LS Civilization Mini-Game

[LastSword]

1. Foreword
I have recently started working on Total Conversion mod, my try on "history simulator". I decided to create a mod development thread as some kind of motivation. It might help me see the progress of mod (and luckily the possibility of finishing it), therefore I am gonna update it monthly (I think forum can handle this spam ) with new content done.
I don't want to describe in details what I am planning to do. I have already learnt that reality is merciless for the complicated systems my imagination creates. That's why I am gonna show certain system/mechanic when/if it is done.

However, I can bore you with general concepts of mod.
AI - First of all, I always believed that civ series are a single player games. I am focusing to make everything very easy for AI to handle, in order to make mini-game challenging and interactive (so player is not the only actor on scene). I dream about default one-difficulty level with no bonuses for AI.
Why I call it mini-game, not scenario/total conversion? Since It is gonna use map scripts instead pre-made maps, I think it doesn't classify as scenario, while total conversion is too long string.

Time - I am aiming in 2 hours of gameplay (the concept of 100 turns with option to continue game). Victory will be based on earned "points of glory" (for remarkable achievements in words history; earned for things like "first to discover technology" or having the best artist of the Era).

Theme - the game is settled in Classical/Ancient Era. Obviously, I would like all players to advance into Medieval Era once the 100 turns passed, but let's make it real (and 2015).

General Idea - Civilization V is not the game where losing a city is a disaster... seriously, it is game where losing an important unit is a disaster (something rare/a mistake from player). I hate it sooooo much. I want to make progress unlinear with almost a surely fall of empires and rising of new dominant powers. Mentioned "points of glory" are gonna be much different than current system of points. Simply, it is not gonna favour the empires that are strong at the end of mini-game. You earns points through whole the game. It's not gonna be forgotten If you had controlled a large amount of territory in T50, but your empire collapsed.
It is impossible to be disqualified. Losing last city turns you into a deputy of conqueror (with reaching enough power you can "revolt" back to "King" status).

I decided that I need new combat system to achieve those. I have greatly reduced the number of units of the map. Settlers? Removed. Workers? Not needed. Great Persons are gonna be part of UIs. Finally, I simplified combat to only one type of units crossing the lands of game - Armies.

At the end I am gonna mention that resources will be "get & spend" instead of "have & use". For example, Horses are obtained from entering the tile with them. (they are gonna spawn through the game).

I think there is currently no need to write more (my usage of english is neither fast nor good). If you are curious about something, I am more than happy to answer your questions.

2. The Conclusion of first two weeks
It was fun, mainly deleting and disabling content. Faced a very funny CTD that took me only 3 days to fix (UnitCreated -> Creating Instances = random CTD; UnitCreated -> DisplayProceedButton -> Click -> Creating Instances = works). Made first combat simulation, General system, Improvement UI display. Forts have City Names. Moving forward.
Some screenshots (the order is mixed, but you might see: forced Combat simulation between my two Armies, assigning troops, creating improvements (and cities since new Cities begun as Forts) and military overview).
http://imgur.com/a/Ly7ya#2

 

[LastSword]

3. The Month
I have made Science and City Growth systems. I learned to pause AI turn (so the player can process) for Unique Unit selection. Add some colours to UI and improved Build system.
Science is much more random than in base game, technologies are discovered randomly (% chance includes if met Players already known this tech, your improvements/buildings and population) - you can still choose "researching" tech increasing the chance and prioritise it in queue.

Iron Working is more likely to be discovered if you have turned your lands into Mines and have built a Forge.

The most important technology of ancient world is gonna be writing. It is linked with Alphabet (create your own and try make rival's one exctinct). I replaced a mandatory tech race with influence battle over the title of most scientific civilization. Civs are gonna make their language the most important by creating Great Works of Science and translating rival's one.

First Great Scientist comes after building the Library and creates your first GWoS. In addition, he can contribute into research, translate GWoS, recreat GWoS or make Military Upgrade. Great Scientists are gonna die with the end of Era.

Woo, I made very first victory points: 5 for discovering tech first on the world, 3 for discovering tech before any met player and 1 for just discovering tech. AI is not handicapped, because whole Research stuff happens on barbarian turn and has random queue.

Player can't finish turn if Researching Tech is not selected (system for blocking turn is done and easily moddable).

Growth System is quite primitive, basically depending on two values: current Population and maximum possible Population (mainly determined by "Food" - farms, Granaries and Aqueducts). The greater is difference between those values, the quickier Population rises/decreases.

Next month plans. Mainly working with Production Popup, adding "projects" (something repeatable like Wealth/Research). There will be plenty of them, and they are quite important for game, where everything took one turn to build (except Wonders , but that's far future). I would also like to make Unique Building system ("Architecture"), start making Culture system and giving Resource unique traits.

Some random screenshots.
http://imgur.com/a/7AWs6

 

[Natan35]

Sounds cool, Doge Lastsword of LS civilization empire.

 

[LastSword]

4. 2nd Month Blog
Let's see what have I done from my plans:
~Production Popup: Check. It is prepared for whatever I want to do.
~Unique Building: Check? I decided that there will be no unique buildings.
~Culture System Base: Check. I have quite solid design.
~Giving Resource unique traits: Check. Some traits are done.

I have actually started with dreams about the Map. Checking how easy it will be to put extra players (on city-states slot). I have this concept that map will have main land plate (plate = connection without crossing ocean) where all civs start. Later, entering reinassance I would put extra civs on other land plates. (new players would start in Classical Era, so they would be a food for forged empires). Touching map generator is not in realistic plans right now.

So Map. The most unbalanced factor of civ 5. I am not sure how to fix "death sentence" starts (player surrounded by several enemies, who are quite secured on other fronts. You obviously noticed how easy is game if you except aggression only from one side).
I thought about resources. In civ 5, they are quite powerful tile bonuses (using numbers, I would say Resource is at least 33% boost to tile). I would like to reduce it to about 10% bonus, so it will be not crucial, while still add some fun and variety.
Wheat - Reduced cost of creating Farm on tile.
Cow - Slightly increased Food from Farm.
All Mining Resources are allowing player to build Mine their and provide some extra resources depends on type. Otherwise Player might build Mine on hill and have luck to discover there resource (60% chance).
And so on. I am definitely gonna remove about 33% of luxury resources and some bonus resources like Bison (keeping it for other land plates).

Players are gonna collect/earn:
1. Morale - giving boost to military units
2. Happiness - only give penalties if low, no bonuses
3. Culture - for victory points and some bonuses (some kind of social policy system)
4. Gold - to buy things (no maintainence)
5. Science - increase chance of discovering Technologies (resets)
6. Food - global Food is universal resource, almost everything is gonna cost Food, cities are collecting Food locally in Granary (for the moments of trial)
7. Production - next universal resource, mostly for buildings and Wonders
8. Horse - more specialized resource, mostly for building Cavalry
9. Iron - ultimate resource for heavy infantry

I have made Wonder system. In opposite to civ 5, it is not Science/Production race. To make it fair, all Wonder stuff is decided on Barbarian Turn (after all players have chance to contribute in the race). You are contributing resources toward Wonders and fulfill quite unique requirements (like create enough monuments for Statue of Zeus, enough Works of Art for Great Library etc.). Tie between players is gonna be solved with plenty of things (last one will be pure random - luck). Once you earned your rights to build Wonder, you can build it whenever you want (bonuses are aplied once you built it).

Great Works of Art are separated into 4 category. Each one have their own parameters (how easy to steal/destroy they are, how much culture their provide for creating/owning it)
Painting
Monument
Literature
Music

All of them have base 5 points of generation. It means that each turn the random % between 0-5 is added to meter (obviously, once it reach 100%, you got the Great Work).
All players start with an extra 5 points they can distribute at their will. (both base and extra points might be increased in future)

At the end of game, there will be 3 culture rankings:
For the best culture at the end game.
For the best % input to global culture through the game. (it will consider only turns after first ~10)
The most important one - the sum of % input of every turn through the game.
I don't want to make losing a city the end of the world.



What is next? Nothing more I need. I am gonna add "body" to the skelet I made. I would like to have playable (without combat... it will be a separated challange) game next month. At least for human player with zombie AI.


Some new screenshots.

 

[Gyra Solune]

This is some highly fascinating stuff. I am very confused on what precisely I'm seeing but it's very interesting - for the most part it seems you're gutting the game and its organs and building a different and slightly more Paradox-ey beast on its skeleton altogether. It's super intriguing and I will look forward very much to testing it out, presuming all the changes don't threaten to overload computers XD

Not sure on what to think regarding removing UBs...or really, what the various civs will do given the massive changes here, since basically everything is being overhauled. Do you have plans to make your own mod civs compatible with this once it's all 100% super done?

Also you should like, promote this a bit more, nobody else has made much commenting on it! Put a link in your signature or something. You are kind of the worst at getting people to know about what you're doing! XD

 

[LastSword]

None of my or others civs will be compatible. None of the other mod will be compatible. This project is total conversion. I am aiming in creating the little mini-game, LastSword's Civilization. None of the civ starts with "Traits", they are gonna earn them through game. Therefore, my civs mods would require removing traits to be compatible. Not so hard, but what is a point.

I doubt it will overload computers, I have greatly reduced mechanics (very few units on map) in this area.

I don't see a point in promoting it, because:
a) I don't think I am gonna finish it anytime soon (I gave it a year at the start)
b) This is a game for a guy who is bored to death with Civ5. What such guy would do in this subforum?
c) I can't precisely describe what I want to achieve. It's quite hard for me to explain my plans in english. I am losing content.
d) I am afraid I am gonna fail in AI coding.

Thanks for your enthusiasm. I would be glad if you help me in future (just by playing, tracking bugs, suggesting changes to balance and interface).

 

[Gyra Solune]

Well I will be happy to help indeed. So the implication is pretty much that each civ isn't any different from each other, simply aesthetic choices? I suppose it makes sense for just the base project - you're pretty much indeed making a whole different game here, so the base content should be complete before doing different things with each civ.

But yeah if there's less overall 'stuff' going on in favor of making the calculations present more interesting and different then yeah, it should work fine. I do think that the coding of Civ V is fairly wasteful and inelegant in areas, yes ^^

 

[hangman]

Dood, I would love it if we had a modder who could get a history simulator going! Gedemon wrote a (now broken ) mod for spawning civs at different times. If someone can update the code, we code get a real Civ5 RFC-type mod. For those who don't know, Rhye's and Fall of Civilization is a mod (now a set of mods, really) that was essentially TSL + true start era, with stability and rise/collapse dynamics. Instead of "winning" the game, you typically had three unique historical victories (UHVs) to achieve in order to win (framedarchitect has written very similar UHV code for our RFAC mod). If you are interested in the RFC code, I would NOT recommend the code from RFC itself; use sprt's bare-bones code here instead.

I also know there's a dynamic traits mod for Civ4. Not sure how useful it would be, but it may help.




More OT: Language/alphabet sound fascinating, I've thought about such an addition myself.

 

[Bonci]

Wow, I sense high potential here!

 

[Swedenball]

I never thought this would gain any sort of progress, but it's moving along quite nicely!

 

[LastSword]

5. 3rd Month Blog
Let's see what I wanted to achieve.

What is next? Nothing more I need. I am gonna add "body" to the skelet I made. I would like to have playable (without combat... it will be a separated challange) game next month. At least for human player with zombie AI.

It is definitely playable, but I wouldn't stand 100 turns. There is still much to do. Anyway, I am gonna shortly lists new additions in totally random way.

1. Resources
Since resources are obtained randomly (ex. Farm providing 6-8 Food), I needed a new display system. There is a simple "Last Turn Report" that will provide most important data from last turn (resources, tech, wonders, great works) and a resource table showing how much you can except from next turn.

Have you even wondered what will happen if you remove a resource from game? You will have world with no luxury resources. Therefore, I had to make a replacement system to actually remove resource (there will be some other future complications like Civilopedia).
So far, I have removed Bison, Crabs and Cooper.

About half of resources has now an effect. Upgraded Marble provides production towards Wonders each turn, Cows/Whales/Fish/Deer are increasing max population of city (Deer for example adds +1 Max Population, but it can't increase Max Population over 6). Wheat makes farm cheap to build. I hope resources are not gonna be too overwhelming, while will create a dimension between cities.

2. Cities
So, I made a system that allows your empire to go wide (founding a city). I made new growth system and city data stuff. Defense (you can increase it with resources) and Food Storage system (it will help in the times of need, saving your citizens from certain disappearing). City can "work" tiles in two range, minimum distance between cities is 3.

3. Famine
Each turn the famine factor is set between 5-25%. It means that each farm may be turned useless this turn with such a chance (store food ).

4. Forestation
Forests have 3 level of "power", thick forest will require 3 turns of chopping to get rid of it. Thin only one. Each turn, the forest may grow, increasing its level or even expand to adjacent tiles (if is already on level 3).

5. Culture Level
New race system, be the first to obtain certain amount of culture to reach next level of culture (in order to obtain Glory Points). In addition, it allows you to create Great Works of Art faster.

6. Great Works
Art and Science now have both great works. First great work of any kind will grant author 1 point of glory. You have also 2% chance to create magnificent great work (which yields more points and 1 point of glory).
Monument is linked to a city and can be destroyed.
Painting is linked to a city, but can be "rescued" from lost city.
Literature can be copied/stolen/destroyed (it is possible for two players to own the same piece). Easy to lose if you don't have libraries.
Music cannot be stolen, but is quite easy to be destroyed.

Most interesting (for me) of great works of science is Historical one. It yields value dependent on how many was made recently (if you have the only writing evidence of year 3640, you will be rewarded). You can also translate foreign works (however, note that original authors of works have extra benefits).

7. Research
You can assign points of Science into Research instead Great Works. It will speed up discovering the technologies.
I have added plenty of bonuses towards technologies. Sailing is more likely to be discovered if you have coastal cities with coastal resources. For every point in Astronomical Great Work generation you receive extra chance to research Calendar.
The more horses you have, the more likely you are to acquire Horseback Riding. And more.

8. Wonders
I have made a system, I have built the Oracle, but I haven't yet made any wonder effect. I am gonna definitely change (or remove) Wonder popup, so It will be easier to add new ones. Some designed ones:
Great Library - requires number of GWoScience (+translated), reduces chance of losing Great Works, increase translate generation.
Walls of Babylon - requires a city with maxed defense, adds even more defense to the city where it is build (it will be very hard to conquer this city, might be an achievement)
Pyramids - costly, grants Food and Production of construction.
Statue of Zeus - requires certain number of monuments, increases value of momunemts you make, prevents rivals from creating magnificent monuments.

9. Processes
I made it possible to add as many Processes as I want. So far, I have tree:
Festival ~ cultural one
Games ~ happiness
Infrastucture ~ population + production

10. Currency
I have started coding "Economy". You will be able to choose your own Currency (from resource list like Gold, Silver, Cocoa, Fish). Right now, I have made only selection system. There is no way to obtain "Wealth" (gold in civ5). Currency will be important in Trade Missions with other civilizations. It will be simplified, player with Gold Currency would prefer not to send Caravan to the civilization, which has a lot of Gold Mines. Wealth bonuses are not gonna be fair in this case. There will be also internal aspect, granting Wealth for every "currency" resource you work on.
Some currencies can be personalized (Gold and Silver), creating your own coin. You will be able to force this Currency on conquered nations (which will increase your Wealth in cost of those barbarians).

11. Alphabet
Honoruable mention that I decided to not do anything right now. I am sure there will be no bonuses towards Translating. In general, I don't want to punish creator of Alphabet in any way (creating and keeping Alphabet alive will grant bonuses). There will be Usage Points ("defense") and some way to influence other Alphabets ("offensive"). The more you are gonna use your alphabet, the less likely it will be to be replaced by foreign one.


What I would like to do next? Much likely something simpler, maybe some civs for relax. It might be a month of break. If not, I am gonna try on Wealth/Economy and very simple combat (something like, put units into army, go attack, simple attack/defense values; if city has defense, there will be some simple siege mechanics, otherwise you fight with garrison; vassal system upon conquering last enemy city).

Some screenshots:
http://imgur.com/a/6yk7g

 

[Zantonius Hamm]

Keep up the good work!

 

[Swedenball]

There are other writing systems then alphabets like abjads, abugidas, logography, etc.

 

[LastSword]

Aww, in my language the alphabet refers to all of them, so forgive me this ignorance.

Though "Writing system" might be more confusing.

 

[hangman]

Aww, in my language the alphabet refers to all of them, so forgive me this ignorance.

Though "Writing system" might be more confusing.

I think "alphabet" is okay, but yeah, there's no elegant word in English that encompasses all of them.

 

[Urdnot_Scott]

Woah this all sounds amazing LS, keep it up!

 

[Swedenball]

It's not much of a deal but you could just use writing system if you want.

 

[LastSword]

The glorious Mayan update, share your secrets.

As I stated, I had a month of rest. I haven't done much. I didn't bothered making a screenshots this time. Why? The improvement was mainly a bunch of code, which is probably not really so interesting.
Last time I have ended on Currency.

The interface got lifting. Every Currency has now three values M (Market), R (Resource) and T (Trade). Every Market generates M Wealth (aka Gold) per turn, if you have two Currencies than it will be an average value (well, 0.6 * (M1 + M2)). You gain also R Wealth for every improved Resource (I mean, If you choose the Silver as Currency, than it will be R * num of Silver) - having two currencies doesn't change it. T value is related to... Trade, which I started coding.

The Trade. With every civilization (with itself too - Internal) you have a "Trade Relations Meter". You are earning Trade Relations points from various things (for example from special "Trade" process and Connections). When you reach certain level, you gain "an active Trade Route"... short story, the better relations, the better gold outcome (gold outcome is also based on Currencies - T value , yours and your partner's one - establishing Trade Route with civilization that has Pearls currency when you have many Pearls resource will significantly boost your Wealth). This meter is mutual, both sides are working on good Trade Relations. Open warfare (battles, conquering) will drastically reduce this meter (reaching 0 or below will result in no trade and benefits). Each turn those meters are leaning toward 0 anchor by 1 point.
You can also establish connections between cities, which will increase gold from Trade and generate Merchant Points (yaa, Great Merchants).
Merchant Points (yaa, Great Merchants) can be spent to boost instantly Trade Relation with one partner (or internal), establish city connection or make a Great Trade Mission (humm, let's say it will be instant Wealth boom; you may gain information about unknown cities that your merchants visited and even earns points of Glory).

Ok, so our little civilization is earning Wealth. Now, to complete the mini-game, I have to do one important thing. Make them somehow spent this Wealth. I decided that some Wealth will be needed for Wonders. Player will be able to buy Happiness as well. However, the main thing and the last "system" I have designed (for beta version) is Social Projects. In opposite to Social Policies they will be temporary (5 turns). You will be able to have only two active in the same time (by default). This system will be quite important, it may change your average artistic heritage to remarkable one.

Humm, Golden Ages will be a part of Social Projects. Basically the Golden Age will freeze all the current Projects and allow you choose 5 Projects for free. Golden Age will trigger only once and only if you manage to earn enough Glory Points in short time.

Ok, so I have done some Trade stuff, I have made bonuses for Cultural Level (one, but interface will be shared for all of them, the system is done). They will be the closest thing to the current Social Policies (since related to Culture). For level one, there will be available several trivial bonuses, but for higher levels same civ will be unable to choose the same bonus (more diversity, it will be basically one of many unique traits obtainable).

Quite a big stuff was recoding Swap units interface (incorporating it to Military Overview, easy access from unit panel), but it was just recoding. Though, right now it is impossible to move same troops twice a turn. Let me bore you about military then.

I added more code to the unit combat simulation, made some battles with AI (AI was waiting for me to come ^^).
The cities will have two negative states:
Blockaded (enemy army within two tiles) - can't build defensive buildings (building ^^), add extra defense or be a destination for troops.
Sieged (enemy army attacked this turn) - effects equal to resistance. I truely don't want to see Armies sieging a city that pops a new military unit each turn.

About the army movement. By default Army has movement of 6. However, most units have "movement penalty" (except cavalry) reducing the max movement. Heavy units (Swordsman, Spearman) reducing movement by 3, while light infantry (Archers, Warriors) by 2.

Healing or being specified "Reinforcing". It will be rather costly, I believe the civ 5 Healing system benefits a player to much. Only in city territory (eventually, fort), eats up resources and turn (in opposite to just building new units, you still save city production and some experience from previous battles).

Ahh, battles. I have started working on "Battle meter". Basically you can win 0-100% of combat. 48-52% will be a stalemates, 53-55% a minor victory (respectively 45-47% a minor defeat) and so on. You are gonna earn mainly Morale from victories (though defeating enemies may result in obtaining resources, from Wealth to Horses), but it will also increase the amount of units defeated (modifiers like 10% for minor, 100% for legendary victory). Basically, if you somehow get an upper-hand in the battle, and every single combat was on your favour (a combat is a series of mini-combats between troops in the army; the queue is quite random, the target is also - it may result in different outcomes if your cavalry will strike enemy archers first or be intercepted by Spearman and then heavily wounded by rain of arrows) you may annihilate the enemy army - I want combats to be deciding (AI friendly ^^).

Siege will be very similar to normal combat, except that sieging side will have to break the fortifications first; in general defender will rather buy a time, because the losses of sieger will be greatly reduced.

Some future planning. The list of wonders expanded:
Great Library
Staute of Zeus
Walls of Babylon
Silk Road
Great Wall
Triumphal Arch (quite enigmatic)
Great Lighthouse
Pyramids
Stonehenge (available only in first 15 turns ^^)
Colosseum
I think about 15 will be enough for release.

About the future. Unrestricted code spam. I feel the urge to start adding graphic assets, but it would slow testing greatly. Maybe next month. I have to fight with numerous tooltips, make some interfaces more friendly, finish off the planned stuff. If I manage to make code related to conquer cities, it would be huge. Embarkation system, Armades - much to code.

 

[LastSword]

Year.

From good news, there is no Civ VI, which could or not disappoint me. Other than that I resigned from original version, because of being unable to code the AI behaviour, basically the movement and complicated combat.
I have started from the beginning, keeping in mind main points of the mini-game, short ~ fun related ~ remove linearity (of science for example) and reduce importance of starting locations (map in general). Combat is taken directly from civ 5 with my little own modifications (almost removed concept of ranged attack).
I went into some classic concept of game generating, Heroes III and stuff. Looks epic, great fun coding, but what can you know. Anyway, I wanted to prepare something for today, but somehow Christmas delayed it and now I am quite busy and not in the mood. I need a time to code Culture and Code of Laws (yaa, design them). I am gonna start collecting Graphics (mainly icons for UUs) and polish the interface.
Don't want to spoil too much, had some good ideas and some backfired at me (the amount of beliefs needed...).

However, a good news is that I started coding .dll, which was something truely new to me. I have also take a look on map scripts. Not gonna lie, that I am aware that "perfection" requires too much time spent on it, and I actually prefer "reality", so I am going for the most basic "skeleton"/web of gameplay. Simply, some stuff would be pointless if others are not in game, so if I made Technologies, I need new science systems, Social Projects to have sense require Culture/Economy/Military/Religion. Religion's beliefs are affecting everything. Hard to make half-done playable stuff.

Anyway, I except two months for completing a base and adding Art then the fun begins. I would like to post gameplay videos since then. Finish Classical Era at Summer (with AI fully coded). Then I am gonna decide if I am gonna rush a new era or add more stuff.

I don't truely remember what I have written about before. Making it simple for AI, check. Removing amount of units on map, check ) Map is now filled with other interesting things). Barbarians, done. Technology system done. Science done (great works of science, Medicine, Astronomy). Unique Unit aquisition done. Trade Route system done. Espionage done. Great Generals done. Colonies as capture points done. Tweaked combat. Social Projects (temporary effects for gold). Mercenaries. Palace upgrading. Local Happiness, Riots. Wonders started ~ can't decide on design yet, but for sure every wonder will can have several effects (or even more than one at once, and there are special Wonder Beliefs connected to certain existing wonders). Currency done. Diplo relations somehow controlled (very forced). And other gameplay matters. Population system is done from the certain point of view.
I need Culture and Code of Laws to achieve certain level of Happiness, and Forts/Citadels combat. Oh and UI upon finishing the game, obviously.

Meanwhile, I am gonna probably finish/update some civs since I am recently in Photoshop's mood.

 

[Hoop Thrower]

So I was wondering, will your forts draw names from a different list than the city one or will they share a list and forts will eventually evolve into cities?

Maybe none of the above?