Developmental ideas for possible industial age mod

[Fullerene]

Since making ideas is more fun and faster than actual modding, I'm going to write down some modding ideas I get. And of course one benefits having a good plan before starting modding. Note, this is not development thread, I haven't yet started modding anything and I'm not even 100% sure I will.

Anyway, here we go:

I'm planning a mod that takes place on earth map on timeline around 19th and early 20th century. So it's era of industrial revolution, imperialism, and rise of ideologies like nationalism and communism.
In this mod I would like to add some character to units. They aren't no more just resource gatherers and workers, they also form a diverse society.

First major idea I have come with is unit life time and education system:

Units have new attribute, age ,and they also can and are going to die when they get old. Since your units will die and there is no immigration(it will be global game,but I haven't yet thinked it through, how I'm going to make it so) you need to get new units also. So, naturally every turn new units are born ( and old ones may die). Birth rate depends on factors like food surplus, healthiness, cross production and maybe some other social factors too.

Your newly born units have age of zero. It doesn't make sense that they can work much.They will have hard profession output penalties till they reach certain age (15-18).That's why there will be new kind of education system:

Young units can go to school.After they have spend enough years of school they become literate and are ready to go to work. Literate units have many benefits: they can learn to become expert on certain professions faster and maybe they live bit longer. They might also work some professions bit better. And they need to be literate to go to the University.

University is only place where your units can learn the most special professions that are needed in industrialized society:

• Engineers - they give something like 50% hammer bonus and they are necessary for building new expensive buildings and for example battleships etc.
• Doctors - helps the citizens to live longer and fight the disease
• Lawyers - fights the corruption and crime, helps keeping your citizens happy
• Scientists - only unit that can produce research
• Statesmen
• Maybe military officers/generals
• Preachers
• Etc.

Some further ideas:
Some units might have high intelligence.Units with high intelligence will graduate faster from university and work better the high education professions too. It will be invisible attribute that becomes visible when unit gets literate. That's why it might be a good idea to get all your units to go to school...

More ideas to come...

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I would really like to hear some opinions. Are these ideas worth further thinking or would it maybe be too complex and boring for actual game play?

 

[M07]

It's certain it's a good idea because you try to bring closer the game to the reality.
The main problem it's the speed of game. Indeed, each turn is one year. That's mean each unit will live in average 40 turns. It's may be too quick. I think you should impose only one speed for the game. One turn has to be at least equivalent to six months.

 

[Don Senglar]

It's certain it's a good idea because you try to bring closer the game to the reality.
The main problem it's the speed of game. Indeed, each turn is one year. That's mean each unit will live in average 40 turns. It's may be too quick. I think you should impose only one speed for the game. One turn has to be at least equivalent to six months.

Some ideas are really interesting.

However I don't think that the game speed could be a problem. You can use "1 turn = 1 month" speed. Just change in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml

					<iMonthIncrement>1</iMonthIncrement>

For your example

...each turn is one year. That's mean each unit will live in average 40 turns.

If each unit will live 40 years at iMonthIncrement = 1 ("1 turn = 1 month" speed) we have 12 * 40 = 480 turns. It's more then enough for the units development (education, work). For the timeline period around 19th and early 20th century we'll have about 3-4 generations of units.

 

[raystuttgart]

Just some comments about the idea.
(Not meant to critizise.)

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A mod usually consists of many features and concepts.
Thus a modder should take care that each single feature does not get too complicated or even tedious.

Just imagine you have 10+ cities with around 50 citizens.
With a really realistic system of units dying and being educated, you will need to spend massive time each turn only to reorganize and retrain your population.

This might even be fun in early game, but doing this every turn in lategame will probably get very very annoying to the players.

And as I said, we are talking about one single feature here and your mod might consist of many more new features.

I have seen many "realistic" concepts totally fail considering fun and gameplay.

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On the other hand, if you make lifespan of the units too long (e.g. the 480 turns as suggested), you could leave out such a feature right away.

It will not really impact gameplay and still cost performance.

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Will it really be fun to you if your beloved specialists die after some time ?
If it is, then go ahead and implement such a feature.
After all, modding is still about personal taste.

But you should really also think in detail about all the possible side effects ...
(Unit dying in city with population 1, unit being born in city without school and AI in deadlock if your unit can really only work if literate, ...)

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When implementing a feature, I always suggest to modders to think about all of these factors:

1) Atmomsphere and Authenticity --> I guess that is what you are heading for
2) Balancing and Gameplay --> Probably the most difficult aspect for this concept
3) Performance and Stability --> Should not be too critical if implemented in a good way
4) AI --> I list that explicitly because many modders totally ignore that point

Only one single "bad" feature can ruin a complete mod.

 

[Fullerene]

I think 1 turn = 1 season speed might work well to this feature. This way no units are necessary born or dead every turn. Turn/month might work too, but it would be quite slow.

1) Atmomsphere and Authenticity --> I guess that is what you are heading for
2) Balancing and Gameplay --> Probably the most difficult aspect for this concept
3) Performance and Stability --> Should not be too critical if implemented in a good way
4) AI --> I list that explicitly because many modders totally ignore that point

Good points. I think the AI part is the most challenging.

If this system is too micromanagement heavy, the education system could be incorporated alone.So if you want your expert miner to become educated doctor, you need to put him into school and university for certain amount of turns. This system wouldn't be as realistic, but lot easier to implement.

 

[raystuttgart]

So if you want your expert miner to become educated doctor, you need to put him into school and university for certain amount of turns.

So the only real differences to education system from Vanilla (or improved versions of education system in TAC / RaR) are:

1. Young Colonists cannot work efficiently.
2. Education of Specialist with academic degree requires 2 sequential steps ?

Well ok, it is your mod.

 

[Fullerene]

So the only real differences to education system from Vanilla (or improved versions of education system in TAC / RaR) are:

1. Young Colonists cannot work efficiently.
2. Education of Specialist with academic degree requires 2 sequential steps ?

Well ok, it is your mod.

I'm now talking about dropping the age feature.

Well, heh, it comes pretty close to vanilla system if without the aging feature...

But keep in mind that it's supposed to simulate your society slowly becoming educated and literate and that being literate/educated possibly has more effects in the mod than just having some special profession.

On the other hand, maybe one could simply put teacher(s) in the school and they will automatically teach the citizens to become literate. Makes the first step more simple.

Then if you want highly educated folks, you need to sacrifice some working turns.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

On the other hand, maybe one could simply put teacher(s) in the school and they will automatically teach the citizens to become literate. Makes the first step more simple.

I had code for something like that once

It was an extra attribute for units: if they were literate, they were more productive (akin to how rebel sentiment works). Each unit had a literacy level which could go from 0 to 100 (over 50 they would be considered literate and get the bonus; in-game that showed up as a "Literate" line in the unit's description).

There was also a new profession, "Educator", which would increase the literacy level of each unit in the settlement (something like +2 per turn). There was also a literacy level decay of 1 per turn. As such, a literate settlement with no educators would slowly become illiterate, while settlements with educators would slowly become fully literate.

In the end, though, I decided that the feature didn't add enough to the game to be worth maintaining, so I removed it from my personal Civ4Col version. Nevertheless, I still think representing literacy in some form would be interesting.

 

[Fullerene]

Hey, Androrc, I see you have had similar project going on here.

Unfortunately it's not downloadable anymore.

Would you be interested to working on global colonization/imperialism mod/scenario with me? Maybe continuing that project or yours or recreating something similar?

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Anyway, I've been thinking how to implement a global game, where players is the european power and there would not really be the 'king' faction:

First you have to sell the goods somewhere. I think it's best to still have some sort of "europe" screen, since AI is so programmed to sail to there.

The map would be divided into market areas. For example Europe, China, India, Africa.. N and S America... etc. The 'europe' screen (let's call it a market screen now on), could be accessed below cities.
Say, the French player has it's home cities in Europe and a Colony in China. It can now sell goods to European market or sail to the Chinese colony to sell the goods to Chinese market.

Prices would be determined by recent trade history and populations of cities in the market area. Maybe only those cities would be accounted that you can access (these are your own cities and enemy cities with open borders).

I think solution like this would work fairly well and it wouldn't be too hard to implement.

Another problem with global game is the king player. It doesn't make much sense to have the revolution if you actually play the european power and not just colonist faction.
Maybe the king could be replaced with 'people'. The people will sometimes demand you gold to buy food/other goods/what ever. Also they are going to eventually want to start revolution against the king (you). Maybe it's possible to program the game not to end when the revolution is over, instead if you loose it you have to pay more gold to the people and you are no longer tyrant you were before. Then if you beat the revolution , it will take some time before new revolution will occur.
I know... this isn't yet very well polished idea.

However I don't think that achieving decent global game of colonization is that hard that some may think. But who knows...

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I know the medieval guys have implemented multiple trade screens, that are accessed in different ways, I would imagine looking at that mod, and seeing how it can be adapted to the 'modern era' would be a good idea, especially since it is quite active and there .dll is recieving a lot of love and attention, so a lot of features would be implemented (or will eventually be implemented) that you are looking for. Research, Different Invasion Scenarios, Multiple trade screens, 'transforming citizens' and Classes, (in that mod they have Squires that become Nobles, I think it is) etc.

The revolution could be 'World War' and before that it could be 'Diplomatic Appeasement' or some such.

I think an 'Industrial Revolution/Modernisation' era mod would be pretty cool, there are also trains already implemented in RaR. (trains are my favourite addition to col, you have trains and there is a good chance I will be playing it! )

 

[raystuttgart]

However I don't think that achieving decent global game of colonization is that hard that some may think. But who knows...

Don't underestimate the amount of effort a big mod with good quality will require.
But everything is possible with enough effort and skills.

Good luck with your project.

 

[Fullerene]

I know the medieval guys have implemented multiple trade screens, that are accessed in different ways, I would imagine looking at that mod, and seeing how it can be adapted to the 'modern era' would be a good idea, especially since it is quite active and there .dll is recieving a lot of love and attention, so a lot of features would be implemented (or will eventually be implemented) that you are looking for. Research, Different Invasion Scenarios, Multiple trade screens, 'transforming citizens' and Classes, (in that mod they have Squires that become Nobles, I think it is) etc.

The revolution could be 'World War' and before that it could be 'Diplomatic Appeasement' or some such.

I think an 'Industrial Revolution/Modernisation' era mod would be pretty cool, there are also trains already implemented in RaR. (trains are my favourite addition to col, you have trains and there is a good chance I will be playing it! )

Yup, I've been looking the sources of that mod and trying to understand how they work and how to possibly apply these to my plans.

Don't underestimate the amount of effort a big mod with good quality will require.
But everything is possible with enough effort and skills.

Good luck with your project.

I'm aware that the work needed for finished mod is heavy. Even the graphical conversation doesn't seem to be trivial (at least from my experiments so far).

I will probably go first with more cheesier/lightweight modding approach, and then when I have met my minimum goals, I try to apply more complicated features.

I don't want to put myself a pressure over this. I'll work on this when I feels so, and mod is finished when/if it's finished.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

My advice would be, take the Medieval Mod and then start playing the 'rename game' thinking of different names for things, so for example crosses could change to 'oppurtunity' and could be generated by entrepeneurs or industrialists (representing new industries jobs and oppurtunities to attract immigration).

Think of industrial resources like, steel, concrete, coal, boilers, munitions.

Rename units like Riflemen, Gattling Gun, Cavalryman.

Boats like Ironclad, Frigate, Battleship, Dreadnought, Liner, Freighter, Cargo Ship.

Then you can start to build up a picture of what to change things to, then after that worry about 'actual' changes like gameplay features.

The cool thing about Medieval Mod is it actually already has a lot of game features that would just need to be renamed(and imaged) to make a very industrial flavour, with a few yield type tweaks for things as well.

Then see if you can get the train codes and railroads from RaR and boom! You have a Train Mod!!

 

[Kailric]

I would love to see an industrial age mod that accumulates into a World War. Every Nation is in a race to accumulate a huge army in preparation of the war. Then, you get bonuses depending on if you are the one who starts the war, or what level your different attributes are at when the war starts. Like if you are the one with the highest population you get this bonus, or greatest land mass another bonus.

I also actually like the aging idea but just how to implement it is the question. I personally would skip the new born stage and all new units would start at age 18. They would then enter the working class and can be educated to become Masters of any profession. Then, at some point they "retire". Retired units are no longer available to the working class sector or for military purposes but they become your Statesmen until they die.

If you were to have this level of detail I would also suggest creating units that have more attributes such as names and also add or take away from their production, loyalty, or combat abilities. Some units could have special abilities maybe even based or historical events. This would create a more personal level to units were you could grow fond of certain ones and maybe dislike others, "man, I can't wait till or Mordakai retires.. he's a yellow belly who sucks at making Cigars!"

This is something I would like to see in the Medieval Mod.

 

[Fullerene]

I'm not sure this mod ever comes to reality, but here's just another idea:

Instead of World War the goal of this mod would be to provide highest amount of living standards to your population. World war(s) could still happen as side effect of competition to gather resources. Living standards would consist of supplying your citizens with resources,certain buildings and education levels of your population.

I think this would be nice feature, since it would mean that bigger empire isn't necessary better as you would need more resources to keep your population happy.

Maybe I'll try to create a mod component of this idea.

 

[Fullerene]

I write my modding ideas to this thread to save and share them for the possible future use.

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Anyway I'm interested about to create a Colonization like game/mod where map is global and 'Europe screen' doesn't exist. To accomplish this, a new economic system is required. I've been trying to design a system that's simple enough to understand, fun enough to play and realistic enough to make sense.

Worth noting that these are all yet very unpolished thoughts that requires more thinking still.


Let's dive into my ideas:

First we have to assume that there is no 'king' player, instead you control the independent nation like in Civilization. Nation is the state and the units. Both the state and every single unit can have changing amount of money or wealth or gold. Let's call it a money for now.

Public and private sector

A unit that works on a field or inside city can do public work for the state or private work for himself.

Public worker functions much like units in Vanilla Col. They do work on profession they a set to work and the yields they produce are stored in the warehouse. New thing is that the state has to pay them salary(money) every turn. State can determine the amount of salary but it won't be necessary good thing to always set it lowest possible value. Keep reading further.

Private worker works 'independently'. Player still sets unit to work on desired position, be it farmer or sugar planter or tobacconist. But private sector workers are not paid salary from the state, instead they automatically sell the yields they produce to other units. Yields usually won't get stored in the warehouse.

Every unit has demand for certain goods. Food is something that all the units requires every turn. Elder statesmen might be interested on cigarettes and lumberjacks like to drink lot of rum. And most units like to buy sugar for their families. I haven't thought this all through but you got the picture I think.

Now let's say we have private sector farmer who produces 10 units of food per turn. He lives in city with 3 other units. He is the only farmer in the city and every unit demand 2 units of food per turn to stay healthy and strong.
It makes sense that farmer consumes 2 food for himself. He has now 8 food to sell for the 3 units:

• Free Colonist: demand 2 food, has 100 money
• Expert lumberjack: demands 2 food, has 50 money
• Elder statesman, demands 2 food, has 250 money

We see that there is more food in the market than there is demand. Farmer will sell the food for minimum price (10 money). The tax rate of the state is set to be 20%. Farmer makes 60 money profit and he pays 12 money for the state as taxes.
(The reason I use minimum price as big number as 10 is that we don't lose too much money into rounding numbers down: for example 6 * 20% = 1.2 , we would lose 0.2 money in this case.)
Two yields of food was leftover. Maybe state is set to buy leftover food since it's important and is needed for population growth. Farmer gets 20 extra money from the state and 2 food is stored in the warehouse. No taxes this time since it makes no sense to pay taxes for the state on profit got from the state.

The lumberjack is also private worker and produces just 6 lumber per turn. He doesn't have demand for lumber himself this turn. For some reason the free colonist demands 5 lumber and the statesman and the farmer demands 3 lumber each (Maybe they all are building a new house ). Now the demand is total 11 lumber and in the market there is only 6 lumber. The units bid for the lumber. (I'm not yet sure how the bid prices should be calculated, it gets quite complex when there are demand for multiple goods per turn. But let's assume we have a solution with following results ) The statesman is ready to pay 30 money per lumber. Free colonist will pay 18 per lumber and farmer just 15. Lumberjack will sell 3 lumber to statesman for total price of 90 money since he bidded most. Then he will sell the leftover 3 lumber for the freecolonist and the farmer was left without.
Lumberjack made 90 + 3*18 =144 money profit and he pays 28 money as taxes for the state.

The freecolonist works as public sector fur trapper and statesman is of course public sector worker too.So, they don't have goods to sell in the marker this turn.

The state got 12 + 28 = 40 money from the taxes in this city this turn. It also bought 2 food for the price of 20 so the final revenue is +20 gold. Since the state also has to pay salary for the fur trapping free colonist and for the statesman it's quite possible that the city is working at net loss for the state... But it doesn't matter this was just an example.

Of course it could be much more complex than this example. Some goods could be bought and sold into neighboring cities. Maybe state could sell goods from the warehouse (for example to avoid famine in case not enough food is produced or to avoid unhappiness if not enough sugar was produced.) Or maybe some foreign trading ship is selling some goods in the city.

Hmmm, I'm not sure this example was good and practical but I hope you are understood the basic system where all units have money and they use the money to buy goods they demand. Role of state (player) is to manage the units so that state is able to run public sector and army etc, but also make sure that the units stay happy enough to work effectively and to stay loyal.

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Now we have system where amount of wealth/money is fixed. In theory no new money is generated and no money is disappearing from the system. Sort of mercantalistic game play. It could be very interesting but as we know today wealth isn't fixed constant.

Maybe we could allow state to produce more money to boost the economy. This could lead to all kind of interesting things like inflation. Really I'm not economist so I'm not sure where all this could lead into.

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If someone bothered to read this mess of text, I would be pleased to get some thoughts and input. I really like the basic idea of this system and how it could be expanded into interesting simulation of semi- (or pseudo-)realistic economics.

 

[Commander Bello]

Well, your ideas about the private workers are close to what I am thinking about, too (although I am doing it in the context of the "classic" colonization environment).

The idea of having auctions though may not be the very best. Although it sounds nice in theory, it might put heavy load on the cpu when it has to calculate all these things for many nations, many cities and many citizens.

Anyway, it is interesting to read the view of others on this economical aspect of the game, so keep your ideas going

 

[Fullerene]

Some may think this next idea as heretic, but I think it could be interesting:

I've been thinking how to streamline trade and reduce some micromanagement. One possible solution is to automate the logistics. I'm talking about "teleporting" goods. It may sound silly but let me explain:

What I have in mind is global map game where all the goods are sold to the people in the cities where the goods are consumed. The prices are determined for every individual settlement based on demand (which is calculated from unit types, trade history and maybe buildings in the city.) I haven't yet figured the exact details on the price calculations but it can be quite trivial thing after all.

Now it might become quite a micromanagement heavy to try to figure out where it's most profitable to go to sell the goods... So instead of physically moving ships to do the trade, the process could be automated and abstracted.

The automated process goes like this: Player goes to the city screen and hovers mouse over for example sugar. Game does automatically calculate the most profitable city in the trade network and shows the price and logistics expenses that player must pay to transport the goods. If player thinks it's worth doing the trade, he will execute the trade mission. Goods are shipped instantly with 'ghost' ship/train. The traded goods are consumed in the destination city and the player who did the trade gets the money. The player who owns the destination city doesn't lose any money. The money comes from nowhere (from the people).

The system most likely requires some adjustment for implementation. Finding the most profitable city can be cpu heavy so it has to be cached somehow. Or there could be (maybe even should be) maximum distance the automated trade can happen. This will reduce the number of cities in the trade network so the prices could be calculated faster.Also it wouldn't be necessary realistic to instantly sell goods from Britain to Australia for example.

The trade route would still has to be found via pathfinder. So you can't do the trade in the city that your ships can't access (closed borders). If there are pirate ships on the trade route paths there would be certain chance for the cargo to be stolen.

Also notice that you can't relocate goods via this 'teleport' methods. It's strictly for the commercial use and all the sold goods are consumed instantly and they disappear from the game. So you still have to ship all your strategic goods with ships.

Consuming goods would affect the units in the city various ways: for example coffee does boost the morale/happiness etc... So there is also decisions to be made. Do you sell loads of coffee for the foreign city or do you stockpile it waiting that the destination city changes.

One weakness of this system would be that you can't select where to sell the goods. They are always sold to the most profitable city. Other thing is that some cities might never be buyers for some reason. So the player has to manually send goods for those cities to be consumed.

Yeah I know that many people prefer everything to be physical in the Col game, but I still think this idea could make some sense if implemented well enough.

 

[Fullerene]

I think diplomacy is the most disappointing thing in the all civ/col series. And I also feel that the liberty bells and crosses in the colonization could have more uses in the game.

In short, my idea is to use political points produced by statesman to support diplomacy, among other things. I don't go into all details but here are some example of possible uses:

• Casus Belli - you need certain amount of DPs to declare a war. The amount may depend on your relations to the target nation
• Administration/ Loyalty - You need DPs to change civics,upkeep civics, keep your citizens loyal to you... in general just keep your empire together
• Spread of ideologies - I already represented this idea in the Nationalism modcomp
• Espionage
• Propaganda - boost relations with foreign power

If I start creating the mod written in the thread title, this is one of the top priority concepts I'm going to implement.

 

[Nightinggale]

Casus Belli - you need certain amount of DPs to declare a war. The amount may depend on your relations to the target nation

Me big. Me angry. You die.

That's basically the idea of declaring war. You don't need a stateman to do that. You would however need one to make peace and one could argue that statemen would be needed in order not to offend 3rd party counties.

The concept of improving diplomacy is great and I certainly wouldn't mind improvements. We could introduce some more concepts like civic requirements for diplomatic actions. Master of Orion 2 had the leader trait repulsive. That basically shut down the diplomatic system into peace and war. No trade agreements, no alliances or anything. Something along those lines could be interesting to implement for certain civic combos, like slavery vs abolitionism.

However while we can make something great, it can also ruin the game. Implementing changes in something as fundamental as diplomacy needs to be thought through.