Landfall 0.58 (realtime colonization)

[suliman]

Has redone most of the ingame mechanics. Plz comment!

Big differences compared to old col
a. realtime
b. more focus on military, conquest and expansion
c. isometric
d. no workers, instead your buildings generate resources

1. What feature do you miss?
2. Any bugs or crashes? Fps problem? I get around 500 fps.
3. Suggestions of improvements?
4. If you play longer: At what year did you get your third settlement? Who did you play and where did you settle?

Lots of placeholders for gfx and sound. No AI yet (but automated traderoutes and exploring, athough exploring is kinda stupid for now...)

download :
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/26/1460259/landfall.rar
(5MB, needs directX)




Thanks for your input!
Erik

 

[suliman]

anyone?
please try it out and comment if you got the time.
E

 

[sir_schwick]

People please try this out. Just downloaded and it looks very promising. Can't seem to load goods I collect in town into the boats.

And my opinion, its what Rise of Nations was to Civilization. Continue work, need any help? Have a URL?

 

[sir_schwick]

Figured out the ship problem, some kind of bug that only hit once only on my first base.

Played out all three quick games with Portugese.

Trade Features:

1B) Have some kind of way to automate shipments to Europe. It is really easy to set up resource/goods factory colonies this time around.
2B) Have the auto-load feature load anything currently on the docks to be outgoing. Would really quicken sending slaves/colonists that direction.
3B) Have ways to auto-send resources using ships from one colony to another. That would be useful so resource colonies could send to manufacturing colonies.

Land-Management:

I really like the idea behind deforestation, however it needs some adjustment to not become a frustrating exercise in micromanagement. The Deforest tool is good. However you should have an option that allows you to use it in a renewable manner.

Choices
Heavy Harvest - Takes the forest down to 25% then sells.
Medium Harvest - Takes the forest down to 50% then sells.
Light Harvest - Takes the forest down to 75% then sells.

If there are specific amounts of wood that would be harvested at that rate(i recommend sets of 10, etc.), then that is what those settings could go to. Also whenever a forest is deforested, swamp cleared, or harvested partially you should get a message so you can act on it.


Colonies:

Really like how the in colony buildings work. I am curious how you will handle Sons of Liberty and education, didn't see buildings.

Governors:

What do they do? I tried out setting one to industry, and even at 60% my Steel Mill still only put out the usual 5 metals.

 

[suliman]

Trade features:
There is traderoutes which fixes most or all of your requests and single-europe-run (the Z button) which sends the ship to europe, sells all sellable cargo and returns to the original square.

Deforestation
Im with you all the way, its not balanced yet. Message should maybe be set so when you have many colonies this is only sent if you depleat the last forest so not to many messages maybe...

Education
No education is planned at all.

Bells
Maybe just like crosses (you build some building)? And they give shipments. Im not sure i wanna implement founding fathers, but maybe.

Gov
Governors-industry add a percentage to income, which is not seen in main view but maybe i should change to a fixed bonus that is easier to track? For example +1 goods per 3 goods.

E

 

[sir_schwick]

How do I activate trade routes/assign them?

How do I get a ship to go to Europe and wait? I have had to buy a new ship anytime I want to bring something over from Europe. The auto-load button is activated, but any ships that come in just leave everyone on the dock.

Maybe you should have a renewable harvest option. Slower rate of wood collection, but the forest doesn't deforest.

 

[suliman]

if you auto-send the ship with Z button it doesnt load in eurpe thats true (its used to single-sell stuff on the ship)
If you just send the ship manually by sending it to the dark waters, it stays in europe until you drag it to the leave-box.

Press T to see traderoute setting when having a ship selected. All this is in the txt-file.

 

[sir_schwick]

I figured out that the dark water part does work now. Didn't the first time I tried it.

The T for trade route isn't listed in the control.txt, it says something about editor.

A bug that keeps coming up; I will playing for a little while and have no money. The indicator that usually shows gold just disappears for a long time. And the game acts as though I am running on 0 gold, i.e. can't buy things.

 

[sir_schwick]

How do I unload ships with military/colonists within colonies? It is a little annoying to need to unload them outside then go into the colony.

Why do resources sometimes get randomly stored with my garrison?

What about cacoa? I can't harvest any, even in plains.

 

[suliman]

yeah i havent fixed those issues yet. I think when goods end up in your non-ship army you maybe double-clicked goods to "load" them on a ship. I will look into this.

Cacao is harvested in plantages in tropical climate. You need to click a building and then click on the goods symbol to toggle output. This also applies to stuff like mines in mountains who can output both ore and silver.

E

 

[sir_schwick]

Gotcha on the cacoa. I was mostly confused because there were some Cacoa resource bonus squares in plains squares.

Is there a convenient list of what forests turn into what that can produce what?

 

[suliman]

maybe in the terrain-info (or at least i will put it there)

just shift-click on the tile you wanna know more about.

E

 

[sir_schwick]

Unfortunately it is not in the terrain info. Would be cool if it linked to the terrain it converts to as well.

Still having trouble though, Savannah is listed as supporting Cacoa(chopped from tropical forest). However even when cleared, the only options are Farms(food), horses, and sugar plantations.

Suggestion:

Don't have workers added with town upgrades. It makes growth of settlement ridiculously fast. I have not had need for any slaves or colonists because of it. Maybe indoor facilities should require a worker as well, to help limit growth.

An Idea:

Schoolhouse(Building) - Town and above level settlement - Allows you to train Children(20-40ish food), that take approximately 8-12 years to be turned into colonists by the school. Maybe 2-3 children per school max.

University(Building) - whatever is above town - Allows you to train Governors(pricing needs adjustment).

 

[suliman]

just build a plantage: its for all cash-crops. You can click a completed building to get info on it: here you can switch the output by clicking the goods.

Im actually thinking about switching it to turnbased... What do you think?

E

 

[sir_schwick]

I really like the real-time aspect. I don't think I have seen anyone try a colonization game like this. It is working really well, just needs some work.

However you do need to slow the progression of time a little. Beyond 2 or 3 cities even 1x speed is a bit much.

Also the last couple times I played through I've been freezing up.

 

[sir_schwick]

Ahhh, now I understand. The thing with the plantations makes sense now. Actually you could have whale resource be oil or something else along with food(no extra food). Maize versus corn, where one can feed cattle(which has higher utility/price/unique uses).

 

[sir_schwick]

Where did you go? Your game had me captivated till I started playing SC4 and modding everything. Anyway, other people, you need to try this out. I think suliman is on to something here.

 

[suliman]

im right here

what did you mod? Something that i should use in the official version maybe?
E

 

[sir_schwick]

So far the only thing I understood enough to mod on this game was the town file. I figured out that you could keep additional workers from being added with upgrades by editing the Outdoor workers column. I put them all at three. This does slow down the pace of growth and makes immigration much more important. However when I tried editing the indoor column, it does nothing to the indoor spaces available. There is a lot in all the docs that doesn't really add up for me.

What is available in the null city states that aren't listed yet?

Big recommendation, some kind of transparent message bar or tabs or something. That way things like ships arriving in Europe, at a colony, upgrade complete, or building complete can be kept track without changing your view. My favorite system of this kind from any game was in Railroad Tycoon 3.

 

[Toni1]

I've tried it out and experienced quite few problems including random and repeated crashes, ships losing their cargo space and being unable to go to europe and inability to get treasure on board a ship. Most of them may be related to douple clicking ships with cargo in specific locations (towns mostly) but I'm having difficulty defining excactly what causes them. Also wagons don't have cargo capacity at all so inland cities are pretty useless and you don't seem to be able to do anything peaceful with the indians at the moment (sending any unit to indian settlement causes battle atm). The deforestation is a big problem as I need to constantly watch my cities to prevent them from cutting the last forests down. After upgraging to higest colony size (city?) you get upgrade to null.

Suggestions :
Game needs slower than 1x speed setting currenty available
Game need autoexplore AI as managing scouts becomes bothersome as you need to keep tabs on your cites, ships and military as well.
You need a way to build roads to connect your cites.

Questions :
What do governors do?
How do you harvest plants other than sugar?