Legendary Explorers idea

[GoodGame]

I think this might have been suggested before, but how about a new category of Legends---Legendary explorers.

Same mechanisms as Legendary units, but they'd be based on historical explorers.
Some of their "features":

Legendary explorers can "paint" culture (make territorial claims at say 10% value) over completely unclained tiles (with barb culture counted as unclaimed).

Legendary explorers have a special "Found Trade-route" option that sacrifices them in a non-barbarian city that you don't own. It creates a single high value trade route between the capital of your civ and the city, with an extra bonus modifier of ~300% value. Think of it like a Spice route or Silk Route.

 

[phungus420]

While implementing those features would be possible, teaching the AI to use them is well beyond my abilities. I wol't be adding new functions or gameplay mechanics that the AI can't use.

 

[Afforess]

While implementing those features would be possible, teaching the AI to use them is well beyond my abilities. I wol't be adding new functions or gameplay mechanics that the AI can't use.

The AI is less complex than you think*, and this feature sounds very similar to part of Fixed Borders in my mod, which does allow units to claim territory. I bet it would not be that big of change to create 'Legendary Explorers'.

*If the AI was more complex than you can think, it would be a contradiction. We can not create something smarter than us.

 

[GoodGame]

While implementing those features would be possible, teaching the AI to use them is well beyond my abilities. I wol't be adding new functions or gameplay mechanics that the AI can't use.

Well for the first feature, can't it just use a slightly improved AI for the scout? I noticed the AI tends to throw scouts away a little too carelessly, but why not simply tell the AI to march it's Legendary Explorer over every unclaimed tile on the map?

On the second feature (trade route), why not simply tell the AI to use the explorer like a Great Merchant, if there is no unclaimed land on the map, or if it has no option (no suitable transport) to getting to an unclaimed continent?

Shouldn't that just a few lines of code? Not criticizing you, just curious what the technical difficulties of adding AI code is.

 

[phungus420]

For the most part I don't want to add any more features. LoR is already at the level of expansion it should be at, there are plenty of other modpacks out there if people want more stuff. Of course if a concept is exceptional I may change my mind and add it, but just in general there will be no new features added. With the AI, I don't have the time to teach myself how to program the AI to deal with new features either, so any new feature I'd consider must not require AI coding, that or be integrated from a modcomp that has already included AI logic.