Castle Building

[Kailric]

Say we have a production type for buildings (weavers, winemaker etc). We can then have set a limit to how many production buildings we can have in a city. This limit can be affected by whatever we like, such as other buildings, population or tech. Those buildings will then not have a location on the city screen like the buildingInfos have right now. Instead the city has slots for production buildings, which fills up with the buildings we build in the order they are build.

The end result will be to make it possible to have say 8 production buildings, but only 3 slots meaning we will only have to reserve room for those 3 buildings. This frees up room for other buildings or whatever we like. We can also do stuff like only placing two slots in monasteries because we need more room for holy buildings or whatever.

I don't think this will be hard to do. I already rewrote the python code to place buildings into using XML to place buildings rather than python meaning we are no longer using vanilla code to draw buildings. This mean the code in question is known, both in location and behavior.

That could work well. For instance Monasteries could only have room for 3 industries but you can choose which three. So, how does this "XML to place buildings" work, I must have missed or forgot about that?

 

[Nightinggale]

So, how does this "XML to place buildings" work, I must have missed or forgot about that?

It's precisely the same as how it used to be in python. The difference is that the x,y numbers are written in XML (specialBuildingInfo if I recall correctly). The only thing we gained here is to move the setup from python to XML. Nothing else, but it is an important difference because multiple mods use the same python files while they have unique XML files.

There is a debug setting you can enable, which forces it to constantly reload the XML file. While it really slows down the game, it mean you can get live updates from moving buildings around in XML. Well live as in it reloads and redraws every 5 or 10 seconds or whatever number I wrote in python.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

that is really nice!

 

[orlanth]

I like your ideas of some special buildings for citytypes. But about losing land, I have to say I would really dread that as it seems it could become a micro management nightmare. Maybe with 2-plot city radius that might work but with just 8 tiles I would hate losing them esp. as its hard to predict & manage which are lost and you presumably located and designed your city to benefit from and work well with its surrounding land (I'm already OCD enough about city placement) Anyway, cities/castles/monasteries were really quite modest in total land mass relative to their surrounding countryside which they remained able to get their food & supplies from.

(BTW one cool thing I think is in either BtS or FfH is the ability to have buildings that get an extra boost from having a certain Bonus Resource locally within the city radius. Ie, Tanner gives its usual benefits but also something like plus 1 hammer per Cow or Pig within the city tile radius. This adds flavor & uniqueness making cities more individualized in that they react to the local surroundings and aren't all just similar blocks of production buildings.

Maybe for the population max thing, you could make it like Health works in Civ4. There could be some buildings which add or subtract Health, and having negative Health value creates a penalty to population growth via the Food counter rather than clamping it off entirely.

I especially like your idea of bringing back discoverable/emerging Bonus resources from Civ4Bts. (If you didn't find out already <iArea> in Bonusinfos can make them continent-specific which is cool. About adding on connection bonuses for cities, be very cautious since that would serve to reinforce the "runaway victory" tendency for any player who starts getting more cities than others (ie this now gets amplified by rapidly stacking bonuses, and since each additional bonus gets applied to multiple connected cities this would start having an almost exponential effect on total economy). This runaway economy is already present when yield production and income really starts ramping up in the late game, so what's needed is mainly an auto-balancing mechanism that decreases prices/income or makes you do something to generate more Demand when massive production and sales is getting too easy for you.

 

[Kailric]

I like your ideas of some special buildings for citytypes. But about losing land, I have to say I would really dread that as it seems it could become a micro management nightmare. Maybe with 2-plot city radius that might work but with just 8 tiles I would hate losing them esp. as its hard to predict & manage which are lost and you presumably located and designed your city to benefit from and work well with its surrounding land (I'm already OCD enough about city placement)

I understand your concerns. I am going to add this for testing, as I am curious how this will play out. Not to worry as it will all be xml moddable.

Anyway, cities/castles/monasteries were really quite modest in total land mass relative to their surrounding countryside which they remained able to get their food & supplies from.

This is true. As you mentioned an extended City radius that could work out with this idea pretty well. Or, perhaps a new idea where there is an extended city radius where Castles and Monasteries are no longer Citytypes but Improvements. They would work like Hamlets in Civ4. They could give extra production to the plot, say like a Monastery could give 3 Wine plus the what ever bonus you farm from it.

(BTW one cool thing I think is in either BtS or FfH is the ability to have buildings that get an extra boost from having a certain Bonus Resource locally within the city radius. Ie, Tanner gives its usual benefits but also something like plus 1 hammer per Cow or Pig within the city tile radius. This adds flavor & uniqueness making cities more individualized in that they react to the local surroundings and aren't all just similar blocks of production buildings.

Yes, I would like Bonus resources to give a bigger benefit. At the moment they are only mediocre at best and not like in Civ4 where when you discover a Bonus nearby you get all excited

I especially like your idea of bringing back discoverable/emerging Bonus resources from Civ4Bts. (If you didn't find out already <iArea> in Bonusinfos can make them continent-specific which is cool.

Yes, I discovered that recently and it could create some interesting game play as well.

About adding on connection bonuses for cities, be very cautious since that would serve to reinforce the "runaway victory" tendency for any player who starts getting more cities than others (ie this now gets amplified by rapidly stacking bonuses, and since each additional bonus gets applied to multiple connected cities this would start having an almost exponential effect on total economy).

There is already restrictions on this. Each city is only allowed One Bonus per connected Citytype. So, if you have a City that gains benefit from a Monastery extra Monasteries add no extra bonus. There could even be more restrictions to say each city type is only allowed to grant its bonus to one other City. The current Cultural bonus I am adding is for creating a Triad of Citytypes: Commerce, Religious, Military. After that, other Commerce Cities that are connected would gain a bonus. There could be a distance limit to this. But, in Col there is only so many Cities that you can manage, on normal games anyway. Making a huge city sprawl is usually counterproductive.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Another factor that will help stop the 'Mass-Expansion' is Military costs, as you will need to defend your cities if someone attacks (My games often end in catastrophe because I do not have enough military) So if it is sufficiently difficult to form a large/powerful military then the player will naturally have to add some caution to their expansion lest they be overrun!

The Buildings get bonus from local bonuses is not a Bts feature, but has been added to several bts mods. (FFH was probably the first) There is one feature I love from Master Of Mana mod, where certain improvements get adjacency bonuses from other improvements, so a Mine might benefit from having a Workshop next to it, or a Farm having a Windmill next to it, that was always fun because it made me think about the improvement infrastructure design.