King Solomon's Mines

[mystikx21]

Tourism yield on NWs would help in the late game. Just as an added bonus for acquiring a couple of them. They don't improve substantially otherwise and so lose their early game advantages. This was more obvious though in GEM with all the village and mine bonuses available. Would mostly be a flavor issue.

Mostly the balance issue applies to the couple of new ones. Early faith-based NWs though can much more obviously alter game play than the others as that can put a religion in play and make use of a faith-burning belief (pagodas) a little easier once it gets up.

 

[mitsho]

Isn't there a World Congress Resolution that helps Natural Wonders? If no, wouldn't that be a better place to put tourism benefits for NW? Tourism though is the only across the board buff that makes sense, all other seem a bit lackluster.

 

[mystikx21]

There is "Natural Cultural Sites: Worked Natural Wonders yield +5 Culture", which has tourism implications.

 

[Ahriman]

There is "Natural Cultural Sites: Worked Natural Wonders yield +5 Culture", which has tourism implications.

By tourism implications, basically anti-tourism, right? It makes it harder for a tourism player to overwhelm culture when this motion is passed.

Wouldn't it be more interesting to make it a pro-tourism congress motion, which gave +tourism rather than +culture?

 

[mystikx21]

The culture of NWs is converted to tourism too with tourism related buildings in addition to increasing the defensive culture value, yes.

I'd agree it would be better to just have some raw tourism yield on them though.

 

[agc28]

@Thalassicus

Thanks a lot for the code. But I don't think it worked. If anything, I think it made the map create fewer wonders. Looked all over the huge map and only saw 3 natural wonders.

 

[ExpiredReign]

OK since this post is now about NWs in general.

What about leaving the placement of them as it is but implementing a way to give their yields to any civ that is either allied/friendly or has a trade route with that CS.

Sure, I get annoyed sometimes that all the NWs are already inside the boundaries of CSs by the time I find them. And I don't always like to go on a campaign to capture CSs, especially just to have a NW. However if the benefits of each NW was available to me by other means then I wouldn't mind where they are.

Or.

Maybe if your territory borders with a CS that has a NW the bonuses are shared. That is if say a NW is on the border between me and a CS we both get the bonuses. Not if I have a border with the CS but the NW is closer to another civ.

 

[stackpointer]

@Thalassicus

Thanks a lot for the code. But I don't think it worked. If anything, I think it made the map create fewer wonders. Looked all over the huge map and only saw 3 natural wonders.

Did you use IGE to reveal the map? You should be able to get a precise count from revealing the map.

 

[agc28]

Did you use IGE to reveal the map? You should be able to get a precise count from revealing the map.

Yes i used IGE. But i didnt do extensive testing with multiple replicates

 

[Thalassicus]

@agc28
Oh sorry I made a dumb mistake. I was sleepy. Change the first + to an = equals:


UPDATE Worlds SET NumNaturalWonders + NumNaturalWonders + 2;

should be

UPDATE Worlds SET NumNaturalWonders = NumNaturalWonders + 2;

 

[shaken]

@Ahriman, mitsho
That's the thing: randomly picking tiles means the NW usually goes somewhere too distant or weak to influence the game. I see an important NW perhaps 1 of 10 games; the others are too remote from any civilization to matter, or in desolate areas we don't want to settle. A different method could ensure they appear places that matter.

@agc28
Natural wonders are created by a different AssignStartingPlots file shared by all maps. The communitas map script does not alter their placement. I don't remember what controls the quantity. I'm feeling excited about this, so I'm going to give it a try tomorrow.

If it is any help, I've changed this bit of code in AssignStartingPlots, and all of my maps have 17 Natural Wonders in them (or as many as could be placed):

-- Determine how many NWs to attempt to place. Target is regulated per map size.
	-- The final number cannot exceed the number the map has locations to support.
	local worldsizes = {
		[GameInfo.Worlds.WORLDSIZE_DUEL.ID] = 17,
		[GameInfo.Worlds.WORLDSIZE_TINY.ID] = 17,
		[GameInfo.Worlds.WORLDSIZE_SMALL.ID] = 17,
		[GameInfo.Worlds.WORLDSIZE_STANDARD.ID] = 17,
		[GameInfo.Worlds.WORLDSIZE_LARGE.ID] = 17,
		[GameInfo.Worlds.WORLDSIZE_HUGE.ID] = 17
		}

 

[albie_123]

Hey Thal, while we're on the topic:

Do you think it would be wise or beneficial to have wonders appear in certain climates? I always like finding El Dorado surrounded by jungle, or Uluru surrounded by plains.

I'm aware this might conflict with your other natural wonder placement changes, in which case, keep them, they sound great. But, if they could be used in conjunction - so that, say, the 'spots' for Natural Wonders are chosen, and then the most appropriate one of these spots for each Natural Wonder is picked - that'd be super cool.

 

[Ahriman]

Do you think it would be wise or beneficial to have wonders appear in certain climates? I always like finding El Dorado surrounded by jungle, or Uluru surrounded by plains.

Doesn't this happen already? I assumed we'd keep this.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree it's nice to find natural wonders in matching terrain. The vanilla game has some things to do that, but it could be better. I'll see if I can improve it. I do plan to include that in my improved placement code.

Basically the method would be... pick a spot, figure out what NWs look good there, and pick a random one of those. So if we pick a spot surrounded by plains, Uluru would be on the list of wonders to randomly pick from.

 

[Ahriman]

Basically the method would be... pick a spot, figure out what NWs look good there, and pick a random one of those.

This works.... except that it might risk almost never picking the coastal/sea-based NWs.

 

[Thalassicus]

The code I'm writing sorts the possible plots into two lists: land and sea. I randomly pick a list by analyzing the proportion of land vs sea natural wonders available in the database. If 90% of wonders are land it has a 90% chance to place a land wonder. If it fails to place anything in one list, it tries the other list, and if both fail it moves on to a less-optimal midline with a greater difference variance between the two leaders.

If it completely fails to place a natural wonder anywhere between the two leaders, those leaders exist on opposite sides of a barren ocean, so it reverts to vanilla style natural wonder placement for 1 natural wonder.

 

[albie_123]

Sounds fantastic!

How many natural wonders should we expect to see in a game?

 

[Brannock]

I wonder how this change will affect the Celts if NWs become a reliable thing to hunt for.

 

[Thalassicus]

@albie_123
At least 1 natural wonder will appear a reasonable distance from every player. They will have stats the same as in Gem, twice as good as a normal improved tile, with no superpowers like free promotions.

 

[albie_123]

Hm... so do you mean that there is one NW for each player? Or are most NW's going to be 'shared' by two players?