Castles ideas.

[sputnik323]

After posting in the FFH forum, it didn’t seem like anyone on the FFH team thought about much about this, but many other people responded, so instead of a repost (cut and paste) I want to combine and edit some of the ideas that came out of that discussion and see if the FF crowd likes them better. (FF moders seems to think much more outside the box)

Forts and castles can have a bigger role in this game, and add a whole new level of play.

Inside cultural borders:
It would be cool if a unit that is garrisoned in the fort adds the palace defender (renamed to fort – keep – and castle defender) promotion to cities near the fort or castle. Forts give +1 defense, castles and keeps like are the same as palace defender and give +2 defense and a castle near the capital gives +3. Keeps have a ranged attack ability similar to archers, and castles have an ability to range attack similar to catapults. These abilities only exist when a unit is on the castle tile square and using a “garrison the castle (fort, keep)” ability. Magic races could have a new upgrade instead of castle (a mages tower) that has the same ability but can create fireballs to throw at attackers. This promotion is lost and given to the enemy if they take the fort tile and use “garrison the castle” ability, although they lose the promotion if they leave the castle, just as other units lose the promotions when they leave the city. Archers also have the wall defender promotion inside the castle tile.

Outside cultural borderers:
This is where the idea really got interesting in the other thread. That castles outside cultural borders with a unit “Garrisoned” inside produces a small amount of culture. Forts don’t give culture outside the fort tile, but allows them to grow to keeps and castles. Keeps and castles have +1 tile range for cultural borders. When a unit that is garrisoning the castle leaves the castle, the cultural borders disappear just as if a city was destroyed. This new design works as a way to buffer your borders from attackers, allows you to collect rare resources without wasting a settler or city in crappy terrain, and controls barbarians from getting to far into your territory.

Can anyone see reasons why NOT to do this?
Go here for getting part of the coding – added by Mailbox
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=288728

 

[Valkrionn]

This would make an amazing game option. As it stands now, I hardly touch forts.... not enough of an advantage in them when the AI circles far enough away from them that if you have to exit the fort in order to fight. Only time I really use them is if I take an enemy's fort... Good place to heal up.

 

[sputnik323]

It seems that modmodders have taken forts and castles to new abilities... just another step to make them more strategic for attacking forces, homeland defense, and resourse and border control. Im glad you think likewise Valkrionn.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

hey, I like that quite a lot actually. point 2) is nice, there's a modcomp for vanilla out there that allows that and it's a great addition. point 1) is awesome! mages tower for the amurites sound great, and I really like the idea of holdfasts givind ranged attack to units inside. one could also take it one step beyond and think of some different versions of forts for different civs.

 

[sputnik323]

Does anyone know how to code this? I would be interested in learning how - help get the ball rolling on this idea, but I dont even know to use civ editors..

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It isn't hard (in FF) to give out free promotions only while on specific improvements (using <PrereqImprovements>, <bMustMaintain>, and <bAutoAcquire>). Giving them out to units in cities with improvements nearby or giving out better promotions when near the capital is much harder, and I seriously doubt it would be with adding the extra load on the processor.

Promotions can handle all the range changes easily (using the <iAirCombat>, <iAirCombatLimitBoost>, and <iAirRangeChange> tags). I'd probably say that mage towers should grant promotions giving summon perks/xp gain/spell damage boosts/spell resistance boosts instead of allowing more spells. You could now make improvements themselves "cast spells" when units get within 1 tile of them too, but I don't think this is necessary in this case. I would however like to change Citadels of Light to be a Malakim unique fort (or citadel) that does direct fire damage and maybe also has the effect of revelation on approaching units, and to make Chancels of the Guardians an Elohim unique fort that sanctifies and heals.


It would be rather hard to create an alternate version of a upgrade of forts. I guess you could instead give them a spell that changes a normal castle to a mage tower, or make it be built directly. I'd like to borrow code from Jeckel and make it so that the fort improvements don't auto-upgrade, but rather bust be built on top of an existing improvement.


The culture generation/border alteration is rather tricky, and again processor-intensive, but it can be done. A method similar to Jeckel's would probably be better.

 

[sputnik323]

Promotions are added to units directly when a unit enters the city such as iron weapons. Couldn't a "garrisoned" fort (one with a unit using that ability) count as a resource giving units in the nearest city the palace guard promotion, and promotions like it? even if it requires a road it seems like that may work? but again that may use up too much processor, honestly I have no idea.

Could range change exclude non city tiles? so all units near the castle get the promotion then exclude non city tiles so its within a range but still in a city?

I like the idea of building on top of existing forts to upgrade - but I think some of the other ideas that have come up about forts would need to be implimented to make it worth the effort to build them. I also like race specific abilities of forts, good ideas!

You think that these things could be added to what Jeckel has already done?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm not quite sure I understand you.

Giving out weapons promotions is "pseudo-hard coded." (The DLL searches GlobalDefinesAlt.xml for the weapons promotions and the resources needed for them and if these defines exist, the unit has the proper tier, and the city has the right resource, then it gives the promotion. Kael doesn't consider this hard coding, but I do.) It could probably be changed to work in forts too, but this would require changing the DLL. I'm not sure, but this is probably something simple enough for me to handle myself if I wanted, although I'm no expert in C++ coding. It certainly isn't beyond Xienwolf's skills.

(Actually, the weapons promotions in FF could be set to work pretty well without the FfH code for them at all, but without changing something in the DLL then they could be obtained when the resource is connected to the capital instead of the city or fort where the unit is.)

This method could be extended to work like weapons promotions, but that is a horrible implementation for this. Forts would have to destroy a resource to produce something fairly useless (and this would have to be added or removed by python calls when units move into and out of the tile, which could be a nightmare for processors), new pseudo-hard coding would have to be added, and it would be applied in all cities which are connected to the city nearest the forts. It would makes more sense to change the DLL so that it cycles though the tiles of each city radius looking through the improvements on the tiles and grants perks based on a new tag in CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml, or to make new tags in CIV4PromotionInfos.xml to give perks based on what is in the city radius. These (especially the second one) would slow things down somewhat though, and I don't think it is worth it.

Edit: I just thought of a better implementation. There is a modcomp out there that grants buildings in cities based on improvements in the city radius. I believe that this is a fairly efficient DLL modcomp, but a similar effect could be handled by a python call at the start of each turn (if you want having the fort being occupied to be a prereq the python way may be better). Either way, it would be very easy to make this building grant the promotion instead. If it only checks once per turn instead of every time a unit moves in or out of the fort then this wouldn't be all that hard on the computer.


What do you mean by "non city tiles"? No tile but the city itself? That would be stupid, since you could only target your own/allied units. No tiles out of the city radius maybe? I can't think of any way to do either. Maybe to only have the promotion applied when the city is within a city radius? Could be done, but I believe it would require a python call that could slow things down.



I don't see why you are trying to make everything boost cities like this. I think boosting the forts within your borders is a much better implementation anyway.

I'd also like to remove a C++ block that stops you from building improvements, including forts, on city tiles. (I'd like it if you'd need to build improvements to get resources on city tiles too, but from what I've seen in the SDK that would be extremely difficult.)


All the ideas I've proposed (except those in parentheses) are either quite possible now or quite possible after including code from some of Jeckel's modcomps. I really think that we need to get Xienwolf to implement (the equivalent of) these modcomps.

 

[xienwolf]

If you were to re-write the Weapons system using FF codebase instead of the "Pseudo-Hardcoding" method, you would set it up like as requires the resource, autoacquire, noXP, requires In City, and then have Mithril grant Immunity to Bronze & Iron, and Iron Immunity to Bronze. Then you would have to list every unit who is allowed to use each of the weapon promotions in the PrereqUnit list. You could skip the last part and allow it based on Unitcombat alone, but with how the Weapon Tiers are spread around it would be best to list out all of the units who can use each weapon. Unless I created a PrereqWeaponTier field and just forgot about it. If I did create such a field it was specifically to do that very change, and then I forgot to set it up

 

[Valkrionn]

Sounds to me like that would be a more efficient way of doing than the way it's handled in FfH, especially if you added PrereqWeaponTier field.... The code would need much less space that way.

 

[sputnik323]

@xienwolf - re-writing the whole system seems like a ton of work... but in the end I think strategically it would be worth it.

I think it would be awsome to change the dynamics of siege warfare that attacking forces would want to capture a fort by a city before attacking the city and then have the fort benifit the attackers. Thus the defenders would want to hold the fort almost at all costs. It adds much more strategy to holding cities and taking cities

 

[xienwolf]

Oh... I just never posted in this thread, but right after making that post I did go through and retool how Weapons are handled in Fall Further. It is now trivial to invent weapon tiers beyond Tier 3. But the weapon system discussion was completely seperate from the intent of this thread, the castle redesigning

 

[deadliver]

I'd like to see forts, castles and citadels also yield some sort of commerce. In the real world these structures acted as a trade center in civilized territory. You know nothing major, just one commerce.

 

[zup]

What's the point? Who builds forts inside city radius? Infernals and Scions, but that's it.

 

[sputnik323]

In the orbi mod, castles actually give a production and commerce bonus. As well as defensive bonus to units nearby. i build them near all my cities in that mod. I think there should be multiple uses for forts and castles. One to give bonuses to cities, and the other as a zone of control (with buildible traps) and as outposts for rare resources. The romans didn't spend all their time building excessive defenses of rome. The first line was a series of forts and walls.
I would also like to see the great wall wonder to add more defensive bonus - without clear defensive bonuses and buildings and wonders, every civ may as well be offensive.

 

[deadliver]

In the orbi mod, castles actually give a production and commerce bonus. As well as defensive bonus to units nearby. i build them near all my cities in that mod. I think there should be multiple uses for forts and castles. One to give bonuses to cities, and the other as a zone of control (with buildible traps) and as outposts for rare resources. The romans didn't spend all their time building excessive defenses of rome. The first line was a series of forts and walls.
I would also like to see the great wall wonder to add more defensive bonus - without clear defensive bonuses and buildings and wonders, every civ may as well be offensive.

Cool, castles were centers of trade in the area. Even if there were cities in the area castles were still useful, perhaps not as much for commerce but still provided something to the local economy (if not just encouraging people to settle around the castle).

What if citadels could give a commerce boost to surrounding hamlets or villages?