C3X: Civ/Trait Specific Resources

[SayHayKid]

I just thought of another new idea with Virtual Resources. You can have a civ (or trait) non-era specific tech (like "Rome Flavor" in CCM) and have that tech create a virtual resource "Roman Flavor". This would allow you to have a Civ-specific wonder/improvement available at a particular tech since the resource frees up the tech spot. Before C3X, Civinator figured a great work around by having the GW require X number of buildings (or a resource) that only become available at the time the GW should be built. Using CCM as an example, with a civ-specific virtual resource "The Limes" could have a tech requirement of Construction and a resource requirement of "Roman Flavor".

It could also be used to enhance "traits". For example, I was thinking of having each civ start with a non-era tech for their trait. Religious civs could have a "Religious Flavor" and create Crusaders/Fanatics available at Theology (for example). I could have a Crusading Order SW that uses CCM auto-production to create a "Fanatic" that upgrades to a religious-specific Crusader. The Crusading Order SW would have a tech requirement of Theology and a resource requirement of "Religious Flavor".

 

[Predator145]

The civ specific tech may allow you to access the resource but what will generate it? You'd still need a city improvement doing that. A common solution would be a 0 shield SW requiring the tech "Rome Flavor". Let's call it "SW Rome". SW Rome generates "Flag (Virtual Res)" in every city. That improvement generates the resource "Roman Res". The SW and the improvement generated need to be heavily perfumed for the AI to build them ASAP.

This idea can also be used for unique civ specific improvements. I'd like for Militarisitc+Seafaring civs to have their unique 15 shield harbors and African civs to have their own architecture sets. But the SW generating the "Flag (Virtual Res)" idea has 1 drawback: It's not instant. You'd need to spend a turn to build that 0 shield SW. If your capital is lost now you've got 1 turn where you can't start the production of these improvements. It's not elegant.

Here's another way: Change your Palace to an SW. Even with C3X, only SWs and GWs can auto generate improvements in all of your cities. Have the Palace autogenerate "Flag (Virtual Res)" in all of your cities. This means instant access. Even if you lose your capital, the Palace gets auto respawned.

"Flag (Virtual Res)" will generate many different resources. And civ-only techs allow different civs to access them. In my case "Flag (Virtual Res)" will generate "Norse Res" and "African Res" but only the chosen civs will be able to access them accordingly. The Norse will start with "Norse" tech allowing them to access "Norse Res". The Sahelians and Bantus will start with "African" tech allowing them to access "African Res".

"Norse" tech will obsolete Harbors and Commercial Docks. Create "Harbor (Norse)" costing 30 shields with militaristic ticked and "Commercial Dock (Norse)" requiring Harbor (Norse) to be built. Both of them require "Norse Res" and their techs to be built.

The drawback of this is that the AI will think these civ specific improvements will be available to all civs. This creates a tech price inflation. Expect Map Making to be worth more now that it enables both Harbor and Harbor (Norse). In this case it's not too bad. It's only a 1 improvement inflation. But if you want implement a buncha culture specific improvements it's gonna be worse.

Or you could have all your unique improvements require no techs to be built. But now "Flag (Virtual Res) will generate "Map Making Res". Harbor (Norse) will now require "Norse Res" and "Map Making Res" to be built. That way despite being available to all civs and requiring no tech it's still tied to the Norse upon researching Map Making. The only inflation here is Map Making unlocking "Map Making Res". If you have a buncha unique improvement tied to a tech then unlocking just 1 resource instead would cause less AI price inflation. And of course it makes your city screen have a buncha resources cluttered.

 

[SayHayKid]

You are right. I was thinking an actual "flag". I had done this for an earlier version of my mod and added all the flags for the civs in the buildings file. That extra layer of needing a building (flag) does make it not elegant, per se, but functional. You have some great and in depth ideas as always.

 

[Civinator]

"Flag (Virtual Res)" will generate many different resources. And civ-only techs allow different civs to access them. In my case "Flag (Virtual Res)" will generate "Norse Res" and "African Res" but only the chosen civs will be able to access them accordingly. The Norse will start with "Norse" tech allowing them to access "Norse Res". The Sahelians and Bantus will start with "African" tech allowing them to access "African Res".

Predator145, have you tested this? In CCM 3 there are virtual resources that are tied to era none techs, that nobody has access to (per example the virtual resource "Capital Ships" connected to era none tech "Game Mechanism") - and the result is not that no civ has access to that virtual resource, but that every civ which has that virtual resource creating building has access to the created virtual resource.

Addition according to the Norse/African harbour example:

Here it is enough, if one of those civs has an era none tech that makes the normal harbour building obsolete and only allows the other civ to build the different harbour improvment by a prerequisite building tied to that specific era none tech. In CCM this is the setting for the additional Jewish religion and its religion specific buildings.

 

[Predator145]

Predator145, have you tested this? In CCM 3 there are virtual resources that are tied to era none techs, that nobody has access to (per example the virtual resource "Capital Ships" connected to era none tech "Game Mechanism") - and the result is not that no civ has access to that virtual resource, but that every civ which has that virtual resource creating building has access to the created virtual resource.

Addition according to the Norse/African harbour example:

Here it is enough, if one of those civs has an era none tech that makes the normal harbour building obsolete and only allows the other civ to build the different harbour improvment by a prerequisite building tied to that specific era none tech. In CCM this is the setting for the additional Jewish religion and its religion specific buildings.

Yes. Here are the settings:

The Norse start the game with the non trade able, non era tech: Sea+Mil



The improvement Harbor (Sea+Mil) requires no tech but the strategic res "Sea+Mil" to be built



The Palace is now an SW that auto produces the improvement "Flag (Culture)" in all cities. This improvement is both responsible for my negative culture mechanism and virtual resource creation. "Flag (Culture)" generates the local strat resource "Sea+Mil Res".


The result is that the Norse, along with the Japanese who start with the "Sea+Mil" tech, have access to the "Sea+Mil Res" in all of their cities right from the start of the game. And since for the sake of testing I didn't tie the Harbor (Sea+Mil) down to Map Making, I was able to build it right away. Carthage, not starting with "Sea+Mil" tech, had no access.


Sure. You can have a virtual resource creating building. That's what I was doing before I came up with the Palace SW idea. But that takes at least 1 turn to construct. For things like 15 shield harbors for the Norse, I'd like it to be instantly available. I'm ok with sacrificing the ability to change capitals and use it as a prebuild. The AI can't do these things anyway.

 

[Predator145]

Here it is enough, if one of those civs has an era none tech that makes the normal harbour building obsolete and only allows the other civ to build the different harbour improvment by a prerequisite building tied to that specific era none tech. In CCM this is the setting for the additional Jewish religion and its religion specific buildings.

You know what that makes me think of? You could actually have culture specific improvements that also age up eras. The drawback is that if they get captured you still can build your own version on top of that. That's the negative culture mechanism is useful. I can make things like culture specific walls uncapturable. Which is a bit of a departure from stock game. Things like culture specific courthouses also can't be captured that way. And the courthouse is something you'd often hope to capture if you want to keep a productive city. This drawback can be solved if C3X can somehow eliminate an improvement from the menu if there is a certain improvement already built. But alas, I have no clue about LUA .

 

[Civinator]

Predator145, I had a look at the settings in CCM 3 and I can see the difference in your settings and the settings in CCM3. The settings in CCM 3 are: "local no-tech-req", the settings in your examples are only "local". This means:

1. local no-tech-req: Every civ, that has such a building, has access to that resource in that city (=local). This is also relevant, if it is an era none tech.

2. local: Only civs, that have the needed tech, have access to that resource in the city (=local). This includes resources tied to era none techs.

This is logical and I would not have written my post, if I would have remembered the addition in CCM 3, that I have set some months ago.
Predator145, you are correct!

 

[sylkachan]

How do you make civ specific techs? I know that Tides of Crimson has this, and I was interested in it as well. In that mod, there are both civ specific resources and buildings. I assume this also mean that there could be civ specific governments as well, and I don't know of any mod that does this.

 

[Predator145]

How do you make civ specific techs? I know that Tides of Crimson has this, and I was interested in it as well. In that mod, there are both civ specific resources and buildings. I assume this also mean that there could be civ specific governments as well, and I don't know of any mod that does this.

Each civ can start with a max of 4 techs. So you can use 1 slot for a non tradeable tech that doesn't belong to any era. You can make a gov tech require that unique tech to be researched.

 

[sylkachan]

Oh, thanks for telling me! That is a much easier way to do it. I know that in the ToC mod, the civ specific techs can be researched, and always appear in the bottom left of the tech tree.

 

[tjs282]

Just FTR, @Vuldacon's Escape From Zombie Island uses Faction-specific techs, resources, and govs.

This allows Buildings (= repurposed city-tiles from the epic-game) to (auto)produce multiple different faction-exclusive unit-lines, depending on which faction holds that Building on any given turn.

 

[sylkachan]

What are factions? Do you mean flavors or alliances, or something else? What is the name of the text file you would this use to do this?

 

[tjs282]

There are no "nations" in EFZI2, there are 4 human factions (Farmers, Survivors, Authority and Company), plus the Zombies. All factions are playable, but due to the differences between them (available starting techs, governments, buildings and unit-lines), each faction has a different optimal victory condition to aim for.

The mod is a total-conversion played on a preset map (Paradise Island, a previously beautiful resort-island turned into a zombie-infested urban dystopia), where nearly every epic-game terrain art-asset has been customised. So instead of attacking Barb-camps (as in the epic game), you can send your people to collect "Supply-drops". You don't capture cities, you storm individual Buildings -- many of which have unique strategic-resources nearby, which allow custom additions to be made to (or units made in) that Building, but nowhere else. And to reach those Buildings, you might have your people move through Skyscrapers and Apartment-blocks rather than Mountains and Hills (many of the stronger [Zombie] units are Wheeled, but roads can only be built on flat ground).

Strongly recommend you check it out. The novel gameplay that @Vuldacon has managed to build off the back of the Civ3Conquests engine is absolutely incredible.

 

[Vuldacon]

tjs282... Thank You for the Compliments

There are still remaining things I want to do with the Game but the past 3/4 years have prevented me from working on them or having the life I want.

I hope to get back to it in the near future.

In the mean time, I continue to follow the Great things going on here at Civfanatics and it is Great to see New Members too

 

[tjs282]

I know that in the ToC mod, the civ specific techs can be researched, and always appear in the bottom left of the tech tree.

Yes, because (AFAIK) @haluu wrote the ToC .biq as @Civinator described: those researchable (but non-tradeable) tribe-specific techs also have a tribe-specific, non-tradeable, Era=None tech as their basic prereq (named e.g."Hobbit tech", or similar).

That also meant that the same set of (x,y) co-ords can be used for all the tribe-specific tech-box pairs on the F6 page(s) -- but the pair of tribe-specific tech-boxes you actually see in-game, will depend on which tribe you're playing as.

 

[haluu]

@tjs282 yep, that's exactly how the civ-specific techs were added to Tides of Crimson. =)

@sylkachan

 

[Vuldacon]

That also meant that the same set of (x,y) co-ords can be used for all the tribe-specific tech-box pairs on the F6 page(s) -- but the pair of tribe-specific tech-boxes you actually see in-game, will depend on which tribe you're playing as.

tjs282... yes if each Faction or Civ has the same number of Techs the (xy) co-ords can all be the same but if any of the Factions or Civs have more Techs and or more Units and Improvements/Wonders that has to be worked out because the Tech Boxes will be different sizes to accommodate them. This is true in EFZI2.
Taking Screen Shots in game Greatly help when making the Tech Trees because you can actually use a measurement in pixels to place the (xy) co-ords.If a Tech Box is off, it can be moved on the Screen Shot leaving a color where it was. You can measure that space to know how many more or less pixels to add or subtract from where the Tech Box was on the (xy) co-ords. Hope that makes sense