Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[Thunderbrd]

Say, all normal units get born "Human", as in with "None" culture.
Then, they slowly absorb the culture(s) from the plot they are currently sitting on (could be limited to cities, and could be limited to full-turn-skip).
And when their personal culture % is high enough (say, 51% for zero possible competition flukes), they actually CHANGE to a cultural unit of that culture.
And after that, they can never change to anything else, no matter how much different culture(s) they carry on them as baggage to influence cities and plots.
In other words, you NEVER build unique cultural units altogether - you TRAIN them via cultural influence over time, and it's a ONE-directional switch as well.
How's THAT for an idea, lol?

I want all units to start as carrying the influence they began with. Obviously units like immigrants would, when joining back into a city, strongly take that influence into that merger with them. I don't want to make elite culture units replacements for the units they are based on - at this point, not all of them are even based on a given other unit type template. We divorced the idea of them being replacements a while back.

If you send Roman troops to hold Celtic territory, over time, they rub off on each other. This is one reason you get revolutionary sentiments growing on borderlands and so on. Also some pockets of cultural sentiment and differences can emerge from within a nation. There would be units that you could promote to BE influencers - entertainers as a prime example. The idea of any given thing being locked in might apply fine to units that are what they are purely because of their absolute dedication to a given cultural identity, but for most, they should be fluid I think.

And that's just talking culture here. Similar would be special religious units - all other units could have their 'religious unitcombat declaration' vary based on influence %s adopted, but a unit like a Crusader, being a Christian only unit, would only qualify to be trained in a highly Christian city and would remain completely fixed as that religion. Loki Fists, much the same for Asatru, etc...

Now, multi-maps should still be real-time-ish, but my idea was always BEYOND merely several "surface maps" like in ToT.
I'm hoping for something more like Spore, where you have "planet map" alongside "space map", or even more specifically - separate "star system map" and "interstellar map".
And then a bunch of "planet maps" as well, though the latter would be an issue very directly tied to memory limitations, obviously.
But there's one thing that actually makes this rather easier:
1. The maps would be used only one at a time anyways, since it's turn-based. This drastically reduces the memory issue, compared to real time moving maps, like those of Spore.
2. Basically, you should really go for "load all, use at need", kinda exactly like with viewports right now. Heck, that's most probably HOW you gonna do it to begin with, I guess.
This said, and memory limits aside, what exactly is the current problem with implementing the concept itself?
Like, if you use it on a Duel map, then memory is quite not an issue yet, so what IS?

We aren't talking about only having surface maps either, but space maps, even dimensional maps, and even like the fantasy version, subterranean maps (based on the original earth surface map). We'd offstore MOST map info, but if you needed to target another map, we would need the ability to be able to refer to a second map in memory at a time. I'm told modern offloaded data storage could be done pretty quickly to bring in and out. You might feel it some but not intolerably so. How to get the AI to work with it is probably the biggest hitch. Big questions exist as to whether we need a whole new game engine or not.

 

[Somebody613]

@Thunderbrd

Yeah, well, this is exactly why "units with cultures" clash with "culturally unique units" in my view - they represent the exactly opposite concepts "type"-wise.
"Unique" units are born unique and never change, while "culture carrier" units are born basic and... also never change, lol.
Which is plain weird to me, or at least not how I'd like them to work.
That being some way of "real time cultural influence", which is still "confusing" anyways.
Of course, that's just ME, lol.

I realized I was wrong about "not real time maps", though.
They are real time in the sense that:
1. You need to know where to teleport TO, and whether you even CAN.
2. AI needs to know that as well, which is much worse.
3. Unit movement and city building are happening at all "layers" simultaneously (turn-wise).
Thus, all those processes need to be synchronized even when you personally DON'T do anything beyond just one of the maps this turn.
There's still stuff going on by itself out there - and that needs to be addressed on a turn basis.
Pity, really.

Side idea, which may or may not be stupid.
If you somehow managed to make map SIZE changeable during a running game, you could use viewports for "map layers" that are instead just portions of the ONE SINGLE meta-map.
Though, if you'd eliminate the concept of ADDING maps during the game (as in, DON'T allow "random planet discovery", which would be a huge pity), this becomes much more easy to do.
Say, make exactly a map like a current Space map, but with each portion ("layer") of it Gigantic-sized (or anything that you need, obviously), then just "cut it up" with viewports.
We already see something quite similar to it in the mini-map, even without Space - you see only the part of the map that is "currently relevant".
So, apply the same concept to the actual map as well - and you can have "map layers" that in fact are just "pieces of the same map", but "cut up" via viewports.
The downside of this is that you'd have a FIXED number of "partial maps", since it's not multi-map, but multi-cut-map.
But as a starting point, I think this would be good enough, if you make enough "map layers" that are themselves big and detailed enough.
The real problem here is, duh, MEMORY.

 

[Thunderbrd]

also never change, lol.

Ah... but they would. When they have picked up a different cultural influence in stronger amounts than what they began with they would become a representative of the new culture. The graphics, the innuendo of effects that having a culture gives them, the influence they bring to where they are stationed and so on. If you are trying to hold a nation together, it will be important to try to ensure you don't inadvertently spread foreign ideas too much and try to limit yourself to a given cultural identity, however, there is strength to maintaining numerous cultural identities as well. Merging and splitting would obviously make this much more interesting as well as each unit in a merge would bring into the merger its influences. One of the great dangers in war might be allowing your front units to become too identified with foreign culture influences.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you somehow managed to make map SIZE changeable during a running game, you could use viewports for "map layers" that are instead just portions of the ONE SINGLE meta-map.

Thus why viewports was created to fundamentally underline and enable the multimap project. Different maps will likely have different sizes to them, at least relative to the main first Earth map.

Yes, we've been working at this for a very very very long time.

At the moment, I THINK the next main project is to create the generation systems for other map types and to invoke their creation when needed. That and the ability to get a targeting map popup when targeting other maps. Actually being able to have multiple maps in the system and doing stuff on them is IIRC proven possible now thanks to a lot of recent work by MattCA to add on to Koshling's initial efforts. I haven't been able to help a whole lot and memory concerns have demotivated much work on it for now from others who are looking deeper at highly fundamental code architecture changes to support the concept of the off-board database.

 

[Somebody613]

Ah... but they would. When they have picked up a different cultural influence in stronger amounts than what they began with they would become a representative of the new culture. The graphics, the innuendo of effects that having a culture gives them, the influence they bring to where they are stationed and so on. If you are trying to hold a nation together, it will be important to try to ensure you don't inadvertently spread foreign ideas too much and try to limit yourself to a given cultural identity, however, there is strength to maintaining numerous cultural identities as well. Merging and splitting would obviously make this much more interesting as well as each unit in a merge would bring into the merger its influences. One of the great dangers in war might be allowing your front units to become too identified with foreign culture influences.

You totally confused me now.
So will or won't a Japanese-born Swordsman turn into a Samurai, and then will or won't a Roman-to-become Samurai later on turn into a Legionnaire?

 

[Somebody613]

Thus why viewports was created to fundamentally underline and enable the multimap project. Different maps will likely have different sizes to them, at least relative to the main first Earth map.

Yes, we've been working at this for a very very very long time.

At the moment, I THINK the next main project is to create the generation systems for other map types and to invoke their creation when needed. That and the ability to get a targeting map popup when targeting other maps. Actually being able to have multiple maps in the system and doing stuff on them is IIRC proven possible now thanks to a lot of recent work by MattCA to add on to Koshling's initial efforts. I haven't been able to help a whole lot and memory concerns have demotivated much work on it for now from others who are looking deeper at highly fundamental code architecture changes to support the concept of the off-board database.

Well, if you can manage creating maps during the game- you then have the concept of discovering new planets.
Otherwise, you still can make a rather in-depth Solar System meta-map that would play out like a multi-map, while not being one for real, but just cheating with viewports.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You totally confused me now.
So will or won't a Japanese-born Swordsman turn into a Samurai, and then will or won't a Roman-to-become Samurai later on turn into a Legionnaire?

A swordsmen wouldn't turn into a Legionnaire just because they are Roman. A swordsman is still just a standard swordsman and is not elite by training no matter what culture the soldiers that make up the unit consider themselves to be a part of. A Legionnaire is not a replacement for swordsmen, it is an elite version of one you can only produce IF you have strong enough influences of the culture that enables them to be trained. Remember that since we killed the whole idea of 'replacement' units, uniques are elites, not just a 'cultural version of' a type of unit, and some elite cultural units don't even have a basic unit template they are designed from and may be related to nothing else in an absolute sense. Some are blends of two or more other unit types as well. Like some of the battle-priest types.

Well, if you can manage creating maps during the game- you then have the concept of discovering new planets.

Precisely, though for the sake of game management, we may limit how many planets get fully designed past a certain era and keep such resolution of mapping down to only key locations like a hunting world or two, Alien homeworlds, etc...

 

[BlueTemplar]

A samurai is a swordsman, but a swordsman is not a samurai, though.
Meaning that "culturally unique units" make sense not only as "different stats" (which is what promotions are for, by the way), but also more "real life related" as well.
My idea of "sharing cultural unit uniqueness" can be translated into something like a story:
Imagine that a samurai somehow travels to Africa, joins the Zulu tribe and teaches them to not only wields katanas, but also forge samurai armors.
Would a Zulu dude equipped with a katana and wearing a samurai-style armor be called "Zulu Warrior (Samurai)" or would he be called "Samurai (Zulu)"?
Or maybe something else altogether?
That is precisely the topic I raised above regarding the "problem" of cultural units -vs- cultural influences.

Samurai are perhaps not the best example : they were kind of the equivalent of the European knight, so first a military caste, with their bushido code of martial values (which is obviously super-cultural though not completely unique...)

And AFAIK, unlike the mostly heavy cavalry knights they would have been much more polyvalent : firing bows from horseback, but also later firearms (probably not from horseback ?), as well as engaging in melee combat on foot.

IIRC for their swords they would have benefited from a perhaps slightly inferior version of the world-best (until mid-19th century) steel invented in Serendib (today Sri Lanka) circa 300 AD, using the monsoon wind for a steady high-temperature fire in their furnaces - the knowledge (or mostly just the ingots ?) of which slowly spread, then also manufactured in India as wootz steel it became known as "Damascus" steel in Arabic countries and later Europe...

Of course the Romans didn't know that technique, their steel swords were inferior even at the pinnacle of their civilization.

And it doesn't make much sense to speak of Roman Samurai, since they are a good millenium apart...

But then we're pretty much discussing alternate history here, where you can totally imagine a Roman empire that would have continued for another 1000-1500 years (heck, the Eastern Roman empire did !), long enough to start importing Indian wootz steel ingots and to be invaded by the Japanese and then steal the secrets firearm-making from them, like the Japanese did from the Portuguese in our world... but would they go as far as to adopt an early modern military caste system ??

 

[Somebody613]

@BlueTemplar
I was using random unit types without any reference to real life history, loool.
My point was only about whether "having a cultural influence" would lead to "transforming into a more specialized and unique unit type", and whether it would trigger twice, and nothing else.
I could specifically look for unit types that WOULD represent something that "could've happened in a slight AU" - I just don't need to, since that's not the core of point anyways.

 

[BlueTemplar]

Fair point, I got carried away...

But while at it, I might as well point out something that has been bugging me :

The Ancient Era advancement Copper Working unlocks a bunch of IRL-Classical Era units like the Greek Phalanx !

Now, Greeks had both a Classical civilization (familiar to us, often confusingly called "Ancient" Greece), but also AFAIK had an Ancient civilization before that (which collapsed, and of which we hardly know anything about, except that Classical Greeks had some tales about that...

But the phalanx (and its non-Greek equivalents) is firmly in the Classical era - IIRC the Iliad, set at the very beginning of the Classical era, doesn't have it yet (and also still features soon to be obsolete chariot-delivered combat).

C2C-wise it's probably even worse from the point of view of materials used :
(after all Obsidian weapons are set in Prehistoric even though they would have been used up to the early modern era in Southern America, for lack of anything better...) :

a phalanx was an Iron age formation of heavy (for the time) infantry : hoplites in Classical Greece.
While their wooden shield (aspis) would have a bronze (not copper !) covering, and the richest of them would have bronze armor, the spear(head) (and their sword) would have been made of iron (not steel yet ?). No iron, no phalanx !

This is very different from the several thousand years older copper axes evolving into the Ancient Sumerian & Ancient Egyptian bronze khopesh !

But gameplay matters too, and perhaps moving them to the early Classical Iron Working would also bring them too close to the Roman-style heavy infantry (which was better than Macedonian phalanx, itself better than Greek phalanx).

So maybe they (and other similar IRL-Classical era cultural units) should be instead moved from Copper Working to (or around) late Ancient Bronze Working ?

 

[Maltazard]

I guess it depends on your approach to the concept of culture, if using a constructivist approach there would be no real reason why roman samurais wouldn't be a thing under the right circumstances. But constructivism makes no sense. In other words, there is a fixed element to the roman culture and the legionnaire unit, as there is one between japanese culture and samurai, and a japanese legionnaire or a roman samurai make no sense in a historical setting. In a post modern one, sure, go on ahead and add flying pigs to the mix.
Continuing from a storicist point of view, you might end up having a chinese samurai perhaps. It would likely have a different name, but would be otherwise pretty much the same thing. Culture bridges exist - but only within "next of kin cultures". Same as why you need european and middle eastern culture group to build Byzantine culture, or european and south american culture to build argentinian culture. Why can't you build argentinian culture with say, asian and south american culture? From a constructivist point of view that would be possible, from a storicist/materialist one, a mix of asian and south american culture would not be argentinian culture but something completely different,deserving its own name and all, and not comparable. Should we add made up cultural mixes to account for different kinds of colonialism? What if we have a game where it's south americans colonizing oceanians? How do you represent that? This isn't Rhye's fall of civ after all, we're not entirely historically driven...

This is why alternative timeline scenarios are always so hard to pull off... you're basically making stuff up and affording yourself as much rope to pull as you see fit. Too much and it's unbelievable, too little and it's not enough of a deviation from history. See for instance Kaiserreich mod for HoI4 for a plausible yet amusing alternate history.

 

[Somebody613]

I did bring up the topic of RFC in the past, by the way - regarding the Earth map.
The problem here is that C2C modders are stuck indecisively in the middle between "historicity" and "mix-and-match", and that... sucks for the end result.
If we go by "historicity", then we should also limit the game to RF-style Earth-only maps.
Any other maps and games would inevitably break "historical accuracy", and then it'd be pointless to "stick to historical cultures" anyways.
But if we go for full "mix-and-match", then we bump into the problem of "is this even what we call it"?
And it usually won't be, since it would be "born" under different "historical" circumstances and under different conditions.
"Roman Samurai" then doesn't mean that Romans went all the way to Japan and learned to craft weapons and armor like the locals.
Nope, it merely means a "mix-and-match" that REPRESENTS certain "qualities" of what kinda stands in for "Roman" and for "Samurai", but not literally "historically".
This becomes more of a "stats thing", simply giving the "Roman" units some "Samurai" stats (whatever those be), and hence "renaming" the end result to reflect those "stat changes" all along.
Sure, this is what *I* would very much *like*, indeed - but this isn't necessarily what the *modders* ever had in mind, nor ever will have.

 

[Maltazard]

Then we would have to give each culture/ethnicity some weighted values, such as individualism vs collectivism, discipline vs passion, and so on. Values which can be represented through a promotion on a combat unit with a definite effect. We already have similar things for stuff like martial arts promotions, ie bushido and pankration, which are also cultural promotions in a sense, since they're part of a specific cultural identity, from a historical point of view. But then in C2C you can embrace hellenism as a japanese civilization and have a pankration trained samurai.

 

[Somebody613]

Then we would have to give each culture/ethnicity some weighted values, such as individualism vs collectivism, discipline vs passion, and so on. Values which can be represented through a promotion on a combat unit with a definite effect. We already have similar things for stuff like martial arts promotions, ie bushido and pankration, which are also cultural promotions in a sense, since they're part of a specific cultural identity, from a historical point of view. But then in C2C you can embrace hellenism as a japanese civilization and have a pankration trained samurai.

That's where the "indecision" starts.
On one hand, you do have units called "Samurai", who also look like "Samurai" (even if built by African-Romans).
On another hand, you have "cultures" that enable those "special units" and also can be carried from civ to civ like any resource (and then used by that civ, regardless of what its "name" is).
The end result of all that... is way too confusing as of right now.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Then we would have to give each culture/ethnicity some weighted values, such as individualism vs collectivism, discipline vs passion, and so on. Values which can be represented through a promotion on a combat unit with a definite effect. We already have similar things for stuff like martial arts promotions, ie bushido and pankration, which are also cultural promotions in a sense, since they're part of a specific cultural identity, from a historical point of view. But then in C2C you can embrace hellenism as a japanese civilization and have a pankration trained samurai.

This is where it could be possible to have other values in their own 'ideas category' that are in competition, such as individualism vs collectivism vs whatever other options would fall in that grouping. These values may then help to promote particular cultures that match those values and push out cultures that are opposed to them.

Interesting.

Still, I think its important to make the distinction here that Samurai are not Japanese Swordsmen. They are a completely unique unit of their own. You would be able to train both Samurai AND generic swordsmen that are nowhere near as well trained nor qualified to be dignified with the Samurai title, even if you were 100% Japanese in your producing city, as was historically accurate in Japan where you wouldn't dare to designate a common footsoldier swordsman as a lofty Samurai. They simply don't have that kind of skill nor dedication and are probably going to go back to being peasants when their military service ends.

 

[Somebody613]

This is where it could be possible to have other values in their own 'ideas category' that are in competition, such as individualism vs collectivism vs whatever other options would fall in that grouping. These values may then help to promote particular cultures that match those values and push out cultures that are opposed to them.

Interesting.

Still, I think its important to make the distinction here that Samurai are not Japanese Swordsmen. They are a completely unique unit of their own. You would be able to train both Samurai AND generic swordsmen that are nowhere near as well trained nor qualified to be dignified with the Samurai title, even if you were 100% Japanese in your producing city, as was historically accurate in Japan where you wouldn't dare to designate a common footsoldier swordsman as a lofty Samurai. They simply don't have that kind of skill nor dedication and are probably going to go back to being peasants when their military service ends.

Both points bring us back directly to the dilemma of "do we go strictly by real history cultures, or do we go by abstract concepts to define pseudo-cultures", and it's kinda unsolvable, sadly.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Both points bring us back directly to the dilemma of "do we go strictly by real history cultures, or do we go by abstract concepts to define pseudo-cultures", and it's kinda unsolvable, sadly.

Well, it's another discussion anyhow.

I have the same issue with leader figureheads for the mortal leaders project I've long wanted to install. With that, I am wanting to make it possible for a totally random leader configuration attached to a totally random leader name for the culture/era the leader is being presented in and of course a rather random set of xml data assignments to those purely in-game defined 'random' leaders. It is possible we could develop some similar random parameters for new cultures to fill gaps in the tree that you'd only find in the given savegame with those exact details. Even some range of name randomization may be possible to build into the system, along with some random 'boost' benefits to assign to those cultures, even possible random unique units and buildings. You could get a game that presents a culture that requires coast and apples and South American heritage, while giving a unique version of a Javelineer that gets called a 'Nantophosite' (thanks to a random name generator system) that gets an extra first strike and a 10% early withdrawal boost (all on a list of random adjustments that would apply to a Javelineer). The culture would come up around the time Javelineers are in play and a randomized hero is even accessible by said culture. Anyhow, if we can make entire foreign worldmaps totally random, we can do the same with uniquely ingame generated cultures to share with predefined ones.

 

[Somebody613]

Well, it's another discussion anyhow.

I have the same issue with leader figureheads for the mortal leaders project I've long wanted to install. With that, I am wanting to make it possible for a totally random leader configuration attached to a totally random leader name for the culture/era the leader is being presented in and of course a rather random set of xml data assignments to those purely in-game defined 'random' leaders. It is possible we could develop some similar random parameters for new cultures to fill gaps in the tree that you'd only find in the given savegame with those exact details. Even some range of name randomization may be possible to build into the system, along with some random 'boost' benefits to assign to those cultures, even possible random unique units and buildings. You could get a game that presents a culture that requires coast and apples and South American heritage, while giving a unique version of a Javelineer that gets called a 'Nantophosite' (thanks to a random name generator system) that gets an extra first strike and a 10% early withdrawal boost (all on a list of random adjustments that would apply to a Javelineer). The culture would come up around the time Javelineers are in play and a randomized hero is even accessible by said culture. Anyhow, if we can make entire foreign worldmaps totally random, we can do the same with uniquely ingame generated cultures to share with predefined ones.

I guess this literally means you have to branch out into [C2C: Earth] and [C2C: Custom], and go for two totally separate rule sets regarding cultures.
The former would then drift much closer to RFC (almost literally, but much more complex in details), while the latter would become strictly a Random Planet Generator with all that this entails.
And, let's be honest, I'd enjoy BOTH, loool.

 

[Thunderbrd]

They'd probably overlap so you'd have fixed cultures but some amount of generated random ones in there too to fill gaps at specified junctures where players may wander into Real World undeveloped territory.

 

[BlueTemplar]

This is where it could be possible to have other values in their own 'ideas category' that are in competition, such as individualism vs collectivism vs whatever other options would fall in that grouping. These values may then help to promote particular cultures that match those values and push out cultures that are opposed to them.

Well, we already have this, don't we, thanks to the Civics system !

So, a bit like Christianism allows for King's Richard's Crusade spawning Crusaders,
and perhaps more closely, how Vassal Levies civic allows for King's Tournament,

you would require Vassal Levies Military civic, or Vassalage Rule civic, or Caste System Society civic (?), or Divine Right (??) Power civic in order to be able to build Samurai (on top of the other requirements).

This might require making stuff you can build enabled/disabled by civics much more discoverable though, especially in the city build screen...

Still, I think its important to make the distinction here that Samurai are not Japanese Swordsmen. They are a completely unique unit of their own. You would be able to train both Samurai AND generic swordsmen that are nowhere near as well trained nor qualified to be dignified with the Samurai title, even if you were 100% Japanese in your producing city, as was historically accurate in Japan where you wouldn't dare to designate a common footsoldier swordsman as a lofty Samurai. They simply don't have that kind of skill nor dedication and are probably going to go back to being peasants when their military service ends.

Yeah, that's why I said they were closer to knights... (IRL ones, no idea about C2C ones)

But also I should have looked it up in C2C earlier : the only thing they have currently in common in C2C with Swordsmen are the requirements ?

C2C Samurai are actually somewhat closer to a mix between Heavy Axeman and Crossbowman ! (I think I like it !)

P.S.: It would be perhaps better to have two units : the one we already have "Medieval" "Early Samurai" with (also) bows, and also another "Modern" "Late Samurai" with (also) matchlock guns ?

It is possible we could develop some similar random parameters for new cultures to fill gaps in the tree that you'd only find in the given savegame with those exact details.

Sounds great !