continent but on the globe. What about no horses? Shouldn't a good tech tree be able to show how the cultures of such a planet would develop differently than the ones here? What if we created some new 'alien' resources and techs to go with them that we ourselves have never encountered so could never research?

I'm not only pointing at the animal techs. It was Bronze that really got to me. You know there's only two sources of Tin worldwide on Earth right? So what if there were none? We'd have never had Bronze. Thus a tech to work bronze would never have been developed and what... we'd be stifled and stuck and unable to learn the things beyond it until a meteorite came along and brought us tin? No... even more irrational - according to the current C2C tech tree we would learn how to work with it despite having no idea it exists because we can develop technologies regarding the manipulation of a material that we've never invented or heard of.

I'm not bashing what we've done with the tech tree so far - it's brilliant in many ways. Doesn't mean we can't improve on it still.

There would be someone in charge so there was "Administration" of some kind even if it was an overseer, foreman or manager.

Exactly. If we can come up with a different term that would mean Effort and Material Distribution Management Center without it sounding too era specific while not sounding too public or private then maybe that term would fit a little better. But calling them 'mine' rubs a lot of players the wrong way since they have a hard time knowing exactly what the building is and how it differs from the improvement they just placed.

And yet if you lived on Earth in the Americas you would not have encountered anyone who would have seen any of the three; Horses, Elephants and Camels and yet you need to know how to domesticate all three to get to masonry.

Exactly. Despite the point made about being able to get around it for masonry which is a deflection of the core point you and I are making here.

And how do your enemies know it then? Someone HAS to be the first.
We have that awesome Tech requires building tag, why shouldn't we use them?

We could certainly work out the system with buildings but they'd be nothing more than a prerequisite tool which I think would be better solved by a new tag.

1. Even so all the mine and quarries should be kept constant. Meaning since since we cannot have map resources for every possible mineral we use the resources vicinity combos. Which means that some buildings will be named like Copper Mine while others are Cobalt Mine. The first has a map resources while the other has none. However since there is no improvement called Copper Mine we should be fine. We just happen to have a Mine improvement than can sit on top of Copper Ore resource.

I get what you're saying here and for me, personally, I'm not bothered by the naming. I'm trying to be a diplomat for one who GREATLY is. And I've heard others make the same comments and complaints here.

If you're a little unsatisfied with the previous suggestion above about 'and administration', another alternative that may work that would be to say 'ers' at the end so we know it's an organization rather than a representation of the actual site. This would work nicely I think for all of these building types, even those that operate on other than mineral goods like Farm buildings (which are also divest of problematic monikers for all the same reasons.) 'and Administration' doesn't fit a Farm very well.

So to say Copper Miners, Cobalt Miners, Apple Orchardiers, Banana Plantationists Sprout Farmers etc... would be enough. A generic term for the formation of a group of people for this task that is available to be taken in this city. One that can count for all eras.

2. True, but having promotions like Anti-Elephant or Anti-Camel on those techs would be perfect. Thus even if you did not have resources to get Elephants or Camels you could still benefit from the tech.

Likewise if you get Camel Domestication you still benefit from the Llamas. And chances are unless you are on an Earth map you will encounter some kind or animal resource from one of those 3 techs.

Interesting thought that echoes a project that CivFuhrer brought up a while back that would involve tracking the unit types we've been in battle with to open up access to 'counter strategy promotions'. I may have a very good way to handle this coming up - some of my thinking on DH's 'tales' project in combination with AIAndy's 'always think of the project in terms of parameters that can manage other dynamics' generic programming methods is beginning to shape up into a larger image for me in terms of project design. I think it may be able to encompass this concept you bring up about counter-strategies in a way that would leave the tech side out of it.

The problem is I would still, as a player, not be able to logically get around the basic problem that I'm learning to work with something that I don't have to work with.

Also you don't need to know Equine Domestication, Camel Domestication or Elephant Domestication to get Masonry. All you need to know is Animal Husbandry.

When I say this is a deflection I'd like to clarify that it doesn't address the basic point being made but rather focuses directly in on this one example. It's good that we have a workaround to Masonry. Just what techs CAN'T we get without these ones though? If we envisioned that world without let's say all these beasts of burden (which America WAS apparently) then made it impossible to get these techs without having some kind of access to at least observe these creatures, how far could we actually go in the tech tree and what would we never know? Far too many techs fall into this withheld group I believe.

 

[Faustmouse]

If you really want a tech tree that requires resources / buildings for some techs, I could take a first step and make a list of all techs we have and which (if any) building/resource they should require. But this will be a whole lot of work, so if you don't really want it I have others things to do. So what you think?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Part of the problem is that while most animal resources come very early (around scavenging) the minerals don't come early enough for you to plan where to place your cities. I think that most should be visible at Hard or Soft-Hammer Percussion or maybe Ground Stones or Natural Pigments.

The tales project is is indeed about what animals you have come in contact with. This is another reason I should change the Myth buildings to be based on actual combat rather than capturing the animals.

BTW it took ages to convince people that the animals resources should be seen earlier. In their case it was the idea of people not being able to see these herds of animals earlier was just silly. With minerals it is a bit harder because today most are hidden underground but they were available on the surface. You only have to look at mining in Australia to see that. Iron, bauxite and copper all sitting on the surface in rich enough form to require almost no pre processing.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you really want a tech tree that requires resources / buildings for some techs, I could take a first step and make a list of all techs we have and which (if any) building/resource they should require. But this will be a whole lot of work, so if you don't really want it I have others things to do. So what you think?

It's something to tinker with. I wouldn't dedicate a huge project to it until I can get the tag built that would enable it to be done.

Part of the problem is that while most animal resources come very early (around scavenging) the minerals don't come early enough for you to plan where to place your cities. I think that most should be visible at Hard or Soft-Hammer Percussion or maybe Ground Stones or Natural Pigments.

That would be helpful at least. And yeah that is one of the main problems here.

The tales project is is indeed about what animals you have come in contact with. This is another reason I should change the Myth buildings to be based on actual combat rather than capturing the animals.

So I have a concept shaping up of a new Game Object Class called 'Ideas'. Ideas would be something units can 'know' or possess. They would have various categories and would be 'learned' from all sorts of sources, including yes, combat. Different types of units would be able to learn and spread differing categories of Ideas. Tales, for example, might be something a combatant unit might come to possess thanks to having been in a battle but it can't actively spread that tale - that's where a storyteller unit comes in - he can learn the tale from the combatant then go back and spread the tale around in cities.

Ideas would play into something of a 2D property-like system (unless AIAndy still has firm plans to develop that out.) And could thus be used for the spread of religious influence and cultural influences as well as tales and spreading access to anti-type promotions. Cities would track it's ideas known but more than that - ideas would have prevalance levels expressed in terms of %. This is where a number of tags in the Ideas class would manage how the ideas are tracked in relation to each other. Some ideas contradict each other and are in competition among communities to gain adherence among the people while others do not clash at all.

I programmed a very basic mechanism for tales then started realizing so much more could be done here so it's taking a bit longer to work out in my head and I figured I'd share what I see coming about here. Perhaps this discussion itself should take on a new thread.