New buildings!

[mitsho]

I'd be okay with skyscrapers as a building separate from medical labs, if we think tall empires need that much food in the late game. In general, though, I like to combine the effects of similar buildings so everything has a distinct and unique purpose.

I'm not sure we need a second building, especially with the effects in the Freedom tree. I just thought a per : might work differently than a + % growth building. So it's probably better to have it replace the medical plant and leave the choice between iron for production or iron for food building.

Following that train of thought, what fundamental role could airports provide? I wish we could make them just like Civ 4:

• Airlift units
• Connect trade routes
• Double aircraft stack sizes

Sadly none of that is feasible with our current modding tools, so we need to come up with alternatives. Moving aircraft experience bonuses to the airport is one obvious choice. I don't know what we could do for an economic bonus (enhancing trade routes is not possible at a local scale). Maybe gold per population?

Make it use up oil and give it +10% commerce nationwide?
Or make it a city-state related building which fits with their late game appearance. They could give 0.5 resting points with all city states per which does prefer tall empires....

I think the racetrack or ranch is a good way to consume horses in the late game.

But don't racetracks fail your test of real world importance (see hydro plants?). I'd rather have constabularies require them (fast police needs horses and even today, horses are used in cities for crowd control). Of course they'd need another effect then. Or again, Postal stations, but they have the problem of fading away in importance once railroads get common.

I do like the idea of giving tall Civs more of a chance in the religion wars, but going from a flat 2 to 1 + 0.5 per would really mess up game balance, I would think, no?

What about slightly rising faith prices and creating a new building that requires the temple and gives +0.33 per :C5citizen:? (Assuming the temple doesn't require the shrine)?

Alternatively, an "or" choice between Faith buildings could be interesting (as with Hydro Plants and Nuclear Plants in vanilla). One could give a flat amount of Faith, and the other + per . This choice might be better suited for the Belief-requiring buildings though, I suppose.

Heck, I think introducing more "or" choices in buildings would be fun in general. More tough decisions!

That might work as well..

 

[mystikx21]

Postal stations for horses had either a very early importance (persia/rome) or a very short lived modern one. I think we can think of happiness from trade routes and/or trade routes themselves as that. I would prefer airports or if possible a port trade route modifier to overland mechanics. Since trade routes aren't easy to do with mods, commerce and air xp may have to suffice.

Hydro plants have a real world importance. Racetracks, while interesting, are basically just modern circuses for gameplay purposes. On reflection there's really no reason to have to use up horses late game. Iron can be thought of as steel and is a different story. I still like the skyscraper idea there at least.

Trouble with making constabulary require horses is that you need them presently for police stations. Which in turn are needed for the national wonder. Making the espionage tree dependent on a resource doesn't sound like a good route.

It's between solar and nuclear in vanilla. Hydro is synergistic. I wouldn't mind some more either or options, but the reason the solar/nuke choice is there is that they provide the exactly same bonuses and have limitations through location or resources. It isn't exactly a choice.

 

[mystikx21]

Very OT, but there is a lot of counter research that suggests solar is going to have a lot of trouble competing with coal/oil for a long time, especially as more of a power grid becomes based on it and the indeterminacy problem becomes more noticeable.

Pretty much what Denmark does is sell its wind power generation and relies on coal. For this reason.

I think that mitigates against axing hydro plants further.

 

[Thalassicus]

I do like the idea of giving tall Civs more of a chance in the religion wars, but going from a flat 2 to 1 + 0.5 per would really mess up game balance, I would think, no?

The exact numbers aren't important at this stage.

But don't racetracks fail your test of real world importance (see hydro plants?).

Both have real world importance for the resources they consume, which is what I'm looking at. Racetracks are a big use for horses, and bridges are a big use for steel. Hydro plants are a much lower consumer of steel than bridges/skyscrapers, since dams are more rare and mostly made of dirt.

What about slightly rising faith prices and creating a new building that requires the temple and gives +0.33 per :C5citizen:? (Assuming the temple doesn't require the shrine)?

This is basically the Cemetery idea, which I think is a good idea.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the racetrack or ranch is a good way to consume horses in the late game.

Again: why is this needed?

I think a skyscraper is fine, but I don't think it needs to consume iron. Iron is simply not a strategic resource anymore in the modern world, because it is so easy to mine and it is so common. Similarly; horses are no longer a strategic resource. A strategic resource is one where you are limited in what you can do by how much of it you have.
Horse and iron tiles are still slightly valuable in the late game - because of boosts to tile yields and stable/furnace. But I don't see that they need a further use that consumes them.

An airport that provides a trade route and gives gold per pop seems fine. I don't think I'd mix civilian/military unit purpose by going for an XP bonus.

I think the Temple should probably stay at fixed yield (otherwise it is too weak in the early game or too powerful in the late game), but I could imagine one of the Religion property buildings (there aren't enough meaningful differences between Monstary/Mosque/Cathedral/Pagoda anyway) could be adapted to use a mechanism like this, so as to make religion feasible for a Tall empire.

 

[Thalassicus]

Iron may be common, but steel is still an important industry. In the modern era the iron resource would represent the manufacture and distribution of steel.

If these buildings don't consume a resource, they need to fill some other fundamental role in the game, and it's difficult to figure out what holes exist in the lategame because we see it less than the early game. We have two weeks left to figure out what those roles should be, so there's no rush.

 

[Ahriman]

but steel is still an important industry

But steel production very often doesn't happen where the iron is. The iron is often imported; sometimes from a long distance away overseas (Australia is a huge iron exporter).

There are dozens of important industries that aren't represented in the game; why pick out steel manufacturing? We don't pick out car manufacturing, or software design, or textiles, or insurance, or supermarkets, or CAFOs (concentrated agricultural feeding operations) either.

It's like saying: textile manufacturing should require you to have cotton, and we should represent that in game.
But that would be weird, because cotton isn't a strategic resource, and because the cotton mills of Britain were fed by cotton grown in the US.
Individual industries are largely abstracted away in civ, so we just represent this with the gold bonus on the cotton tiles.

You could have a mod like Rise of Mankind for Civ4 that adds a lot more detailed industry structure in, but I didn't think that kind of detail was that important for GEM.

And horse racing is most certainly *not* an important industry.

If these buildings don't consume a resource, they need to fill some other fundamental role in the game

I agree. Which is why I think the right way to start is by thinking "what is missing". Consuming a resource isn't really a role.
I don't have many good ideas here.
We could have a building that gives gold per pop;trade routes already does gold per pop, but trade routes encourage wide whereas such a building could encourage tall.
We could have a building that increased religious spread, but that might detract from missionaries.
We could have a SAM site building that defended against air attacks, but that would be too narrow and the defensive buildings already do this effectively.
We could have another production booster in the late-game; a manufacturing plant at robotics, that gave a large % production increase, but that might detract from the nuclear plant.
We could have a network effect building that boosted trade routes - an internet hub/data center perhaps, it could give +5% trade route bonus, so if you build 10 of them you got +50% trade route income, which would favor wide in the late-game.

If we decided that the AI could intelligently handle decisions between strategic resources for military or for buildings, there are several options for buildings that could consume oil or aluminium. I'm a bit worried about the tradeoff, but maybe this could be done through flavors (are there civ4-style flavors on buildings?) where militaristic civs would save resources for units but pacifistic civs would consruct the buildings. These might work better as national wonders, to prevent a wide civ from locking itself out of military units.

 

[albie_123]

One building that as of yet does not exist is a Diplomatic one: That either increases yields from open borders, (Trade House), that gives a different yield (Science, Production, Gold, etc.) from DoF's (Diplomatic Ministry) or that amplifies City State rewards in a single city (Could be a NW, eg. an embassy that actually exists outside of the diplo screen!)

 

[Ahriman]

One building that as of yet does not exist is a Diplomatic one: That either increases yields from open borders, (Trade House), that gives a different yield (Science, Production, Gold, etc.) from DoF's (Diplomatic Ministry) or that amplifies City State rewards in a single city (Could be a NW, eg. an embassy that actually exists outside of the diplo screen!)

I think this is a very interesting line of thought.

This feels like some of it might be more appropriate for a wonder, than a building? With buildings it might be quite hard to balance.

Could building the UN give bonuses to city state rewards, so that it is incrementally helpful rather than just the victory condition?
Could a wonder that boosted CS bonuses change the weighting of how the bonuses are distributed across your cities to focus more on that city?

Or maybe a "Diplomatic center" type national wonder?
Or could this we have a Versailles wonder that boosted open borders/DoFs? It would be cool to reflect the theme of "lingua franca", the French cultural/diplomatic/political domination of Europe.

A few worries about this kind of thing:
Could the AI understand such intangible benefits? We wouldn't want warmongers building diplomatic buildings that they can't use, but if the buildings are powerful, then the AI would miss out if they never built them.

 

[Seek]

Some excellent ideas, albie!

(Btw, welcome back! How was your trip?)

 

[albie_123]

@Ahriman
I think as long as diplomatic leaders (eg. Siam, Greece, etc.) /buy/ the buildings, they'll get the rewards regardless: Despite being fun (in my opinion!) they're actually quite passive effects, that the leaders will use without even noticing.

@Seek
I'm still on it! I'm just on a break for a week in Cusco (With internet, luckily!), and then it's back to work in the Andes again.

 

[mitsho]

Both have real world importance for the resources they consume, which is what I'm looking at. Racetracks are a big use for horses, and bridges are a big use for steel. Hydro plants are a much lower consumer of steel than bridges/skyscrapers, since dams are more rare and mostly made of dirt.

Huh? Are we talking about the same thing?

Spoiler :

That's as high as the Eiffel Tower btw.

I know you were thinking more of the flat river ones. But these things are huge, and certainly not made from dirt

I agree with the other observations, especially the possible "Diplomatic Line"... if possible

EDIT: Wow that picture suddenly is huge... ??? It's from wiki, soo..

 

[Ahriman]

@Ahriman
I think as long as diplomatic leaders (eg. Siam, Greece, etc.) /buy/ the buildings, they'll get the rewards regardless: Despite being fun (in my opinion!) they're actually quite passive effects, that the leaders will use without even noticing.

Right, but the question is: will they build/buy the building, and will they do so intelligently?
Normally the AI looks at the effect on yields for various buildings in deciding what to buy, but my worry is that it won't be able to "see" an effect on yields through buildings like this, because the yields wouldn't come in a way the AI understands. I'm already not sure that the AI really understands the effects of +X from resource Y buildings.

[btw, I don't want to sound too negative here, I think this is a really good idea.]

 

[Seek]

Ahriman - yes, Civ5 uses a flavor system as well (which Thal has modified for the better of course!) - if you open the attachment you can see all the default building flavors in G&K for example. There are a great number of variables, such as production, science, etc. that can be modified, and because leaders are set with a level for each flavor, the results should be that Korea prioritizes science buildings for example.

 

[Zaldron]

Hmm... maybe high maintenance but -10% from Population in this City and, say, 0.5 per ?



I do like the idea of giving tall Civs more of a chance in the religion wars, but going from a flat 2 to 1 + 0.5 per would really mess up game balance, I would think, no?

We already have a 0.5 culture/pop in the museum so I would hesitate to use that again.

I actually think that temple = 1 + 1/5 pop would be pretty balanced. A wide empire would need 3-4 cities per tall super-city to be about equal.

 

[thadian]

Im working on trying to get my setup to work, and it doesn't, so i will pass the idea here - who knows, you might do it, then i can "clone it" to do what i wanted to do in the first place.

I think it would be neat to have buildings/units by Era instead of by Tech. I want to apply different modifiers by Era as well. For example, i want every unit to get +10% bonus per era vs earlier age units.

I want a building that becomes availible in the classical age, then each age thereafter, this building "grows" further benefits. Not from researching a tech, but from entering an era.

This would add a whole new depth of fun, and as i said - once you did it, i could clone it which would be much easier than struggling around with these foreign languages... (ok, i can do xml, but xml does not do prereqEra i would have to lua magic that in and im out of magic points).

Think about a ladder of buildings where each "next" building came in a different era regardless the tech you got there with. or a unit-ladder. Each era would have a "version" that could only be built in that era. Lets use the warrior as a base.

Warrior> (ancient)
Fighter> (classical)
Commander> (medieval)
Hero> (renaissance)
Legend (industrial)

This is the weakest unit per era, requires no resources to build and can upgrade into stronger units of the era. Fighters could become Swordsman, Commander could become Longswordsman, Hero could become musketeer and Legend could become rifleman or great war infantry.

This allows each era to have a "simple unit" that can be "trained" into a musketman or longswordsman. Most of this i could do by myself, just not the era prereq, and without that, i can do nothing.

Lastly, i would like certain "Era National Wonders" that can be built at the starting of an era and not by researching a tech.

 

[Ahriman]

Ahriman - yes, Civ5 uses a flavor system as well (which Thal has modified for the better of course!) - if you open the attachment you can see all the default building flavors in G&K for example. There are a great number of variables, such as production, science, etc. that can be modified, and because leaders are set with a level for each flavor, the results should be that Korea prioritizes science buildings for example.

Ok, this is pretty close to Civ4. I guess the problem is though that none of these flavors match very well with what we would want for a diplomacy building. You could give a building that boosted city state rewards some culture/faith/growth flavor, but that still isn't going to distinguish well between people with lots of alliances or citystates and those who don't.

You'll get a little bit, to the extent that AI preferences for culture/faith/growth correlate negatively with aggressiveness, but not a huge amount

So you'd still risk seeing warmongers building a useless building, or pacifists not building something that would help them.

This isn't a dealbreaker, but it is a problem.

 

[Zaldron]

Can you elaborate further on the benefits of era-based rather than tech-based upgrades? I just don't see a significant difference that warrants a whole new mechanic.

 

[mystikx21]

Ok, this is pretty close to Civ4. I guess the problem is though that none of these flavors match very well with what we would want for a diplomacy building. You could give a building that boosted city state rewards some culture/faith/growth flavor, but that still isn't going to distinguish well between people with lots of alliances or citystates and those who don't.....

So you'd still risk seeing warmongers building a useless building, or pacifists not building something that would help them.

This isn't a dealbreaker, but it is a problem.

There's a flavor for "diplomacy" for Angkor Wat in VEM, since it has a unique effect diplomatically. Leaders like Alex got a higher flavor chance for building diplomatic flavored buildings or wonders. I suspect this would help handle the problem.

 

[Ahriman]

There's a flavor for "diplomacy" for Angkor Wat in VEM, since it has a unique effect diplomatically. Leaders like Alex got a higher flavor chance for building diplomatic flavored buildings or wonders. I suspect this would help handle the problem.

Excellent. That sounds like exactly what we'd need.

How should this work then?

I could imagine separating something that boosted open borders/DOF/research agreement benefits from something that boosted CS benefits. There are quite different strategies in being nice to other players and in being nice to city states.

OB/DOF/RA bonuses are applied at the civ level, so I would think any booster would also need to be at the civ level - ie a world wonder or national wonder.

In theory you could separate buildings in various places that boosted CS benefits, but in practice each CS is also providing a civ level benefit that then gets chopped up between cities. Would it really make sense to have multiple cities each separately boosting either global or local CS benefits? Again, I wonder if this makes more sense as a national or global wonder.

Some possibilities:
League of Nations, Industrial era wonder, could boost CS benefits or DOF benefits.

Bretton Woods Agreement, modern era wonder, increases the gold income from open borders. Alternatively: World Trade Organization.

Commonwealth, boosts CS benefits.