[Feature] Late game content and building changes

[Leoreth]

Wahhab? For the last I grapple with thee, from hell's heart I stab at thee, for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee

 

[1SDANi]

Wahhab? For the last I grapple with thee, from hell's heart I stab at thee, for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee

From what I've read, Saudi Arabia supported and funded Wahhabism back in the 18th century in exchange for their support of their legitimacy. This deal bound Saudi Arabia into a practice of radicalizing their nation, and in turn, surrounding nations.

Wahhabism, the west's poor execution of splitting up the Ottomans, the CIA changing Iran to a Democracy, the CIA changing Iran to a Shahdom, Iran's declaration that they're the voice for the Muslims, not Saudi Arabia, and the US killing Saddam Hussein aka the only man insane enough and powerful enough to be feared by both Iran and Saudi Arabia, all contributed to our modern middle east.

So I wouldn't say that Saudi Arabia's support of Wahhabism is directly the same as hiring terrorists. I was just reminded of Wahhabism as it's the closest thing IRL that I can think of.

 

[Publicola]

Pretty sure you mean Iran (rather than Iraq) throughout.

 

[1SDANi]

Pretty sure you mean Iran (rather than Iraq) throughout.

Fixed.

 

[Ani Taneen]

This isn't everything I have in mind for this branch, in particular I want to expand the space element of the mod somewhat. Ideas here include:
- replacing the Apollo Project with a series of projects required to ultimate reach the space race victory
- some purpose of going to space even without going for space victory, e.g. building satellites for economic benefit
- rebranding the Space Victory projects from Alpha Centauri spaceship parts to modules of a Mars colony base (i.e. instead of building the space ship you would build the Mars base part by part)

But my plans here are still vague and I need some time (and suggestions) to decide what to do exactly, so I wanted to push the current state already to get feedback and more ideas.

Space program can include a bunch of milestones.
First build a space lunch facility (national wonder) that must be within a certain latitude (in the atomic age, restriction lifted in the digital age, including the ability to build an additional lunch facility)
Second build a space program control center (allows city to build space program materials, with a max of 3, and exponential increase in production cost
Materials are brought to the lunch facility
Space programs have "recipes" requiring to build multiple different components to the lunch facility
Recipes include:
Lunch a communication satellite
Lunch a animal mission (unlocks manned mission)
Lunch a manned mission (unlocks space walk mission)
Lunch a space walk mission (unlocks a lunar orbit mission)
Lunch a lunar orbit mission (unlocks a lunar landing mission)
Lunch a lunar landing mission (creates a space race monument for the first completion)
Other projects for space include:
Lunching satellites to explore outer planets
Lunching a space telescope
Lunching space station
etc.

Now I am a firm believer that this game should support the Venusian Atmosphere Colonization project (NASA Link). but Martian Colonization will require a lot of genetic engineering, both of our food stuff (chickens need gravity to swallow, potatoes need to filter out the toxins in the martial soil) and of our selves (at 1/3 earth gravity, we have reason to believe that mars will kill modern humans after a prolonged stay). So I am all for adding those elements to the game. But then we need to have a discussion about the near future of commercially available CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing.

Personally I believe that the space victory should include asteroid mining and building a space elevator on the moon with a Venusian Sky-City. But Mars has had more literature.

 

[Leoreth]

Homer Simpson voice: hmmm .... lunch

(Serious response to follow.)

 

[Ani Taneen]

As for incentives,
1. Spy satellites, which can inform you when a city starts a building a world wonder, a nuclear warhead, or a new city?
2. Space stations allow you to produce science in exchange for space part materials (so lunch a research project for the station to conduct)?
3. telecommunication satellites help you spread culture and can give you additional trade routes?
4. Can create a golden age for landing on the moon first?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

lunch [...] "recipes" [...] food stuff (chickens need gravity to swallow, potatoes need to filter out the toxins in the martial soil)

Maybe you should grab something to eat before writing up longer posts, you seem pretty hungry.

 

[Ani Taneen]

I'm surprised no one picked up the "martial soil" mistake.

I'm gonna go and have some Sushi with Wahabi

 

[Leoreth]

Maybe you should grab something to eat before writing up longer posts, you seem pretty hungry.

If I'm not mistaken, he does live in Turkey.

 

[merijn_v1]

I had the idea of highjacking the spaceship screen to view the mars base, but that is hardcoded in the exe. But it should be possible to create an overview like the city view mod in civ3.

EDIT:
After a small test, I can very likely make a full 3D model of the planet on which you can add various base components individually.

Maybe I can also make a civ3 like palace viewer with the same methods. So you can design your own palace.

 

[Leoreth]

Space program can include a bunch of milestones.
First build a space lunch facility (national wonder) that must be within a certain latitude (in the atomic age, restriction lifted in the digital age, including the ability to build an additional lunch facility)
Second build a space program control center (allows city to build space program materials, with a max of 3, and exponential increase in production cost
Materials are brought to the lunch facility
Space programs have "recipes" requiring to build multiple different components to the lunch facility
Recipes include:
Lunch a communication satellite
Lunch a animal mission (unlocks manned mission)
Lunch a manned mission (unlocks space walk mission)
Lunch a space walk mission (unlocks a lunar orbit mission)
Lunch a lunar orbit mission (unlocks a lunar landing mission)
Lunch a lunar landing mission (creates a space race monument for the first completion)
Other projects for space include:
Lunching satellites to explore outer planets
Lunching a space telescope
Lunching space station
etc.

Now I am a firm believer that this game should support the Venusian Atmosphere Colonization project (NASA Link). but Martian Colonization will require a lot of genetic engineering, both of our food stuff (chickens need gravity to swallow, potatoes need to filter out the toxins in the martial soil) and of our selves (at 1/3 earth gravity, we have reason to believe that mars will kill modern humans after a prolonged stay). So I am all for adding those elements to the game. But then we need to have a discussion about the near future of commercially available CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing.

Personally I believe that the space victory should include asteroid mining and building a space elevator on the moon with a Venusian Sky-City. But Mars has had more literature.

As for incentives,
1. Spy satellites, which can inform you when a city starts a building a world wonder, a nuclear warhead, or a new city?
2. Space stations allow you to produce science in exchange for space part materials (so lunch a research project for the station to conduct)?
3. telecommunication satellites help you spread culture and can give you additional trade routes?
4. Can create a golden age for landing on the moon first?

That's a bit more detailed than what I had in mind but in general it's very similar to my thoughts which is a good sign. In my mind, there is a couple of elements to the overall idea of "space" that I would organise as follows:

1. Some system to represent satellites and their economic/military benefit. I have some ideas here but I need to test them first so let's skip the details.

2. A track of projects that are the requirement for the space victory (now Mars colony modules), replacing the "Apollo Program" project. My idea is that these projects need to be completed sequentially, and each of them gives a bonus to the first civ to complete them. Maybe civs after the first should also get a production bonus to allow them to keep up. The current list is:
- Orbital Flight (i.e. man in space): +4 experience to Air units for the first to complete
- First Satellite (i.e. Sputnik): enables building Satellites, first to complete causes one turn of anarchy to civs that have Orbital Flight completed
- Lunar Landing (i.e. Apollo Program): enables building Mars colony modules, first to complete receives a free Golden Age

I think that's enough detail and still fits reasonably on the tech tree (I'd put Orbital Flight at Rocketry and the others at Spaceflight). You could also include Lunar Orbit but it seems a bit too fine grained.

3. The Space Victory itself. As said before, it should require Lunar Landing and have modules connected to the seven techs of the third and second to last columns. I don't think it should change much mechanically, although maybe the overall number of required modules should increase because more space production modifiers have been introduced and that would also make it easier to spread the production load over multiple cities.

4. A bunch of buildings, wonders and projects more or less related to space. This includes some new stuff and changing existing things to integrate better with other elements that would be introduced. In particular, some wonders would receive new effects that buff the effects of satellites, making them useful if you already invest in space.
- Launch Site (Spaceflight, national wonder): minimum latitude limits, +100% space production in the city (I don't think we need additional buildings as requirements for space parts)
- Strategic Defense Initiative (Laser, project): would be cool to change it so you could use satellites to defend against ICBMs or attack other satellites
- Global Positioning System (Telecommunications, project): +4 experience for Air units, +1 movement on roads
- Hubble Space Telescope (Satellites, wonder): additional science from satellites
- Space Elevator (Supermaterials, wonder): additional gold per satellite or space project completed
- International Space Station (Satellites, project): additional GPP from satellites, additional civs can complete the project if they have positive relations with the first to complete, giving an additional benefit to that civ
- Lunar Base (some fourth to last row tech, project): additional spaceship production in all cities

Maybe:
- Planetary Probe (or something like that): it would be nice to have a repeatable project that represents missions to various other places in the solar system, but I don't know what benefits it would provide
- Voyager Golden Record: mainly because that's one of the greatest things mankind has done maybe ever in my opinion, and it has a clear cultural component so it could for example produce a massive amount of culture to help with the culture victory

Finally, Tim Curry reminds us why this is worthwhile at all:

Spoiler :

I had the idea of highjacking the spaceship screen to view the mars base, but that is hardcoded in the exe. But it should be possible to create an overview like the city view mod in civ3.

I thought about that too, can we at least draw stuff into the interface with Python? Even a simple 2D graphic that fills over time would be nice.

 

[merijn_v1]

I did some testing to see if some of the CyGInterfaceScreen python functions did what I thought they would do. They do exactly what I hoped they would do.

So I created a small concept of how the mars base view will look like.

Spoiler :

Note that Mars and all the modules (pink blobs) are individual models. That means I can freely control which Mars modules are placed or not.

 

[Vectors]

Doesn't RFCEurope have a colony screen?

 

[Leoreth]

Looks great, but I was envisioning something more like this:

Spoiler :

Basically one colony complex that includes stuff like habitats, hydroponic gardens, etc.

 

[merijn_v1]

Something like that was also my idea. The pink blobs were just some placeholder components. The end result would be a single complex consisting of multiple habitats connected to eachother. But it would be placed on a planet. Giving it a second thought however, placing directly on a planet will have some scaling issues. Having a complex that is about half of Mars in size isn't that realistic.

I think it should be possible to create a view which looks like the building viewer in the pedia using the same functions. (I have to test this though)

 

[Leoreth]

That's what I was getting at. I think it's better to focus the view on a particular section of the Martian surface.

 

[JHLee]

Techs that give bonus yields to improvements are scarce, and I dont think they should be packed up in the global era.
The difference between the civs that make it into global era and civs that can only acquire late game techs by lucky trades and the resurrection mechanic is already quite big.
I'm not sure we should open that gap wider.

 

[Ani Taneen]

Techs that give bonus yields to improvements are scarce, and I dont think they should be packed up in the global era.
The difference between the civs that make it into global era and civs that can only acquire late game techs by lucky trades and the resurrection mechanic is already quite big.
I'm not sure we should open that gap wider.

Personally I think that the easiest, and most realistic solution, is to make it so that corporations spread the bonuses after some research is unlocked. This means that late game civs have a trade off between providing you with that bonus, but also spreading that bonus globally. The difference is that the tech gives it to all your cities, and other civs only benefit if that corporation is there. The reason I feel this makes sense, is because it allows the civs behind a benefit from being the "raw material" part of the economy, showing how in globalism trade has spread wealth to industrializing nations. And if being technologically advanced means that other civs get the benefit for what I researched, then maybe I , the player, too will want to elect the damn nationalists we have seen across the globe.

Let me know if this idea should go into the bad idea section.
Also, launch was delicious. ;-)

 

[Ani Taneen]

2. A track of projects that are the requirement for the space victory (now Mars colony modules), replacing the "Apollo Program" project. My idea is that these projects need to be completed sequentially, and each of them gives a bonus to the first civ to complete them. Maybe civs after the first should also get a production bonus to allow them to keep up. The current list is:
- Orbital Flight (i.e. man in space): +4 experience to Air units for the first to complete
- First Satellite (i.e. Sputnik): enables building Satellites, first to complete causes one turn of anarchy to civs that have Orbital Flight completed
- Lunar Landing (i.e. Apollo Program): enables building Mars colony modules, first to complete receives a free Golden Age

Sputnik comes before Manned Orbital Flight. The way i would do it:
1. First Satellite (i.e. Sputnik): enables building Satellites, first to complete causes one turn of anarchy to civs that have researched both rocketry and radio.
2. Orbital Flight (i.e. man in space): +4 experience to Air units for the first to complete. Unlocks Lunar Landing Project
3. Lunar Landing (i.e. Apollo Program): enables building Mars colony modules for all civilizations, first to complete receives a free Golden Age

I feel like number 3 should unlock it for everyone, this way the game reflects the reality that no other civ has replicated this event.

4. A bunch of buildings, wonders and projects more or less related to space. This includes some new stuff and changing existing things to integrate better with other elements that would be introduced. In particular, some wonders would receive new effects that buff the effects of satellites, making them useful if you already invest in space.
- Launch Site (Spaceflight, national wonder): minimum latitude limits, +100% space production in the city (I don't think we need additional buildings as requirements for space parts)

Personally I like the idea of having to transport the modules to a launch site, this allows the civs with industrial complexes too north of the minimum (or south, but lets be realistic, too far north) to build the materials and then take them to the launch site. Also I feel like the space elevator, if we want to be realistic here, should be highly limited in location (on the equator, and maybe a deviation by 1 or two tiles away from the equator). So maybe it can then give the civ that uses it as a launch site a gold reward for launching the materials from there. It would force the usually powerful civs to then capture space in Africa or South America to use it. It would be the ideal group project wonder if there ever was one for alliances to build.

Also, I want to emphasize that any martian project will require genetic engineering, humans are better off "making" astronauts that have lower bone density than sending earthlings. The benefit is that it makes this victory a true "science" victory, by requiring more late game techs, not just the material sciences.