Design: Resources

[Xereq]

Resource villages? Provide access to monster units or other civ’s exclusive units. These villages may need to be harvested to produce resource-type emigrants that can be settled in a city that will be able to produce the special units.

I've read the discussion on this so far, and it’s really fascinating, I hope this concept is on the agenda.


I was thinking up some ideas for when I start my mod this summer and I started to think about the nature of resources in civilizations. In Civ3 there was always enough to go around if you wanted to share, it would be concentrated in certain regions and some civs would have more access than others, but generally by the end of the game the best civilization could have one of everything.
Playing through the various incarnations/releases of FfH, I found that sometimes, even if you scoured two continents, you would not find someone to trade with you for that special resource you needed to build that special unit. I was a bit frustrated when I was in a position where I could not create any disciple units because the resources for each one were beyond my grasp.
I don’t think I've ever built a single horseman in all the times I have played. Then again, I don't regenerate the map when I am in a bad position. Still, I like what the scarcity of requisite resources does; it makes certain civilizations unique in their capacity to produce a type of units in a given game.
This really hurts sometimes though. So that started me thinking, how else could resources be used to differentiate game play experience, but still allow you the full experience of using almost every technology you have gained and fit with a fantasy gaming experience? Legendary Resources.
Resources that can only benefit the closest city to them, or even only are accessed by working the tile they are in. They can make that specific city able to build unique buildings or resources that differentiate them from all other cites on the globe, and even make them more dangerous to maintain. A Wyvern's nest resource could give a bonus to gold and the ability to build 3 national 'trained wyvern' or 'wyvern rider' units, but has a chance of spawning a 'rogue wyvern' barbarian unit that will pillage the countryside and lay siege to your cities. (Wyverns could use the hawk model and animations with a dragon head and tail and legs)
You could also make it so that rangers with animal empathy (do they get it free?) who are level three or higher, could enter a nest and be upgraded/ or sacrificed to tamed monster/monster rider.
There could also be other legedary resources, blue marble that lets you build a great water temple that grants 3 water mana and/or grants divine 1 and water I & II to all disciple units built there (etc. for all mana types), standing stones that grant animal empathy to all unity built in the city and allows you to build a building that grants all units built in the city woodsman II, Rich mountains which allow several types of mines to be built, each one granting access to a different type of metal/stone to the closest city.
There's my idea. If it would fit with your mod, that’s awesome, I would love to see it implemented. If not, I will simply have to get my design team working on it...If I can ever assemble one as great as you guys.

Btw Kael and design team Inc.,
How did you guys get together and started on this mod? Is it covered in your how to design a mod thread? If I started a mod would you guys be willing to lend a hand now and again. Thanks in advance (for an answer.)
-Xereq

 

[Kael]

I've read the discussion on this so far, and it’s really fascinating, I hope this concept is on the agenda.

Yeap, is scheduled for a add feature in "Shadow".

I was thinking up some ideas for when I start my mod this summer and I started to think about the nature of resources in civilizations. In Civ3 there was always enough to go around if you wanted to share, it would be concentrated in certain regions and some civs would have more access than others, but generally by the end of the game the best civilization could have one of everything.
Playing through the various incarnations/releases of FfH, I found that sometimes, even if you scoured two continents, you would not find someone to trade with you for that special resource you needed to build that special unit. I was a bit frustrated when I was in a position where I could not create any disciple units because the resources for each one were beyond my grasp.
I don’t think I've ever built a single horseman in all the times I have played. Then again, I don't regenerate the map when I am in a bad position. Still, I like what the scarcity of requisite resources does; it makes certain civilizations unique in their capacity to produce a type of units in a given game.
This really hurts sometimes though. So that started me thinking, how else could resources be used to differentiate game play experience, but still allow you the full experience of using almost every technology you have gained and fit with a fantasy gaming experience? Legendary Resources.
Resources that can only benefit the closest city to them, or even only are accessed by working the tile they are in. They can make that specific city able to build unique buildings or resources that differentiate them from all other cites on the globe, and even make them more dangerous to maintain. A Wyvern's nest resource could give a bonus to gold and the ability to build 3 national 'trained wyvern' or 'wyvern rider' units, but has a chance of spawning a 'rogue wyvern' barbarian unit that will pillage the countryside and lay siege to your cities. (Wyverns could use the hawk model and animations with a dragon head and tail and legs)
You could also make it so that rangers with animal empathy (do they get it free?) who are level three or higher, could enter a nest and be upgraded/ or sacrificed to tamed monster/monster rider.
There could also be other legedary resources, blue marble that lets you build a great water temple that grants 3 water mana and/or grants divine 1 and water I & II to all disciple units built there (etc. for all mana types), standing stones that grant animal empathy to all unity built in the city and allows you to build a building that grants all units built in the city woodsman II, Rich mountains which allow several types of mines to be built, each one granting access to a different type of metal/stone to the closest city.
There's my idea. If it would fit with your mod, that’s awesome, I would love to see it implemented. If not, I will simply have to get my design team working on it...If I can ever assemble one as great as you guys.

Btw Kael and design team Inc.,
How did you guys get together and started on this mod? Is it covered in your how to design a mod thread? If I started a mod would you guys be willing to lend a hand now and again. Thanks in advance (for an answer.)
-Xereq

Yeah, the design a mod thread offers pretty good advice. I started FfH and released the first version on my own. Based on that I got a lot of feedback and offers to help from people much more talented than I am. I really believe you have to be ready to go on your own and be thankful of any help you get. I see a lot of requests for teams go out before the leader has put much work into the project and those projects typically don't do well.

So first comes the mod (at least an early version), then come the people to help with it.

Im always willing to help and answer question for other mod makers and I think you will find that everyone on the FfH team are major contributors to other sections of this site as well, so Im sure they will help out as they are able. Get a working version up, ask question if you get stuck and hopefully that will start the ball rolling.

 

[Xereq]

Thanks again Kael. I'll start on the XML before I ask for any actual work. Now about Legendary Resources; yeah, nay, or I'll get back to you on that one?

Edit: Also I noticed you don't want anymore dragons, and that wyverns are pretty close to dragons. Another exaple with working artwork that isn't in FfH yet would be a Griffin roost, or a giant eagle flock.

 

[z00t]

I read somewhere else in the forum about keeping mana generic until a node is on it so that strategy isnt restricted, which I think is a nice idea.

With the current mana system though its easy to build a mana node that you need for a specific building/unit, and then once its built destroy the node and rebuild it as a different mana. This means you can essentially get every kind of mana from one node if u just sit a couple of adepts on it, which weakens the idea of mana specific features.

How about making it so that once a node was built, it stayed as that type of mana? The choice is still yours but isnt so easy to go back on (like changing alignment when u adopt a religion). Maybe an archmage or similarly high level unit could change it if you wanted to leave some level of flexibility there.

 

[Chalid]

@z00t: We started discussing this thing just yesterday.
Levaing the nodes permanent and introducing an late game spell that changes them on the cost of the caster is in discussion.
But the main problem lies than not with nodes you built yourself but with conquered nodes. Often you conquer something like 4 body nodes or death and entropy nodes. These nodes are then wasted resources if you are not able to change their mana - which makes conquering to get different kinds of mana often not worth the trouble. So we think about which penalty could be given to a player that pillages his node.

Any proposals? Right now we have as idears:
- The node dissapears and reappears within 5 or 10 tiles of his former position, so he could travel into enemy lands.
- The node is switched to an inactive kind of mana that has a small chance every turn to get back to normal mana. This way pillaging your node will usually make it unusable for an defined interval of (i would aim at) 150 to 250 turns. If you are lucky you can use it after few turns, if you are unlucky you wait 500 turns before you can reuse it. So it is a though decision.

 

[z00t]

perhaps destroying a node of a certain type of mana should make that spell sphere unusable for a certain amount of time, if that can be coded. or make that sphere unusable in promotions for some time (sounds more easy to code).

I like the idea of "wild mana" (uncontrollable rather than unusable) that cant be built on for some time after destroying a node, maybe add some fallout or its magical equivalent in the surrounding area as well.

moving the mana is a bit of a hit or miss penalty as it might be deep within your borders.

 

[z00t]

destroying a node should probably destroy the unit too =)

 

[z00t]

some more ideas on destroying nodes

a shockwave similar to ring of fire, that destroys all improvements within the radius of the mana, kills the unit (unless hes a tier 4 arcane/disciple?) and leaves some negative effect on the terrain.

some kind of elemental unit that spawn on that tile and only defends (water elemental, earth elemental, etc) similar to the way treants spawn. It has to either be beaten or left alone until it slips back into the ether on its own, which takes a long time. I like this idea a lot, but balancing the strength of the elemental against the timeline of gaining stronger units could be problematic.

 

[wilboman]

@ Zoot: The idea of having to sacrifice a high-tier unit (at least mage, if not higher) in order to pillage an mana node sounds like a good one to me, although perhaps not quite as harsh as your shockwave.

 

[Jono]

double post...

 

[Jono]

I'm going to suggest this for the third time, but I think now I'm posting it in the correct place — I know, the first time was back in 0.8~0.9 and I hadn't actually suggested the concept, I had only suggested one of these and the second time was simply the same suggestion but with a magical item that led to the activation of it .
Resource Wonders: A resource, which only one of spawns in an entire map (sometimes none). This resource is then worked on by workers (sometimes maybe monks/high priests). After a long time of being worked on, this resource can produce certain units or work as a wonder by giving a certain promotion to all units built. Cities receive their culture bonus (and all other bonuses, other than spawning units, etc.) by working the tile the wonder is on.
Now that've I've actually suggested the concept, you can just go ahead and suggest a wonder (keep in mind that Kael hasn't approved of this... yet, MUHAHAHAHA ).

 

[ChaoticWanderer]

is there anyway to change resources around to test what is good

im not a programmer so is there an easy editor yet?

 

[Jono]

Only able to find with mine. After you would "mine" archaeological findings, you'd be able to build an additional improvement on it which would give culture and whatnot (and Adventurer points to Grigori, in their capital of course. In fact, if possible, I'd make ruins and ancient temples do the same for Grigori).

 

[H.GrenadeFrenzy]

I have a resource question that is building related....markets are these Civ only markets or do the reach to other Civs or doen't that occur until Foreign Trade and if so should that give a fractional to be built up resource draw like 1/10 or 1/4.......from other civs or do those things have to be traded for.
Is their any black market resources scheduled for the future like for Shadow or something.......pondering away.

 

[QES]

@z00t: We started discussing this thing just yesterday.
Levaing the nodes permanent and introducing an late game spell that changes them on the cost of the caster is in discussion.
But the main problem lies than not with nodes you built yourself but with conquered nodes. Often you conquer something like 4 body nodes or death and entropy nodes. These nodes are then wasted resources if you are not able to change their mana - which makes conquering to get different kinds of mana often not worth the trouble. So we think about which penalty could be given to a player that pillages his node.

Any proposals? Right now we have as idears:
- The node dissapears and reappears within 5 or 10 tiles of his former position, so he could travel into enemy lands.
- The node is switched to an inactive kind of mana that has a small chance every turn to get back to normal mana. This way pillaging your node will usually make it unusable for an defined interval of (i would aim at) 150 to 250 turns. If you are lucky you can use it after few turns, if you are unlucky you wait 500 turns before you can reuse it. So it is a though decision.

Thoughts on the problem:

Spoiler :

It strikes me that while node switching is a cheap tactic, it fits the over all theme of the FFH world. Perhaps Node switching from "generic" mana is able to be done by workers, but from one type of mana to another is only able to be done by adepts? After conquering a mana node, should not the magic-users RUSH in to begin work on their might/evil designs?

Perhaps that last mana node was all that was preventing the evil Calabim from raising an undead army and sweeping the lands with their darkness, and lo our hero throws himself onto the sword to stop construction of the death mana siphon. (Insert cool story here).
It strikes me that in game terms, gaining lots of useless nodes trhough conquest would limit the flow of the game. Allowing node switching allows for cheap tactics and getting "everything". The solution to this is not to kill the units switching, (except for perhaps death nodes), the solution to this is to make mana nodes very fragile and extreamly hard to construct/maintain.

Mechanically, im not sure how this should be done. But it should create incentives to GUARD the mana nodes from....inscruplulous and insideous characters. For the construction of another node (and/or loss therein) might cripple the magic-weilding capabilities. Is there a way for the game to check if a caster has access to the mana? In .15 it's assumed that casters will be allowed access to a spell-level if they've the mana to get there. But what if theyve achieved fire 3, and then lost a fire node in war? At 2 fire mana, are the casters still able to use fire 3 spells? Mayhap there is a way to prevent this, and force guarding of mana to be important. The importance of guarding minerals like copper and iron is that without them, the civ may not produce those units required of them. With magic, an adept is all that is trainable, and a paitent player can level him up and wait for the mana to become available......losing NO time for haivng lost mana nodes. If the units were actually produceable and obsoleteable, then the loss of mana nodes would mean the loss of the ability to produce the appropriate magic-users.

I dont know how or if this should be done. I simply examined the nature of strategy in conquest and the consequences for specific actions. Need and advantage define much of CIV strategy. There is little pain for losing a node, and little gain for stealing one. Before the question of "what to do with conquered nodes" comes up, the question of "what does losing a node mean?" should be answered first. If there is a tangible reason NOT to allow the loss of a node, then your answer to what to do with conquered nodes is automatically answered, as the conquered will want it back, and the conquering will want to add to their advancing profit.

Potential Solution:
Make FAR less mana nodes in the world. When a mana node is produced, it grows, like a village. It starts at one, ends at 4. Each progression makes KEEPING that node important, becuase its loss (which should be instant, not leveled like villages) would mean having to restart at 1, a loss of mana over time would be painful. ANd with LESS mana in the world, each source of it would be FAR more important.

EDIT: Possible Mana growth: Node =1 Vein = 2 Well = 3 Font = 4

-Qes

 

[Kael]

Thoughts on the problem:

Spoiler :

It strikes me that while node switching is a cheap tactic, it fits the over all theme of the FFH world. Perhaps Node switching from "generic" mana is able to be done by workers, but from one type of mana to another is only able to be done by adepts? After conquering a mana node, should not the magic-users RUSH in to begin work on their might/evil designs?

Perhaps that last mana node was all that was preventing the evil Calabim from raising an undead army and sweeping the lands with their darkness, and lo our hero throws himself onto the sword to stop construction of the death mana siphon. (Insert cool story here).
It strikes me that in game terms, gaining lots of useless nodes trhough conquest would limit the flow of the game. Allowing node switching allows for cheap tactics and getting "everything". The solution to this is not to kill the units switching, (except for perhaps death nodes), the solution to this is to make mana nodes very fragile and extreamly hard to construct/maintain.

Mechanically, im not sure how this should be done. But it should create incentives to GUARD the mana nodes from....inscruplulous and insideous characters. For the construction of another node (and/or loss therein) might cripple the magic-weilding capabilities. Is there a way for the game to check if a caster has access to the mana? In .15 it's assumed that casters will be allowed access to a spell-level if they've the mana to get there. But what if theyve achieved fire 3, and then lost a fire node in war? At 2 fire mana, are the casters still able to use fire 3 spells? Mayhap there is a way to prevent this, and force guarding of mana to be important. The importance of guarding minerals like copper and iron is that without them, the civ may not produce those units required of them. With magic, an adept is all that is trainable, and a paitent player can level him up and wait for the mana to become available......losing NO time for haivng lost mana nodes. If the units were actually produceable and obsoleteable, then the loss of mana nodes would mean the loss of the ability to produce the appropriate magic-users.

I dont know how or if this should be done. I simply examined the nature of strategy in conquest and the consequences for specific actions. Need and advantage define much of CIV strategy. There is little pain for losing a node, and little gain for stealing one. Before the question of "what to do with conquered nodes" comes up, the question of "what does losing a node mean?" should be answered first. If there is a tangible reason NOT to allow the loss of a node, then your answer to what to do with conquered nodes is automatically answered, as the conquered will want it back, and the conquering will want to add to their advancing profit.

Potential Solution:
Make FAR less mana nodes in the world. When a mana node is produced, it grows, like a village. It starts at one, ends at 4. Each progression makes KEEPING that node important, becuase its loss (which should be instant, not leveled like villages) would mean having to restart at 1, a loss of mana over time would be painful. ANd with LESS mana in the world, each source of it would be FAR more important.

EDIT: Possible Mana growth: Node =1 Vein = 2 Well = 3 Font = 4

-Qes

In 0.15 the mana is only needed for rank 1 of the spell sphere. After that point you can learn to rank 3 regardless of available mana (although multiple sources of that mana give you free ranks so there is a benifit of multiple mana, nut no requirement).

The reason we arent adding more requirements or mana growth is just because I am pretty conservative with changes. If I change a bunch of stuff and people dont like it I have to go back and forth. So I make one restrictive change (you have to have the mana to learn the sphere) and then get it out to you guys for testing. If there needs to be more I will do more.

The first strike to weaken spellcasters was the level requirements. This is the second strike, just in that it forces specialization. The third big one will hopefully be that the Ai will go after spellcasters more aggresivly.

Outside of those 3 things we do want to change the nodes to make the players decisions permanent. I wont make that change until workers no longer upgrade nodes (since to often they upgrade a node to the wrong mana type). Before I can remove workers ability to upgrade nodes I need the Ai to do a good job of upgrading its nodes with adepts. Once we can do all of those things we can put together a more costly method for chanign mana types. Which will probably be that it doesnt convert back to base mana on pillage, but does on conversion, so you can only pick what you want it to be once.

 

[QES]

In 0.15 the mana is only needed for rank 1 of the spell sphere. After that point you can learn to rank 3 regardless of available mana (although multiple sources of that mana give you free ranks so there is a benifit of multiple mana, nut no requirement).

The reason we arent adding more requirements or mana growth is just because I am pretty conservative with changes. If I change a bunch of stuff and people dont like it I have to go back and forth. So I make one restrictive change (you have to have the mana to learn the sphere) and then get it out to you guys for testing. If there needs to be more I will do more.

The first strike to weaken spellcasters was the level requirements. This is the second strike, just in that it forces specialization. The third big one will hopefully be that the Ai will go after spellcasters more aggresivly.

Outside of those 3 things we do want to change the nodes to make the players decisions permanent. I wont make that change until workers no longer upgrade nodes (since to often they upgrade a node to the wrong mana type). Before I can remove workers ability to upgrade nodes I need the Ai to do a good job of upgrading its nodes with adepts. Once we can do all of those things we can put together a more costly method for chanign mana types. Which will probably be that it doesnt convert back to base mana on pillage, but does on conversion, so you can only pick what you want it to be once.

So, whats the idea then when evil deathmagic users storm in and conquer the peaceful nature mana users? It would make sense that the death magic users would want to transform the nature mana into death mana (for whatever reason). Should this be possible? Or is it that whomever develops the node first, gets to chose what it is. And it stays like that?

-Qes

 

[Jono]

Not everyone wants to change things. I wouldn't want the basic mechanic messed around with, myself. If I were a death magic user, I'd probably have enough death mana, so another one wouldn't be a necessity...

 

[Kael]

So, whats the idea then when evil deathmagic users storm in and conquer the peaceful nature mana users? It would make sense that the death magic users would want to transform the nature mana into death mana (for whatever reason). Should this be possible? Or is it that whomever develops the node first, gets to chose what it is. And it stays like that?

-Qes

The mana would drop back to base mana on conversion (so a player has one chance to set it as he wants). So if you caputre a death node from an empire and you are a goodly person that death node will turn into raw mana when you capture it. Then you can make it what you want.

 

[Grillick]

The mana would drop back to base mana on conversion (so a player has one chance to set it as he wants). So if you caputre a death node from an empire and you are a goodly person that death node will turn into raw mana when you capture it. Then you can make it what you want.

That sounds like a great idea, but at present, the AI has a tendency to pillage just about everything, any chance they get, even, in many cases, at the expense of their attacks on the main city.

This would create a severe disadvantage for the AI over the human players, in that the AI would be unable to gian new mana nodes for conquest.

I suggest either decreasing the AI chance to pillage mana nodes, or perhaps making it so that an improved node that is pillaged during wartime by the enemy does revert to unimproved mana, or at least has a high chance to?

It's not exactly realistic, but our goal is to limit the players micromanaging their mana to manipulate the wonders and whatnot, and we shouldn't penalize the AI in our solution.