Let us collect a list of missing Achievements

[raystuttgart]

In former days we took care of details like Achievements as well.
(Small atmospheric images with atmospheric story once you had a certain gameplay situation.)

Typical Achievements:

• Found Land
• Two Colonies
  
• Met 3 other Europeans
  
• Found the Pacific
• 3 Tobacco Traders
• First Church
  
• 10 Battles won on Land
• 10 Batles won on Water
• ...

Possibilities to tell small stories are endless.

Achievements may not be an improtant feature for gameplay itself.
But nonetheless they add to atmosphere and immersion.

Also what many modders forget or probably players do not even know:
Once I have an Achievement it is extremely easy to also trigger a Python Event with

I know for sure that with most recent features we added like e.g. Happiness, Large Rivers ... we did not create any.
That is simply something I want to correct at some point. Maybe not now, but eventually.

So let us please collect a list of features that are still missing Achievements.
The file for Achievements is this here: CIV4AchieveInfos.xml

As long as we do not have any other graphical modder, I will try to create necessary images myself.
(They might not be as perfect as if a true graphical modder would create them but I will try my best.)

----

I know for sure we are e.g. missing Achievements for:
(If I really think a bit, I will easily identify 50 Achievements we could add for more atmosphere.)

• First Trade in Africa
• First Trade in Port Royal
  
• Domestic Market (e.g. 1000 Goods traded)
  
• Coastal Ships
• First Large River found
• First Lake found
  
• Happiness
  
• ...

----

Achievements are a nice medium we should use to improve atmosphere and tell more immersive stories.
The effort to create them is actually not that high once you have a nice and fitting image.

So please help collecting missing Achievements for existing features.
Ideally somebody would systematically check our game features and check if there are corresponding achivements.

 

[raystuttgart]

List of Planned Achievements:

• First Trade in Africa
• First Trade in Port Royal
  
• 100 Goods sold on Domestic Market
• 1000 Goods sold on Domestic Market
  
• 3 Small Coastal Ships
  
• 3 Large Coastal Ships
  
• First Large River discovered
• First Lake discovered
  
• First time Happiness in a City is higher 10
• 5 Native Slaves
• 5 African Slaves
• First Freed African Slave
• 2 Native Traders
• 3 Expert Townguards
• 3 Settler Militia
  
• First Open Border Contracts
• First Defensive Pact Contract
  
• First Bishop
• First Famous Nobleman
• First Expansion of City Radius
• First Monastery
• First Fort
  
• ...

Optional stuff: Maybe later when working on "Plains":
(All of that stuff currently does not exist in "develop".)

Not "true" Achievements but could tell nice "discovery" stories:

• (First) Coral Reefs discovered
• (First) Rock Reefs discovered
• (First) Pearl Reefs discovered
• (First) Rock Formations discovered
• (First) Flood Plains discovered
• (First) Meteor Crater discovered
• (First) Volcano discovered
  
• (First) Ocean Stream discovered
• (First) Fog discovered
• (First) Blizzad discovered
• (First) Sandstorm discovered
• ...

 

[Mr. ZorG]

hmm .. how about the "cartographer" achievement? for this you need to explore the entire map.

 

[raystuttgart]

hmm .. how about the "cartographer" achievement? for this you need to explore the entire map.

Too performance intensive - especially on Gigantic Maps.
You would need to check every single turn for every single Plot to see if it is uncovered.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

automatic exploration of the map by scouts and ships. yes, on Gigantic Maps it will take a very long time)

 

[raystuttgart]

yes, on Gigantic Maps it will take a very long time)

No, you did not understand what I wanted to say.
(I do not care for an achievement how long it takes for gameplay.)

It is technically very bad for performance.
(It will negatively impact end turn duration.)

Achievements have "technical limitations" that we need to take care of as well.
One of them is: It needs to be possible to "calculate it performantly" in DLL.

 

[Nightinggale]

hmm .. how about the "cartographer" achievement? for this you need to explore the entire map.

Leaving performance issues aside, wouldn't it be bad to have an achievement, which might be impossible to get in some games? Polar ice on a map can render some plots impossible to see.

 

[raystuttgart]

Comment:
Achievements are first of all a vehicle to tell a small immersive story with an atmospheric image.
Anything we can not come up with a nice immersive story is not worth to create "just to have it".

Remember also:
Achievments can bet used as condition to later trigger an event in the Python Event System.
So in some cases we might in fact create them just to later more easily create a Python Event.

----

Summary:
Think in stories and events.
Do not just think "high score".

 

[Mr. ZorG]

It is technically very bad for performance.

Polar ice on a map can render some plots impossible to see.

yes, I didn’t think about that.

 

[raystuttgart]

@Moandor @vissercsp
If I know correctly, both of you guys are talented graphical modders.

Thus I ask if you would like to create "pictures" / "images" we can use for Achievements.
And of course since you woud create the "pictures" / "images" you would also chose the "story" the Achievement tells.

Interested in drawing / creating a few nice images?
Maybe something like that is fun to one of you.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Too performance intensive - especially on Gigantic Maps.
You would need to check every single turn for every single Plot to see if it is uncovered.

An explorer who manages to explore the last remaining unexplored part of the New World in a real world example would have to first return to civilization, present his explorations, maps and evidence to the Academie Francaise or the Royal Society of whatever and only after it has been verified would he be acknowledged for his success.

Which ingame would mean that this event would not need to check every single turn if each and every square has been discovered - every few turns would suffice, e.g. every 2 X mapsize turns to then fire the event and hand out the achievement.

In addition checking for that achievement at the start of the game would be useless - the event should start to check if the whole world is explored only after a minimum amount of time, e.g. only after 5X mapsize turns have passed should the event even start to check if the world is explored.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Leaving performance issues aside, wouldn't it be bad to have an achievement, which might be impossible to get in some games? Polar ice on a map can render some plots impossible to see.

Which is a problem that should not exist in handmade maps (e.g. in the Americas maps several squares that should not have impassable ice had been reported and removed as a bug) and which should be rare in randomly generated maps.

After all there are several promotions that enlarge the sight range of units to enourmous ranges if several of them add up.The low range of vision of units at the start of the game should be no hindrance as an achievement like the complete exploration of the world should be expected to come in the later part of the game.

 

[raystuttgart]

As I said, such an Achievement is bad for performance and will thus not be implemented.
(Discussions about how likely it is that not all plots can be uncovered or not are thus pointless.)

Simply accept a "no" from us modders please. We normally know what we are talking about.
If we programmers say there are technical reasons not to do it, we definitely do not lie.

 

[Aradziem]

Maybe add a button,, check achievements'' somewhere? Then it would only check ones wchich are bad for performace only when you click it. As achievements are only for players it isn' t problem for AI.

 

[raystuttgart]

Maybe add a button,, check achievements'' somewhere?

Definitely no.

The Achievement System itself will stay as it is.
I am not going to destroy its immersivness and create some tedious "click button thing".

 

[raystuttgart]

Maybe these here could be used as images for achievements.
They are not from our mod but they still look "game style" and atmomspheric.

Credits:
They are actually from "Port Royal 4".
I really do not think they would mind us using them as Achievement-Images.
(We would give credits and that it is more or less "free advertisement".)

 

[Red velvet]

Would it be possible to have an achievement screen every 10/20 turns should how players progressing on the market domination races. Right now you get no sense of progress until you win. Alternatively I seem to remember in the early versions of Col, one of the screens would record how much you shipped to europe. That would serve as a proxy.

 

[raystuttgart]

Would it be possible to have an achievement screen every 10/20 turns should how players progressing on the market domination races. Right now you get no sense of progress until you win. Alternatively I seem to remember in the early versions of Col, one of the screens would record how much you shipped to europe. That would serve as a proxy.

Those "Trade Quests" are Python Quests and have nothing to do with Achievements. (2 totally different systems.)
Also we already have it on our todo list to visualize the traded amounts (or progress of Trade Quest) e.g. in an Advisor Screen.

5. Improving "Trade Quests" considering UI showing progress ( @Raubwuerger )

Summary:
It is all on the todo list. Do not worry.
It just needs time and motivation to implement it.

 

[Schmiddie]

@raystuttgart

I saw your list with potential achievements, but aren't the possibilities very limited? I suppose a large part of your list can't be implemented at all. At least, I don't know how.

To my view these achievements are not possible, because there exists no command for it:

• First Trade in Africa
• First Trade in Port Royal
• Domestic Market (e.g. 1000 Goods traded)
• First Large River found
• First Lake found
• Happiness
• First Open Border Contracts
• First Defensive Pact Contract
• First Expansion of City Radius
• First Monastery
• First Fort
• (First) Coral Reefs discovered
• (First) Rock Reefs discovered
• (First) Pearl Reefs discovered
• (First) Rock Formations discovered
• (First) Flood Plains discovered
• (First) Meteor Crater discovered
• (First) Volcano discovered
• (First) Ocean Stream discovered
• (First) Fog discovered
• (First) Blizzad discovered
• (First) Sandstorm discovered

Happy to get your thougts on that. Or did you extend the list of possible achievements?

 

[raystuttgart]

To my view these achievements are not possible, because there exists no command for it:

Indeed, they would need new DLL logic and according XML tags.
I was originally planning to add more XML capabiltities to the System.