More small mod ideas

[bisonbison]

1. Open borders enhancement: increased trade income
There's no benefit to open borders with most civs unless you're exploring or planning/at war. Why not add a trade bonus, to indicate the relaxed legal boundaries to entry? Who knows what's reasonable.

2. Culture change: fully fortified units produce culture.
1 culture point on that square (produced as though a city were producing it) for the first unit fortified on it. Further units produce .5 culture points.

3. Fog of War: make the world map more historical and wacky.
Have you ever looked at a map produced before the 1600s? It's likely to be some wacky poop. Why not make the world map degrade when you've got light or heavy fog on it? For any map square not currently in line of sight of a unit or culture border, there is a 50% chance that it's appearance will shift 1 position at the end of any given turn (grassland can become plains, forest/jungled, but not desert or tundra. desert can go plains or tundra or oasis, blah blah blah).

At writing, this decreases to 33%. At literature, it drops to 20%. At paper, 10%. Astronomy, 0%. This is my favorite idea and would love to have it done.

4. Cosmetic betterences: lattitudinal skin tone
Fun change: make unit skin tone vary based on latitude on world maps. Darker at equator, lighter at poles. White impis. Black redcoats.

 

[GRM7584]

1) Implemented in Vanilla. Foreign trade routes are significantly more profitable, and don't exist unless an open borders agreement is signed. What is more commonly proposed (and might have been modded somewhere, for all I know) is splitting the existing open borders setup into "Trade Agreement" and "Right of Passage" to help the AI / make the game more immersive / improve the quality of the diplomatic game.

2) I'm pretty sure that would require intense SDKing; sounds neat, though, especially for some of the less conventional mods.

3) Sounds like a LOT of work for not much payoff. It also penalizes the player for not having a good memory, and rewards the player for being a gimpy map-tile memorizer. I wouldn't mind seeing "minimap skins" that make the minimap look different in each age, but even that also sounds like a lot of SDK work.

4) Sounds nice; again, huge amount of work, but this time both with graphics and (I think) SDK. I haven't seen anything along the lines of unique units by latitude.

 

[Jeckel]

I am working on a mod that does what your talking about in 3. Areas that you haven't had an active line of site on for X number of turns will have a configurable chance of turning back to undiscovered black.

There is the issue GRM7584 brings up of gimpy players just memorizing the map, but I'm of the opinion that if players want to use it that way that is their buisness and right, not my place to tell them they shouldn't. But I know I won't be one of them as I have trouble remember... what was I talking about.. ;p.

Anyway, the pros of this are,
1) It makes exploration useful through out time
and
2) The trading of World maps never becomes useless or obsolete.

I am also toying with the idea of slightly random roving areas of LOS that move around the map representing obiting spy satalites, which naturally won't come around until you learn the appropriate tech. And maybe some unit you can build that will give you more of them and some random events that casue you to lose a satalite.

EDIT: Just FYI, I am currently planning to realse this mod maybe before Xmas, but atleast some time in January.

 

[n003lb]

I am working on a mod that does what your talking about in 3. Areas that you haven't had an active line of site on for X number of turns will have a configurable chance of turning back to undiscovered black.

This sounds like an interesting idea, but it should pretty much go away during the middle-latter stages of the game. Thing is, especially in the modern age, you would have an accurate map of the land at all times, including cities, just like we have now. I rather like the idea bisonbison had about making it go away completly with Astronomy.

...I am also toying with the idea of slightly random roving areas of LOS that move around the map representing obiting spy satalites, which naturally won't come around until you learn the appropriate tech. And maybe some unit you can build that will give you more of them and some random events that casue you to lose a satalite...

I really like the sound of making Satalites, but I'm not sure about the random part. What I would prefer would be something like a unit that you build, or maybe a small wonder, that would allow you to continiously see a section of the map. Think about it, most "spy" satalites are moved to an area to recon. They don't just wonder around in orbit and see things at random. What I see here is something like a small wonder that creates 5 satalite units when it's built. These units would be invisible to other civs, and would have a vision of something like 10 spaces. The small wonder would allow something like 5 of these units simulating spy sats. Then you could either move them like regular units, or come up with some kind of interface to place these units.

I like the idea of moving them like regular units, using RogerBacon's Flying Mod, thus allowing them to be moved anywhere on the map, but simulating the time it takes to modify the orbit of a sat.

You could also incorporate some kind of unit that can see these satalite units and destroy them. Maybe make it a "Star Wars" (not the movies) small wonder. When satalite is destroyed, something like 5 turns later, another is created again.

Anyhow, this is off topic for this thread. If you like this idea any, let me know and do you have a thread on your mod (Jeckel)?

 

[Jeckel]

I am working on a mod that does what your talking about in 3. Areas that you haven't had an active line of site on for X number of turns will have a configurable chance of turning back to undiscovered black.

This sounds like an interesting idea, but it should pretty much go away during the middle-latter stages of the game. Thing is, especially in the modern age, you would have an accurate map of the land at all times, including cities, just like we have now. I rather like the idea bisonbison had about making it go away completly with Astronomy.

I personally am less concerned with how things work in real life and am aiming more to keep the ingame systems of map trading and needing to explore as needed and useful parts of the game even into the latter eras. However, seeing as most people will be of the same opinion as you on the topic, I will definetly be including config.ini option to set a tech that will end the possibility of forgetting part of the map.

...I am also toying with the idea of slightly random roving areas of LOS that move around the map representing obiting spy satalites, which naturally won't come around until you learn the appropriate tech. And maybe some unit you can build that will give you more of them and some random events that casue you to lose a satalite...

I really like the sound of making Satalites, but I'm not sure about the random part. What I would prefer would be something like a unit that you build, or maybe a small wonder, that would allow you to continiously see a section of the map. Think about it, most "spy" satalites are moved to an area to recon. They don't just wonder around in orbit and see things at random. What I see here is something like a small wonder that creates 5 satalite units when it's built. These units would be invisible to other civs, and would have a vision of something like 10 spaces. The small wonder would allow something like 5 of these units simulating spy sats. Then you could either move them like regular units, or come up with some kind of interface to place these units.

I like the idea of moving them like regular units, using RogerBacon's Flying Mod, thus allowing them to be moved anywhere on the map, but simulating the time it takes to modify the orbit of a sat.

You could also incorporate some kind of unit that can see these satalite units and destroy them. Maybe make it a "Star Wars" (not the movies) small wonder. When satalite is destroyed, something like 5 turns later, another is created again.

Hehe, sorry, I didn't accually mean "random", I am thinking more of a set orbital path around the planet with a small random element that will allow a +/- X number of tiles varation between passes on that same general path.

The acual satilites will not be units, but I am planning to have a national wonder that will give you X number of satilites. The sats themselves are just a colection of tiles that are made visable, not any kind of ingame object.

I am toying with the idea of a ingame screen, ala TheLopez's MAD Nukes Screen, that will allow some control over the sats' orbit path.

I haven't started coding this at all since time is not permiting at the moment, but I am doing some of the intial concept tests and am happy to hear your opinions and suggestions, please share any other ideas you have on the topic.