Castle Building

[Kailric]

This is one aspect of the mod I am still not happy with. Castles were a huge part of Medieval history and I would like it represented well.

In Medieval England before 1066 castles were few and far between. The ones there were of the motte and bailey type built of wood and earth. After William the Conqueror showed up he needed castles to keep order in his new lands. Castles were excellent in controlling the population as well as blocking enemy advancement. One could not simply go around a castle and its garrison as the garrison could come out and attack from the rear. William had hundreds of castles built. After each revolt he'd build a new castle. It wasn't till after the crusades when people brought back new castle building technologies that the hay day of castle building really begun. Castles most times where built near cities for protection, but often times towns where built up around Castles as people migrated there for the security.

In the game I use to have a feature were you could take a load of lumber and or stone to a spot and "build a castle" which would turn into a Castle settlement but no one used this feature so I removed it.

So, we have two options basically. Either Castles are Improvements or they function as a town.

As Towns
To have them function as town there would need to be limits perhaps on the number of goods and number of buildings. I would really want to be able to change the graphic so that Castles don't look like sprawling cities, not sure how to do that.

As Improvements
Perhaps as Improvements they could function similar to my forts mod where they have limited storage capacity and maybe auto gather surrounding resources. Graphically they would look better as improvements.

Ways to build castles
Since no one used the Transport with Materials feature what would be the best way to simulate the Building of a castle? As Improvements it would take time to build but only cost gold, which really doesn't do justice to the amount of resources required to build a castle. Perhaps we can use the plotgroup feature to require a route connected to the plot in order to transport materials needed for the castle project.

We could also maybe have a special Castle Constructor unit that the player can build in his cities they would go out and build a castle.

Anyway, these are some of my initial ideas on this, feel free to add your own.

 

[Don Senglar]

As Towns
To have them function as town there would need to be limits perhaps on the number of goods and number of buildings. I would really want to be able to change the graphic so that Castles don't look like sprawling cities, not sure how to do that.

All city-buildings graphics is described in CIV4CityLSystem.xml and located in serie of *.nif files in the Cities directory (\Assets\Art\Structures\Cities).

As a variant you can create a new ARTSTYLE_CASTLE in CIV4CityLSystem.xml and edit *.nif files by replacing conventional buildings on the walls/towers of castles. Now it's quite difficult to predict how it would look.

Maybe to be better to have only one central castle and some small buildings around?

 

[orlanth]

Isn't there already a citytype that was made especially for representing a Manor or Castle and its surrounding dwellings? As a kid I trooped through dozens of castles living in England for a summer, most of them fall along a spectrum from a large Manor to a Castle to a Citadel and were associated with a settlement at or shortly after when they were built. I would think the best way is to have castle and other advanced fortification Buildings available for this citytype requiring lots of Stone for completion, which would take advantage of Nightingales design for the AI to transport materials for Building construction.

On the topic of unique Improvements, one nice feature from Dune Wars was that there are some Improvements you can build only once per one-tile radius. I forget what the current Improvement is that patrols for nearby Bandits, but if you want you could repurpose this to outlying castle or fortress as long as you can't build many close together.

 

[Trade Winds]

As Improvements
Perhaps as Improvements they could function similar to my forts mod where they have limited storage capacity and maybe auto gather surrounding resources. Graphically they would look better as improvements.

This is my favourite option, although I don't quite remember if I got to gather resources from Forts in your Forts mod. To have these grown into towns, we could make use of the poorly used feature of "Home" button. This way a unit could make this castle its home and therefore have +1 population until there are so many houses that it has become a town. There could even be earlier versions to build settlements in WHM.

Ways to build castles
Since no one used the Transport with Materials feature what would be the best way to simulate the Building of a castle?

"Transport with Materials" Never known about it.
I'd like to have a wagon loaded with wood and cut-stone and an architect taking turns to build it making use of the goods stationed until depleted and then having another wagon with fresh supplies. If your "Transport with Materials" is something similar, I have missed a nice feature.

 

[Willi_Tell]

I like your ideas about castle building!

If your "Transport with Materials" is something similar, I have missed a nice feature.

you did, it seems...

 

[Kailric]

All city-buildings graphics is described in CIV4CityLSystem.xml and located in serie of *.nif files in the Cities directory (\Assets\Art\Structures\Cities).
Maybe to be better to have only one central castle and some small buildings around?

Thanks for the info on city art styles. I haven't check into that yet but will see what all I can do. Yeah, the one central castle is what I am looking for. Nice pic btw. Also, I don't believe I have ever welcomed you to the forums, as it shows you to be fairly new, so Welcome my friend, and thanks for your input. Keep it up

Isn't there already a citytype that was made especially for representing a Manor or Castle and its surrounding dwellings? As a kid I trooped through dozens of castles living in England for a summer, most of them fall along a spectrum from a large Manor to a Castle to a Citadel and were associated with a settlement at or shortly after when they were built. I would think the best way is to have castle and other advanced fortification Buildings available for this citytype requiring lots of Stone for completion, which would take advantage of Nightingales design for the AI to transport materials for Building construction.

Yes, there is the Citytype for potential Castles. Your Military units can found outposts that you can upgrade to castles. I am not sure if I like this setup or not. Need to play test more.

I would love to "troop" through some castles, in fact it's on my bucket list to go explore a Castle

On the topic of unique Improvements, one nice feature from Dune Wars was that there are some Improvements you can build only once per one-tile radius. I forget what the current Improvement is that patrols for nearby Bandits, but if you want you could repurpose this to outlying castle or fortress as long as you can't build many close together.

I thought of something similar as well. The Castle Improvement would naturally be set to "ActsAsCity" and have special bonuses for it.

This is my favourite option, although I don't quite remember if I got to gather resources from Forts in your Forts mod. To have these grown into towns, we could make use of the poorly used feature of "Home" button. This way a unit could make this castle its home and therefore have +1 population until there are so many houses that it has become a town. There could even be earlier versions to build settlements in WHM.

Also some good suggestions.

"Transport with Materials" Never known about it.
I'd like to have a wagon loaded with wood and cut-stone and an architect taking turns to build it making use of the goods stationed until depleted and then having another wagon with fresh supplies. If your "Transport with Materials" is something similar, I have missed a nice feature.

Yeah, it is actually simply disabled at the moment. People found it easier just to "Found Settlement" rather than go through the hassle of hauling materials. Plus, this feature wasn't well documented in game so most people had no idea it was even there. However, Castles built this way had the advantage of starting with more buildings.

Thanks for all the input. It is still being mulled over

 

[Nightinggale]

We have a city type for this and I think it would be best that way. However I'm not too happy with the way it works currently. How about making it a type of city (like now), but it starts without the castle? You then have to bring in building materials and use units to build up the castle just like you build up other city types. It shouldn't be able to have most of the production buildings. Instead it should have castle buildings, whatever they are.

Maybe we can borrow the fort code from RaR to make castles fire arrows at nearby enemies. Certain buildings would give one attack per round meaning a well build castle would be able to attack multiple units each turn. I know there is improvement attacking bandit/animals, but taking the RaR fort attacking code is likely much faster as it is already designed to work from buildings.

Maybe castles shouldn't work the land around them. That would mean they need supplies from the outside. An attack strategy could then be to block all transports, but only at a range so far that the castle is unable to fire arrows. Stockpiling food will then be important when you are able to do so.

 

[Kailric]

We have a city type for this and I think it would be best that way. However I'm not too happy with the way it works currently. How about making it a type of city (like now), but it starts without the castle? You then have to bring in building materials and use units to build up the castle just like you build up other city types. It shouldn't be able to have most of the production buildings. Instead it should have castle buildings, whatever they are.

Maybe we can borrow the fort code from RaR to make castles fire arrows at nearby enemies. Certain buildings would give one attack per round meaning a well build castle would be able to attack multiple units each turn. I know there is improvement attacking bandit/animals, but taking the RaR fort attacking code is likely much faster as it is already designed to work from buildings.

Maybe castles shouldn't work the land around them. That would mean they need supplies from the outside. An attack strategy could then be to block all transports, but only at a range so far that the castle is unable to fire arrows. Stockpiling food will then be important when you are able to do so.

Some interesting points. I like the building attacks feature. And I like the idea of having to build up your Castles, but game wise what would be the advantage of having Castle city types if they become gimped compared to other cities? Something to mull over.

Some castle buildings...

• Kitchen
• Bakehouse
• Brewery
• Stables
• Great Hall
• Chapel
• Buttery
• Cellar
• Well

Defensive buildings...

• Donjon(Keep)
• Towers
• Moats
• Gatehouse
• Barbican
• Prison
• Barricks
• Drawbridge
• Portcullis

 

[Nightinggale]

game wise what would be the advantage of having Castle city types if they become gimped compared to other cities?

If they can't place units on plots anyway, they can ignore min distance to other cities. Instead they can have min distance to other castles. That way we can place castles in between regular production cities and not use up a whole lot of land for the castles. Naturally regular cities can't harvest a castle plot.

 

[orlanth]

While it's nice to have a difference between Manor/Castle citytype versus Monastery or City citytypes, all of these were supported by working surrounding fields (probably Manors/Castles most of all) with the main difference being buildings inside the settlements themselves, so it would be odd to create "black holes" of nonharvestable terrain around any of them (which neither the AI or bad players like me could cope well with anyway) The main difference setting the citytypes apart would be different sets of a few advanced Buildingclasses they can construct.

Town/City type:
Top Tier industry/yield processing buildings
Market chain buildings
Buildings which generate lots of demands for Domestic Economy
Buildings which support higher max populations

Monastery/Abbey citytype:
Research buildings
Religion/Cross producing buildings
Buildings producing FF Points
Buildings that more rapidly assimilate surrounding lands (does city tile expansion happen by YIELD_CULTURE? is there still going to be a economically-focused Prosperity counter separately?)

Manor/Castle type:
Fortification buildings granting extra defensive bonuses
Smithy buildings producing Miltary Yields
Training Buildings that can grant Experience or a free Promotion to units trained in that settlement
Buildings that increase fealty (can also be appropriate for Monastery/Abbey type)

Don't make the citytypes too dramatically different, in reality most types of buildings could be found in any of these settlements and with too many buildingclasses you can never get to use most of em. But having some top-tier buildings be special/unique and require lots of yields to construct could add interest.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Missed another conversation.

I was another one of these who didn't really know how much benefit you got from castles and so just built outposts cause it was easier. If only I had known!

I would probably think that orlanth has got it right in terms of each of the three having a distinctive 'industry' flavour.

As well as castles having a lower max pop. but much more, or more powerful fortifications, where town fortifications are much more expensive and not as effective (curtain walls having to encircle a much larger area of a sprawling town)

With Monasteries having weaker defences but benefits to certain production industries (Monastery cloth among many other products was considered to be of the highest quality and a standard to be emulated) Most monasteries were also like factory complexes becoming extremely wealthy through the production and sale of high quality goods. and of course the shrines and libraries.

Perhaps monasteries could have a very low max pop. but have special production buildings that produce a higher output (a bit like the +50% of factories in Col.), but as the max pop is so low you could only conceivably run one industry and it's supporting fields, so monastaries become highly specialised production facilities, compared to towns which can run much larger (but less efficient) operations.

 

[Kailric]

We maybe piecing together a good solution here. Maybe these three CityTypes can work together in unison. If you have a "Cluster" (for lack of better word at the moment) of these three CityTypes joined by roads and all in the same border they confer to each other specific bonuses.

Like for Immigration... Immigrants are attracted to the money opportunities of your Prosperous towns, they are also attracted to the security of your Castles, and also to the Solitude or Piety of your Monasteries. So, these three working in approximation can add bonuses, hmmm...

Perhaps add bonuses to the Goods demanded as well.

 

[Nightinggale]

I have been thinking a bit about city work radius (the range it can work plots). Rather than just copying the RaR solution, I think it is possible to add a variable to CvCity telling the work radius. The code to set this radius can be set by whatever we want (city type, civ, civics population,buildings etc).

Doing that brings the natural question: any idea on how precisely this can be used?

Also we should be a bit careful here as some people (myself included) claim that increasing the radius is not only good. It is a tradeoff because the game loses something in the process. One major issue is the greatly reduced number of cities. Another issue is native cities use up all the land when each takes 25 plots. There are lots of sideeffects, which should be considered.

One interesting twist would be that if more than say 25% lives in 2 radius cities, then no units can be added to those cities. That would allow big cities, but at the same time some careful planning with large rural areas.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Well, cities can still overlap each other, just because they both cross over on an area, you can choose which city you want to use the land.

In RaR you still have to expand the border through sentiment, and in medi you have to expand it with culture, plus with all the other restrictions you mentioned, it is easy to make it hard to have big cities, and in many cases it will just be easier to stick with a small one, if it has everything it needs to be effective.

As well as it can be restricted to say only towns have the necessary access to buildings to get the larger area, with monasteries and castles only being allowed to be small.

Plus with all those extra factors you mentioned, surely it can be set that barb towns only use the original 8?

 

[orlanth]

As a slightly OCD person I can easily go crazy in Civ4 trying to patch together a grid of cities so land does not get wasted, then go even more insane when position of a single AI city totally wrecks my grand plan

I think I'm in favor of a larger city radius too since it enables population maximums and more buildingclasses to actually get used (in RaR before the change many buildingclasses would never get used or built). The larger radius also eases micromanagement and looks and feels way more realistic on the map. But one somewhat jarring thing about having both 1-radius and 2-radius "fat cross" cities is it makes city placement even more of an OCD nightmare with oodles of opportunities for wasted terrain. You needed to place cities wide apart while still only using a tiny area initially, then you'd get a huge sudden "jump" in your lands when the city expands to the 2-radius "fat cross" using Bells/Culture growth. In RaR that jump could be also somewhat problematic, since people had posted about it being game-able to easily seize free land from nearby Natives, or unexpectedly enrage them from a sudden 1 to 2 radius jump when you wouldve been willing to pay for a small amount of additional land.

One actual good thing about Civ5 (blasphemy) is how cities expand in a gradual organic way, growing by one tile at a time and using a combo of Culture and land purchases for gradual expansion in a flexible area, rather than a sudden binary "jump" to a rigid "fat cross" grid per city like in Civ4. I dunno if anything like this would be possible with the Civ4 engine, maybe not but any general steps toward more gradual expansion would be good.

In Civ4Col there is a percentage Cultural ownership per tile, do you think it could be realistic to use this for a more gradual/organic city plot expansion rather than a sudden "jump" from 1-radius to 2-radius fat cross?

 

[Kailric]

I have been thinking a bit about city work radius (the range it can work plots). Rather than just copying the RaR solution, I think it is possible to add a variable to CvCity telling the work radius. The code to set this radius can be set by whatever we want (city type, civ, civics population,buildings etc).

Doing that brings the natural question: any idea on how precisely this can be used?

This would be a good addition for a larger mod, like WH, but I would want to keep M:C like it is. At least until we have the mod to a more final stage where we can more easily playtest a huge change like this.

One thing I dabbled in a while back was making it so that a single plot could be worked by more than one city. I actually had it working for the most part, except I remember I wasn't exactly happy with for some reason. Anyway, I thought this would be a cool addition for maybe some types of civics so if two cities have overlapping borders they can still work all plots.

Another thing that is cool about Col is that you don't even need Plots right. All your citizens can work in buildings and not even have to worry about in the field plots. Everything even Food could be generated from a building, or shipped in from other cities, so this is an option as well, and maybe something we can use for Castles and or Monasteries.

 

[Nightinggale]

One actual good thing about Civ5 (blasphemy)

is how cities expand in a gradual organic way, growing by one tile at a time and using a combo of Culture and land purchases for gradual expansion in a flexible area, rather than a sudden binary "jump" to a rigid "fat cross" grid per city like in Civ4. I dunno if anything like this would be possible with the Civ4 engine, maybe not but any general steps toward more gradual expansion would be good.

C2C doesn't expand in waves like vanilla. Instead it earn points and takes on plot at a time and get the one with the highest AI value. At least that is how I think it works, because I only just discovered it in the documents and haven't investigated ingame or in source yet. However regardless of how or what they did, that approach sounds interesting.

 

[Nightinggale]

One thing I dabbled in a while back was making it so that a single plot could be worked by more than one city. I actually had it working for the most part, except I remember I wasn't exactly happy with for some reason. Anyway, I thought this would be a cool addition for maybe some types of civics so if two cities have overlapping borders they can still work all plots.

That would allow 4 cities to harvest from the same super bonus plot. Imagine doing that in RaR with a gold mine
There is also the problem that you increase the counter for plot being worked each time a city extracts yields from it. This mean the counter will trigger 4 times each turn. I'm not sure I like this concept.

Another thing that is cool about Col is that you don't even need Plots right. All your citizens can work in buildings and not even have to worry about in the field plots. Everything even Food could be generated from a building, or shipped in from other cities, so this is an option as well, and maybe something we can use for Castles and or Monasteries.

That is actually a fairly good point. We should have a profession costing 50 food, which then delivers 50 food when founding. That way it will be easier to found in really poor terrain, like a mining "colony" in the mountains. I did something like that in RaR in slow covered hills because it clustered silver mines in that area. Silver miners alone ate more than the city produced. Feeder service is really awesome for something like that. Feeder service also supplied all lumber because the colony couldn't produce any itself.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yeah, I don't know if I like the multi work plot either, it seems way too overkill, you could make massive cluster cities, that all work the same plots... Perhaps if we could link it to certain kinds of improvements or something, so you could for example build an 'Intensive Farm' that can be 'multiworked' but not mines, or forests or whatever, that way you can avoid people going crazy on super expensive luxury harvesting.

The other thing you can do would be making the multiwork improvements have a really high upkeep, so that you pay more than you 'get' so it is not an ideal solution, but sometimes it is the best or most secure solution, thus making it worth paying out for.

In my head for WH, I am working through the idea of Production Improvements (That let you generate a second or third tier yield on a plot) Like a weapons factory, and also buildings in cities that allow you to generate plot resources (Linke a monastery garden or allotments making food), but both would be less efficient than their 'proper' counterparts.

So for example a plot factory would generate 3 Rifles when worked, but a rifle factory in town would produce 6+ per person, but it would require the input yields, so there are upsides and downsides to both systems.

 

[Kailric]

That is actually a fairly good point. We should have a profession costing 50 food, which then delivers 50 food when founding. That way it will be easier to found in really poor terrain, like a mining "colony" in the mountains. I did something like that in RaR in slow covered hills because it clustered silver mines in that area. Silver miners alone ate more than the city produced. Feeder service is really awesome for something like that. Feeder service also supplied all lumber because the colony couldn't produce any itself.

You're on to something there. I really like that idea and it could solve the issue of settlements starting with extra buildings. We could have a Settler profession that requires 50 food and 50 tools that players start with to found thier first settlement. Then you can either have your any units found a "base camp" or a Settler found a settlement, like now.

This could work for military outposts as well that require 50 food and 50 weapons.

Then we could have an Architect profession perhaps that requires materials enough to build a Castle. This could be instant or perhaps take several turns. Expert Engineers could take less times and or use less materials.

On the multi plot usage, I was only intending it to allow for only two workers. I remember there was the issue if each plot only having allotment for one working city, which would have to be updated to two workings cities, so I stopped my tinkering their as that would require an extensive code rewrite.