Idea for New Great People

[gunnergoz]

Would it be possible to create new categories of Great People, primarily so they could establish new special constructions on hexes?

The first that comes to mind would be Great Naturalist. Primary use would be to create a National Park on any open terrain or hill hex. Output could be 2 Science, 2 Culture, 2 Happiness on top of regular hex values. Alternatively, could be placed on any deer, cattle or sheep to create a Nature Preserve that would provide 3 Science and 3 Happiness (plus the hex values). I'm thinking of names like Teddy Roosevelt, Ansel Adams, Charles Darwin.

Another would be Great Athletes. They could build sports complexes that would bring 3 culture and 3 happiness to any grassland, plains or hill tile. We have tons of famous athletes to choose from for this GP.

The GP's would be created upon construction of certain buildings after the necessary tech is invented. I leave those specifics for later discussion.

I'm sure that other types of GP's could be imagined and welcome ideas and feedback.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Would it be possible to create new categories of Great People, primarily so they could establish new special constructions on hexes?

I think so.

 

[Putmalk]

Yes this is entirely possible. Create the unit, create the improvement, create the improvement build, and then allow the unit to build the improvement (make sure the build option of "Kill" is enabled)

Then make the buildings that allow access to the great person grant the person as a free unit.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Would it be possible to create new categories of Great People, primarily so they could establish new special constructions on hexes?

Yes and no.

Yes, you can add a new Great Person. It's fairly easy, although you're limited on icons and such for them, and you'd have to make quite a few UI changes to get them to show up in all of the appropriate windows..

No, you can't have the Improvement he plants add Happiness. (Or at least, you couldn't before G&K. If they've changed that, then great.) My own mod had exactly this, a Great Empath that would place a Monolith improvement that was supposed to add Happiness, Food, and Culture. To do this, I had to create a hidden Feature (which CAN add Happiness), and use Lua to place that Feature on any hex containing that Improvement, replacing the Improvement with a nearly identical replacement to keep it from triggering again.

The biggest problem with Improvements is on the AI side. The AI does not use Flavors for Improvements; it'll simply compare the yield before with the yield after, and depending on the difference it'll decide whether or not to create the Improvement. As a result, if you're creating an Improvement that has no yield boosts but has some other effect (something Lua-based, for instance), then the AI will think the improvement is worthless and replace it at the first opportunity. The same goes for the Happiness production loophole I mentioned above; since the AI won't know that the Improvement will result in Happiness, it won't consider that benefit when deciding whether or not to create the Improvement, and it might destroy the improvement in favor of a Trading Post or something that it thinks is more valuable. The way around that, with the Feature method I mentioned, is to make the intermediate Improvements even stronger. That is, if you want +2 Happiness, +2 Food, +2 Culture, then make an Improvement that's +4 Food, +2 Culture, and make the Feature be +2 Happiness, -2 Food. That way, the Improvement is seen as valuable enough not to destroy, but you don't get an unbalanced final result from the hex.

You'll run into a similar issue if you want your custom Great Person to be usable both on regular hexes AND certain resources (with two different Improvements); depending on the yield, the AI might waste the Great Person on a regular hex even though there's a resource nearby that would be even better, or vice versa. In general, it's easier to not bother with that, and make one Improvement that works on any hex and that connects any strategics.