Modding the Liberty Tree

[Bobert13]

I'm in the process of updating the Liberty tree so that it's at least competitive with Tradition if not the default (nigh, ONLY) option for wide empires. I've ran into a little trouble with implementing some of my ideas however.


This is my proposed set of changes. In blue are changes I believe I have implemented correctly but have not tested. In red are the changes I could use some help with.

• Opener: +1 per city; Each City you found will increase the Culture cost of Policies by 50% less than normal.
• Republic: +1 in each city (2 in the Capitol); +1 in each city connected to the Capitol.
• Collective Rule: Free Settler; Settlers produced 50% faster in all cities; Settler cost reduced ~33%.
• Citizenship: Free Worker; Workers work 25% faster; 4 units are maintenance free.
• Representation: Golden Age cost reduced 33%; Starts a Golden Age.
• Meritocracy: -1 per city; +1 per city connected to the Capitol.
• Finisher: Each City you found will increase the Science cost of Technologies by 50% less than normal; Free Great Person; Starting in the Industrial Era all base Specialist yields are increased by 1. (both the normal yield for said Specialist and the Great Person Points it would normally produce)

So far everything I've done has been XML from civ5Polices.xml. I've never messed with anything outside of mapScripts so this is a learning experience for me. Any insight, or suggestions are more than welcome. Note that discussion on my proposed buffs is also welcome but outside of the Specialist boosting finisher (that doesn't synergize that well with wide) I'm unlikely to change my mind on any of these.

 

[JamesCivFan]

I don't use mods that alter the rules, but I guess you might wanna change the Finisher into being able to buy the Great Person you chose from the Industrial Era and on. For example, you chose a Free Great Engineer when you finished Liberty? You can buy GEs from the Industrial Era, and so on. It would make more sense to me.

 

[Bobert13]

I don't use mods that alter the rules, but I guess you might wanna change the Finisher into being able to buy the Great Person you chose from the Industrial Era and on. For example, you chose a Free Great Engineer when you finished Liberty? You can buy GEs from the Industrial Era, and so on. It would make more sense to me.

I too am generally minimalist when it comes to changes to the base game, but I'm tired of rolling Tradition every game because Liberty/Wide is so terrible in BNW. I sat down and compared the full tree bonuses of both trees and while my list of changes may look like overkill, it's what I honestly feel it's going to take to make wide viable.

That being said, I considered the exact bonus you've described and decided against it. Faith buying GEs is so strong that you'd probably pick them 80+% of the time regardless of how you were playing. I didn't want to feel pigeon-holed so I came up with something else. Another idea I had was that National Wonders apply ~25-33% of their normal yield and bonus to all non-puppeted cities instead of only affecting the city they're built in. I decided against that as I feel it sounds really strong on paper but would likely underperform greatly due to wide and the prerequisite buildings.

 

[killmeplease]

+x something per city is typically realized by use of dummy buildings
create a buidling in xml, set cost to -1 and greatworkslots to -1 (this will hide the building from production list and from city screen buildings list) set it to give 1 production and then place these buidlings in cities that fulfil your criteria (or delete in cities which ceased to, e.g. the road connecting the city to the capital was pillaged). Use PlayerDoTurn event and City:SetNumRealBuilding function

 

[killmeplease]

i think liberty could be given something unique, like +25% to great people generation.

 

[Bobert13]

i think liberty could be given something unique, like +25% to great people generation.

Every Ideology has this in it's Tier 1 tenants. Also, the buff to specialists I'm currently considering is actually based on +GP generation only it should work out to be stronger (it's +GPP and +Base Yield per Specialist). In fact I'm worried it might be too strong making Liberty just as good for tall as Tradition.

 

[Machiavelli24]

There is no easy way to reduce the science-per-city formula. You may just want to provide some kind of science per city, which will be trivial to implement.

To provide a yield change upon industrial, that will require some lua. There are a couple of parts to it:

1) Detecting when a player enters the industrial era (I have some lua that detects when players enter a new era)
2) Create a building that provides additional yields for the various specialists (look at Statue of Liberty to see how)
3) When a player enter industrial and has the policy, add the building to their capital. (I have some lua code that does something similar and could be re purposed. It handles cases where capitals are captured and the buildings have to be moved.)

 

[killmeplease]

statue of liberty gives hammers per each specialist, not their base yield. there's no such effect in buildings. a policy can have it, so maybe you could create a dummy policy and activate it in industrial.

 

[killmeplease]

i have another idea, to make later expansion viable - maybe, give some basic buildings in newly founded cities for free when you're in a certain era:
e.g. medieval - free monument; renaissance - free granary; industrial - free workshop..
(a finisher effect)

 

[Bobert13]

i have another idea, to make later expansion viable - maybe, give some basic buildings in newly founded cities for free when you're in a certain era:
e.g. medieval - free monument; renaissance - free granary; industrial - free workshop..
(a finisher effect)

One thing I was thinking about was changing Representation to make the level 1 buildings (Monument, Granary, Library, Workshop, Marketplace) 50% production/gold and just get rid of the Golden Age stuff. A free golden Age is meh, and reducing Golden Age cost sounds strong on paper but may not work that well with Wide where it would work amazingly with Tall. I also though about a second Happiness bonus but my new Meritocracy is already quite strong and balancing Happiness is part of playing Wide so I don't want to make that aspect too easy.

Another thought I've had regarding the finisher is "For every City connected to the Capital you may work one Specialist slot in the Capital for free." That doesn't seem like it would be any easier to do than my current idea however it would be much more beneficial to Wide than Tall unlike my current idea. There's also the issue of what if you build a guild or say Petra in your second City instead of the Capital and want to work Specialist slots there as well. If I were to make it so you could move the free specialists from city to city, that would resolve the issue but require some new UI work/menus etc. assuming it's even realistically doable without modding the .dll.

I don't really like the idea of + per city over reducing the penalty as I feel that would benefit the early game greatly and then taper off as time wears on. Where reducing the penalty would start slow and snowball over time. The last thing I want to do is make going Wide and then Pike/Treb or Rifle/Artillery rushing the default way to play. I really just want to give Wide (8-20 cities) a fighting chance when it starts getting into the Modern Era and beyond (where the science penalty really hurts). I suppose +% per city might work but the complexities of getting that to work out 1:1 with directly reducing the penalty are many (buildings that already have +% science, policies that boost those buildings, calculating the NumCities portion in, etc.). If the Rationalism opener is multiplicative of buildings and such, that could simplify this approach greatly (then I'd only have to take into account the current science penalty, the desired penalty, and whether or not the Rationalism opener bonus is currently in effect).

 

[Janskey]

If you want to encourage going wide, how about giving a bonus based on the number of cities you have? E.g. +1 something per city for every three cities you own.

e: so having 3 cities gives +1, 6 would give +2 etc.