Era Splitting Revisited

[pepper2000]

I am thinking some more about how we should delineate eras. There seems to be a consensus that the existing Transhuman Era is too long, as well as some dissatisfaction with how the Prehistoric Era is defined, but not a consensus of how to deal with these issues. And there's the reality that any change to the era structure will require surgery in several places throughout the mod.

I'm trying to build a list of all files that would have to be edited to add a new era. I have the following so far. What am I missing?

Spoiler :

• CIV4EraInfos.xml: where the eras are actually defined. This order in this file dictates the order in the make, making eras inherently nonmodular. New eras should probably have things like iGrowthPercent interpolated between surrounding eras.
• CvEraMovieScreen.py: determines what splash screen comes up at the start of a new era. Is easy to update, though suitable images would have to be found for each era.
• CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml: background music for diplomacy, which depends on era. Would be tedious to update without an XML generator.
• CIV4PropertyInfos.xml: Something about education target level. I'm not sure what this is, but I could interpolate values for new eras and hope for the best.
• BUG_CIV4GameText.xml: For the BUG menu, I guess. I'm not sure how this works.
• CIV4UnitCombatInfos.xml: In theory, I think this could be untied from the main era system, but that would be bad design. Would have to add CombatInfos for the new era and assign it to the appropriate units.
• CIV4GoodyInfo.xml: Define what comes out of goody huts. Could copy from existing eras.
• Civ4CityLSystem.xml: Not sure how this works either, but it looks like a job for Find and Replace, and least if cities in the new era will start off looking identical to cities for another era.

No wonder this hasn't been done.

Anyway, there are a lot of ideas floating around for new eras or replacements to existing eras. There's the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Machine, Atomic, Information, Nanotech, Cosmic, and plenty others.

I think the best way to get the eras worked out would be to add in one fell swoop all the eras that we would conceivably want. At first, the new eras would have no content, and they would be invisible to a player except when deciding which era to start. Then several proposals via modmods could be generated, we decide which delineation we like best, and then delete all eras that are not used. Fortunately, most of the steps outlined above would not be needed until the era delineation is decided on.

This task looks like ripping off a band-aid. Painful, dreaded, must be done at once, and we'll be better off for it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm thinking if we do this then at the moment the only real 'new' divisions may be one in prehistoric and one or two in Transhuman.

 

[pepper2000]

That is close to what I am thinking. I am also finding that the whole system is more complicated than I realized, so just adding a bunch of "dummy eras" and them trimming is probably a bad idea.

On my ever-growing list of things to do is build a modmod that reclassifies the techs according to a 12 or 13 era system so people and see how it would look.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The complexity of adding eras has made such projects an item of extreme reluctance.

 

[strategyonly]

The complexity of adding eras has made such projects an item of extreme reluctance.

Yeah, when i added the PH era, it took me quite a while, because i kept having error's, but at least they pop-up in the debug dll the best . . . i think . . .

 

[JosEPh_II]

I don't agree with any need to Add more eras. 10 is very sufficient.

And only academicians want to argue over what defines an Era.

Great discussion but of little use for the Mod imho.

JosEPh

 

[pepper2000]

Hmm. Well, given the difficulty and the general lack on enthusiasm, I think I'll give up on this. Got plenty of other things to work on anyhow.

 

[Praetyre]

I don't agree with any need to Add more eras. 10 is very sufficient.

We only really have 9, though. Future is simply an artifact from vanilla with no actual content beyond a single tech which does nothing but act as an endpoint for the tech tree that goes up in cost each time but gives you fixed in-game benefits every time it's researched (much as it was in vanilla and C2C's predecessors).

And only academicians want to argue over what defines an Era.

Great discussion but of little use for the Mod imho.

JosEPh

What defines an era is not simply an academic discussion; it would have an impact on what technologies would go in which era, including new technologies. One of the biggest examples for this would be (in my proposal, at least) the Neolithic era, which would have an impact well beyond merely the technologies within it (namely a probable shift from what will in the future be a long period of Paleolithic egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies (nomadic start) to something resembling what Prehistoric is now (and indeed, judging by the former starting date of 12,000 BC and DH's comments on the Animal Myths simulating the burst of knowledge in the Neolithic, I'm not alone in this thinking).

Also, Ancient would (in my proposal, I don't think anyone else has suggested it) be an entirely new era between what used to be Ancient (Neolithic) and what is now Classical. And even in the situation where there are not too many technological differences between suberas, treating them as eras (even if that is solely in the sense that they are given an eras number of turns in the game speed file(s)) would allow a wider breadth of societal and geopolitical changes to take place without trying to squeeze it all into however many number of terms you'd allocate to the combined era otherwise.

Furthermore, you seem to have an interest in getting the dates for each era within a certain range. While I don't personally think the number of turns changes the era length, defining when each era begins and ends would certainly be important if what you're aiming for (and as far as I can tell, other people in that thread were) is to make them be in the ballpark of historical dates.

As for as C2C goes, though, I think it'd be better to just try and make each era (subera?) last a roughly equal number of turns (adjusting for things like how filled up the map will be and turn times, of course), and worry about the dates later, if at all.

 

[Noriad2]

As for as C2C goes, though, I think it'd be better to just try and make each era (subera?) last a roughly equal number of turns (adjusting for things like how filled up the map will be and turn times, of course), and worry about the dates later, if at all.

Hmm as the game changes as the techs change, I'd prefer that the number of turns of each era corresponds roughly with the number of techs in an era, with tech prices corresponding with estimated economic development so that there is roughly an equal number of turns between each tech.

Regarding dates, they will probably never be correct, but discussion is necessary to check whether the tech tree and the order of techs corresponds with known history.

(personnally I wonder how effective Slavery would have been in an era without large stone buildings or metal chains, in a hunter-gathering economy. And maybe Stone Buildings comes a bit too soon in the tech tree)

 

[JosEPh_II]

There will be fluctuations in # of turns techs are researched even in individual eras. But I do and am attempting to make each era's # of turns a direct relationship to number of techs in that era. I can tell you so far there will be some variance. So for example, Eternity players don't expect every tech to be completed every 20 turns, too many variables to get that exact. But if it fluctuates from 14 - 25 turns you should be happy with it.

JosEPh