Exploration Revamp

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Let me try

Opener: Embarked units able to move onto ocean tiles. All naval units including transports get +1 sight and +1 one movement (maybe transport only), unlocks Lovere (can't spell it)

This opener allows civs to go on exploring before astronomy allowing for differen't tech path and also make it easier to explore with large LoS and more speed.

Pionners: unlock the pionner unit, a cheap fast settler with embarction protetction and speed that can only settle oversea land.

Pionner cost 50 hammers 4 moves embarktion protetcion and +2 speed on embarction.

This unit will give explorers a large advantage to colonise oversea land add in the opener and maybe exploration will be needed to get anything at all from oversea land.

Colonisation efforts needs pionners: Oversea cities gives +2 happines each gets +2 food each and border expand cost only 25% as much

Makes oversea cities more manageable and stronger to get alot from your new colonies.

Naval tradition: give naval units +25% strength/ranged strength and one speed.
This will help your naval empire alot vs its enemies.

Exotic riches need Naval tradition and Colonisation efforts: your civ get +4 happines for each luxery resource not found on your home continent, whatever they are in your oversea empire or if you trade for them.

Benefint the ones that search for newfound riches

Global empire need Exotic riches: each continent you got your precens on will give you +5 happines and your land units get 20% strength boost on oversea land.

To the one that whishes to dominate the world.

Finisher Hidden sites revealed, 25% production on spaceship parts and great admirals can now be purcased with faith.

Liked that finisher, why stop exploring your own planent then so many others exist.

Exploration will give large bonus for any oversea empire but will be pretty much worthles for a non oversea one.

 

[EpsilonEridani]

I also rather like EpsilonEridani's idea re: Hidden Antiquity Sites. I've been scratching my head for a while thinking of a mechanism to create/reveal new Natural Wonders but couldn't think of anything feasible. This mechanism definitely has some merits. However, I would ask - are you forced to make a new Landmark/Natural Wonder, or could you extract an Artefact as usual? The former might be more interesting, but it might also result in you giving Natural Wonders to other Civs!

My idea was that in BNW, scouting had not to be encouraged because you always have to explore the world at the very least for finding the other civ and city states. The archeologist is a very interesting unit because it is a kind of modern explorer, digging everywhere in the world including in the territory of other civs. For me, an exploration tree has to reward somehow this digging and I do not really like the current "hidden antique site" reward. I had this idea of introducing these hidden natural wonders (for me, it could not be turned into an artifact. Pompei or Omo Valley cannot be moved into a museum so it would mean giving sometimes a science boost to enemies from Babylone or a tourism boost to France) but I agree it would be difficult to implement.

A completely different solution would be that the final exploration bonus gives a science bonus in addition to the +2/+2 in culture/tourism for each artifact. In counterpart, the hidden antique site would be removed from the game. I do not know how high the bonus should be. In my opinion, it should be high enough for justifying exploration everywhere in the world including in enemy territory. +4 in science should be a good compromise encouraging an aggressive hunt for distant sites without being excessively powerful.

 

[Sorinth]

I a big fan of adding science to the exploration tree but if it becomes a strong science tree it should also be pushed back to the renaissance era rather than medieval era.

Would anyone be in favour of a policy that allowed the Archelogist to dig up more than once? If a single unit could say dig up 2-3 sites before being used up it would be a big boost.

 

[vplus]

Re: policies that involve continents - I'm not too huge a fan. Firstly, I'd like to think that all Social policies are valid across all map types. Secondly, there is tremendous variability between different Continents (or Continents Plus) maps. The world may only consist of 2 continents, one may be small with 2 players, the other may be large with 6 players. Everyone on the large continent would be penalised merely for sharing land connections with their distant neighbours.

Secondly...

My idea was that in BNW, scouting had not to be encouraged because you always have to explore the world at the very least for finding the other civ and city states. The archeologist is a very interesting unit because it is a kind of modern explorer, digging everywhere in the world including in the territory of other civs. For me, an exploration tree has to reward somehow this digging and I do not really like the current "hidden antique site" reward. I had this idea of introducing these hidden natural wonders (for me, it could not be turned into an artifact. Pompei or Omo Valley cannot be moved into a museum so it would mean giving sometimes a science boost to enemies from Babylone or a tourism boost to France) but I agree it would be difficult to implement.

I agree that there is definitely a need for a modern Explorer. For a while I toyed with the idea of adding an Explorer Unit (much like the one in the Scramble for Africa) into the mix, where he can unveil Natural Wonders that were otherwise hidden on pre-existing tiles. However, this mechanism was far too clunky, and I couldn't really think of anything else that it'd be worth having an Explorer do.

The way I imagined your proposal working is that approximately 1 in every 5 Hidden Antiquity Site will convert to a unique tile, effectively a new Natural Wonder. I suppose these tiles could be outstanding Archaelogical finds such as Pompei or Troy (before it got wrecked), but I suppose it could also include hard-to-discover natural phenomena such as the Phong-Nha-Ke caves. Obviously these tiles would offer up impressive yields (as all Natural Wonders do).

Given the policies I suggested earlier, this means there would be 3 reasons to go for the Hidden Antiquity Sites:
1) Culture & Tourism, as before
2) To get foreign artefacts into your museums for the boost
3) To increase the number of Natural Wonders within your boarders, and therefore the (that might be needed to sustain a war)

I really wouldn't worry about Civ-specific boons, not only would it be really complicated to come up with something for everyone, but it assumes that once a player has chosen a Civ they have already chosen their victory path

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Hidden natural wonders is a beautiful idea. I only worry that the base game does not have anything near to support for it - changing the properties of tiles on the fly is just... one of the things this engine doesn't do right now.

Summing up everything so far, the important thing to do is to figure out how to choose the policy texts that match our vision. vplus might say that his Seafaring, Cartography, Bountiful Lands etc. policies (in #20) are a good answer to this thread, and I might argue that the effects be different. We need a way to have that argument constructively, we need to agree on how the right set of policies will be known when we have them, which involves (1) Picking the right things for Exploration to do from the suggestions, and (2) How to arrange those bonuses (separate them into texts of distinct policies) and set the balance of the numbers.

I think it's possible to consider and evaluate different policy effects separately from appraising their balance, as though the balance could come as an afterthought. It is the correlation of the effects within a single policy, and the structure of policy prerequisites, which contributes most to the aesthetic appeal of the design. The fun (at the end) is a combination of those aesthetics, and the balanced gameplay wrought by using good numbers.
That said, there is still an art to approximating balance at least, and predicting what sort of intrinsic strength a certain kind of bonus has, thus balance is not truly an afterthought. That's what I have to say about the (1) side of the question.

As for (2), I feel that existing social policies can be a guide for balance. While there is (unfortunately) a wide disparity in policy branch power levels, we might as well aim for the top - Tradition and Rationalism. The relative strength of each branch determines the appeal of each, and the absolute strength of policies available determines the value of culture as a resource. I think the value of culture itself is in about the right place, maybe a little lacking, but whether it is or it isn't, couldn't be solved with just changing one tree, so we've got to focus on the goal before us. So that leaves equality in a relative sense in our control, and the comparisons with two known good branches to make.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I've been thinking about this more, and realized we've got to lay out some priorities for Exploration, and look at its effect as a whole.

We've identified bonuses to Science, Culture, and Happiness as the things the branch will do, keyed off to whatever conditions. It's important to have an overall scope limiter on the science and culture bonuses, so that Exploration doesn't become better at Rationalism than Rationalism, and so that it doesn't do what Aesthetics does but better.

However, that said, it's clear that we want Exploration to become a very attractive sort of "conditional" tree, that will tie into your productivity and wealth if in fact you invest in exploring the world, settling lots of new land, and picking up artifacts. In addition we want it to help you do those things, starting from the naval unit sight bonus in the opener.

I'm just saying the scale has to be controlled so that it's actually about helping you explore, and not just a grabbag of science and wideness goodies.


Oh, and add "1 free Great Admiral" to the effect list. The pre-astronomy navigation is kind of expected of the tree. I think it would be good to combine this policy with the effects keyed to exploring number of tiles / meeting other civs.

 

[kaspergm]

I really like the idea of some sort of hidden Natural Wonders, that fits perfectly in the "exploration" theme (and should imo. replace the hidden antiquity sites, which should be in Aesthetics finisher instead). It would also encourage settling new unclamed areas which imo. should be a major theme in this tree.

I think the idea of changing the hammer bonus from coastal cities to any city on different continent is very encouraging for this tree, but I also see the problem with certain map types as pointed out above. Perhaps one could work up some sort of region mechanism could come in play, map is already divided into different regions by map maker, or one could say it applies to any city founded after you adopt the policy, simply to encourage late-game settling. The hammer bonus makes a huge impact in building all those cheap base buildings, so having it only apply to coastal cities seems a bit random.

I'm not myself a fan of the gold bonus on naval trade routes. This should imo. be in commerce tree (same policy as land trade routes). Instead I agree what others mentioned above, Exploration should have boost in domestic trade routes - this makes sense, Commerce focus on external trade, Exploration on internal.

So my suggestions would look something like:

Expansion: Unlocks at medieval (renaissance??) era
Opener: +1 sight and movement to naval and recon units. Grants a free explorer.
Left 1: +2 movement for settlers and +2 population in newly founded cities. (Pioneer Expansion)
Left 2: +3 production in newly founded cities. (... Infrastructure)
Left 3: +25 % internal trade routes yield. (Wagon Trains)
Right 1: +25 % production when lighthouse, harbor and seaport. +1 gold from these buildings. (Merchant Navy)
Right 2: +1 happiness and +1 science from lighthouse, harbor and seaport. (Navigation School)
Finisher: Explorers can see hidden Natural Wonders and/or unique luxury resources (appears randomly spread out over unsettled lands at start of medieval (renaissance?) era. Can buy Settlers with faith from Industrial era.

 

[Doktor Vic Tim]

Explorer is an upgraded Scout, yes? Come to think of it, Scouts really should be able to upgrade to Explorers.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I think the opener should allow you to move into oceans, not just give a free admiral for that purpose.

Opener: Unlocks everything from astronomy but observatories also +1 sight and +1 speed for naval and recon, unlocks wonder.

This opener gives a headstart at exploration, even if you aren't close to astronomy you can still explore all the oceans and even transport units over to new lands.

 

[Doktor Vic Tim]

That doesn't sound like a bad idea! Getting a good headstart in exploration (Although hurting the Polynesian UA a bit).

What about Exploration Triremes suffering a -1 or -2 movement in deep ocean so that while they can explore, they can't explore as well as a Caravel could.

 

[kaspergm]

I think the opener should allow you to move into oceans, not just give a free admiral for that purpose.

Yeah, that makes sense. I would remove the admirals entirely from the Exploration tree anyway, since I think they belong better in Honor.

 

[vplus]

Sorry for the lack of response recently, I have (and still am) in the midst of some rather major exams! Still, it's nice to see that despite everything said so far that there are yet even more suggestions. Whilst we may struggle to come to a single best policy tree that we can all agree on, it seems we could make multiple incarnations that are all better than the one currently provided!

I agree with Horseshoe_Hermi that we need some scope for collecting all these ideas together into some form of coherent system. I tried to do this earlier, but it appears that the creativity of the contributors to this topic isn't yet exhausted! I will therefore restate the list and expand it to include newer ideas:

Policies aiding "exploration"

• Increased Movement and/or LOS
• Access to a special Explorer Unit
• Access to Hidden Antiquity Sites (slightly revamped)
• Enable Naval Units to enter Ocean earlier than usual
• Decreased costs of Spaceship Parts

Policies rewarding "exploration"

• Extra Delegates are rewarded for discovering the world to various degrees
• A Happiness boost for Natural Wonders (discovering and/or working)
• Discovery of tiles produces Culture and/or Science
• A production boost for Archaeologists
• A Happiness or Culture boost for each Foreign Civ the player has met

Policies allowing larger empires

• Cities start with extra Population or Territory
• Science and/or penalties for having a wide empire are reduced or eliminated
• All Sea Trade Routes provide additional Food
• Increased yields for Internal Trade Routes
• Border growth rate increases
• Boosts to cities that are on different landmasses
• Access to a special Pioneer Unit

Naval / Coastal oriented policies

• Increasing Gold of Sea Trade Routes
• Cheaper / improved Great Admirals
• Production boosts from coastal cities, Sea Tiles, Atolls, etc
• Increased Gold, Happiness, and/or Production from Lighthouses, Harbours and Seaports
• Naval Units gain increased Strength and Ranged Strength
• Naval Units near a Great Admiral receive increased Movement and/or LOS

If you have any ideas for principles that could be added to this list, then post ASAP (even if you can't incorporate them into a policy).


So it looks like we've formed a rather large and somewhat eclectic list! All of these options of course have their merits, but we ultimately need to narrow down the list to form the optimum result. Some principles that might help here:

1. Reflect our understanding of "Exploration" (see #8 and #11). As a rule of thumb, I'd say that means at least one concept from each group set out above.
2. Balance within the tree - so that it is not too narrowly conceived one way or another.
3. Balance against other trees - so that it doesn't become OP or take the other policies such as Rationalism or Aestheticism

I don't know how to do it on a forum, but we've got to find some way of trimming down these 23+ ideas to get anywhere!

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Expansion
If exploration is to help late game city founding then late game city founding needs to be worth it, so its really needs to help the new cities.

Things such as:

No science penalaty for exploration cities (You gain tech for these cities, exploration cities could maybe be cities that you need to cross ocean for to get)

More starting pop (however this can't be the only benifint or it has to be like maybe atleast 5 if not much more)

Cheaper to grow pops (Like aquaduct maybe we could allow cities to store some food, let say like 30% + aqua bonus then these new cities can grow much faster, could represent immigration).

More happines

Lower or no culture cost penalaty for new cities to not slow you down at gaining policies.

Trade

While commerence is the main tree for trading exploration do have a large gold benifint for naval routes. Alot of exploration was done to find trade routes for valuable goods so exploration could use some sort of trading bonus conected to exploration.
Best way to represent that is this I think:

Quadroples the gold gained for trading with luxeries that do not exist on your capital continent.

Exploration

Exploration should give some benifint to exploring which this tree don't give much of right now.

Early acces to exploring oceans should be one benifint, this will allow you to meet other civs and CS earlier then normal, if also transport and trade is allowed then this could give more advantage.

Hidden Natural Wonders, encourage exploration to find these new wonders.
Bigger bonues for Natural Wonders, to encourage settling and looking for them.

Hidden Lux Resources, could be hard to implement but could be very intresting.

Navy

Exploration civs will probably work close to the seas and a navy boost could fit very well but maybe exploration should more eco focused, we could sacrifice its navy for others things if we have to.

Wonder
Should exploration keep its wonder or have another, maybe a completly new designed for it?

Its place among the trees
Tradition: Growth, large boost to capital
Liberty: small boosts to all cities, reduce expansion cost and punishment
Honor: Land military and military buildings bonuses.
Piety: Very large religious building bonuses, better religion and faith useage.
Patronage: CS bonuses.
Commerence: Effiecent gold useage, better gold buildings and lux resources.
Astetics: Easier to get tourism and culture.
Rationalism: Resarch bonuses.
Exploration: Naval and cost bonues.

Right now the trees all focus on very narrow things, maybe we should make exploration a chancing tree which can win you the game if you had a bad start, or make you very strong if you allready are strong but may also grant you very little at all.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Death of thread makes me sad. Revive?
Someone has to take charge and produce a mod, in some form. Then a community can form around the mod.

I am working on a Social Policy Revamp project, and I can modularize it with this Exploration revamp so that I can distribute it separately. To make it tractable, I'm forgetting about anything requiring DLL modification, except for changes to trade route yields, because I've done that anyway.

A bonus to food from Sea trade routes is perfect for colonialism; the only problem is that trade routes work by gifting to the destination city, which means the bonus I want (where it applies even if you ITR) is inelegant to apply.
Alternatively, the Treasure Fleets effect is like reimbursing an internal route , so maybe I should work from that end.

The policy effects I'm working with, considering all the above:

• The Great Unknown: A Great Admiral appears, and Great Admirals appear 50% faster. The rate of border expansion increases.
  
• Cartography: Gain 1 Happiness for the discovery of each Natural Wonder. Receive a boost of [Science] and [Culture] when each tile of these types first enters your borders: Atoll, Jungle, Oasis, Ice, Marsh, Snow. Requires Legendary Tales.
  
• Expeditions: See the Hidden Antiquity Sites. +2 Science from Landmarks and Natural Wonders. May purchase Archaeologists with [Gold]. Requires Cartography.
  
• Colonies: ?? (currently just leaving Naval Tradition) Requires Maritime Infrastructure
  
• Maritime Infrastructure: +3 Production in coastal cities. {unchanged}
  
• Opener: +1 [Movement] and Sight for naval units. An extra delegate is available if the civilization is the first to circumnavigate the globe. Unlocks building the Louvre.
  
• Finisher: Save 33% of the [Science] costs increased on technologies from the number of cities. +1 Culture for each Market, Harbor, or Lighthouse. Requires Maritime Infrastructure.

Actual colonialism is some combination of Exploration and Commerce policies; moved the cultural payback for developing the coastal city into finisher (again).

Spoiler Old version :

• The Great Unknown: A Great Admiral appears, and Great Admirals appear 50% faster. The rate of border expansion increases.
  
• Cartography: Gain 1 Happiness for the discovery of each Natural Wonder. Receive a boost of [Science] and [Culture] when each tile of these types first enters your borders: Atoll, Jungle, Oasis, Ice, Marsh, Snow. Requires Legendary Tales.
  
• Expeditions: See the Hidden Antiquity Sites. +2 Science from Landmarks and Natural Wonders. May purchase Archaeologists with [Gold]. Requires Cartography.
  
• Colonies: +1 Happiness for each Harbor or Lighthouse. +1 Culture for each Market, Harbor, or Lighthouse. Requires Maritime Infrastructure.
  
• Maritime Infrastructure: +3 Production in coastal cities. {unchanged}
  
• Opener: +1 [Movement] and Sight for naval units. An extra delegate is available if the civilization is the first to circumnavigate the globe. Unlocks building the Louvre.
  
• Finisher: Save 33% of the [Science] costs increased on technologies from the number of cities.

• • Legendary Tales: A Great Admiral appears, and Great Admirals appear 50% faster. The rate of border expansion increases.
    
  • Cartography: Gain 1 Happiness for the discovery of each Natural Wonder. Receive a boost of [Science] and [Culture] when each tile of these types first enters your borders: Atoll, Jungle, Oasis, Ice, Marsh, Snow. Requires Legendary Tales.
    
  • Expeditions: See the Hidden Antiquity Sites. +2 Science from Landmarks and Natural Wonders. May purchase Archaeologists with [Gold]. Requires Cartography.
    
  • Colonialism: +1 Happiness for each Harbor or Lighthouse. Cities receive 2 [Food] from sea trade routes established to them. Requires Maritime Infrastructure.
    
  • Maritime Infrastructure: +3 Production in coastal cities. {unchanged}
    
  • Opener: +1 [Movement] and Sight for naval units. An extra delegate is available if the civilization is the first to circumnavigate the globe. Unlocks building the Louvre.
    
  • Finisher: Save 33% of the [Science] costs increased on technologies from the number of cities. +1 Culture for each Market, Harbor, or Lighthouse.
  
  I wanted production modifiers for new cities, then realized the infrastructure perk is probably more useful. Wish I could fit some gold in there.
  
  
• A Great Admiral appears. 1 [Culture] is added each turn to the Culture that may be spent on social policies for each other major civilization met.
  
• +1 Happiness for each Harbor or Lighthouse. Markets, Museums, and Archaeologists built 25% faster.
  
• +2 Science from Landmarks and Natural Wonders. See the Hidden Antiquity Sites.
  
• {Other continent / luxury / gold.} Sea trade routes give +4 food (somehow). +50% Happiness from luxuries.
  
• Maritime Tradition: +1 [Movement] and Sight for naval units. An extra delegate is available if the civilization is the first to circumnavigate the globe.
  
• Opener: ???
  
• Finisher: Gain 1 Happiness for the discovery of each Natural Wonder. {Reduce science/culture costs of sprawling.}

If I crank out a mod that does this, I think interest will be reborn, and the mod may even evolve from there to do all these far-reaching things.

UPDATE:
I am encountering a strange resistance of the mod to ... work. It's just some XML, I only wanted to implement Hidden Antiquities on Merchant Navy, Colonies as Treasure Fleets, the altered prereqs and UI positions, and the text. It's just like a mod I've done before but it's not working. And the way it's glitching is all over the place. Sometimes my text tags don't link, sometimes the policies appear all over the place, sometimes one of them isn't even there.

UPDATE:
Initial tests now successful. I can begin the big DLL changes. Getting an extra delegate is step one, then hooking to the gaining of new tile types.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13550895

I have produced a mod in Alpha which is approximating the notions espoused in this thread. The link is to a thread in Creation & Customization which houses discussion of this mod.

 

[Thormodr]

Great work guys! Exploration should be a much greater part of the game and there are some excellent ideas here.