C7 Feature Requests

[Takhisis]

Those seem like things that should be workable, especially given how, e.g., Vuldacon has managed to make helicopters work in the EFZI scenario.

 

[Civinator]

Those seem like things that should be workable, especially given how, e.g., Vuldacon has managed to make helicopters work in the EFZI scenario.

 

[B-29_Bomber]

Is it possible to give colonies basic harbor functionality so that, let's say you find a valuable resource on a one or two tile island but you really don't want to waste a settler building a city that would otherwise be pretty awful, so you build colony there and it auto connects to your trade network?

 

[Takhisis]

We were actually discussing that on Discord recently, not least because the game also sometimes spawns islands (or peninsulas) that are 100% unbuildable tiles and thus wastes resources.

 

[B-29_Bomber]

We were actually discussing that on Discord recently, not least because the game also sometimes spawns islands (or peninsulas) that are 100% unbuildable tiles and thus wastes resources.

Awesome!

 

[Takhisis]

Oh yes, in the game that I finished yesterday I had the delightful experience of seeing the AI's already bad city placement skills be further hampered by a mountainous peninsula cropping out of nowhere to nullify a couple of whales tiles out to sea.

There's also some discussion on, for example: do they act as full-on harbours? Can they be blockaded? Would this be an act of war? Can they be surrounded by enemy territory or even taken over?

 

[doylestondave]

In C3C units don´t heal on LM-terrain.

What are LM Sea squares. Do they prevent movement?

 

[Civinator]

What are LM Sea squares. Do they prevent movement?

LM terrain means Landmark Terrain. With this feature introduced with C3C, you can set different values to some tiles, among them per example restrict to build a road or mine on that terrain, or to set this LM Tile especially precious. The last one was done by Firaxis in the Mesopotamia conquest of C3C with the "Cedars of Lebanon".

LM terrain in C3C Vanilla was not available for every type of terrain, but the marvellous Quintillus editor now allows LM terrain for every kind of terrain. Here you can see a screenshot of my SOE map, that I have created more than ten years ago, with the restriction of building roads on all LM tiles. The LM tiles are marked by a yellow diamond on that tile. With this methode, that I called microzones, it was possible to limit different production in the cities (and to give the Infinite City Sprawl mod good limitations for the graphical growth of cities). Now with the Flintlock mod and the Quintillus editor, there exist better methods to achieve the same results.

 

[doylestondave]

LM terrain means Landmark Terrain. With this feature introduced with C3C, you can set different values to some tiles, among them per example restrict to build a road or mine on that terrain, or to set this LM Tile especially precious. The last one was done by Firaxis in the Mesopotamia conquest of C3C with the "Cedars of Lebanon".

LM terrain in C3C Vanilla was not available for every type of terrain, but the marvellous Quintillus editor now allows LM terrain for every kind of terrain. Here you can see a screenshot of my SOE map, that I have created more than ten years ago, with the restriction of building roads on all LM tiles. The LM tiles are marked by a yellow diamond on that tile. With this methode, that I called microzones, it was possible to limit different production in the cities (and to give the Infinite City Sprawl mod good limitations for the graphical growth of cities). Now with the Flintlock mod and the Quintillus editor, there exist better methods to achieve the same results.

Ah, a lightbulb just went on. The LM sea tile could be used as a barrier to any ship entering the coast. After all in the real world, amphibious landings can't be done just anywhere.

 

[ThesaurusRex]

I'll just say I've always wanted to see something like this for years, ever since it looked like Firaxis wasn't going to release the source code.

Over time I've filled in a sticky note (the Windows widget, not a real one) of things I might like to see in either a facsimile game or some sort of .exe edit, if possible. I haven't done a lot of in-depth browsing through the thread so I hope I'm not repeating anyone else's suggestions. I guess my first feature request would be a list of received feature requests (organized by rejected/accepted/hmm/etc), because I didn't see one in the beginning. Would be a nice insight into what is and isn't possible.

Spoiler Feature Requests :

Culture points for captured Wonders: Should at least be an option in the properties. Real-life wonders fall into the hands of successor states all the time and still manage to be cultural icons!

Annexation: Elimination/Regicide transfers cities. I think this would make for a more realistic conquest mechanic. Sometimes when you cut off the head of the snake, you can surgically attach a new one!

Barbarians can enslave: This would change SO MUCH. You'd have an entire barbarian ecosystem going on, especially if there were more than 1 "barbarian" faction though that's not necessary. You can have barbarian "settlements" that, if they win an invasion, create a new, stronger unit that attacks the civ in revenge. Or barbs that naturally evolve through the course of the game.

Notification/advance warning of reputation ruin: How many times have you tried your best to be diplo-honest only to find out that Civs are snubbing their nose at you over "something" you did? Having the Foreign Advisor warn you beforehand would really help.

Fix for Culture Group: None?/Assign barbs a culture group: This is mostly meant in the case of modded games where barbs have cities that stand in for city-states. Having a non-glitched graphic would be helpful.

No Tile Pollution/TP doesn't affect production: I forgot why I wrote this down, to be honest. It might have something to do with a select few mod scenarios in which "pollution" is something else, like a Mars scenario where the pollution tiles are actually terraforming plants or something and the global warming mechanic creates oceans or something. In case this wasn't obvious, this is more something like an option that can be enabled.

Colonies connect to sea: Now THIS would not only be helpful, it would make sense! Think of all the colonies, fish processing stations, whaling stations, logging etc. that have been put right by a coast with no access to a city. This honestly should have been in the base game, IMO.

Harbor connected by rivers? This is something I've thought about in regards to river-based civilizations for a while. Some ways for rivers to be incorporated economically, I feel there's a lot of underutilized mechanics with them.

Paratroopers have a chance to kill units and can take cities: No reason this shouldn't be possible with an empty city, and if a Paratrooper with an offensive capability got the drop on a weakened unit, they ought to be able to take over that tile.

Editor:​

Full LM terrain changes? You ought to be able to say, for example, regular Mountains can't support cities, but LM Mountains can. And all LM variations for all terrains and their corresponding graphics would be cool too. This is more of a suggestion for a modified C3C, because a facsimile like C7 could just as well be able to add entirely new terrain types.

More barbarian evolutions: This would have barbs spawning units that more closely tracked with the era. Combined with barb enslavement, this could have them relevant and a present danger well into the modern period.

Multiple espionage immunities: Speaks for itself and would make a fascinating dynamic.

Change the difficulty of Sabotage and Initiate Propaganda: Initiate Propaganda only kind of works if you've been trying your very best to win a culture victory, and even then so many things have to go right. And sometimes sabotage only sets work back a turn or so. Reworking these might make these spy actions worthwhile.

Auto and AI razing as a function of government: A 1-pop city has been captured. Should a Democracy really be out here killing entire cities? Maybe for AI civs, razing becomes more of a combination of government type + Civ aggression, and for players capturing a 1-pop they should get the option like any other city if they're under a certain government that's able to control their troops.

Worker AI - Have Terraform flag available even if not all Worker Actions are selected, or do worker actions without flags: AI will use Offense/Defense workers (just Offense seems to work marginally better), but automated player will only use it if they have well defended cities. Other flags will have no action at all. The AI rarely if ever seems to use the Legionary or Crusader's ability to build fortresses (or roads in the Rise of Rome conquest); that might fix it, and we'll be able to have civ-specific worker units that each have different limited actions.

 

[handofthrawn1844]

What if we took a page from Civ 6's book and used a terrain type / terrain feature model? Eg: Terrain types would be grassland, desert, plains, etc. Features would be forest, jungle, hill, etc. It wouldn't be too hard to have these interact, and it would give some more terrain flexibility. For example, desert hills alone would be very useful in a lot of maps since normal hills looks so green it interrupts the surrounding desert.

 

[ThesaurusRex]

What if we took a page from Civ 6's book and used a terrain type / terrain feature model? Eg: Terrain types would be grassland, desert, plains, etc. Features would be forest, jungle, hill, etc. It wouldn't be too hard to have these interact, and it would give some more terrain flexibility. For example, desert hills alone would be very useful in a lot of maps since normal hills looks so green it interrupts the surrounding desert.

Maybe for graphics but the game ought to still recognize forests and hills as unique terrains for spawning resources or calculating move costs.

 

[jack3552]

Idea: Two additional stats in the city screen, one in the science tooltip and one in culture, showing the player whether a city is 'pulling its weight' in terms of science and culture. It could be a multiplier such as 0.97 or 1.03, if greater than 1 the city's science/culture yield outstrips the additional % cost of the techs/policies caused by having that city, if less than 1 you would currently be progressing faster without this city. This would allow the player to easily see at which point an annexed city begins to accelerate your pace instead of slowing it.

I think it would be pretty quick to calculate, you'd just need to get the proportional increase of empire science generated by that city, and divide by the raw % increase caused by that city.

Example using this city in my current game: city generates 56 science, total empire science is 1454, there are 12 non-puppet cities on empire. Calculation is: (1456/(1456-56)) / (1.55/1.5) = 1.01. This is the number that would be displayed in the science tooltip. It quickly shows me as the player that the city has broken even, and is generating enough science to offset the tech cost increase. There might be better ways to present this stat to the player, but something like it would be such a useful tool to build a sense of when annexing is better than puppeting, one of the most common dilemmas in any warmonger's games.

 

[LordBaal]

Just read the whole thread (lightly a times I must admit). This is huge news to me, and an all around awesome project. I saw great ideas all around, and have some suggestions as well.

- Variable unit upkeep: different units can have a different amount of upkeep (gold) depending on several factors like type of unit, techs and tiles). Explanation: economically speaking, it makes no difference having 20 spearman in the field against having 20 battleships, or 20 tanks or 20 nukes. Having a variable upkeep beyond just 1 gold for each (and the AI actually taking it into account) would work better in my opinion. More complex units would require more gold per turn. So to have a huge army of advanced units you'll need an excellent economy and resource base. This variable upkeep can also double in a way for logistics and supply if is possible to diminish in a discrete way via % or numbers the amount of gold required for units depending on their current tile. More expensive upkeep for units in a tundra far away from home, or deployed units in general vs units in cities and forts, with roads and ports affecting this too.

- Resource upkeep for units (and even buildings or improvements): units, buildings and tittle improvements constantly consume specific resources to work properly. Explanation: it has been proposed a revamped system for resources, where they can be accumulated and even processed into others. That is wonderful! Now, picture requiring a constant supply of resources to keep some functions of certain units. Running out of oil (or fuel) could mean your mechanized units stopping in their tracks or being limited to 1 movement per turn even on roads, the same with ships and planes and even railroads improvements and power plants not providing their perks or at a reduced rate until more oil (or fuel) if found. This could be true and work slightly different for other types of units like mounted units slowly losing health if no more horses, camels, elephants or whatever their mount animal is, can be provided. The effects could extend to decreased defense, attack, increased upkeep (see above) or any combination.

- Arbitrary limits for units: being able to set an arbitrary limit for specific units. Explanation: being able to set an arbitraly limit to units be it in a simple global way or tied to buildings, resources, cities, tech... In example, you can only have 10 warriors per barrack, or 1 worker per city, or 5 battleships overall (not tied to anything). While for most cases upkeep and resources should be the only limit for units, as it comes off as more natural and inmersive, some scenarios might require of this. An example is the Warhammer Fantasy mod. Lots of buildings there provide free units every x amount of turns, but it comes a time when is really unbalanced, and cumbersome unless you are basically wasting your units. Having a simple global limit or limits tied to specific conditions would help balance this out.

- Approach to stacks: stack limits, penalties or bonus dependent on variables like terrain, improvements, tech and other units. Stacks can affect improvements. Explanation: developing logistic technologies and having logistc units could allow to increase the size of an stack can go whitout penalties. An improvement such a fort becomes detrimental when a certain threshold is passed, reflecting how cramming an entire army into a castle would go horribly wrong as supplies willd evaporate. Stacking too many units in a farmland tittle could potentialy reduce it's output or even unwillingly raze it. Having a general or a supply wagon unit (or organizing them into armies or corps) could allow for a higher density stack without penalties. Also combined arms (stacking infantry with tanks, or severall artillery units) could provide defensive perks to units. In short, the more advanced and prepared you are the more troops you can stack in a single place. Countering this in late game things like bombardment could affect all units in the tile.

 

[Ozymandias]

I'm probably too late to the game for this, but I was just briefly playing with SMAC & wondering about using voxels for transforming terrain Tiles ... ?

 

[WildWeazel]

Mmm, that's probably one of the few things that isn't practical. It's essentially a 3D world vs 2D. We'd have to design the engine around a different geometry and texture drawing system from the ground up (pun intended). But maybe I'm overthinking it and a Godot expert could correct me.

 

[Ozymandias]

Mmm, that's probably one of the few things that isn't practical. It's essentially a 3D world vs 2D. We'd have to design the engine around a different geometry and texture drawing system from the ground up (pun intended). But maybe I'm overthinking it and a Godot expert could correct me.

... And you don't know a Godot expert?

 

[tjs282]

I would be happy if we could just have upgradeable Specialists with progressively better outputs — but which replaced their precursors.

e.g. the generic Scientists could be replaced by an upgrade-chain from a Vanilla-style 1-beaker "Mystic" (no precursor tech?) in the Ancient Age, to a 2-beaker "Scholar" (with Education?) in the Medieval, and finally a 3-beaker "Scientist" (Scientific Method?) in the Industrial. Similarly, the generic Entertainers could become e.g. "Fool (Feudalism?) —> Actor (Free Artistry?) —> Rock-Star (Electronics?)".

Had another thought on this: keep the basic 5 Specialist types/outputs (Happiness, Coins, Beakers, Shields, Corruption) but have them boosted according to which generic buildings have been put in that town. So e.g. the basic Scientist would only produce 1 Beaker (as in Vanilla), but would produce 1 extra Beaker for every building with the "+50% Science" flag.

The different Specialist types could even be enabled by the basic buildings -- so you wouldn't be able to run a Scientist if you didn't have at least one "+50% Science" building in the town (with the proviso that at least one Specialist type would need to be enabled from game-start, to allow tile-switching).

Haven't thought yet about how Wonders might fit in with that scheme...

 

[WildWeazel]

One of the next things I want to write up is my concept for flexible prerequisites, allowing anything to require almost anything else. In theory that should be able to address all of these "allow X only if Y" and "modify X based on Y" scenarios.

 

[Gary Childress]

Greetings, all!

Plotinus just made me aware of this project. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know. I'm still plugging away with poser and Wings3D and have been creating some 3D models lately which I've been using for the game Advanced Tactics Gold. You can see some of my models and graphics here: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10260&t=404926&start=60