Merging Super Forts

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Having the outposts upgrading to forts is probably a bad idea.

In Total War thy upgrade to radar Stations but I don't think we have the code to support what radar stations should do. Which is increase the chance of fighters intercepting incoming planes etc.

 

[strategyonly]

OK this is one thing i like about the NEW forts, revolting and kicking out an enemy unit, nice!!

 

[Nimek]

Having the outposts upgrading to forts is probably a bad idea.

I also thinak that outposts should be separate improvement line than fort. I like the radar as modern outpost.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Is this finished now?

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Yes Super Forts have been merged and forts now eventually upgrade if they have a unit fortified in them. No the outposts and new resource outposts are not finished. I have not had the time or inclination to do the XML that is needed. I do not see me getting to this any time soon.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@StrategyOnly I don't even know if the ones I have added work corectly. I seem to have corrupted mu BtS folder - I probably copied the C2C dll over the BtS one now I can't run anything except mods with there own dll which makes pillage (oops that should be recycling) difficult.

My original detailed ideas are here for the outpost buildings and two early fort like buildings. I am still thinking about fortified caves that was discussed elsewhere.

If you could make the two early forts and make sure the outposts are working that would be great. I was going to use the palisade graphic from Piat's mod (hence the pillage). Don't know what to use for the abatis

@all With the resource improvements things are a it more complex. It will mean duplication of what we have and changing some of what we have also. There is also some thought needed on how they interact with Realistic Culture Spread which they may subvert.

1) currently mines and quarries can be built outside your borders. The only reason for this is to influence Realistic Culture Spread! The suggestions here would not influence but implement cultural spread.

2) I reckon that early in the game you should only be able to build resource grabber improvements if they are next to your cultural border. This mans that you would need to build that fort next to a resource before you build the resource grabber. How do we teach the AI that?

 

[Koshling]

@StrategyOnly I don't even know if the ones I have added work corectly. I seem to have corrupted mu BtS folder - I probably copied the C2C dll over the BtS one now I can't run anything except mods with there own dll which makes pillage (oops that should be recycling) difficult.

My original detailed ideas are here for the outpost buildings and two early fort like buildings. I am still thinking about fortified caves that was discussed elsewhere.

If you could make the two early forts and make sure the outposts are working that would be great. I was going to use the palisade graphic from Piat's mod (hence the pillage). Don't know what to use for the abatis

@all With the resource improvements things are a it more complex. It will mean duplication of what we have and changing some of what we have also. There is also some thought needed on how they interact with Realistic Culture Spread which they may subvert.

1) currently mines and quarries can be built outside your borders. The only reason for this is to influence Realistic Culture Spread! The suggestions here would not influence but implement cultural spread.

2) I reckon that early in the game you should only be able to build resource grabber improvements if they are next to your cultural border. This mans that you would need to build that fort next to a resource before you build the resource grabber. How do we teach the AI that?

If the restriction is that you want some improvements to only be buildable adjacent to (or inside presumably) your borders we can add a tag for that. Using a regular fort to take an adjacent plot you then want to build something else on however, is rather dangerous, unless that something is itself a 'fort' in the widest sense that it itself holds its own plot to your culture while occupied by at least one unit. If you were just to use regular improvements to grab the resource, by making them your territory by adding an adjacent fort, then nothing would be holding them and they'd switch to a neighbour civ that built an actual CITY nearby (i.e. - had 'real' serious culture flow to the tile) at the drop of a hat.

So, here's a counter-proposal:

add a new tag to improvements:

<iMaxDistanceFromBorder>

which specifies how far away from your nearest border they can be built. That would then be a more natural and generic restriction which you could apply to the resource gatherers, so their general pattern would become:

• They have bActsAsCity, which means they won't switch to an opposing player for cultural reasons, provided they are occupied by at least one unit
• They are universal resource providers (i.e. - they provide the resource they are built on)
• They have bOutsideBorders, meaning they can be built outside of your borders
• They have a non-0 value for iMaxDistanceFromBorder, meaning they can only be built within a limitted range of your borders

The effects are that:

• You don't need to build a military fort to have a resource gatherer, unless it's a significant distance away, in which case you do to act as a staging post (hmm - this model might work quite well for supply line modelling)
• Another civ that builds a city nearby won't grab the resource gatherer off you without military action (provided you garrison it)
• Initially, provided we allow a not-too-small range (say 3), the AI won't suffer significantly since it'll still be able to get close outside-border resources anyway, and the cases where you want to support distant ones via potentially chains of forts are likely to be rare (and the AI would try to build a city which is not too bad). That gives us leeway to improve the AI later, without precluding the mechanism by making it too strict at the start

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Interesting. In which case we may not need all this if we have the restriction on how far a unit can move from your cultural borders. A prototype of that is my next project since the adaptive iCost on unit missions is not working and I need a break. My intent is that the restriction on how far you can move a unit away from your borders will disappear sometime in the Classical era since there is archaelogical evidence of Celts from western Europe living in eastern Asia.

btw we already have a flag that says can be built outside your cultural borders.

I was thinking about duplication all those you can build inside the cultural borders but doubling the cost. Which means I may not need to if we just double the cost of building something outside cultural borders (including forts).

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Here's a fine thing. I used to go around claiming those one plot islands with forts. Now with the two plots required between forts I can't.

So the question is should that be 2 land tiles? Or is it possible to have a special island fort which is the same as a normal fort but is completely surrounded by water?

What happens when a fortification upgrades but is now to close to another fortification of the same type?

Edit and I have no idea why you can't build the look out posts yet.

 

[Faustmouse]

This ain't gonna work since you need 2 plots between your forts.
I think forts can have ZOC on water with cannons.

Is it possible to make your fort upgrading? It should be able to get the Ballista, a Doctor, a Tower to increase the line of sight, Traps/Mines, Stronger Walls...

 

[Koshling]

Here's a fine thing. I used to go around claiming those one plot islands with forts. Now with the two plots required between forts I can't.

So the question is should that be 2 land tiles? Or is it possible to have a special island fort which is the same as a normal fort but is completely surrounded by water?

What happens when a fortification upgrades but is now to close to another fortification of the same type?

Edit and I have no idea why you can't build the look out posts yet.

I **think** the upgrade will ignore the restriction and the result is a circumstance where the upgraded type can be closer together than they should be. Not sure though - it **MIGHT** prevent the upgrade *(but I don't remember any code that would police that)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I am still working on this. I don't have art for most of it but I have the following working

- Outpost towers
- Coastal Forts upgrading to Coastal Fortresses (fixes my problem with claiming all those one plot islands )
- Siege encampments - get better at defending your units next to your enemy's city but at the cost of increasing disease - for use with disease on units.

Still designing
- Grab resource improvements
- pre fort forts

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

OK you can't have a fort with min distance=1 upgrade to one with min distance=2 because as soon as you can build the second you aren't allowed to build the first. This means that I need another solution to let me claim all those one plot islands, especially as cities are equivalent to forts.

 

[DRJ]

Well, you can build cities 1 tile away from each other if they are on different landmasses. So, if you could build a city on the one tile island but not a fort because there the distance penalty sets in the forts don't act as cities in this regard.

I don't know if it has been changed lately but if I recall correctly (and I am about 99% sure) on GEM, I have built for instance London and with only one tile seperating them, across the channel, Calais.

So what we need to find out is what part of the code makes it that the 2 distances apart rule is nullified if the "on another landmass" part kicks in. If forts would really act as cities the 1 tile rule would be skipped for forts on 1 tile islands?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Ah well, to properly implement coastal and siege forts I would need some extra tags so I will drop them for now.

There is no way of saying that an improvement can't be built on a plot with a resource on it in the XML. It would need a python call back to implement and the only one that there is is currently being used by the great farmer... I may be able to use that come to think on it. However it wont let you build on plots which have resources that you can't see yet.

So I currently have

Fortification | Tech | Claim plot | Upgrade |
Abatis (Thorn hedge)|Shelter Building|no|Palisade
Wooden Palisade|Carpentry|no|Fort
Fort| | |Bunker
Bunker| | |Future Bunker
-
Wooden Watchtower|Carpentry|no|Stone Watchtower
Stone Watchtower|Masonry|no|Steel Watchtower
Steel Watchtower|Steel|no|Radar|needs art
Radar|Radar|no|none
Listening Node|Planetary Defenses|no|none|needs art
-
Fortified Cave|Shelter Building|no|Fortified Cave with cache
Fortified Cave with cache|Pottery|yes|?

Does this sound right? What name can I use instead of Palisade? If you click on the link in the pedia you end up at the city building not the improvement.

edit should gatherers die when building the above?

 

[Nimek]

Wooden palisade.

Stone watchtower shoul req masonry i think.

You can add
Steel watchtower (steel construction can be much higher than stone)
Radar
Listener node.

Also techs like optics can expand vision of watchtowers.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Wooden palisade.

Thanks

Stone watchtower shoul req masonry i think.

It does I just typed it wrong

You can add
Steel watchtower (steel construction can be much higher than stone)
Radar
Listener node.

I have graphics for radar but not the others.

Also techs like optics can expand vision of watchtowers.

Can't do this at the moment. Well I could just by having another of each with the greater range and an upgrade time of zero.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

While adding the upgrades for the forts I discovered we have two bunkers a building and an improvement. This breaks the pedia. Anyone got a suggestion as to which should be renamed and to what?

So I now have

Fortifications

Fortification | Tech | Claim plot | Upgrade |
Abatis (Thorn hedge)|Shelter Building|no|Palisade
Wooden Palisade|Carpentry|no|Fort
Fort| | |Bunker
Bunker| | |Command Centre
-
Fortified Cave|Shelter Building|no|Fortified Cave with cache
Fortified Cave with cache|Pottery|yes|?

Watch outposts

Outpost | Tech | Claim plot | Upgrade |
Wooden Watchtower|Carpentry|no|Stone Watchtower
Stone Watchtower|Masonry|no|Steel Watchtower
Steel Watchtower|Steel|no|Radar|needs art
Radar|Radar|no|none
Listening Node|Planetary Defenses|no|none|needs art

Gatherer builds all kill the gatherer after and cost twice the equivalent improvement inside the cultural borders. Need to be worked to upgrade.

Build | Tech | Claim plot | Upgrade | Resource required
Grab Stony Resource|gathering|yes|Special Stone Tools Workshop|Stone, Marble or Obsidian
Grab Metallic Resource|gathering|yes|Stone Tools Workshop|Amber, Jade, Copper, Iron etc
Grab animal(domestic) resource|Scavenging|yes|Pasture|Horse,Camel,Cow,Donkey,Sheep
Grab animal(non domestic) resource|Scavenging|yes|Camp|Furs, Bison etc.
Grab leafy resource|gathering|yes|Plantation
Grab fruit resource|gathering|yes|Orchard
Grab grain resource|gathering|yes|farm

​

 

[strategyonly]

While adding the upgrades for the forts I discovered we have two bunkers a building and an improvement. This breaks the pedia. Anyone got a suggestion as to which should be renamed and to what?

According to Wiki the difference is that a "bunker" is mainly BELOW ground, and a "blockhouse" is above ground.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockhouse

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Indeed but both are below ground aren't they? What we need is a better name for the improvement that is better than a fort but not as good as a command centre.