GEM Stage 1: Terrain

[Thalassicus]

I'm not concerned with earlier villages at least until I have a chance to test it. All that said I want to play several more games with completely baseline G&K before I start making lots of suggestions.

That's one reason why I'm doing Gem slowly in stages. I'm giving everyone a chance to play the core G&K. I know because of time/finances not everyone buys new games right away. I hurried Civup out the door just because there's some interface enhancements I can't live without, like on-map promotion icons or the trade overview screen.

Were natural wonders going back to being somewhat balanced for this? I assumed their placement was partly a CivUP thing, but their actual tile values are not.

Syrian removed and replaced the basic natural wonder placement code in the expansion. The G&K system is much better than the vanilla system, but I need to start from scratch to improve it again. It's a low priority right now.

(BTW - Is the total amount of resources a function of # of players or map size?)

I'll give examples with iron:

• Vem places a total of 5 iron per player territory (land closer to our capital than others). Iron clusters near hilly, desert, snowy, and militaristic-CS areas within each territory. Deposit size is random, so the deposit sizes within a territory might be [1,2,2] or [3,2] or [1,4].
• Gem will scatter 3-8 iron per player territory, similar to Vem, but with a random quantity per territory.
• Vanilla and G&K place 1 iron deposit per 84 hill tiles, ignoring player and terrain distribution. It does a similar ratio for deserts and snow. Each deposit has 2-8 iron which does not consider any factors (purely random).

@glider1
We have variables to control AI prioritization of coastlines, rivers, etc.

 

[Tarquelne]

[*]Vem places a total of 5 iron per player territory...
[*]Gem will scatter 3-8 iron per player territory.

Ah, thanks. I've been adding an extra player each game, in part to spread the resources thinner. It suddenly struck me that I likely had it the wrong way around.

(Though I guess, if I've been using map scripts that didn't come with VEM, I was using the vanilla distribution method?)

 

[mystikx21]

Syrian removed and replaced the basic natural wonder placement code in the expansion. The G&K system is much better than the vanilla system, but I need to start from scratch to improve it again. It's a low priority right now.

Not sure I would say it's much improved. I haven't seen Krakatoa anywhere near anything yet; not even another island. Could just be bad luck. Didn't answer the other part of my question: are they being rebalanced for tile values? (it was just a simple xml change in VEM. We could do that ourselves if needs be while the map code gets worked on, as long as the values haven't been changed by other factors). Vanilla has some outrageous imbalance versus vem. Getting 10 happiness from a tile is like playing on god mode.

 

[Thalassicus]

By "improved" I mean the new system stores information in xml, instead of hardcoding all wonder placement in lua code. This is much better because mods can introduce dozens of new natural wonders, and be fully compatible with one another. In vanilla I modified the lua code to prevent Krakatoa from appearing in the middle of oceans. Now I'll need to modify the xml instead.

Thanks for reminding me about the yields of the natural wonders... I missed that part of your earlier post. I agree the default values are imbalanced.

 

[mystikx21]

By "improved" I mean the new system stores information in xml, instead of hardcoding all wonder placement in lua code. This is much better because mods can introduce dozens of new natural wonders, and be fully compatible with one another. In vanilla I modified the lua code to prevent Krakatoa from appearing in the middle of oceans. Now I'll need to modify the xml instead.

That is much better. It's definitely not much better in how it actually works in game vs vanilla, but if it's easier to mod (assuming it is easier to change placement code in xml vs lua), and can include others easily enough, that's awesome.

I can think of a few (Grand Canyon, Galapagos, Dead Sea, Everglades, Victoria, Angel or Niagara Falls. Probably a glacier too to boost a snow/tundra area). But that's a separate matter.

 

[mitsho]

But there's the problem of graphics, not? If it is easier to do now, I agree we need a few more to add variety, f.e. special lakes, river deltas, deserts, jungles, islands etc. not just mountains

 

[clausewitz77]

No idea if this is the right thread, but I have one wish about terrain in a mod:

Tile improvements that have been destroyed and which are not within any cultural borders should disappear after a certain time, i.e. 30 turns.

I think it does not make sense to have them there smoking in nomansland for centuries.

 

[mystikx21]

But there's the problem of graphics, not? If it is easier to do now, I agree we need a few more to add variety, f.e. special lakes, river deltas, deserts, jungles, islands etc. not just mountains

I don't think of this as a priority relative to other changes for existing natural wonder balance and (then) placement. Might be fun.

If were to come up as an option, I think the reason they're mostly mountains is that mountains are (generally) the most useless tiles and this makes them useful. With that in mind, I'd say that "glacier" or a "wetlands" natural wonders would make the most sense. I wouldn't mind a special lake, or a river (for example a "waterfall" could go on a mountain or hill tile bordering a river?, "delta" affecting the two bordering tiles by the coast?), special island, and maybe a jungle spot.

The second issue with it is that they tend to be in impassable spots. Mountains are generally already so, not much of a change (GBR is about the only one I can think of that screws with this, Old Faithful, Barringer and FoY maybe?). Having a river basin that you couldn't found a city or add improvements on those tiles might be a little confusing/annoying.

 

[Thalassicus]

But there's the problem of graphics, not?

It's like adding new citystate names. There can be multiple natural wonders using the same graphic. Kilimanjaro can use the Mt Fuji art, Kilauea could use the Krakatoa art, etc.

 

[Herex]

Sorry to derail the thread for a moment.

I wish there was something I could do to help speed up the release of GEM. I've never tried modding though, and I wouldn't know where to begin.
I just can't play Civ V without VEM/GEM, so I just gotta have to wait it out...
Keep up the good work everyone, especially Thal.

 

[Tery Buster]

Sorry to derail the thread for a moment.

I wish there was something I could do to help speed up the release of GEM. I've never tried modding though, and I wouldn't know where to begin.
I just can't play Civ V without VEM/GEM, so I just gotta have to wait it out...
Keep up the good work everyone, especially Thal.

I find myself in the same situation.
If it takes one week per stage, I am pretty sure to dry out waiting before all the project is done.

Ain't there anything that could be done to help?

 

[glider1]

Be patient there is things that you can do to the base game while you wait. Start up a fresh thread about what annoys the most about the base game and we can try to patch something up for you while we wait. Realise how big a job it is to make a GEM mod believe me it's a big effort when only one person is actually doing the coding of it. Problem is that you need software engineering skills and that is what Thal has got big time!
Cheers

 

[Tery Buster]

I'm an engineer.
I have quite experience with coding, and plenty of time meanwhile.

Perhaps (emphasis) I could help a bit deeper.

 

[Thalassicus]

I intended to release the terrain stage after just 1-2 days, but ran into a problem with mod dependencies between GEM and Civup. Once I've figured that out stages will come much faster. I'll update the todo list today with information about how can help with future stages.

 

[Tery Buster]

I intended to release the terrain stage after just 1-2 days, but ran into a problem with mod dependencies between GEM and Civup. Once I've figured that out stages will come much faster. I'll update the todo list today with information about how can help with future stages.

I see only CivUP in GitHub.
Is there any way to help with GEM?

 

[Thalassicus]

I've uploaded gem to github now.

Which are you more interested in, xml edits or lua coding? I can point you towards something in the project to help out.

 

[Tery Buster]

Actually, I would start by including Faith and possibly espionage in random events mod.
I did not plan a next step though.

 

[Thibaulthc]

the guarantee of having each type of strategic resource is bad imo

not having one force you to trade/conquer/change strategy, and that's nice

I hate so much those 5 oils tiles. that should be raaaare

 

[jacktannery]

Is it possible to code it so that each Civ's starting location has one resource absent? That way, each civ will need to trade/war/aggressively early expand/overseas expand to get all of the strategic resources for good? If so, would it also be possible to force it to provide the relevent resource to make a civ's UU (so for example if you played as Rome, one random strategic resource other than iron would not be present in your starting location).

 

[mitsho]

the guarantee of having each type of strategic resource is bad imo

not having one force you to trade/conquer/change strategy, and that's nice

I hate so much those 5 oils tiles. that should be raaaare

Well, you are often forced to trade/conquer/change strategy in VEM anyways. The chance is quite high that the ressource you need is a) in a bad city location/on an island, b) with a city state you don't want to conquer (which btw. would be conquering anyways) or c) nevertheless quite removed for you.

The problem that doesn't exist in VEM is one ressource tile with many ressources. Those make it quite unbalanced and often you cannot use them right away anyways, so you trade them for gold.

I do think that the semi-random solution is a good start, the chance is there that if you end up with a 3 iron deposit in your region you can't take it anyways... I guess that needs testing.

On another topic: Is it possible to change mapscripts to place more coastal tiles so that you sometimes have cluster where the coast goes 2 or 3 tiles out. Shallow Seas are common after all and I would believe it would help ancient and medieval scouting and warfare a lot.