MOD: Caravans and Supply Trains
- Thread starter Hastur
- Start date
It would be interesting once you build a supermarket if some how the system would average all the food connected via highways and harbors weighted to the population.
Also a thought about caravans; once you hit the modern age, I think a caravan should be obsolete. Transportation will make it common place.
Also a thought about caravans; once you hit the modern age, I think a caravan should be obsolete. Transportation will make it common place.
Interesting idea there about making caravans obsolete. I hadn't really thought about that part of it. Someone earlier suggested providing a modern upgrade to the Supply Train unit called Freight. Definitely things to think about tonight. I'll take a shot at the Entertainer unit and can look at doing a modern Freight unit if there's interest.
BeefontheBone
Windbag of the sea
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2005
- Messages
- 2,018
A cap on supply trains sounds like a very good idea to prevent wonder rushing too easily - effectively it would be allowing prebuilds again like in Civ 3 (or the civ 2 OCC, where using caravans on a later wonder build was a near-essential 'strategy').
Lachlan
Great Builder of Civs !
When you will put the final version ?
Because your Mod give taste of Civ 2 to Civ 4 !
What do you think to Recall your Mod "Taste of Civ 2" and :
- make planes to attack like in civ 2 ? because i loved the system of Civ 2 for ships and planes
- spies with bad and very bad missions like planting nuke case in cities and contaminate the water or buy the cities ???
Good work !
Because your Mod give taste of Civ 2 to Civ 4 !
What do you think to Recall your Mod "Taste of Civ 2" and :
- make planes to attack like in civ 2 ? because i loved the system of Civ 2 for ships and planes
- spies with bad and very bad missions like planting nuke case in cities and contaminate the water or buy the cities ???
Good work !Well, I'd really like to get some feedback from folks using the mod before I call it final. That and I'm still trying to make a reskin (skinning is definitely NOT my best skill) for each of the units so you can tell them apart easily.
So as of right now, the only enhancements I have in mind for this mod are reskins and balance corrections based on feedback. I do have a few other ideas for mods and have been working on them so we'll see what happens.
So as of right now, the only enhancements I have in mind for this mod are reskins and balance corrections based on feedback. I do have a few other ideas for mods and have been working on them so we'll see what happens.
I'm not a fan of the caravan or entertainer units.
I'm not sure I like the idea of re-adding layers of micromanagement to things which have already been intentionally abstracted and simplified for a good reason.
The supply trains, however, I like a lot.
It's a good idea (although I dunno if its unbalancing and how) to have one city send food or help production in another city via supply shipments, and I appreciate that you mind the balance and logic of the thing so that it becomes a strategic choice rather than a cheat for zipping productions between towns (because you lose some of the production you put into it).
Still, are you sure its well balanced and not open to some kind of abuse?
PS. Culture moves don't make any sense and ARE open to abuse for cheap cultural victories :>
I'm not sure I like the idea of re-adding layers of micromanagement to things which have already been intentionally abstracted and simplified for a good reason.
The supply trains, however, I like a lot.
It's a good idea (although I dunno if its unbalancing and how) to have one city send food or help production in another city via supply shipments, and I appreciate that you mind the balance and logic of the thing so that it becomes a strategic choice rather than a cheat for zipping productions between towns (because you lose some of the production you put into it).
Still, are you sure its well balanced and not open to some kind of abuse?
PS. Culture moves don't make any sense and ARE open to abuse for cheap cultural victories :>
Lachlan
Great Builder of Civs !
Doesn't work, can you make a folder called "Civ2taste" ?
and you rebuild on it ...
I would like install the mod in the mods folder like a normal mod
Can you add a merchant ship, a fret ship and a fret plane ?
and you rebuild on it ...
I would like install the mod in the mods folder like a normal mod
Can you add a merchant ship, a fret ship and a fret plane ?
There've been some interesting reviews of these extra units so here's my reasoning on them:
All Units: Keep in mind that you are limited to having three of each unit active at one time. This tends to limit any of the excesses that are even possible. You can't form up a huge set of Supply Trains to instant build a wonder. Nor can you have waves of Caravans supplying you with gold. And you can't have large numbers of Entertainers building up a city's culture unduly (in fact, given that Entertainers provide 15 culture and Great Artists provide 4000 culture, it would take 266 Entertainers to provide that same amount and would cost 10,640 production to build them... or about 7 times as much as the Eiffel Tower just to get the effect of ONE Great Artist).
Caravan: No, this doesn't replace (nor should it) the trade routes functionality. It is intended to provide an option regarding commerce and nothing more. The return on using the Caravan vs. just setting a city to build wealth is designed to be about 20% better. Nothing so huge as to provide an overly large return given that, at least in my experience, it's uncommon to just leave a city on the build wealth setting. But it can be handy when you're needing a small temporary boost in available gold.
Supply Trains/Freight: These seem to be the one type of units that everyone actually likes.
Entertainers: As noted above, these units are horribly inefficient for developing large amounts of culture. They are good for helping a very new city (or conquered city) get on its feet. One Entertainer will get a city to a radius of 2 squares. It would take 7 (and remember you can only have 3 active at a time) to get a city to a radius of 3 squares. The intent is to represent the effect of a government deliberately encouraging the growth of their culture through small efforts rather than taking the small frontier town and building an opera house in it. Think minstrels, bards, circuses, and travelling road shows. If they are still considered to be too powerful as they are, I may drop their benefit down to just 10 culture.
Other Units: Since I put up this mod, I've been getting requests to make a food transfer unit. And believe me, I'd love to do it. The only way I've been able to come up with something like this that would actually work is a bit roundabout but it's interesting... A pair of buildings set to work like National Wonders (i.e. you can only build one of each). The first would be Food Export and would lower the available food in town by say 4. The second would be Food Import and would require that the Food Export building had been built somewhere in your empire before it would provide its benefit of say 3 food (some would be lost or spoiled in transport). This would enable a single city to help support the growth of another city. It's possible that this could be enhanced to allow it to work for multiple city pairs (using roughly the same kind of python code that checks to see if you have enough temples before building a cathedral) but I don't know for sure. I'd also like to see if there's a method that the buildings could be torn down so you could rebuild them for a different city pairing. Any thoughts on this?
As for merchant/freight ships and planes, you can always board the units onto a ship or use an airport.
All Units: Keep in mind that you are limited to having three of each unit active at one time. This tends to limit any of the excesses that are even possible. You can't form up a huge set of Supply Trains to instant build a wonder. Nor can you have waves of Caravans supplying you with gold. And you can't have large numbers of Entertainers building up a city's culture unduly (in fact, given that Entertainers provide 15 culture and Great Artists provide 4000 culture, it would take 266 Entertainers to provide that same amount and would cost 10,640 production to build them... or about 7 times as much as the Eiffel Tower just to get the effect of ONE Great Artist).
Caravan: No, this doesn't replace (nor should it) the trade routes functionality. It is intended to provide an option regarding commerce and nothing more. The return on using the Caravan vs. just setting a city to build wealth is designed to be about 20% better. Nothing so huge as to provide an overly large return given that, at least in my experience, it's uncommon to just leave a city on the build wealth setting. But it can be handy when you're needing a small temporary boost in available gold.
Supply Trains/Freight: These seem to be the one type of units that everyone actually likes.
Entertainers: As noted above, these units are horribly inefficient for developing large amounts of culture. They are good for helping a very new city (or conquered city) get on its feet. One Entertainer will get a city to a radius of 2 squares. It would take 7 (and remember you can only have 3 active at a time) to get a city to a radius of 3 squares. The intent is to represent the effect of a government deliberately encouraging the growth of their culture through small efforts rather than taking the small frontier town and building an opera house in it. Think minstrels, bards, circuses, and travelling road shows. If they are still considered to be too powerful as they are, I may drop their benefit down to just 10 culture.
Other Units: Since I put up this mod, I've been getting requests to make a food transfer unit. And believe me, I'd love to do it. The only way I've been able to come up with something like this that would actually work is a bit roundabout but it's interesting... A pair of buildings set to work like National Wonders (i.e. you can only build one of each). The first would be Food Export and would lower the available food in town by say 4. The second would be Food Import and would require that the Food Export building had been built somewhere in your empire before it would provide its benefit of say 3 food (some would be lost or spoiled in transport). This would enable a single city to help support the growth of another city. It's possible that this could be enhanced to allow it to work for multiple city pairs (using roughly the same kind of python code that checks to see if you have enough temples before building a cathedral) but I don't know for sure. I'd also like to see if there's a method that the buildings could be torn down so you could rebuild them for a different city pairing. Any thoughts on this?
As for merchant/freight ships and planes, you can always board the units onto a ship or use an airport.
Lachlan
Great Builder of Civs !
Can you take my comments in consideration ? 
I'll take a look tonight to see if I can make a version of this as a mod rather than as a permanent piece of the CustomAssets.
As for planes fighting like they did in Civ2, that one's WAY out of my ability. The combat system definitely can't be changed as things are and only MAY be able to be changed with the release of the SDK (whenever that is).
I haven't taken a look at the spy missions but I'm sure you can't change/add missions without at least heavy python scripting which I am definitely not good at right now.
Sorry to be so little help to you but I can only work within the limits of my skill. Perhaps someone else here on CivFanatics will take up the challenge.
As for planes fighting like they did in Civ2, that one's WAY out of my ability. The combat system definitely can't be changed as things are and only MAY be able to be changed with the release of the SDK (whenever that is).
I haven't taken a look at the spy missions but I'm sure you can't change/add missions without at least heavy python scripting which I am definitely not good at right now.
Sorry to be so little help to you but I can only work within the limits of my skill. Perhaps someone else here on CivFanatics will take up the challenge.
Hastur said:
I love this idea Hastur. For early civs though the spoilage rate should be high. Once you get combustion and then refrigeration the rates should drop to nearly equal to show the benefits of higher techs
Maybe even flight could aid!
BeefontheBone
Windbag of the sea
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2005
- Messages
- 2,018
Thinking about it (and I'm no coder) the cathedral-style code makes much more sense and should be workable, perhaps requiring a number of granaries (or grocers or supermarkets) to build the export buildings (Corn exchanges?) and then 1 export building per import building, thereby ensuring they come in pairs. If you wanted the efficiency to increase with tech, you could perhaps allow improved versions of the buildings or upgrades to them - for example, the first Import building provides 2 food, then the second one requires the first to be built but provides an extra 1 food for a total of 3 and so on.
