Mod Without a Name

[Aeon221]

Idea: Increase the value of specialists and more realistically model the real world.

Solution: Decrease the value of 'on map' food (food that comes from tiles, and not from resources and specialists) and eliminate the fantasy concept of production entirely.

Means:

1) Create small wonders (eg: Abbatoire) that produce a single resource (eg: processed meats) so long as you have access to another resource (eg: Cattle, Pigs). This resource is required to create another specialist (eg: 3 Supermarket Workers per city with supermarket) which produces a large amount of food/gold (eg: 5food 2gold per) per unit per turn.

2) Eliminate production from the game entirely, and replace the hammers (where appropriate) with food and/or gold.

3) Make "rush buying" the only way to create something.

4) Alter the cost of purchase based on at least three factors:
-Maintenance cost of the city (higher maint, higher cost of rush)
-presence of specialists (eg: Factory workers decrease rush cost by 10% per factory worker, max 3 per city, requires factory)
-population size (larger pop = smaller cost)

5) Decrease the value of tiles in general, forcing players to rely almost totally on specialists to grow their city beyond a small size.

6) Some specialists (ie: Defense Industry Workers, -15% to military unit/building cost, 1 per city... or +100%, depending on how realistic we want to get ) should cost 1g per turn per unit.

7) Most specialists should be linked to either a technology or a building (or a technology seperate from the construction of that building).

8) Many direct rewards conferred by buildings should be reworked or eliminated. In the plurality of cases (if not the majority), it is the people working in the building, not the building itself, that provides the benefits ascribed to it.

Justification for increasing the value of specialists while devaluing the value of land: As any pre-historic history class will tell you, human civilization arose almost totally from specialization. Specialization is the removal of individuals from resource gathering and giving them the duty of resource utilization. An example of this is the baker, who does not grow his own grain, but instead uses grain produced by others to bake bread. In addition, the value of land as a natural producer has declined over time, as can be seen by the almost constant decrease in the % of arable land farmed, with the similar increase in the % yield per acre farmed. Land specialization, like all specialization, is more efficient than the current system displayed in civ, in which each city provides its own food and terrain resources.

Justification for removing the concept of hammers: Everything that governments want, they pay for. Even slave labor has an inherent cost in the maintenance of slaves and the providing of the resources required for their work. Currently, civ4 operates in an almost communist fasion alien to the course of history (as it has never occured), in which the laborer shares the fruits of his work with the government (and, by extension, society) without recompense. Utterly unrealistic, as the course of human events shows, and the suggestions I have made would go a long way towards eliminating this.

Caveat: I do not believe that food sharing between cities (beyond the natural resource system I have proposed) is necessary. Cities with rice, pork, beef, etc, will already be sending them to major processing facilities for sharing out into the general society. There would be no need to share the mundane food supplies, which would over time decrease in usage anyway.

Conclusion: I believe that in a system such as the one I propose, players would (as the game progressed) remove more and more citizens from the land around the city, and concentrate more and more of them in specialized roles (baker, doctor, factory worker, teacher, scientist, etc), thereby realistically modelling the development of the real world. People do not drive out from their city into the country to work, as civ4 seems to suggest. Rather, they drive into it from the outlying regions (suburbs) and engage in specialized professions for the support and maintenance of their fellow man.


*** Started this thought in Rhye's new mod, which is going to rock. Period. This is just something I want to do for the sake of my conscience (and that word just looks wrong... someone needs to exterminate it).

If you are interested, I need some GO RED ENGINE GO help with coding. Its not my forte... lets be honest, its not even on my radar of things I understand. Yet.

I have a bad record with sticking out my own projects (0 for 0x0), so we will see what happens.

 

[Aeon221]

Table of Important Things (To be updated as Important Things Occur)

 

[Gunner]

Hey this looks cool! Oh wait, I already responded to it in Rhye's thread. I'll just copy my response like you did

Its funny that you've thought along those lines Aeon, because I've been thinking about developing a system kinda like that recently. The idea of "production" has always bothered me too, you put it as well as I could. The conclusion I reached, however, is that changing that way this all works would upset the entire balance of Civ too much.

There also, as always, might be an issue with the AI's ability to handle a radical change such as this. I really don't know though, it would need to be tested.

I think that if you're really serious about doing this you should do it yourself as a stand alone mod and then if it works out well Rhye might incorportate it in. I could help you if you wanted me to. I have moderate experience modding xml files so far, its really not very difficult, just time consuming.

Love the name Aeon, its bound to attract lots of contributors

I actually think this should be relatively doable (unlike most of your previous projects). Most of it I think can be done by just changing some xml files around and then adding in buildings and specialists as you want to. Some of that more complicated stuff with giving a discount to just military units is probably going to require python though. I think you should organize it somehow so that you do a 'basic' version first which only changes xml and doesn't add too much stuff and then depending on its success do a 'expanded' version which you can go wild in. Ok, so I shamlessly stole that idea from Rhye, but I think its a very good one.

 

[sgrig]

Some excellent ideas here Aeon! Just a few comments from me:

Idea:
1) Create small wonders (eg: Abbatoire) that produce a single resource (eg: processed meats) so long as you have access to another resource (eg: Cattle, Pigs). This resource is required to create another specialist (eg: 3 Supermarket Workers per city with supermarket) which produces a large amount of food/gold (eg: 5food 2gold per) per unit per turn.

1) As it currently stands, you can't make a specialist dependent on a resource. What you would have to do is for each resource have a building which requires that resource, and which allows a specialist. In your example, you would need "Processed meats" to build a "Supermarket meats section" or something, which would in turn allow a specialist.

However I don't know what happens if you lose the resource. Do buildings which require the resource stop working?

2) Eliminate production from the game entirely, and replace the hammers (where appropriate) with food and/or gold.

3) Make "rush buying" the only way to create something.

4) Alter the cost of purchase based on at least three factors:
-Maintenance cost of the city (higher maint, higher cost of rush)
-presence of specialists (eg: Factory workers decrease rush cost by 10% per factory worker, max 3 per city, requires factory)
-population size (larger pop = smaller cost)

2) & 3) I wouldn't completely eliminate hammers, as the game would change too drastically then. Moreover if everything is rush-bought, everything would be built in 1 turn which is also unrealistic (as a nuclear plant should take longer to build than a supermarket).

Maybe you should look at this from a different perspective. When working on tiles which provide lots of hammers or working specialists which provide lots of hammers, you are losing out on commerce-rich tiles or specialists, hence there is an implicit cost.

4) Obviously this currently not possible via XML, so the AI will not have a clue as to how to use it.

5) Decrease the value of tiles in general, forcing players to rely almost totally on specialists to grow their city beyond a small size.

6) Some specialists (ie: Defense Industry Workers, -15% to military unit/building cost, 1 per city... or +100%, depending on how realistic we want to get ) should cost 1g per turn per unit.

7) Most specialists should be linked to either a technology or a building (or a technology seperate from the construction of that building).

8) Many direct rewards conferred by buildings should be reworked or eliminated. In the plurality of cases (if not the majority), it is the people working in the building, not the building itself, that provides the benefits ascribed to it.

5) & 7) I agree with this. Especially you shouldn't really have half of your population working on farms in the modern age! I guess as technology improves, you should get access to better and better specialists, which will bring a bigger yield than some of the city tiles. So as time goes on more and more specialists should be used. Even the AI should realise this.

6)Again this is not possible with XML, so AI won't have a clue.

8)Good idea. To make some buildings more powerful could use <FreeSpecialistCounts/> in CIV4BuildingInfos.xml to give a free specialist in the given city.

Justification for increasing the value of specialists while devaluing the value of land: As any pre-historic history class will tell you, human civilization arose almost totally from specialization. Specialization is the removal of individuals from resource gathering and giving them the duty of resource utilization. An example of this is the baker, who does not grow his own grain, but instead uses grain produced by others to bake bread. In addition, the value of land as a natural producer has declined over time, as can be seen by the almost constant decrease in the % of arable land farmed, with the similar increase in the % yield per acre farmed. Land specialization, like all specialization, is more efficient than the current system displayed in civ, in which each city provides its own food and terrain resources.

Fully agreed!

Justification for removing the concept of hammers: Everything that governments want, they pay for. Even slave labor has an inherent cost in the maintenance of slaves and the providing of the resources required for their work. Currently, civ4 operates in an almost communist fasion alien to the course of history (as it has never occured), in which the laborer shares the fruits of his work with the government (and, by extension, society) without recompense. Utterly unrealistic, as the course of human events shows, and the suggestions I have made would go a long way towards eliminating this.

True but don't forget that the government doesn't own your local supermarket. Local authorities may have planned that there a should a supermarket but it was built (and hence paid for) by a non-government owned company. The government didn't pay anything for it, yet it was built.

If the government thought that this supermarket is somehow strategically important, it could have somehow subsidized its construction to build it faster (and hence spending money), ie rush-buying it. In these terms hammers still make sense in that they represent general production capability of the society, and the monetary compensation is hidden within the society, and so the government (ie the civ player) doesn't see it (unless tax forms are filed on time! ).

So in my opinion, it seems that the system in Civ is more capitalist than any country in the real world - although everything is planned by the government, all buildings are actually privately financed (including hospitals, universities, aqueducts).

My point is that at least for buildings, hammers (together with the possibility to rush-buy) make perfect sense. However I'm still not quite sure what hammers mean in terms of military unit production. After all, in all countries - communist and capitalist, the military is always paid for by the government. Maybe one could argue that in this case, the lack of monetary cost when building military units is offset by unit upkeep cost? i.e. the unit upkeep cost is actually your defense budget, from which you also pay the defense contractors for new equipment?

But anyway, you have some great ideas, hopefully someday we'll see them in action!

 

[enen]

I like the idea behind this mod, and I can help with python and SDK (when finally will be out). Currently I'm busy with my python utility (and promised to help Rhye with programming when appropriate), but I could jump in if your mod got to some level where coding is required. Let's see if it's doable anyway...

 

[Aeon221]

Good input all around!

I agree that the one turn rush is pretty silly, but afaik its impossible to alter this. I would really prefer to have things cash purchased but still take X amounts of time where appropriate.

OTOH, soldiers get done with basic in what, 3 months? Supermarkets easily fall into place within a year, as do banks (I live within a growing community, so this is straight anecdotal), and a good number of other builds.

And I know it does not take 3 centuries to train a bunch of guys to use a shovel (primitive people may be slow... but come on ).

So, while "rush all" has flaws, it does do good things like: increase the value of money, increase the value of water (because seaports with cottages are great money makers), and devalue the land (which needs to be done).

The way I see it, semi-random production based on current city factors with monetary investment by the government and multiple builds in one city per turn would be the best way to simulate the real world... but thats not happening

@Gunner: Not _all_ of them were unrealistic. Pinktilapia used the "techs as timers" one beautifully in his Roman scenario, and did _way_ more with it than I ever thought could be.

@Sgrig: If it comes down to it, I'll use "Meat Section" and make Supermarket a prereq... but if it can be helped I will find a way to make the specialists depend on the resources. Just gotta figure out what to change where

 

[Aeon221]

Progress report!

I found an xml index! BAM! HEADSHOT!

This instantly makes my work easier, as I do have experience working with xml-ish programs in other games (aka Rise of Nations, where I built myself a fairly complicated Stalingrad scenario with lots of unit pops and promps... and then never played it because I knew everything... but I made all my friends play it while I watched )

Now its time to nix hammers and change some stuff. The funny thing is that rush buy costs are determined by hammers x rush factor... meaning I will still need them to determine costs

 

[Barak]

A very interesting idea. In the real world, all production is done by workers. You want to build a factory. Hire some people and build it!

Sounds like all production should come from specialists hired to build things.

I agree that the rush in one turn issue seems strange, but think of it like this....

Down the block from me they could be building a supermarket. There are workers who will be paid, but not until delivery of the building. Until they are finished, the market produces nothing, but once it is finished, the workers get paid, and the market opens. In civ this would be represented by rushing for cash (more or less).

 

[Aeon221]

Okay, apparently the yield file allows me to modify the weight the ai puts on each of the three yields. Gold is apparently at 80%...

Good thing I got this handy reference (which I bumped), otherwise I would not have seen that and the AI would have been fubared. Picked up the Home Edition of XML Spy (since thats what the devs used, I want to be able to see why)

Oh wow is it obvious. Notepad is incoherent.

Changed the yield values for terrain types. Currently using a very crude straight 1:1 hammer-> gold. Have to bathe, its time for class

 

[Aeon221]

Production has been removed from all on map stuff. Checking it now in game to see if it worked.

 

[Aeon221]

...aaaand nothing.

Not a thing that I changed seems to have made it in.

I already have a config file, everything looks like the working mods I have, and its doooooing nooooothing

I'll get back to that little joyous problem after work.

 

[Gunner]

@Gunner: Not _all_ of them were unrealistic. Pinktilapia used the "techs as timers" one beautifully in his Roman scenario, and did _way_ more with it than I ever thought could be.

I'm sorry, but what exactly are you refering to that I said? But about RFRE, yes, I agree that it is quite historical and amazing. I was fairly heavily involved with the development and testing of that scenario. I think it is by far the best Civ3 scenario out there (but then again, I'm not quite impartial).


The program I use for editing xml is called XML Marker. Its free and has worked pretty well for me. So if your trial of xml spy runs out (I'm pretty sure its a trial, right?) then you can look into it.

Thats pretty weird that the changes aren't working for you. I guess just double check that everything is set up right. Make sure that your folder structure is correct and everything. Oh and about the xml, didn't Rhye make it sound like there were going to be some pretty big changes to stuff when the new patch comes out? I got the impression that people are going to end up having to redo alot of work they did for mods. So you might not want to go too crazy with it yet. I've been working on a project lately too, but have decided to not start majorly coding the xml until the new patch comes out. Just a suggestion, I'm not trying to stifle your creativity or anything We could probably just ask Rhye about it.

 

[Gunner]

Ok, so I was thinking some about this mod and got a somewhat good idea I think. What if we kept production in the game but only allowed it to be produced by specialists in the city? These specialists would produce shields but also use up a good amount of gold. I don't know, but this might help as a compromise between civ's system and your system. This way the government would still be directly spending money to build stuff, but everything wouldn't be rushed in one turn.

 

[Aeon221]

Hrm, that could work. Everyone really seems to want this production crap

Well, I'm starving and no answer is appearing, so feeding time!

 

[Gunner]

I don't know if it'd be better to completely do away with production or not. I was just throwing that idea out there as a better way to do production if you choose to keep it. I think the key would be to roll out a quick prototype of the game without production and see how it works.


Edit: The more I think about it though, it&#8217;s not right to have manufacturing completely based on money. If that was the case then a government could enter extreme deficit spending during wartime and be essentially granted unlimited industrial capacity. That obviously is quite unrealistic. I think that making production primarily specialist based with a large fee for these specialists would be a good compromise between the two extremes. Those way countries would still have to support their production with a strong economy, yet that production would also be realistically limited by infrastructural and time constraints.

One final thought for now. What effect is this going to have on city spot selection? Finding a good spot to found a city is one thing I think is really fun in Civ4. What are we going to do (if anything) to still give bonuses to a good location?

 

[Niccolo]

I'd like to dispute the principles of this mod, but I haven't the time. You're conflation that all civilizations (settled societies) make use of currency is ahistorical, even if capitalist market is currently hegemonic. I think one place you go wrong is your assumption that a civilization is synonmous with it's government. CIV is always ver top-down since it's a strategic game that allows a lot of micro-management; but civilizations are far more organic.

Also, the reduction of arable land is not inevitable. It has much to do with the qualities of that land and how that land is treated by civilization. So eco-systems are far more fragile than others. Some soil is much more lacking in minerals than others. While I agree CIV IV doesn't even touch on this issue, and while I applaud your attempts to make the game more realistic--I think many of your assumptions are wrong and ahistorical.

Increased food gathering efficency and growing populationallows for specilization of labor, yes... but that doesn't make it an inevitability. A large population can be instead largely a labor-intesnive agricultural society; like Rwanda. I tend to think that the +food from farming, and then from fuedalism, and the various terrain improvements might be a better reflection. As it is, the game allows for specialists when you have population in surplus of those tiles that are being worked. I'm sure you can look up what percentage of a society is engaged in food gathering as part of the population; and that's going to be very high until you hit industrialism and the green revolution. ,

I like Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse". Great books.. Check them out.

 

[Aeon221]

Read em, thought they were alright. I prefer Malthus and Das Kapital. Perhaps you recognize them?

On to your disputation.

On the lack of inevitability in specialization: Show me an example of a developed country that does not have a high degree of specialization. One that does not have poverty, disease, and other ailments, and is considered of the first world. And no, Hobbiton does not count. Specialization _is_ inevitable.

Using Rwanda in a discussion about normal economic discussion is like using a person with AIDS in a discussion about normal human health. It adds no weight to any argument _except_ those directly related to the issues causing the ailment. If your argument was that specialization is hindered by AIDS, ethnic cleansing, and civil war, then yes, I would agree.

If you look at any other culture with a huge, agriculturally focused economy (eg: Russia, Antebellum South (USA), China, France (pre 18th cent), England, Egypt, Babylon, or most anywhere else you pick if you look back far enough), you will find that there is a _direct_ correlation between the increase in specialization, the increase in standard of living, and the decrease in land farmed. This is not a debatable point. It is a caluculable FACT! Your argument against the importance of specialization is simply silly!

In fact, I will state flat out that it is _impossible_ for a state to avoid specialization and continue to exist in any way whatsoever. A beaurocrat is a specialist, and beaurocrats are required for the type of example you gave: large, agriculture based economies. If you disagree, look at Egypt, where government was first spawned. Math was invented by beaurocrats in order to determine how much water a farmer should get, and what his taxes should be! Math was already up and running while written language was still trying to get out the door! And on to written language. Two of the prototypes of the modern Latin alphabet, Linear A and B, were developed by _traders_! Darn specialists, always doing things to ruin your argument.


On your first point: First off, to conflate something, there must be something to conflate it with. I did pick up what you meant, but not without serious confusion at first.

The conflation of government and civilization is not my decision. It is the decision of the developers. France is not a civilization. England is not a civilization. Western Civilization is a civilization. Civilizations rarely go to war. We see examples of this in the Culture War (Kulturekampf if I remember correctly) of Bismarck against the Catholics of Germany. This was a true example of a Culture war, and one of the few that was guided from the top, rather than as impulses amidst the people.

In essence, I have decided to model states, not cultures, and in this you are right. So? I'm not claiming to model cultures, and I'm not interested in doing so.

On this blurb:

I'm sure you can look up what percentage of a society is engaged in food gathering as part of the population; and that's going to be very high until you hit industrialism and the green revolution. ,

First off, the proportion varies in response to a catastrophic event, such as a war, famine, technological advance, economic collapse, or comet appearing in the sky.

Secondly, any decent historian will tell you that there were many Green Revolutions in history. The invention of the scratch plough, the wheel, the plough (semi-modern form), the three field system, the invention of a horse friendly harness, the printing press (the number of books printed on husbandry after 1453 is simply staggering, and this had a serious affect on the productivity levels), the enclosure movements under Henry vii and viii, the opening of the Great Plains for farming, and the current biological advances (especially in the matter of rice) are all great examples. I cannot even begin to go over all of them, to be honest, and all of them had a massive effect on the food production levels of the time, and resulted in a _decrease_ in the % of populace involved in agriculture.

Also, you are correct. There were a number of people working on the land. It is not as great as you think (although I am refusing to look at sources for this, so I cannot tell you the exact amount. I know I'm right, and I have enough correct information in my head to prove it.), but the urban/rural % is significantly in favor of rural up until the Industrial Revolution.

On Currency: Since Lydia has invented the coin, "money", in whatever form you find it, has been the primary store of value. Certainly, some markets use other stores of value. But whether you say the money in civ is cow chips or platinum bars, it should still be the prime mover.

Things are paid for in money, which the Marxian historian sees as labor, and the current day economist sees as a debt (essentially... money is pretty complicated, and I confess to not totally understanding it). All of them would agree that a game with both money and production is redundant (however happy it would make a Marxist ), as production is subservient to that which controls it: the primary needs (food, shelter, and good health). Whether you provide these things independent of money (communism) or in exchange for it (capitalism), the needs are still there. While either is technically correct, using money is the preferred method, as the other has never once occurred in pure form.

Since I believe that money and production are redundant, I believe that only one should be in the game. Since capitalism (the exchange of labor for a generally agreed on intermediary object which can be exchanged for a primary need) has existed on the ground, and communism (the direct exchange of labor for a primary need) has not, I prefer to model a realistic economy on a capitalist economy.

Conclusion: Hopefully this huge GO RED ENGINE GO piece will help you to see why I think specialists are undervalued. In real civ, you will still see only one or two specialists until the cities are fairly well maxed out. At which point, a pitiful few will be spared from working marginal land to act as specialists.

My goal is to increase the minimum point at which you will be willing to work a piece of land, and make specialists an ever more valuable group. At first, you might want a Beaurocrat or two to increase the value of your farms. Afterwards, you might want some manufacturing specialists, or commerce generating ones (craftsmen and merchants), or something of that sort. In vanilla, the farmer is king. In this mod, the specialist will replace him on the throne... if I ever figure out how to make any of it work.



Post scriptum:Your grammatical errors and spelling mistakes seriously detracted from my ability to even consider your points. If you want me to take you seriously, and to respect what you have to say in this matter, please do me the respect of spelling things like Feudalism properly.

Post post scriptum: Most people attack this on the grounds that production is a good part of the game. Thanks for at least picking a few points that were different.

 

[Buckets]

I'm intruiged to see where this will go. If i might throw out a few ideas to help you... first of all it agree with most that eliminating production entirely may be too radical. But that's exactly why i'm intruiged, so more power to ya.

One thing you could begin with is using great people to make things. Military units and special building could be made from great people points. The machanic already exists.

Another thing i would do is mod food consumption down to 1 and perhaps up some food resource tile values. Also i'd mod any non reource tile to zero and only allow improvements on resources. This way very few people would be working the land and allow for alot of specailists.

On that train of thought, i just had a wacky idea: Why not have all specialists produce 2 food, and make all land unworkable (zero value). This way all cities would grow at a fixed rate (due to the center tile overflow) and be wholly specialist dependant.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread, because i love stealing ideas.

 

[erikg88]

Aeon - you pretty well dismantled his point, but you came off as more than a little arrogant. In any case, I'm hoping you get this shindig working, because I'm very intrigued by your ideas. How many specialists are you planning on adding?

P.S. - You don't need to say "Post Scriptum".

 

[sgrig]

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread, because i love stealing ideas.

Very good point!