[MOD] Triangle Trade

Triangle Trade


Download (1.62 MB)

When complete, this mod will be a fairly large overhaul of Colonization. Right now I've only made a few changes, but I would like people to experiment with what I've created and let me know what doesn't work, what needs tweaking and rebalancing, and any ideas they might have for the future.

Current new features:

• Selling Ships - You can now sail ships to Europe and sell them. The sale price is based on the base price and the cost of the yields needed to build it.
• Loans - you can now take out loans from a "bank". Your debt increases each turn based on your interest rate. Debt negatively affects your game score, so you'll want to pay it off quickly and never let it accumulate. You can pay back a loan at any time in the same interface. Otherwise, the money will be taken out of your sale of goods and ships in Europe until you've paid off your debt.
• Coastal Trader - Coastal Traders are small, cheap ships. They only require a Dock, they can only carry goods, they can't explore and they can't sail to Europe. They're essentially floating Wagon Trains.
• Imperial Fleet - Your country's imperial fleet is now present on the map from the start of the game. The more colonies you have, the bigger the fleet and the more powerful the ships.
• Closed Ports - The king now has the power to shut down your ports when you anger him. Closed ports cannot load or unload goods to ships but they can load and unload units. Goods can still be moved by Wagon Train.

Changes:

• Wagon Trains are a little cheaper.
• Goods are now grouped in popups by their classification for easy searching for the one you want.
• Instead of boycotting your goods when you refuse a tax increase, the king will instead close the port in which the goods Party takes place. The port will be closed until the War of Independence during which no goods will be able to be unloaded and unloaded by ship.

Planned changes:

• Africa Screen (In Progress) - In addition to sailing to Europe, your ships will also be able to sail to Africa. The Africa screen is more limited than the Europe screen. In Africa, you can sell goods, but the only "good" available for purchase are Slave Units. Africa is in demand for finished goods: Horses, Muskets, Rum, Cigars and Tools. They have little or no use for colonial raw materials.
• Slave Units (In Progress) - Slave units consume -1 Food. In other words, a city that could only support 2 regular units will be able to support 3 Slaves. Slaves can also be traded in the Diplomacy Screen. The downside, however, is that they have a small chance of escaping and either joining a Native village or founding their own settlement.
• Plantation System - Cash crops such as Cotton, Tobacco and Sugar are being removed from the map. The only way to grow these crops will be by building Plantation improvements that give these yields. This will allow the player to concentrate particular yields in particular cities so they don't have to have raw materials trickling in from several sources spread across the map to a processing or distribution center. Furs, Ore, Silver and Lumber will be left untouched.
• Unit Trading - Some units can be traded in the Diplomacy Screen. These include Slaves, Cannon, Wagon Trains and Ships.
• Smuggling - The imperial fleet will be prowling the sea looking for scofflaws who ignore trading laws. Two civics choices banning foreign-bought goods and Slaves will be enforced if they are adopted by the King. Transports carrying these have a chance of being caught and the cargo impounded. Other than that, goods purchased from foreign colonies will be subject to an import tax that the player will have to pay upon entering one of their ports or the player can try to bribe a customs official. If this fails, the cargo will be impounded.
• Maroons - There will be a new civilization for escaped slaves called the Maroons. Their leader is Zumbi. Escaping slaves that have no Native village to flee to will found new settlements on the fringe of your colonies. They will be hostile and will harrass your colonies until you crush them.
• Colonial Charter/Constitution (In Progress) - Civics won't just be for the WoI anymore. Your Constitution in the early game will be referred to as a Colonial Charter. You'll have a good degree of control over it, but the King will be able to revise your Colonial Charter when it suits him... this will come in the form of demands like the tax demands. There will also be civics categories available under the colonial charter that will not be available after independence and vise versa. Some civics will deal with your interactions with the King.
• Naval Reform - There will be some changes to the navy. The map will now have Natural Harbors. Harbors, whether Natural or built, will be necessary to permit deep-draft vessels to enter coastal cities. You will also be unable to build the military-only vessels like Frigates and Ship of the Line while in the colonial period. Your home country's navy will handle your sea defense. I'm also planning to add Trade Winds that will speed up movement when sailing with the wind and slow down movement when sailing against it.
• Natives & Training - Natives will be beefed up a bit. They'll have special promotions that make them invisible in Forests, Jungles and Marshes. Your units will also be able to acquire these promotions when they train with the Natives.

 

I can't wait to see the full list. I like the addition of loans.

 

Looks very cool. I will test it when it it's combinded with modpatch or AoD2.

 

It looks very cool, but when I tested the loans feature it resulted in a CTD.

 

Ooooo, downloading it now.

 

Hmmm... it's working for me. At what point did the CTD occur? When you pushed the button on the main interface? When you accepted the loan? Or at some other point?

 

Hmm, downloaded the mod, and it seems the changed SDK files seems to be missing from the download. Is there another link where I can get them?

 

Sorry. to clarify, the CTD occurs when I click the button on the main interface or use the keyboard shortcut (I tried both to be thorough). The only thing left for me to try is to make sure my CustomAssets folder is empty, as I know that sometimes that causes problems (I removed Blue Marble, I just need to make sure there's nothing left causing trouble).

EDIT: I can now confirm that CustomAssets is empty.

 

Nice idea, but will the AI use it? If not, it just makes the game even easier for the human player.

 

Nice!

Hmmm. Triangle trade - will you be implementing slaves from Africa?

 

Well, could the AI use it? Probably. Does it currently? No. But I will be adding a number of new components that will probably make the game more challenging for the player (hopefully without increasing the game's excessive micromanagement).

An Africa screen and slave units is the largest new planned component, yes.

 

This will be nothing short of awesome.

Make the Africans able to go to school and train as elder statesmen just like the Natives can and I don't think anyone will gripe that much.

Edit:
You're gonna need some slavery-related founding fathers to go with.

 

Suggestion:

Carreira das Indias and Manila Galleon

 

Allready a great Mod. I like the coastal trader most and the grouped goods.

 

Do you plan to added any new Victory Conditions to the mod? Or any Civs or beef up the Natives?

You may consider these ideas... LINK

 

Victory Conditions: Yes, they all focus on independence, but they provide different modes for independence. Brazil bought it's independence from Portugal, so I think accumulating X amount of gold would be a good way to do this. Also, I think a peaceful transition through cooperation with the king would be a good option as well. So essentially it's a choice between a Military, Financial and Diplomatic victory.

Natives: I'm planning on merging by Civ4 Conqueror's Delight mod with this which will include promotions for invisibility that will allow units to be invisible only on certain terrain/features. So I may make some new promotions for natives that will make them invisible in forests, light forest and jungles. I've also included heal rate modifiers for terrains and features as well.

I'm also thinking about a Train with Natives option for military units that will work like the Live Among Natives command that will give you special promotions like the ones mentioned above.

 

How does "can't explore" feature work ?

 

This code is taken from Beyond the Sword. What it means is that when you move a unit, it checks to see if the tile you're moving to is adjacent to unexplored territory. If it is, you can't move to that tile because it would cause you to reveal the unexplored tile next to it.

In BtS, I think this is used to keep players from sending out Spies (which appear much earlier in BtS than in vanilla Civ4) as scouts that can't be attacked by Barbs and could move freely through rival territory. Here I use it to keep players from using Coastal Traders as anything other than cheap cargo ships.

Since they're the first ships you'll be able to build yourself, and because they're so cheap, it seemed that they could potentially be exploited to explore the map very early. Coastal Traders are only meant to remove the penalty of building on islands as opposed to on one large land mass.

 

Never seen that kind of behavior in BTS. (i am fairly sure i did use Spies as scouts there...). It would make a lot of sense on work boats (in Civ) too, that's why i ask

 

The code is there. Don't know if it's actually used. I only remember pre-release that people thought Spies would be getting this penalty... But the code is there and it does work. So if you were looking to apply this to BtS, you need no help from me