GEM2.0

[J in Vegas]

GEM2.0-Discussion
I thought since the project has grown from just adding the C2C terrain to a scenario I should start a new thread to discuss some of the ideas for the earth simulator , and to hopefully find a modder(s) to make the necessary changes to make this dream map work. I will have a world builder save done by Saturday this week. I just have Asia left, and I have done a bunch of it already. Then I will need the you guys and gals to go over and see what I missed , both for adding and subtracting. Then the modders can change the CIVS around, then we can start new games while we work on the GEM2.0 (ES) side of it. The game is too easy early on, it needs to be harder. Bad things need to happen. I miss the plagues of Rhye's and fall. there is much to discuss, but getting the maps up and running is the first key part, then the other stuff can happen. I am planning on doing 2 GEM3.0 maps right afterwards, to kind of give the players the idea of what a changing map looks like. They will be polar opposites, one being the coldest part of the glacier period 2, and the hottest part of the last interglacial period. I really what a changing map and a nomadic start. Like BADLY!

 

[J in Vegas]

First saved draft for world builder, "Old World Start"
Asia is not done.
Old World Start CIv List:
Europe:11
1.England
2.France
3.Italy
4.Spain
5. Portugal
6. Germany
7.Netherlands
8. Celtia
9.Greece
10. Scandinavia
11.Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Middle East:6
12. Arabia
13.Persia
14.Sumeria
15:Israel
16.Assyria
17.Hittie
Africa:9
18.Eygpt
19.Carthage
20.Mali
21.Nok
22.Kongo
23.Ethiopia
24.Zulu
25.Ghana
26. Luba
Asia:14
27.Russia
28.Hun
29.Mongolia
30.Japan
31.Korea
32.Siamese
33. Khmer
34.Maghada or Maurya or Sunga or Gupta
35.India
36.Indus River
37. Polynesia
38.China- Han or Shang
39. China- Wei or Wu or Shu
40. China- Qi or Chu or Qin or Zhao or Yan
China needs 3 civs for balance but I haven't figured out where to place them correctly yet. China is not done.

 

[J in Vegas]

Reserved for GEM2.0(ES) Earth Simulator MOD

 

[Thunderbrd]

I really what a changing map and a nomadic start. Like BADLY!

It's one of our highest priorities in development - just a lot of checkpoints to reach to actually get it all to happen.

 

[J in Vegas]

posted rough draft world builder save above. Asia is not done.

 

[J in Vegas]

Some of the civs will need to be switched out with the right ones as I only had the ones that came with the 5civ scenario. Other civs are new and will need more work. I am surprised that the indus river civ was never made in the past. On the old C2C there was a Congo civ, I can't seen to find it now. Same with the Poland civ.

 

[MattCA]

Reuploaded Civ MegaPack V2 Updated for SVN 11168 | CivFanatics Forums

 

[J in Vegas]

I need new sets of eyes on the map to see what I missed and what I need to add. To check out the map, move it to the worldbuildersave folder, then start c2c, start a scenario, then load gem2.0 v2.8. Do not pick china, I was moving around the starting city as it was in the wrong spot and I accidently killed china. It is dead and the game will not load if you pick them to start. Rookie mistake. Pick one of the other 4 civs, then when the game starts, load worldbuilder , then you can check out the map in detail. I will be busy this weekend now, will try to finish the map by the end of the week.

 

[J in Vegas]

Some game concepts for GEM2.0 ES:
Roads-
Not as draconian as civ 5, but I would suggest some changes to the infrastructure in the game, especially in the beginning of the game.
Once you get trails, you can build trails only on certain terrain type, not all types. For about half of the terrains, you will need to wait until the wheel to build a trail. Here is my breakdown.
Trails can be build on grassland, lush, plains, hills, salt flats, desert, barren, scrub, and with terrain add-ons, tall grass, all forest except jungle. Once you get to the Wheel Tech, you can build path on all the previous areas you could build a trail plus build a trail ONLY on rocky, jagged, muddy, and floodplain. You can also build trails on all types of outcropping. Next, at the ROAD tech you can build a road on all the original trail terrain types plus trails for everything else now except dunes, which will be only available after paved roads. The reason behind this is that HIGH rainfall areas will have trails/paths washed out. And other areas like marsh or swamp are all water and you can't build land routes until technology improves. Sand dunes just cover everything in sand. I would like to increase the maintenance cost for land infrastructure that is done over high rainfall areas to reflect the higher upkeep cost. This will slow down the growth in the early part of the game, and it will limit what can be built in high rainfall areas as you cannot connect up resources until later on in the game. This is to help simulate how certain areas in the world are harder to build civilizations.

Rivers-
The flip to the above idea is that rivers become roads. They are in a sense this way as when you build a city you connect to another city for resources automatically, but I want to change some of the dynamics involved. My idea involves rivers act like a road once certain techs are gained. At Raft building, the river acts like a trail. At Boat building, like a path. And at Sailing, like a road. You may say, why is this needed? If the above idea about roads goes into effect, the only way to connect certain cities will be via rivers. And rivers have 0 maintenance costs. If real life, rivers acted as transport channels, and it makes sense to incorporate this into the game. Example- 2 cities are in the Amazon early game , jungle everywhere and the only transport route is via river.

Infrastructure and cities-
My idea is that a certain level of transportation is needed between certain size cities for the amount of "interciv" trade to work. Something along these lines.
To connect any 2 cities a trail is need. River at Raft Tech counts as the same.
To connect 2 cities 6 or over a path is needed. River at Boat counts as the same
To connect 2 cities 12 or over a road is needed. River at Sailing counts as the same.
Either the connection is lost if the right level of infrastructure is not build, or it is reduced, which I am not sure how this would work.
Maintenance cost for trails goes to 0, path says the same except high rainfall areas, road and paved roads goes up much more. Maybe like 100%~200% more.

 

[J in Vegas]

Game concept ideas for GEM2.0 ES part 2
Fresh water and city building-
Cities can only be founded if it is next to a fresh water source until masonry tech is founded. Oceans DO NOT count as a fresh water source. No fresh water, no city until Masonry. Masonry allows you to build the town well, which allows civs to tap groundwater for a water source versus a river/lake water source. But, unlike a river/lake, a non fresh water city can only grow to pop size 3 until sewer system tech, which will allow you to build to pop 6. Not sure how far into the game you have to wait to build grow past pop 6. Oasis water source only allows a city to grow to pop 3 until much later in the game as it is a very limited source of fresh water. Almost all ancient real life civs grew around river systems, and this idea needs to be incorporated into the earth simulator.

City maintenance-
This needs to be much higher to slow down civ growth early in the game. In real life, civs did not expand super fast early on, and they had much tighter city spacing early on. The 1 city spacing change will help with this. My idea is that the total number of cities cost will be 200% higher than current until Masonry, which allows city states civic option, which will reduce the cost to 125% of current. The other biggie increase will be distance to capital maintenance, which will be 500% higher than current until Monarchy civic. Almost all major civs in real life did not reach their max size until there was some sort of monarchy in place. This will reduce it down to 125% of current

New terrains-
Usable mountains: Just the current mountain pic minus the snow caps. Usable from the start. 75% defense bonus . 15% terrain damage. No city building there.
Lakes: Currently I used oasis as a lake feature as there is no small lake terrain.
Red Dunes: Just like white dunes but red. Same everything. Mostly a cosmetic change.
Raised plateau: In areas that there is a raised flat area, there is no way to express that increase in altitude without having all the terrain in hills, which does not look right compared to real life.

 

[J in Vegas]

Game concepts for GEM2.0 ES part 3
Resource depletion-
All large animals, especially mammals get wiped out by humans. The burn rate for bonus areas like whales, or bison, or mammoth, or elephants, etc. needs to be very high. Like 95% gone by x number of turns from first human contact. Further into the game , certain minerals should have a higher burn rate, especially ones that are naturally limited in real life.

Timed events-
Instead of events going off at random times, the volcanos, earthquakes, plagues need to follow the historical times that they happened. Volcanos should not be dormant then blow once , then go away. Most of the bigger strato type take 1000's of years to recharge before re-blowing up again. Earthquakes should only happen along fault lines, and hurricanes/ typhons/ cyclones should only be allowed to happed in normal areas that they form. And all timed bad events should be able to do much more than damage a building. Multiple building or pop loss should be possible outcomes. Plagues should follow timelines that follow historical events. And they need teeth to them too. Pop loss is usually enough to get players to build health building.

 

[J in Vegas]

GEM2.0-Discuss
Malaria- This one needs to be the big one for diseases. It can either be in the areas red on the map on this post, or the easier way will be to attach it to cities built in the game between latitude 30'N and 30'S it needs to be prevalent from city size 1 on. The area it can effect will need to change when GEM3.0 kicks into gear and the climate changes. From wiki, it has been around for 100,000 years, but didn't gain traction with humans until approximately 10,000 years ago (BP) with the rise of sedentary life. I would say have it turn on once you reach the ancient era. It needs to be a serious health drag on cities, with floodplains, jungles, and marshes/swamps being the bad terrain types that cause it to flourish.

 

[J in Vegas]

GEM2.0 Discussion
A.I. city picking.
Right now the A.I. does not always do the best job of picking city locations. It seems to focus too much on grabbing cities right next to other empires cultural boundaries, placing cities next to oceans, and having cities not even close to their capital. My suggestion until the A.I is fixed, which I know it is being worked on, is to assign each civ a list of 3 or 4 future city location that fit into the historical boundaries of each civ. That way, the civ has a list of tile square spots to pick. Spot 1 is the best, then spot 2, then spot 3, etc. Capturing an neighboring capital is always going to be a priority, but for farther away enemy cities it might make more sense for the A.I. to raze as city maintenance will be brutal for far away cities early on. The A.I should also have a higher priority to destroy cities that are formed on there cultural border, especially if it is in their 4 future city zones.

City razing-
I do like how the city razing works currently, with both civ and military slaves being taken, the resistance fighters, etc. I just never liked how a city pop1 can be razed in 1 turn just like a pop30 city. Not very realistic. I would rather have cities a certain size take several terns to raze, with different options in each turn of razing. Each turn should give you gold, just like razing a city, town ,cottage gives you gold each time. Same with captured slaves. I would also like the feature that when you capture a city you can assign whether the remaining population is allowed to remain citizens or are turned into settled slaves.

 

[J in Vegas]

GEM 3.0 Climate simulator
Working on getting all the information to reconstruct the past for the maps. Will need to produce like 20 maps do be able to describe all the variations that have occurred over the last 200,000 years. Interesting work. This is just a small slice of all the downloaded info I have. Will be using www.floodmap.net to generate the sea levels, this site has greater scale than the game map squares, so the map will be 100% accurate for sea levels.

 

[J in Vegas]

Still grinding in Asia. I fixed the china player I erased, most of siberia, mongolia, and the Stan countries are done. China will be last.

 

[J in Vegas]

Map is 99% done. Got called into work today, will finish tomorrow and post everything.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Map is 99% done. Got called into work today, will finish tomorrow and post everything.

Ouch, on V day and the day before President's day. Are you in a service industry by chance?

 

[J in Vegas]

I'm a bartender. Currently working part time do to covid, so my hours suck. I work another PT job too so I'm pretty busy. I did my valentine's stuff with the wife in the AM so I'm good.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm a bartender. Currently working part time do to covid, so my hours suck. I work another PT job too so I'm pretty busy. I did my valentine's stuff with the wife in the AM so I'm good.

Cool... you should PM me the bar you work at and I can come visit when you're on a shift someday

 

[J in Vegas]

Final Map is done. Old world start is done, will add the new world players and subtract the civs that were added that were extra civs and have the New world save later today. The only civ that will need to be added to the new world start will by the Navajo tribe for western North America.
Added Ideas for the earth Simulator Mod.
City Founding-
Cities cannot be founded on marsh, swamp, or bog tiles until Canal Technology is researched.
Cities cannot be founded on Taiga tiles until Engineering technology is researched.
Cities can be founded on any tile type on the map including dunes and ice after the civil engineering Technology is researched.
This will limit multiple civ on the edge of map including Mongolia, Russia, and the Viking from expanding unchecked in the early part of the game while allowing them to reach their historical empire areas at the appropriate time. Same with limiting the New world civs from expanding into present day Canada. Malaria will limit growth in sub Sahara Africa as the civs are more spaced out, especially the Zulu civ that starts in a great location. With GEM3.0, further limiting will occur across the map with changing climate and changing tile squares.

Lastly, I am highly pushing this scenario, GEM2.0 (ES) be a locked scenario where the only choices that can be made is picking your civ and the difficulty setting. For it to work right everything needs to be a certain way. Definitely the speed has to be a certain speed so all the times events and tile square climate changes happen at the right time for historical reasons. I am HIGHLY RECOMMENDING the "long speed" as the choice of speed for the scenario. Epic is too long, and normal does not give enough time in each era.
More to come today.