MOD: Caravans and Supply Trains

[Lachlan]

What do you think of multirule supply ship 'prod, commercial and cultural) for little "city-islands" or cities on islands ?

When i can expect a version which with i can install your mod like a mod ?

No problem if i must wait

 

[Hastur]

Two quick things...

Making this work as a mod rather than just being added to your customassets: I'm going to have to work with this more tonight because I just haven't made a change to Civ4 before that was intended to work as a "mod" to be loaded. I want to make sure I've got the directory structure right before I upload it.

Before I do upload this as a mod, I'm going to go back and tinker with the AI settings to see if I can make a combined unit that can perform both the production and commerce functions of the Caravan and Supply Train. If that works, I'm going to replace the two units with the combined unit and release that as an alternate mod.

 

[Hastur]

This mod has just gone to release version 1.0 Notes below... (and yes, it now has installation instructions for BOTH as a mod and for insertion into CustomAssets).

Status: This mod is now release version 1.0 (Updated 12/06/2005)

Description: This mod adds three new units, the Caravan, Entertainer, and Freight. As best as I can tell, the AI does know how to produce and use these units. Stats follow:

NOTE: Each of these units is limited to a maximum of 3 each in existence at one time (just like missionaries).

Caravan: Available with Currency and Construction, costs 50 production, has a move of 2, can be captured, can only defend, 0 power. Special abilities: Can perform a trade mission like the Great Merchant but will only produce a base of 50 gold; can hurry the production of the city it resides in by 25 production. Uses the Great Merchant graphic. Upgrades to Freight.

Freight: Available with Railroad, costs 150 production, has a move of 2, can be captured, can only defend, 0 power. Special abilities: can hurry the production of the city it resides in by 100 production; can perform a trade mission like the Great Merchant but will only produce a base of 150 gold. Replaces the Caravan. Uses the Great Merchant graphic.

Entertainer: Available with Drama, costs 40 production, has a move of 2, can be captured, can only defend, 0 power. Special ability: can provide a one-time shot of 15 culture to a city a la the Great Artist ability. Uses the Great Artist graphic.

Version History:
Beta 1
- Initial Release
- Caravan and Supply Train units added

Beta 2
- Freight and Entertainer units added

1.0
- Combined Caravan and Supply Train/Freight units
- Added the readme file


INSTALLATION: Instructions are in the readme.txt file.

 

[Hastur]

By the way... I am currently playtesting the food export/import buildings. So far so good. This one is going to take a while to playtest and if you're interested in beta testing this, put up a post and if people are interested, I'll post a beta version of the mod.

 

[Zuul]

Entertainer or someone else (that you can have max one or so of) should be able to raise the happyness of one city it's in.

 

[woodelf]

I'll gladly playtest the food idea Hastur. I'm not sure how you're implementing it, but I'd love to see /make it work. Nothing worse than having a great city with no hills/mountains to make hammers and having another city nearby with just the opposite having no food potential.

 

[Hastur]

Ok guys... here's the food transfer BETA VERSION. I really need input on this so if you try it, PLEASE give me feedback.

NOTE: THIS IS A BETA VERSION! The new buildings do not yet have civilopedia text (currently uses the granary text) and has not had any of their text translated for non-English languages.

Here's what's been added for this BETA VERSION:

Food Export (building): This building lowers food production by 4 in the city that builds it. Like Cathedrals, it can only be built once for every 3 granaries. Costs 80 production. Uses the granary graphics. Available once you have both Currency and Construction.

Food Import (building): This building raises food production by 3 in the city that builds it. Requires one Food Export building to have been built somewhere in your empire for EACH Food Import building. Costs 80 production. Uses the granary graphics. Available once you have both Currency and Construction.

Possible Issues:

I'm considering adding python script to disable Food Import buildings if somehow the number of Food Export buildings drops below the number of Food Import buildings.

I'm also considering bringing into this the mod that allows destroying buildings so that you can end a city's involvment in food import/export.

And lastly, I'm not 100% that the numbers (export 4 food, import 3 food) are right. They may be too high. That's one of the reasons for this BETA VERSION.

DOWNLOAD BOTH FILES: Due to size limitations, I had to split it up into two files. I'll try to find a way to reduce the size for the release version.

 

[Hastur]

Oh... two other things:

First, Zuul... I'll look into finding a way for Entertainers to add happiness to the city they reside in.

Second, if anyone has suggestions for the food import/export buildings, please feel free to make them. I've thought of a few... Caravansarai, Warehouse, Distribution Center, Depot, Depository, and Cooperative though I'm not really thrilled with any of them.

 

[woodelf]

Good work Hastur. My feeling is that the 4 and 3 food might be high, but since I'm at work I don't have any chance to try it yet. Damn. Also, are you starting your games at another era so you can test out your mods? I've always started at Ancient, but I can see why starting later would be helpful here.

Can cities make more than 1 of each? Could you have a supercity importing tons of food?

Distribution Center sounds good, but I can't right now think of anything better for the other building. I'll think on it.

 

[woodelf]

And I think you definitely need to look into being able to either destroy or disable them. It would suck if a city starved and was still sending food out. And what happens if you lose a city to a rival? Does the food keep coming or going? That would be wierd....

 

[Lachlan]

Please Hastur : make a famous "Global Commerce Mod"

You are on the right way !

Good luck !

 

[Hastur]

One of the other thoughts I had was to have the cities "pay" for the food to deal with the "what if a rival gets the city" situation. In other words, the city shipping food would also get say +4 gold and the city receiving the food would get -4 gold. Within your own empire, this wouldn't make much difference (except as other buildings within the cities modify the city's gold output). But if one of the city's are taken by a rival whether by force, gift, or culture, then at least there's some sort of reasonable explanation for the food transfer.

I'll also be looking at the mod that allows you to destroy your own buildings tonight. Keep in mind that if I implement this, I'm going to have to implement python code that disables the Food Import buildings if there are more importers than exporters. This is mainly to prevent people from building a lot of Exporters/Importers and then destroying all the Exporters so they get the benefit without the penalty.

And thanks, Lachlan! I'm doing my best with it.

 

[woodelf]

Eek, I never thought about someone destroying the exporters. Lovely, but someone would.

 

[GeoModder]

Second, if anyone has suggestions for the food import/export buildings, please feel free to make them. I've thought of a few... Caravansarai, Warehouse, Distribution Center, Depot, Depository, and Cooperative though I'm not really thrilled with any of them.

A simple "Food Storage" perhaps?

 

[Zuul]

Hastur: very nice mod .

Maybe add some national wonder that imports 1 food from each of the other cities in your civilization or something like that.
And maybe soem way of selling food, culture, production to other civs.

 

[Robo Magic Man]

Great idea. Great Merchants are always a good way to get quick cash, and this will make it both easier and more realistic.

 

[Roetghoer]

I see Hastur has combined two mods into one, i think this kind of activity should be a thing from the past:

I would like to get you acquainted with the 'Modswitcher' by TDB ( http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140188 ) This little prog, currently still in an immature form, will allow a large audience to combine different mods together without the hassle of modding the scripts by hand!

I think TDB could use either a little help or at least some encouragement for his activities, because this prog feels like the missing link in the current game to me.

Eventually, I hope we can come to some kind of standardized modding using a program like TDB's which would greatly enhance playability of mods on the game.

 

[Hastur]

Roetghoer: I'm a bit confused by your post...

First you're saying that I combined two mods into one... I haven't combined any mods. I combined two units that I created originally. I put out a beta version of my mod with two new buildings in them to perform functions that can't be performed by units. And all the code I worked with was either written by Firaxis or by myself. I have been looking at incorporating the mod that allows deleting buildings but I haven't done so yet and wouldn't do so without getting permission from the author of that mod first.

As for standardizing. I've been following the (to my knowledge) accepted standard of putting ALL custom XML at the end of the document. I'd take a look at the standard you're suggesting I use but the link you provided doesn't work.

Would you care to elaborate?

 

[Roetghoer]

I've been notified of the bad link a few minutes ago by someone else as well and changed it to the correct one (for redundancy http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140188 )

And my calling it 'two mods into one' might be a little problematic (excuse my english), what i mean is that u put several units/buildings etc into a single mod. This can be a great combo in well thought (and balanced) out cases , and I don't see any reason to use this argument against your mod, but there are some mods that just don't do it for me because they use some unit I find unrealistic or some option, say jungle-creation for instance, that ruins the package.

I would like to opt for several small, or in extreme scenario even single-line, mods which can easily be combined with a program envisaged by TDB (see link, it really is worth it)

This will reduce our Modwork by HoursAndHours and improve playability of mods and the game and it will be easy for scenario builders to use existing (micro)mods in their creations. This will certainly enhance the game

Do you agree?

 

[Hastur]

I understand your point. However, until a reliable tool is available for merging mods (and while TDB's effort is admirable, I think he'd be the first to say it isn't yet reliable), releasing my mod as four separate mods would only be MORE difficult to deal with for people who might want to use it. Because a reliable merging tool isn't yet available, it would mean that anyone who wants to use my new units and buildings would have to manually merge them together after I manually pull them apart before posting them. That's just foolish. It would be like releasing a new civ as one mod for the civ and one mod for each leader. Which if that was the way people were releasing new civs, no one would download them.

And besides all that, the units and buildings in my mod are thematically linked. If I released a mod that had my caravan/entertainer units AND had new civics in it, I could certainly understand your point. But you have to admit that as things stand in the mod I have released, that is not the case.