[Development] Map Suggestions

[cmakk1012]

Leoreth for sassiest modder 2k19

 

[Leoreth]

?

 

[1SDANi]

$

 

[Leoreth]

Anyways, so I tried the continent enlargements only and I disagree that South America looks more accurate with them. Both the shape of the continent itself as well as its proportionality seem better to me in the original.

Is there a chance you could apply your terrain changes based on the unchanged continent? My version of this would probably be of much lower quality.

 

[Publicola]

Random question: would it be possible to include a single resource with multiple 'variants' of how it gets represented? I've seen a lot of variants for different types of forests, but would it be possible to add, for instance, a 'buffalo' resource that covers the water buffalo of Southeast Asia and the bison of the American west? This would also allow 'sheep' to represent the regular wooly sheep, but also alpaca (or even llamas).

More pointedly, this would also allow us to create a single 'fruit' resource with different graphics for the primary fruit (citrus vs. figs) of different regions.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, I talked about that before. Right now it's not possible out of the box and I haven't seen anyone implement it but from what I know it should be possible. I would love to try it, preferably soon. There is a ton of stuff you could do with that, e.g. different regional breeds of animals, folding yaks and llamas in with sheep, alternate murex snail art for dye to allow it as a maritime resource in the Mediterranean etc.

 

[merijn_v1]

About a week ago, I tried to implement this. Ultimately, I failed. But there were some successes.

My first success was that I managed to add a new custom XML tag. This isn't the most difficult thing in the world,but I have never tried this before.

I was able to display all varieties at the same time. However, when the engine rebuilds the plots (that already happens when you exit the WB) the default art was used again. So it partially worked. But maybe I just found a solution how to fix this.

Some brainstorming about other bonus varieties:
Many animals have different breeds. For example the cow currently has the white-black breed, which is common in Western Europe and North America. Many cow breeds in other parts of the world have a brown or black color. I think it would be nice if the diversity of breeds around the world can be represented by this. This would apply to most pasture resources (horse, cow, pig) and fish.

- Buffalos can be the cow resources of (parts of) Asia.
- The Elephant can have the Asian Elephant (current art) and the African Bush Elephant (slightly bigger, brownish hue)
- The dye plant can have multiple color varieties. (current blue, red, yellow, purple)
- Gems can have multiple color varieties. I think a white version would be nice for diamonds. I don't think we should have a variety in every color, but about 3 colors (red, blue, green for ruby, sapphire and emerald and all other gems in these colors) would be nice to represent different kind of gems.
- Crab can have a shrimp and lobster varieties. Maybe the name of the resource should be changed to shellfish. Technically clams are also shellfish, so they should be in the same category. But for gameplay I left them as a seperate resource. Crustaceans would be a more specific word, but I don't think it is as recognizable as seafood.
- Fruit: Banana, citrus, apple. We can have a gazillion variations, but I think we should limit it to a certain amount. I think 5 variations should be the max.
- Olives: If olives mainly represent olive oil, I think we can add more oil variations, such as palm oil. (The main reason for this suggestion is my Swahili civ. The palm tree was the only goods they didn't have to import because they grew them themselves.

 

[Enyavar]

About a week ago, I tried to implement this. Ultimately, I failed. But there were some successes.

My first success was that I managed to add a new custom XML tag. This isn't the most difficult thing in the world,but I have never tried this before.

I was able to display all varieties at the same time. However, when the engine rebuilds the plots (that already happens when you exit the WB) the default art was used again. So it partially worked. But maybe I just found a solution how to fix this.

Some brainstorming about other bonus varieties:
Many animals have different breeds. For example the cow currently has the white-black breed, which is common in Western Europe and North America. Many cow breeds in other parts of the world have a brown or black color. I think it would be nice if the diversity of breeds around the world can be represented by this. This would apply to most pasture resources (horse, cow, pig) and fish.

- Buffalos can be the cow resources of (parts of) Asia.
- The Elephant can have the Asian Elephant (current art) and the African Bush Elephant (slightly bigger, brownish hue)
- The dye plant can have multiple color varieties. (current blue, red, yellow, purple)
- Gems can have multiple color varieties. I think a white version would be nice for diamonds. I don't think we should have a variety in every color, but about 3 colors (red, blue, green for ruby, sapphire and emerald and all other gems in these colors) would be nice to represent different kind of gems.

- Buffalos: Agreed on water buffalos for India. Praerie buffaloes for America, until they eventually turn into normal cows (brown or black/white ones) in the 1800s.
- Elephant and sheep/llama variations: also cool.
- Dye: The difference here is that there are coast-based dyes (roman/phoenician purple, I think this means the four dyes placed around the mediterranean in the current map) and land-based ones (where I agree that there might be different colors besides the current indigo dye)... only which ones? Yellow dyes (saffron, curcuma) in China? Red ones (henna and karmine) in... wait, where should what be placed?
- Gems: rubies and emeralds are simply variations of sapphires and diamonds, respectively. So, together wih sapphires and diamonds, we should have opals (Australia, Mexico,...). Not sure if we want to count lapislazuli and obsidian as "gems"?
- Regarding fruits, I shamelessly quote myself:

The game already has bananas (representing "jungle fruits", like cassioc as well).
Citrus, if the new map doesn't have it already, would represent "semi-arid fruits". If you have Realism Invictus' world map: there are also locations for the Citrus resource. I would expect them in California, 2 or 3 in the Northern Mediterranean (Spain/Provence, Levante), and finally in Southern China. For other areas, see the "citrus map" provided by TJDowling.
To represent "arid fruits", Dates/Figs sound like a good idea, unless that kind of stuff is supposed to grow in oases anyway. Another idea is the Coconut - before industrialization, Coconut Trees were a veritable resource not only for their fruits, but because nearly every aspect of the plant was possible to use for some benefit: Food, Wood, Fibers, Leaves, Alcohol...
About "northern fruits", as I would call apples/pears/plums/cherries, I'm less enthusiastic. Distributing an "apple" resource in the temperate northern hemisphere means, basically, that every civ always has access to a fruity health resource. In light of the resource distribution I see how this leads to an overabundance of resources.

So, let's say we could have these four fruit types in the game: Bananas, Palm tree, Citrus, Apples. [Only colonial empires would have more than two of those, I think?]

• First, the tile yields: Banana (+1F) Plantations (+3F) yield lots of food, which would be unchanged. Citrus (+1C) Orchards (+2C), I would think should yield similar results as Wine Orchards, no additional food. Cocos (+1F) Plantations (+1P +1C) would provide a bonus in all three aspects. Apple (+1C) Orchards (+1F) would not be spectacular, and it would be fully reasonable to build a city right on top. Or Farms, in the vassalage period.
  
• Second, the empire-wide distributed health: Could we pool their basic health benefit as "fruits", so that theoretically having 1 instance of each resource would count as "4 fruits" for the player cities to distribute among them? If that's not feasible, better not implement Cocos and Apples, I think. But if it is possible to lump all fruits together for the distribution, the same could also be done with "grains" (Rice, Wheat, Corn, Millet).
• Third, the building-specific benefits. Only Banana and Citrus would be suitable for a +1 health effect each, from the Pharmacy, I think. About Cocos and Apples, maybe re-introduce the Grocer? +1 currency for having the resource, and add some other resources to the Grocer as well? Olives, Sugar - dunno? With all the new resources coming, I think that nearly all building effects would need to be re-thought. Maybe even introducing production chains?

 

[merijn_v1]

- Buffalos: Agreed on water buffalos for India. Praerie buffaloes for America, until they eventually turn into normal cows (brown or black/white ones) in the 1800s.

I don't think that Praerie buffaloes should be included. For gameplay reasons, I think that there shouldn't be cow resources in the Americas. They should only appear after the Columbian exchange. I think that normal cows are more appropriate for that.

- Dye: The difference here is that there are coast-based dyes (roman/phoenician purple, I think this means the four dyes placed around the mediterranean in the current map) and land-based ones (where I agree that there might be different colors besides the current indigo dye)... only which ones? Yellow dyes (saffron, curcuma) in China? Red ones (henna and karmine) in... wait, where should what be placed?

These suggestions come from a personal note I made a while ago. (before the murex suggestion) We can have both the water-based murex (C2C has murex art BTW) and multiple land based version. The color of the land-based version can depend on what is most appropriate for that region. I don't think that every color needs to be represented, but about 4 different colors for the land variety would give some nice diversification. Maybe the chosen colors will be completely different than the ones I suggested.

- Gems: rubies and emeralds are simply variations of sapphires and diamonds, respectively. So, together wih sapphires and diamonds, we should have opals (Australia, Mexico,...). Not sure if we want to count lapislazuli and obsidian as "gems"?

That is not what I want to represent. I want the categorize the different gemstones on their colors, not how they are related. The red variation should represent all red gemstones, not only ruby. To take you suggested gems, both Opals and Lapis Lazuli would be represented with the blue variation of the gems resource. By that, I'm not saying that they are related. I'm just saying that the gems found in these locations are blue, without specifying which gemstone it exactly is.

Obsidian is a seperate resources BTW. This is done for gameplay reasons. Obsidian will be an alternative required resource for some basic melee units. (spearman and light swordsman) The more advanced melee units (longswordsman and pikeman) require iron. This enables the Native American civs to build those basic melee units while still disabling them to build the more advanced ones.

 

[merijn_v1]

One extra note. I think we should keep in mind that people who are not familiar with this mod shouldn't have troubles with relating the new variations to the default variety. I kept this in my mind when I made my suggestions.

Different breeds of the same animal (brown cows for example) are easily to connect to the default resource. The link is less obvious if we use a different animal. Although I still think that it is easy enough to see that buffalos and cows are the same resource and llamas and sheeps are the same resource. But I can image that people have troubles if we both have a yak and a buffalo resource, when one is a cow variation and one is a sheep variation.

I can image that people have troubles connecting the murex to the dye resources as the art is vastly different and one is land based and the other sea based. There should be some information available which informs people that there are multiple variations of a single resource, especially if the connection isn't clear. (I have plans to update the pedia so it can display the different variations, but is this enough?)

 

[1SDANi]

One extra note. I think we should keep in mind that people who are not familiar with this mod shouldn't have troubles with relating the new variations to the default variety. I kept this in my mind when I made my suggestions.

Different breeds of the same animal (brown cows for example) are easily to connect to the default resource. The link is less obvious if we use a different animal. Although I still think that it is easy enough to see that buffalos and cows are the same resource and llamas and sheeps are the same resource. But I can image that people have troubles if we both have a yak and a buffalo resource, when one is a cow variation and one is a sheep variation.

I can image that people have troubles connecting the murex to the dye resources as the art is vastly different and one is land based and the other sea based. There should be some information available which informs people that there are multiple variations of a single resource, especially if the connection isn't clear. (I have plans to update the pedia so it can display the different variations, but is this enough?)

Give them the same resource name but different icons? Wool, Milk, etc?

 

[merijn_v1]

I don't think that the icons should be different. They are IMO the best way to indicate that different varieties belong to the same resource.

I think that only the art on the map should be different. Everything else (names, icons etc.) should be the same.

 

[Leoreth]

I agree. It's too confusing otherwise, and would probably lead to bloat in the fonts file.

 

[Krieger-FS]

Anyways, so I tried the continent enlargements only and I disagree that South America looks more accurate with them. Both the shape of the continent itself as well as its proportionality seem better to me in the original.

Is there a chance you could apply your terrain changes based on the unchanged continent? My version of this would probably be of much lower quality.

Sure, I'd like to do that. Any other guidelines besides not making enlargements on the map? What about the few water-to-land/lagoons? Should I include resources or only the terrain changes?

 

[Leoreth]

I don't want to entirely rule out changes to coastlines, it's just that mass moving 100 tiles etc. with the goal to significantly scale up the entire continent is too much for me (I looked into it ingame and I don't think it fits). Likewise with turning water to land or lagoons. Also, even if I disagree with the decision I can just not port it over and find my own localised solution. If an entire proposal is first based on enlarging a continent I can only use everything or nothing because everything is relative to the larger continent and it's impossible to figure out what it would be like if the continent wasn't enlarged.

I'd be glad to see both terrain and resource changes, and river changes in particular.

 

[Publicola]

Give them the same resource name but different icons? Wool, Milk, etc?

Or we could change the name/icon of some resources to represent the product rather than the animal. I'm pretty sure we already do this for 'furs' (rather than 'beavers' and 'otters'). In the same way we could change the 'sheep' resource to 'wool' instead -- which would allow us to include alpaca and yaks and llamas and cashmere goats without calling them 'sheep'.

 

[merijn_v1]

Or we could change the name/icon of some resources to represent the product rather than the animal. I'm pretty sure we already do this for 'furs' (rather than 'beavers' and 'otters'). In the same way we could change the 'sheep' resource to 'wool' instead -- which would allow us to include alpaca and yaks and llamas and cashmere goats without calling them 'sheep'.

I had a similar idea. I don't mind what the icon is exactly, as long as it is the same for every variety.

 

[Leoreth]

Sheep is both meat and wool though, that's why it provides health and happiness.

 

[1SDANi]

I don't think that the icons should be different. They are IMO the best way to indicate that different varieties belong to the same resource.

I think that only the art on the map should be different. Everything else (names, icons etc.) should be the same.

That's what I said. Same name and logo (Wool and picture of wool) different icon (Sheep vs Llama)

 

[merijn_v1]

Then you worded it very poorly, if I may say. You originally used the word icon, which I thought was the button of a resource. But I guess you meant the 3D model.