C2C Eras

[RidetheSpiral23]

Now that my civ obsession is back in full swing I found my way back to C2C after being gone for a couple months. I find that C2C has both enhanced and destroyed my enjoyment of civilization. I can no longer play vanilla civ because its just not the same but C2C just becomes unplayable and not balanced at all. Naturally to enjoy the game again I started adjusting C2C to become more like how I feel it should be. I'm sure people will agree and disagree with my assessment but overall my vision is not going to be in line enough with certain people for it to come to fruitition in C2C. I still plan on assisting thunderbrd with his combatmod when I can as I would like to see that get done. Anyways on to the plan.

C2C Eras​

The Vision:To create a more balanced and competitive version of C2C and to refocus the gameplay in each era to more closely resemble that era and to maintain excitement era by era.

The Plan:Comb through C2C era by era and balance them. Then balance them again. I will also be doing work to make each era a distinct gameplay experience. I will not be moving from the prehistoric era until I am satisfied that it is as balanced and fun as it can be. I will slowly incorporate new features added to C2C as I can and as it can be
balanced properly.

C2C Eras
I will begin with my thoughts and ideas for the prehistoric and will add eras as I go.

Prehistoric

First task is to remove buildings. Tons of them. I have done a lot of this already. That many buildings has no place in the prehistoric period. More buildings will be available in appropriate eras.

Removing a chunk of techs. This serves a couple of functions. First, it removes techs that I don't think add any gameplay value. Secondly, it allows for techs to cost more and to be more of an investment.

Tech yield changes on features and terrain. Terrains and features will have lower yields to start and increase when you research a tech. You want to be more of a gatherer type civ you invest time in researching those techs and your terrain and feature yields for food will increase.

Remove animal resources from the map and go to straight hunting and subdued mechanics for animal resources. Also change hunter units to produce with food as well as production.

Raiding parties will be added and possibly replace thieves. Hidden nationality unit that can pillage enemy improvements and gain food/production for your cities.

Add advanced improvements. This system is basically upgrade style improvements for all improvements types. Work the tile and it improves to the next level after a while. I think this one is pretty self explanatory but ask if you want more clarification.

Probably do some work with religions but I might wait to see what DH does.

Overall I want to refocus the prehistoric into hunting and gathering for survival. Low potential for growth and high risk of instability for early expansion or conquest. Please let me me know if you have questions, concerns, would like to help!

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

To-Do List/Progress​

Paleolithic Era
Add paleolithic era and change start date to 2.5 MYA
Create a work in progress tech tree for the paleolithic era
Nomad Start:

• disable city founding until later
• finalize nomad properties
• add buildable improvements for bands
• add promotions to tech trees for early units
• add all necessary "missions" to nomad band

Redo unit progression for that era

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

Reserved 2

 

[Thunderbrd]

Remove animal resources from the map and go to straight hunting and subdued mechanics for animal resources.

You'll have to work extensively with the spawning xml to get this readjusted after removing them since its the resources that animals generally spawn from.

I'd often thought of doing this too, then having them spawn from Improvements that are randomly placed throughout the map to start, herds, lairs etc... Then a spawned animal unit would go out seeking 'food' and if the spawned animal gathered enough food they could plant another such Improvement elsewhere. And some human and barbarian units could possibly 'raid' the spawning Improvement so they could take the herd or lair back to be planted somewhere within their own borders later (or just raze it for a bunch of food NOW).

The improvement would work much like a resource but it could also be moved in the same way and qualify for more advanced improvement (like a pig PEN for example) to be built over the top of one - thus providing the resource through the improvement itself rather than from the resource layer of the map which would then become mostly a mineral layer.

I think DH was going to try something kinda like this too.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The spawn mechanism already allows spawns from improvements. All spawns only occur outside cultural borders.

Some things we have talked about adding to the prehistoric period but have not
- Nomads
- Restricting how far you can move from your base as a simulation of very early supply lines. With techs or resources increasing the distance eg baskets because they allow you to carry stuff easier.
- returns from hunting similarly.
- wild plants and animals need to be actively bread and selected for the traits you want. So you start with grass with seeds that stay on but select for wheat or rice or whatever.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

@Thunderbrd

That gives me some interesting ideas. What about something like herd animals programmed to migrate from improvement A to improvement B. So take your improvement idea but for animal spawns only and still use wild animals that roam as subdue able animals. I'll have to think about that idea.

@DH

Feel free to openly give me any ideas or suggestions and how you feel about the prehistoric period. I feel like if anyone would know it would be you.

Nomad- I want this so bad but don't think I could implement it without AI work (which I can't do)

Supply lines- that's an interesting concept. Not sure exactly how I would get that to work yet. But interesting.

Breeding- hum I like that. Goes a little further than my evolving farmlands. Gels pretty well with farms that improve as they are worked. Also was planning on making crop resource farms placeable.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

For the prehistoric and ancient eras supply lines can be implemented in a fairly trivial way. there is even a mod out there that does most of what is needed. Basically a unit can only move so far from the borders of your nation. That is what the mod provides. To that we add modifiers for units so that recon can go slightly further and hunter units further still. Then we add tech or resource adjustments. It would mean that by the time you get tribalism your units should be able to move far enough to settle the new tribe but you wont have explored the whole map.

The current way farms and pastures work is a bit problematic since it does not represent real life farming to some extent. Yes now a days you have farms that specialise in one crop/animal but you also have mixed farms. Mixed farms being more productive because of crop rotation and animal fertilizer.

editJohny Smith has an interesting set of ideas for the sub-eras of the Prehistoric era his tech tree (very basic) can be found here. We used some of it in C2C prehistoric but not all. One problem with the tree is that archaeologists call different things by the same name in places.

 

[strategyonly]

editJohny Smith has an interesting set of ideas for the sub-eras of the Prehistoric era his tech tree (very basic) can be found here. We used some of it in C2C prehistoric but not all. One problem with the tree is that archaeologists call different things by the same name in places.

How do you open that if you dont have Windows Excel or what ever opens it?

 

[Thunderbrd]

@Thunderbrd

That gives me some interesting ideas. What about something like herd animals programmed to migrate from improvement A to improvement B. So take your improvement idea but for animal spawns only and still use wild animals that roam as subdue able animals. I'll have to think about that idea.

I'm not thinking it would be necessary to force them to go from pt A to pt B but the concept I was working with would have them seek out an optimal placement for their next herd/lair improvement. It would also have animals actually hunting other animals and I think I've finally got a concept as to how that would be handled, particularly if Koshling gets around to splitting animals and barbs into two proxy players. And it would not involve animals being made into numerous separate player groups either.

I was also thinking that if an animal is spawned, it would have a food maintenance cost and if that exceeds how much food it brings in, it could start draining from a limited pool on the improvement it spawned from. If it really starves out, the spawning improvement could be destroyed that way.

How do you open that if you dont have Windows Excel or what ever opens it?

Open Office is a nasty little program that allows you to open, view and manipulate excel forms just fine but you can't save from there in a compatible format for excel to open. But if you're just looking to read and use an excel form and you're not wanting to purchase excel, then by all means open office works pretty well. And there's always the ability to use something like Google.docs to copy into and out of back into an excel file later.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

I'm not thinking it would be necessary to force them to go from pt A to pt B but the concept I was working with would have them seek out an optimal placement for their next herd/lair improvement. It would also have animals actually hunting other animals and I think I've finally got a concept as to how that would be handled, particularly if Koshling gets around to splitting animals and barbs into two proxy players. And it would not involve animals being made into numerous separate player groups either.

I was also thinking that if an animal is spawned, it would have a food maintenance cost and if that exceeds how much food it brings in, it could start draining from a limited pool on the improvement it spawned from. If it really starves out, the spawning improvement could be destroyed that way.

That sounds awesome. So basically it is am improvement upon the current set up of hunting/subduing animals then? So the existing structure for that would still be valid? If so that is something I would be interested in incorporating as I can and it would be nice for the current model to still be applicable once those changes are made. I would also like to implement more of a prehistoric hunting environment with mammoths and other extinct animals.

For the prehistoric and ancient eras supply lines can be implemented in a fairly trivial way. there is even a mod out there that does most of what is needed. Basically a unit can only move so far from the borders of your nation. That is what the mod provides. To that we add modifiers for units so that recon can go slightly further and hunter units further still. Then we add tech or resource adjustments. It would mean that by the time you get tribalism your units should be able to move far enough to settle the new tribe but you wont have explored the whole map.

Okay that makes a lot of sense and would be nice to include. Let's see if we can get that mod and find out what all work needs to be done to incorporate it into Eras. I like what this does to early warfare as a lot of people believe there was an extreme lack of warfare early in human history.

The current way farms and pastures work is a bit problematic since it does not represent real life farming to some extent. Yes now a days you have farms that specialise in one crop/animal but you also have mixed farms. Mixed farms being more productive because of crop rotation and animal fertilizer.

Like I had mentioned I would like to redo improvements anyhow. Would you rather see up-gradable chains like grazing grounds, pastures, ranches etc (similar for farms) that eventually can turn into more of a jack of all trades farm. Or have the combined right away into a unified "farm" improvement that gets better yields as you gain access to crop and livestock resources?

editJohny Smith has an interesting set of ideas for the sub-eras of the Prehistoric era his tech tree (very basic) can be found here. We used some of it in C2C prehistoric but not all. One problem with the tree is that archaeologists call different things by the same name in places.

I am taking a look over this currently. I think a good start date needs to be discussed first. I can make up a google docs spreadsheet that we can both edit (if you would be interested) for a working tech tree. Like I had said in my OP I would like to see less techs in the prehistoric era so maybe it would be best to combine a lot of those techs or take ones at that don't necessarily enhance the gameplay at all. If you have different thoughts then let me know.

 

[Thunderbrd]

That sounds awesome. So basically it is am improvement upon the current set up of hunting/subduing animals then? So the existing structure for that would still be valid? If so that is something I would be interested in incorporating as I can and it would be nice for the current model to still be applicable once those changes are made. I would also like to implement more of a prehistoric hunting environment with mammoths and other extinct animals.

It would definitely work with the current hunting mechanism (though I have some concepts for upgrading some of that eventually too that has been discussed in the Nomadic Start thread.)

I really like the idea of adding more units that would bring home the prehistoric feel too. I don't know a lot about those creatures but I do know we currently have very few of them actually included so far and could certainly use more.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

There are two problems with adding more of the wildlife that is now extinct.

1) there aren't any graphics - the biggest problem
2) they are more dangerous. We toned down the current ones because they would wipe out anything that they came across.

 

[Thunderbrd]

There are two problems with adding more of the wildlife that is now extinct.

1) there aren't any graphics - the biggest problem
2) they are more dangerous. We toned down the current ones because they would wipe out anything that they came across.

1) Yeah... always an issue there.
2) True, but that's one of the reasons to work with Throwing units that can flee from even the more dangerous early critters. Survivability doesn't always have to stem from strength.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

Well here is the link for the editable tech tree. It is open to edits with anyone with the link so if you have some ideas then put them in there. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmRhOtK_Ac3ndEtfejhUOWpTTjNrTWRuUEVxZVZOLVE&usp=sharing

I have the tech tree starting at roughly 2.5 MYA but time will pass quickly into normal BCE progression. This is going to be the first step to getting started with Eras. The nomad demo will be turned on for the early game. I need to figure out how to get the AI not to settle civs right away. I think the best way to do this is to maybe not allow settling until later in the game to avoid the AI just forming cities.

 

[strategyonly]

I have the tech tree starting at roughly 2.5 MYA but time will pass quickly into normal BCE progression. This is going to be the first step to getting started with Eras. The nomad demo will be turned on for the early game. I need to figure out how to get the AI not to settle civs right away. I think the best way to do this is to maybe not allow settling until later in the game to avoid the AI just forming cities.

Why would you start with tools when they aren't founded yet??

If you dont want to have settlements right away, look into having the Nomad "Camp" python placed at the start, just change the starting units from Mongols to what ever. I planned on doing that a year ago, but DH and AIAndy got to busy and its been on my back burner ever since.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

Why would you start with tools when they aren't founded yet??

What do you mean by that, if you don't mind me asking?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Why would you start with tools when they aren't founded yet??

If you dont want to have settlements right away, look into having the Nomad "Camp" python placed at the start, just change the starting units from Mongols to what ever. I planned on doing that a year ago, but DH and AIAndy got to busy and its been on my back burner ever since.

He said that the Nomad Demo would be turned on. It does all that.

However it also allows the settle mission. It may be possible to change the settle mission to require a tech but there needs work still to be done. There are problems still as we did not decide on
. promotion as buildings and vice versa.
. unit production
. research mechanism

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

However it also allows the settle mission. It may be possible to change the settle mission to require a tech but there needs work still to be done. There are problems still as we did not decide on

Yeah a tag will have to be added for that I would guess.

. promotion as buildings and vice versa.

Well I was thinking about that. If we don't allow the band to settle until a certain tech will buildings be necessary. A lot of the techs can just unlock promotions or terrain improvements. Terrain improvements could include; rock art, cave paintings, campsite, cavesite etc. Also we could require a subdue animal for some units, for example, a horse for mounted unit or a dog for tamed dog unit. Do you think we need many buildings before settled cities?

. unit production

Have you played with the nomad demo on? We can just add outcome missions for unit types. Currently there is only stone thrower and wanderer I believe.

. research mechanism

Also the nomad demo has a research tech outcome mission button that becomes active once you accumulate enough of the property lore. It's not perfect but it might work. Other than that we could just make the band unit produce science at a steady rate and then supplement it with discovering new resources or animals.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The promotion as building idea was that when moving all buildings became promotions and when you settle even temporarily then those promotions became buildings again. That way your fire does not go out because you carry the promotion fire stick when you move but you can only get it by building the fire when you are settled.

You should be able to settle on a plot for a few turns but not make a permanent settlement. Except archaeologists now thing that it went from fully nomad to semi nomad (moving between seasonal camp sites) to permanent settlement long before agriculture came along.

I don't think any AI was written for the nomad unit era. Settlement into cities is just so much better because you can start research straight away.

Yes I have played with it but it was a few years ago.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

Okay well then that could work. So you can produce units and create buildings only when you are temporarily settled then? So basically we don't use those property yields that are currently in the demo then? So what would be the motivation for the player/AI to move around?

I agree that it would probably be more realistic and easier. I would also probably turn escorting subdued animals back on.