Gedemon's Civilization, development thread

[Gedemon]

Was going to ask for this

Is it possible to show a continuous delta value somewhere for resources? The stock delta disappears when you're at maximum stock, so you have to do the summation by eyeball.

Also, maximum stock values always seem to be slightly above actual stock... you can never reach it. Is this due to internal consumption, or some other reason?

Do you have a suggestion for the location of the virtual delta ?

And an exemple of the second point ?

 

[heinous_hat]

Do you have a suggestion for the location of the virtual delta ?

My first thought would be to just leave the stock variation visible when storage is maxed, but color it red (or whatever) to indicate that the surplus is wasted if not used.

It's an important number when you're calculating whether you can sustain a build over x turns, while also considering how far your current stock will carry you. Maybe there's a better metric for it. I'll give it more thought next game now that you've changed the behavior when supply is insufficient.

And an exemple of the second point ?

Look at materials in this shot... it's at 370/410, and shows no variation. Yet supply is still exceeding demand by +12. It never reaches capacity, despite the apparent surplus. It continues to show the same value on subsequent turns (with no demand).

 

[heinous_hat]

Encountered a problem with city ownership change...

I had a city captured by an AI player (hurray ) and then bought it back in the peace deal. None of the damaged buildings can be repaired... they're all flagged with an unlocker_building requirement. Nor can I construct new buildings

I then tested direct capture, and had the same result. An exception was the damaged central square, which was able to be repaired.

In the tuner, all unlocker buildings in those cities are flagged as pillaged. The state cant be toggled.

 

[Gedemon]

Thank you, I'll add some more code to handle city capture...

About the max resource stock not reached, does it happen with other resources than materiel?

 

[heinous_hat]

About the max resource stock not reached, does it happen with other resources than materiel?

I think I've seen it with personnel also... will try to check with fresh game and an isolated city, no trade, no units drawing resources etc.

With materials, it seems to be consistently off by the same number (+40 storage), even as population increases and the ceiling rises. Sometimes, the cityBanner tooltip will show it differently than the city detail panel... it looks "correct"... but then it changes and matches the panel.

edit: Aside from problems mentioned, changes to material supply (new buildings, settler material cost, etc) seem to be working. More AI players had multiple cities sooner in my last game.

 

[heinous_hat]

Looks like some of the problems I've come across may be game speed related. My preferred pace is epic or marathon... I like having more time to digest numerical trends, gauge efficiency, find shortcuts, etc. I'm playing now at normal speed for the first time after several updates, and some issues are absent...

- maximum stock reaches the displayed stock ceiling... e.g. 150/150 instead of 150/190
- during turn transition, city population no longer bounces to a lower level and back again (and no graphic change)
- population growth proceeds normally... at slower gamespeeds, new cites rapidly gain several pop levels

Unfortunately, building graphics still go missing on save/load. I'll try to further confirm what issues are tied to game speed. For this particular game, I also shut off barbarians and villages, and minimized the # of players.

 

[Gedemon]

Strange... I play at standard and do autoplay at quick/online, but I do plan to have longer games, the "standard" for the mod will be closer to epic/marathon, I'd like to stretch the eras.

Update on gitHub:

add code to handle "unlocker" buildings on city capture
allow variable materiel requirement for buildings production
add resources requirement per turn to the construction panel for buildings and units

The capture code is untested, here are some screens of the tooltips showing the requirements per turn, I've also added a custom version of the prerequisite buildings (there is a "ANY/OR" and a "AND/ALL" table:

 

[Gedemon]

and small fix

hotfix: a part of the city turn (processing resource and growth) was skipped when construction a building.

 

[chrisgatt7]

looks amazing so far...

 

[Gedemon]

Relatively important update today on GitHub:

- can collect sea resources near coastal city, with a range limit depending on techs and buildings
- some resources (stone, copper, iron, salt) are available in small quantity on some terrains
- the plot tooltip now show those resources (and those already available in features like wood and plants in forest)
- moved all buildings from the Harbor District to the City Center, they can only be build in coastal cities
- add Fish Market, a building unlocked with Sailing that can convert Fish, Crabs and Whales to food (can be build anywhere), the normal market can also convert those resources now.
- tweak down materiel requirement for Settler
- the central square (free building added on city creation) can now convert a few resources per turn to food
- add tooltip info in the building tab of the city panel
- resources can't be harvested anymore
- no population prerequisite for settler (the supply mechanism is enough)
- try another fix for unlocker buildings being pillaged on city capture as the previous one was failing
- fix chariot and swordsman equipment not working and displayed as "unknown" (all other units with equipment requirement still show "unknown" as their equipment is not set yet)

For testing, the sea resources mechanism works as follow:

• Once you've researched Sailing, coastal cities will collect sea resources in the adjacent plots
• With each of the following tech, the range is raised by 1: Celestial Navigation, Ship Building, Cartography, Square Rigging
• Once you've build a Lighthouse in a coastal city, the range is also raised by 1, and all resources in range are improved (fishing boat), raising the number of units collected
• Shipyard give +1 range, Sea Port gives +4 range
• The range is a path length, meaning it's the number of tiles that your ship has to travel (around land for example) that is used
• You can't exploit a resource that is in range without a water path (ie sea or lake, not rivers) from the city to the resource, and the path must be clear of enemy units

 

[heinous_hat]

Sweet Been anxious to see how this plays with sea resources in the mix.

Do you plan to use the harbor district at some point, or stay with the coastal settlement requirement ? I thought the harbor was probably the most useful thing in the whole civ6 district mess, as far as settlement options go anyway.

 

[Gedemon]

I've not found a simple way to allow it while keeping the no-culture-on-water mechanism. I can do an exception for the Harbor, but the problem is to allow to place it on a plot you don't own...

 

[Gedemon]

Small update, slowly moving data from lua.log to the UI...

- add production efficiency (and production turns lost if any) to city banner's production tooltip
- add population and housing data to the small city panel
- raise base equipment stock in city to 50
- add (300) Iron Equipment requirement to Knights
- fix: use the minimal population value of the actual city size when checking to reduce a city size, not the population for size-1

 

[Gort]

This all looks fantastic - how does the AI handle it? That always tends to be my biggest worry with overhauls.

 

[Gedemon]

This all looks fantastic - how does the AI handle it? That always tends to be my biggest worry with overhauls.

I've just been wiped of the map in my test game with the latest build at Emperor, so not too bad... (okay, I was busy testing things and forgot to build an army)

More seriously, a few build ago it was bad because the restrictions on building were too important and it wasn't able to develop, but balance changes in huge ways with each build at this stage of development, still I do rebalance things with the AI in mind, and the new mechanisms are also designed to be AI-friendly without additional code when possible.

Now in the current build, it seems fine, but it still has the limitations of the base game. It doesn't look worse I'd say.

On that subject, one of my (long term) goal is also to use the diplomacy to prevent a Civilization to snowball the others, including the human snowballing the AI case.

 

[heinous_hat]

This all looks fantastic - how does the AI handle it? That always tends to be my biggest worry with overhauls.

The combat mechanics actually help the AI, in my experience...

- Limited stacking helps avoid logjams.

- Ranged units (1 tile range) are forced to the front of combat where they're protected under melee units. Addressing enemy ranged units often means you have to deal with better defenders first.

- Due to the reserve and supply system, AI units stay engaged longer and perform better as a result of continuous "healing". You don't see the overly frequent 'heal' or 'withdraw and heal' moves that make AI combat logic ineffective under vanilla rules.

-Longer combat cycles give the AI more time to produce units. Under vanilla rules, once you've defeated the initial force, it's all over. This still becomes a problem eventually, but it's better.

Outside of combat, the AI does pretty much what it usually does... builds stuff and expands where it can. Mod is early WIP, so a lot of vanilla systems are irrelevant, if they haven't been removed. This latest update adds supplementary material generating resources to all tiles, which should benefit the AI.

 

[heinous_hat]

@Gedemon

Is the new production tooltip on the city banner based on the hammer output from the previous turn?

There's a lot to absorb in this update. Looking good, though.

 

[Gedemon]

@Gedemon

Is the new production tooltip on the city banner based on the hammer output from the previous turn?

There's a lot to absorb in this update. Looking good, though.

The hammer output and stock are the value at the moment the Citybanner is refreshed (the mod refresh it after processing the resources in city turns, but the game also does it on some events), the "supplied" value is the best of the last 2 turns.

Another small update on GitHub:

add the production tooltip (and show the number of turns left at current production efficiency) to the production info in the bottom right city panel.

Edit: about the Harbor district, I think it could be allowed in later era, with some buildings in the city center if coastal, then a modern version of those in the district allowing access to water to some inland cities, but not from the ancien/classic/medieval eras. A bit complex to code, and require a new UI (and maybe some hack to prevent desyncs in MP), so no promise.

 

[Gedemon]

And now, something else, I've compiled most technologies/civics from civ1 to civ6 here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Oa84kibjkjabAiJJpRlGc75lJtgH0ctge6ZUvl1cFJE/edit?usp=sharing

It's not organized, or just by eras, but I'd like to discuss the potential research fields based on those technologies, for example:

• Social
• Academic
• Military
• Craftsmanship
• Naval
• Economic

We can't have too many, because some could be useless if they have only a few uses (the "Naval research field" for example will be only used for application/project in the later eras, like "nuclear submarine project" as an application from Rocketry and Nuclear Power, but not directly for Techs)

The draft for research as a reminder for what I call "tech" and "application":

Spoiler :

• multiple fields for research (science, military, production, economy, culture...)
• prerequisite could be something else than another tech (resource, combat XP, date, ...)
  • city on the coast or discovering sea resource unlock sailing for example
  • a technologie that has been developed by another civilizations you have meet can be unlocked without the other prerequisite
    • use a bucket to fill the "unlocker" for that tech faster depending on the relation or spy access level with the other civilization
• research is based on your actions at the beginning of the game, for example:
  • working a plot with wheat/rice give points for pottery
  • working a plot with cattle give points for animal husbandry
  • a city on the coast give points for sailing
• science points are distributed each turn in all unlocked tech, independently of their specific fields
• "field points" are distributed each turn in all unlocked techs related to that field (a tech could be dependent of multiple fields)
• certain buildings will allow to develop projects to advance in a specific field of research (barracks = military, library = civics/science, workshop = construction...)
• higher cost for research
• tech diffusion from contact with other civilizations (depending on relation, distance, trade routes, spying...)
• applications/innovations are projects depending of a specific tech but with different prerequisite
  • first civilization to find a tech could get a free application/innovation from that tech
  • no "tech diffusion" for those (for an actual example the Manhattan Project is an application of Nuclear Fission, a civilization could potentially get Nuclear Fission from tech diffusion only in the mod, but would have to complete the project to get the application)
  • as for tech, application could be researched faster by developing projects in cities
  • unlike tech, only "field points" are distributed each turn in all unlocked application/innovation of that field, science points aren't used on those

On a side note, no mention to faith, religion is something I'd like in the mod, but that's a huge potential overhaul that's not on top in my to do list. In the current development, see religious tech/buildings has social elements.

 

[1SDANi]

Honestly, Archery is all too often a nuisance for me, I like how the RFC DOC mod for civ 4 combined it with Trapping, and made said tech a tier 1 gra, I feel it makes the tech way more useful. They also makes scouts require Trapping (which base civ 4 might also, I wouldn't know its been years since I played vanilla), but I feel making scout unlockable just makes it even more useless.

Speaking of scout, I've been thinking recently that scout is useless after the world is discovered, I'm not sure if this is in base civ 6 or not as I've been playing WAY too much early game, but I've always thought scouts upgrading to archeologists fits pretty well. Not sure how good of an idea that'd be gameplay wise though

Also, Horseback Riding and the sailing techs are useless for civs that don't have horses/coastal cities. I suggest making them dead end techs that are required for future horse/naval units. I always find it annoying to spend a bunch of turns without any meaningful innovation just because there's a wonder I want to get before Mr. "I have the great lighthouse" Egypt.