Feedback: Buildings and Wonders

[Simon_Jester]

No we don't.

 

[Xyth]

Well we certainly want some skyscrapers. When choosing which we want to ensure that it's has 'wonder' value beyond just being incredibly tall. The Burj Khalifa is possibly an exception because it broke so many records by such significant numbers. The Empire State building is obviously a good candidate since it was effectively the culmination of the first wave of an architectural revolution and has been culturally iconic ever since.

Beyond those, it gets a bit tricky. Taipei 101 and the Petronas Towers (if art existed) appeal because they're Asian and are very distinctive but there's only so much room in the tech tree. In game terms at least, both are very close temporally to the Burj Khalifa. None have been around long enough for anyone to judge whether they have 'wondrous' value beyond architecture.

I can't think of any other widely iconic skyscrapers (but I'm certainly not an expert in modern world architecture). The World Trade Centre perhaps, but that's New York yet again and I must confess I'd never heard of it prior to 9/11.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Let me clarify:
1) I don't think we want more than two skyscraper wonders.
2) My "no we don't" post was a direct response to Keinpferd, who literally just said "we want many skyscrapers," without evidence or arguments in favor of the statement.

Now, the reasons I don't think we want more than two:

The Modern era already has a number of wonders, and plenty of other things to build- new improvements like Airports and Supermarkets, new classes of unit, the works. Adding four or more new wonders to the Modern era isn't all that helpful; we want to roughly balance the number of wonders per era.

Three or four skyscraper wonders, closely spaced in game time, starts to get repetitive. They're all good for trade, they're all big, they're all more or less identical... if we're planning to do it that way, why not just make a Huge Skyscraper national wonder and leave it at that? Do we really want everyone and his cousin Fred to have a huge skyscraper wonder?

I think two, one late-Industrial or early Modern (Empire State) and one late Modern (Burj Khalifa) is about right.

I appreciate the value of introducing more non-Western things into the game, but when we're looking at the era from about 1700-1960, there just aren't a lot of Big Project success stories from the Third World we can point to- it was an age of technological and social imperialism, when the people who had the resources to achieve big projects using the new technology were constantly oppressing and delaying the development of the people who didn't.

And unfortunately, it isn't a good idea to have two or three big wonders all representing the 1960-2010 period that are all basically the same thing, just with slightly different effects for some arbitrary reason.

 

[Xyth]

I think two, one late-Industrial or early Modern (Empire State) and one late Modern (Burj Khalifa) is about right.

Yep, that's pretty much what I'm thinking too.

I appreciate the value of introducing more non-Western things into the game, but when we're looking at the era from about 1700-1960, there just aren't a lot of Big Project success stories from the Third World we can point to- it was an age of technological and social imperialism, when the people who had the resources to achieve big projects using the new technology were constantly oppressing and delaying the development of the people who didn't.

From the Industrial Era on it would indeed be disingenuous to force representation of the Eastern World just for the sake of diversity. Prior to that there still needs to be more than there is now though; Europe really was a technological and cultural backwater in the Medieval Era.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, which is why I'm all for introducing wonders from the ends of the Earth in the earlier eras, but think it's a bad idea to obsess too much over getting them into the late game.

There's no such thing as a Chinese Hubble Space Telescope, but the building of such a device is not unique to any one culture. Unlike, say, the Pyramids at Giza or the Taj Mahal, it would not look all that different had it been built by Aztecs or a triumphal Indonesia-themed global thalassocracy.

For that matter, for a thing like "Large Hadron Collider..." that's actually fully generic. Allowing for translation, any civilization could have built it and given it that name, depending on what word for 'hadron' they invented.

 

[Mr. Sulu]

Theory of Evolution
Cost: 1000 Hammers
Unlocks at Biology
+6 Culture
+2 Great Scientist Points
Receives +2 Free Great People
+2 Happiness in all players cities

I'm not sure if this should be a project or wonder. Several details about it's effect would change if it becomes a project, so ideas are welcome.
Here's graphics
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=18330

 

[Simon_Jester]

I'm reminded of Darwin's Voyage from Civ II.

 

[Eucalyptus]

I'm running 1.16 with the modified road-speeds. The new Paved Roads
are indeed a gaming enrichment. Many thanks Xyth!
This version really does warrant its "1" prefix.

I also came across The Colosseum and the redesigned Hagia Sophia
without previously having looked them up in the Civilopedia. What a
flash of creative insight it was to design these wonders!


The Colosseum

In a wonder race, the Japanese beat me (Elizabeth) to The
Colosseum. OK, so I conquered Kyoto, took The Colosseum, signed
peace with Meiji, and installed 2 Great Generals in Kyoto. I then
built in Kyoto a "Heavy Footman", who, to my surprise popped out as
a (very, very fast) Samurai! My small Samurai crew then performed
miracles for me in the `second Anglo-Nippon war' shortly
afterwards. In an ironic twist, Meiji himself had never made
Samurai as he hadn't bothered to learn Steel Working before
Engineering.

Q: I read that The Colosseum allows (in its city) the unique units
of civilizations in the trade network to be trained. To be certain
about the mechanics, if the Japanese had been extinguished, then I
would not have been able to build Samurai. Yes? The owner of The
Colosseum is thus motivated to keep competitors whose unique units
are not outdated alive longer, to the point of ensuring their
protection from scavengers. I like this mechanic, but I suspect
that the AI won't grasp it quite as well as a human player ...

Q: Is it possible to have "Samurai" rather than "Heavy Footman"
visible in the build queue? This would facilitate build decisions
without having to continuously check up on which civilisations have
appropriate unique units and who is in the trade network. Further,
it would resolve the following issue: What happens if there are 2
distinct unique unit versions for a given unit available? I would
like to be able to choose either, directly from the build queue.



The Hagia Sophia

I built the Hagia Sophia, then conquered several Hittite cities
with their Huwasis (modified Monuments, giving +2 hammers), which I
was then able to keep. Very nice! I received a message explaining
that these Huwasis replaced standard Monuments.

However, as I had Stonehenge, I also automatically received
Monuments in these cities. Cool! But perhaps this is a bug rather
than a feature? It wouldn't happen with any building other than
with the replacement-Monuments and the situation would be even more
powerful for the conquerer if they also had a unique Monument, say
the Egyptians with their Obelisk. I personally like the effect and
advocate its retention but I imagine that opinions may vary on
this.

 

[Xyth]

Mr. Sulu:

Keep your wonder ideas coming! I'm currently very involved with optimizing and improving all the unit art (a huge overdue task, but one that should see decent performance and memory use improvements) so I won't be doing any thorough evaluations of wonders until that's finished. I definitely want to add some more wonders into 1.17 though so know that this feedback is valuable, even if I'm not responding at the moment


Everyone:

If you haven't seen it already, take a look at this thread. Platyping is putting together many wonders with interesting new effects, I'd like your thoughts on which effects you think would be good additions to HR. The building they're attached to doesn't matter, I can change that easily if we wish.

 

[Xyth]

I'm running 1.16 with the modified road-speeds. The new Paved Roads
are indeed a gaming enrichment. Many thanks Xyth!

I'm glad you're enjoying them. There's been feedback from several people that they dislike standard roads not giving any movement bonus. I've proposed reverting them to 1/2 movement cost and making Paved Roads give 1/3 movement cost, with 1/4 after Cartography. What are your thoughts on this?

Q: I read that The Colosseum allows (in its city) the unique units
of civilizations in the trade network to be trained. To be certain
about the mechanics, if the Japanese had been extinguished, then I
would not have been able to build Samurai. Yes?

Correct. A civ has to be alive and connected to your trade network. As soon as either of those is no longer true the Colosseum will no longer produce those units.

Q: Is it possible to have "Samurai" rather than "Heavy Footman"
visible in the build queue? This would facilitate build decisions
without having to continuously check up on which civilisations have
appropriate unique units and who is in the trade network. Further,
it would resolve the following issue: What happens if there are 2
distinct unique unit versions for a given unit available? I would
like to be able to choose either, directly from the build queue.

It's possible but it is potentially a performance issue. The code currently triggers whenever the city with the Colosseum builds a unit, which is just once in a while. In order to make the UUs visible in the build queue I'd need to attach the code to a check known internally as 'canTrain'. The problem is that the 'canBuild' check is called a LOT; each AI civ calls it multiple times every turn so attaching code to it could slow turn times down.

I agree it would be the ideal solution though (for both the player and the AI) and I'd like to do some testing to see how manageable it would be.


EDIT: UGH! I did a preliminary test, just enabling the Python callback for canTrain without attaching any code to it all... and turn times slowed by about a factor of 10! Definitely ruling this solution out.

I built the Hagia Sophia, then conquered several Hittite cities with their Huwasis (modified Monuments, giving +2 hammers), which I was then able to keep. Very nice! I received a message explaining that these Huwasis replaced standard Monuments.

However, as I had Stonehenge, I also automatically received Monuments in these cities. Cool! But perhaps this is a bug rather than a feature? It wouldn't happen with any building other than with the replacement-Monuments and the situation would be even more powerful for the conquerer if they also had a unique Monument, say the Egyptians with their Obelisk. I personally like the effect and advocate its retention but I imagine that opinions may vary on this.

That wasn't an intentional feature but I'm okay with leaving it in. There are a few other quirks with captured UBs; for example a city with a captured Forge replacement instead of an actual Forge is, due to a bug in BTS that I can't fix, unable to build the Eiffel Tower or be counted towards the Ironworks requirement. So the occasional beneficial quirk certainly doesn't hurt.

In some ways I'm actually tempted (if it's possible) for the Hagia Sophia to allow you to capture UBs and let you build the normal version as well. You'd thus get the benefit of an entire extra building, not just the UB 'bonus'. This would solve all such quirks but I would probably balance it somewhat by raising the cost of the wonder and making it go obsolete at some point.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I like the proposed Hagia Sophia modification.

 

[Eucalyptus]

I'm glad you're enjoying them. There's been feedback from several people that they dislike standard roads not giving any movement bonus. I've proposed reverting them to 1/2 movement cost and making Paved Roads give 1/3 movement cost, with 1/4 after Cartography. What are your thoughts on this?

I've been using that XML file CIV4RouteInfos.xml.zip that you supplied recently that implements this. The result is very playable.

 

[Eucalyptus]

It's possible but it is potentially a performance issue. The code currently triggers whenever the city with the Colosseum builds a unit, which is just once in a while. In order to make the UUs visible in the build queue I'd need to attach the code to a check known internally as 'canTrain'. The problem is that the 'canBuild' check is called a LOT; each AI civ calls it multiple times every turn so attaching code to it could slow turn times down.

I agree it would be the ideal solution though (for both the player and the AI) and I'd like to do some testing to see how manageable it would be.

EDIT: UGH! I did a preliminary test, just enabling the Python callback for canTrain without attaching any code to it all... and turn times slowed by about a factor of 10! Definitely ruling this solution out.

OK, but my second issue remains. If there are multiple possible unique units, the result is an Easter Egg for the player! Which unit is chosen? What happens if trade is broken off during construction? The unit reverts to the standard?

I'm still enjoying the mechanic. Today's exercise: Attack Rome with Legionaries!

 

[Eucalyptus]

That wasn't an intentional feature but I'm okay with leaving it in. There are a few other quirks with captured UBs; for example a city with a captured Forge replacement instead of an actual Forge is, due to a bug in BTS that I can't fix, unable to build the Eiffel Tower or be counted towards the Ironworks requirement. So the occasional beneficial quirk certainly doesn't hurt.

In some ways I'm actually tempted (if it's possible) for the Hagia Sophia to allow you to capture UBs and let you build the normal version as well. You'd thus get the benefit of an entire extra building, not just the UB 'bonus'. This would solve all such quirks but I would probably balance it somewhat by raising the cost of the wonder and making it go obsolete at some point.

Today's game demonstrates that Walls can be built in former Celtic cities with Duns.

Sire, we have built new walls around the old walls!

I like this feature more and more!

 

[Xyth]

OK, but my second issue remains. If there are multiple possible unique units, the result is an Easter Egg for the player! Which unit is chosen? What happens if trade is broken off during construction? The unit reverts to the standard?

If there is more than one UU matching the unit being built then one will be chosen randomly from the available options. It's all determined the moment the unit is finished, so if the trade network is broken during construction you'll just get a normal unit.

Today's game demonstrates that Walls can be built in former Celtic cities with Duns.

Sire, we have built new walls around the old walls!

I like this feature more and more!

I like the proposed Hagia Sophia modification.

Okay, I think I've got it working so that UBs are captured but don't prevent you building the regular version of the building as well. Might still be some quirks remaining but we'll find out in 1.17.

 

[Eucalyptus]

If there is more than one UU matching the unit being built then one will be chosen randomly from the available options. It's all determined the moment the unit is finished, so if the trade network is broken during construction you'll just get a normal unit.

So I invest 80 hammers for a Swordsman and I might either get a Legionary worth 100 hammers or a Jaguar Warrior worth 70. A god in the machine! I'm liking it.

 

[Xyth]

So I invest 80 hammers for a Swordsman and I might either get a Legionary worth 100 hammers or a Jaguar Warrior worth 70. A god in the machine! I'm liking it.

That's right, so long as the Romans and/or the Aztecs are in the game and connected to your trade network. I probably need to word the pedia description a bit better.

 

[Eucalyptus]

So I invest 80 hammers for a Swordsman and I might either get a Legionary worth 100 hammers or a Jaguar Warrior worth 70. A god in the machine! I'm liking it.

That's right, so long as the Romans and/or the Aztecs are in the game and connected to your trade network. I probably need to word the pedia description a bit better.

After some more thought, I'm liking it less: If the Aztecs are the only other suitable civilization with a Swordsman replacement, then the build investment is always poor, as the Jaguar is weaker than the Swordsman. Worse, I can't even ask for the normal Swordsman. Building The Colosseum then yields a negative return that can't be cancelled out.

It's possible but it is potentially a performance issue. The code currently triggers whenever the city with the Colosseum builds a unit, which is just once in a while. In order to make the UUs visible in the build queue I'd need to attach the code to a check known internally as 'canTrain'. The problem is that the 'canBuild' check is called a LOT; each AI civ calls it multiple times every turn so attaching code to it could slow turn times down.

I agree it would be the ideal solution though (for both the player and the AI) and I'd like to do some testing to see how manageable it would be.

EDIT: UGH! I did a preliminary test, just enabling the Python callback for canTrain without attaching any code to it all... and turn times slowed by about a factor of 10! Definitely ruling this solution out.

Could the outcome be made a player choice at the moment of construction? A windows pops up:

"You have trained a Swordsman in The Colosseum in Bibracte. Your foreign gladiators can train this unit in their special skills. Choose:

. Aztec Jaguar Warrior
. Roman Legionary
. Swordsman"

The AI could be coded to choose based on raw strength, then promotions.

 

[Xyth]

After some more thought, I'm liking it less: If the Aztecs are the only other suitable civilization with a Swordsman replacement, then the build investment is always poor, as the Jaguar is weaker than the Swordsman. Worse, I can't even ask for the normal Swordsman. Building The Colosseum then yields a negative return that can't be cancelled out.

Well I think the main issue there is that the Jaguar is too weak and should probably be made more desirable! I understand your point though.

Could the outcome be made a player choice at the moment of construction? A windows pops up:

"You have trained a Swordsman in The Colosseum in Bibracte. Your foreign gladiators can train this unit in their special skills. Choose:

. Aztec Jaguar Warrior
. Roman Legionary
. Swordsman"

The AI could be coded to choose based on raw strength, then promotions.

This is probably possible, just tricky to code. Popups like that can cause sync problems in multiplayer if not done carefully, and I'm not very experienced with that aspect of Python scripting yet. However, it might just be possible to do this, at least partially, via the event system - avoiding such problems. I'll look into it.

 

[Howard Mahler]

Gives free Leadership Promotion.
I liked the idea when this change was made a while ago.
I think it is an excellent idea.

Is it just me, but does the National Monument seem too expensive (time consuming) to build in exchange for the benefit? I have not been bothering to build it, and think that in most circumstances that is the right decision.

My thinking is, that instead of building this national wonder, I could be building a bunch of units, for example 5 cavalry. If instead I build the wonder, I have fewer units. The units I build after building the wonder will have a potential to be better; if they get into combat and survive, they will gain experience twice as fast.

I could be wrong, but it seems too expensive to me to build.
If I am right, it should be made cheaper, or be given some additional bonus such as just giving experience similar to a dock or a barracks.

Other opinions from players would be valuable.