New buildings!

[Thalassicus]

I'd like to add three city buildings (non-wonders) to the game to fill any gaps that exist in gameplay. These buildings will be added after four weeks of discussion (Aug 11), followed by additional balancing. I want these to play an important part in the game like Vanguard units as more than simple fluff. There's two ways to approach this:

• Game-to-world: Think of a gameplay problem. What infrastructure could we introduce to fix it?
• World-to-game: Think of important real-world infrastructure missing from Civilization. How could we include it in the game as a city building?

 

[Acratenn]

I guess airfields are an option. Might help make air forces even more important, connect trade routs like harbors do or even allow unit movement between cities?

Besides, I always wondered why are there naval buildings but airfields just happen to appear in cities spontaneously after researching flight.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the reason they put airfields out is because of a specific difficulty of the AI using them; the AI has never been very good at relocating units by air.
I could see adding an airport building, but I'd make it a gold booster rather than something with military purpose. While it would be a bit unrealistic for it to provide the same trade route benefits as roads or ports, it would probably be ok for gameplay for it to do that. Is there some way that a building could boost the trade route yield of just the city it is in?

I could see some kind of modern manufacturing plant, with robotics. But I guess I worry about gameplay value; it would need to be pretty low-cost in order to be able to pay itself back in the very late-game, and I worry that it would weaken the roles of the spaceship factory (for SS races) and the nuclear plant (late game production boost in exchange for fewer nukes).

I could see a Superhighways building that provided gold and consumed an oil resource, but I'm not sure about the AI's ability to sensibly trade-off between building tanks vs bombers vs buildings.

 

[Acratenn]

Maybe highways as an upgrade for railroads? Although I doubt we can make it worthwhile or needed in the late game.

About airfields giving gold (or any other yield for that matter), I thought about it too but I was trying to find other, more unique, options.

 

[mitsho]

Definately an Airport. That is sorely missing. Give it another trade route or just put a commerce modifier on it. Or several smaller ones for culture, production and so on. But I do think a commerce boosting building might be sufficiently useful.

I do think mostly in the later ages, there's room for buildings. Not going by gameplay use, but just quickly listing things I could imagine without detailing them are:

• Main Station (Every big city had a central railway station, and it is nowadays mostly a hub/center for the city; would enhance a railroad connection further)
• Clock Tower (also important)
• Postal Office/Telegraph Station (also quite important, maybe something with active espionage?)
• Cemetery (See other thread)
• Public Pool/Parks or even a Amusement Park

 

[mystikx21]

Airport if in game should be more about trade than military. It could offer an air unit bonus to XP perhaps, or maybe some kind of healing effect (free "air repair" promotion?, might be OP), but moving units around doesn't sound like a good idea.

 

[ThePsyborg]

Ah, I don't know what they're called, but in Medieval times, cities would put ladder-looking structures in the water to stop large ships from coming to close to the city.

You would build this as an additional defense in a coastal city, except that it only makes it harder for Naval Units to capture the city.

 

[rhammer640]

I think it would be interesting to have buildings that were only able to be built in coastal cities and would give (resource: gold, food, etc) per city connected by harbor so the more cities you had on the coast the more benefit. This would represent the importance of connecting your coastal cities instead of just using roads. Thinking about the Venetians.

It would also require an investment so wouldn't be too OP or screw with balance too much. Also maybe if city is blockaded the effect would be shut down to force protection of your trade network.

No ideas on name, just the concept.

 

[mitsho]

I think it would be interesting to have buildings that were only able to be built in coastal cities and would give (resource: gold, food, etc) per city connected by harbor so the more cities you had on the coast the more benefit. This would represent the importance of connecting your coastal cities instead of just using roads. Thinking about the Venetians.

It would also require an investment so wouldn't be too OP or screw with balance too much. Also maybe if city is blockaded the effect would be shut down to force protection of your trade network.

No ideas on name, just the concept.

You're description immediately brought me to Kontor. I bet there's also a Italian/Portuguese etc. equivalent. For the later probably the Feitoria?

 

[Acratenn]

You're description immediately brought me to Kontor. I bet there's also a Italian/Portuguese etc. equivalent. For the later probably the Feitoria?

What about adding a generic trading post as a common building, and a Kontor as a UB for a certain civ?

We can also add warehouses and trading offices to follow the idea.

 

[rhammer640]

What about adding a generic trading post as a common building, and a Kontor as a UB for a certain civ?

We can also add warehouses and trading offices to follow the idea.

Warehouses would be a good name for it cause they were historically built at the harbors because thats were all long term trade was transported. It would make sense as well that they would be only built if you had a harbor and would increase trade per city with harbor connection.

 

[Tarquelne]

I think it would be interesting to have buildings that were only able to be built in coastal cities and would give (resource: gold, food, etc) per city connected by harbor so the more cities you had on the coast the more benefit.

Similar to some of the suggestions in the naval thread, so sounds great to me.

Increasing the bonus for the # of connections is a nice twist. Ideally the Foreign Trade Route mod could be worked into it, too.

Here's a "Wonder" suggestion to go with it: "The Rialto" - Venice's financial & trade district. "Trade and finance" is pretty broad, so it'd be easy to justify quite a range of benefits.

Here's a specific suggestion: +20% gold, and the owner gets more gold from Open border agreements - as do all other civs with an Open Borders agreement with the owner. (Alternative to +20% gold: Bonus to route-gold, and Machu Picchu gets something else.)

It could have some mix of a route bonus, naval movement bonus, or a gold penalty to other civ (only when at war), or a much higher gold-bonus from Open borders. Or more Happiness per Luxury? Give the civ one of the Merchant CS Luxuries?

Hmm... A gold bonus for everyone

 

[Lord Byte]

How about letting us use up Great Admirals to create "channels". They could be used to link cities to the sea (each admiral makes a tile near the sea (or other channel) for all movement effects a sea tile AND an improved land tile. You could link up landlocked cities, have a use for the hundreds of GA I tend to have, or create the "Suez canal" / "Panama Canal". Or even bring ships to an inland lake! Also a channel tile can still be moved over by a land unit. Enemy land units would effectively block a channel. (Ooh art imitates life!)
Gives a hammer and gp?

 

[gunnergoz]

I mentioned this in an earlier thread: establish buildings that are basically Military training academies to give specific bonuses to units garrisoned there long enough to be "trained" in the specialty.
examples:
Amphibious school - gives amphib promotion for cross-beach and cross-river attacks
Mountain school - gives ability to cross terrain without movement penalty
Jungle warfare school - gives improved attack/defense in jungle tiles

These bonuses would take time to be earned and would best be used to train garrisons (i.e. existing units, rather than make new units that automatically get the bonus.) Also, there would be a limit to one such school per city so you would have to spread them out in your empire.

If you made this too easy to earn, then you'd end up with armies of super-units with multiple specialties, all achieved in too short a time. The idea is to allow specialist units to be groomed for specialized tasks, not to give generic army-wide bonuses. This also allows peace-loving empires to be able to build some strong specialized units in the absence of actual combat experience.

 

[mitsho]

What about adding a generic trading post as a common building, and a Kontor as a UB for a certain civ?

We can also add warehouses and trading offices to follow the idea.

For which civ, the Germans?

(Off topic, I do think a modmod that adds a third Unique to each civ would be a good idea, it's an opportunity to bring back all that kicked out naval and air units and difersify the civs a bit)

How about letting us use up Great Admirals to create "channels". *snip*

That would be a good idea. But I do think the producers would have implemented it if they saw a way to do it without generating too many problems. For example, what do you do with melee ships and land units? Is it codeable to have a land unit block the thing? Do you need to code an entirely new terrain that both types of units can walk on it. I'm all for it if it's doable though... (and I'm no modder in that way so I really can't tell you, but my gut says no...)

I mentioned this in an earlier thread: establish buildings that are basically Military training academies to give specific bonuses to units garrisoned there long enough to be "trained" in the specialty.

*snip*

If you made this too easy to earn, then you'd end up with armies of super-units with multiple specialties, all achieved in too short a time. The idea is to allow specialist units to be groomed for specialized tasks, not to give generic army-wide bonuses. This also allows peace-loving empires to be able to build some strong specialized units in the absence of actual combat experience.

I'm not sure, there's always the balancing act of usefulness for buildings. Those have the potential to be overpowered (but you showed how that can be avoided), but they also have the potential to be very niche. Contradictory, they may also provide a way against bad luck in terrain rolling, lessening the luck factor. One place where the civ series excels in my mind is generalization. Not everything needs to be spelled out in detail. Long lists of possible buildings to build may look bad or discouraging if you only ever build one or two. I don't know, maybe they are good buildings, or maybe that can be a (fairly often happening) opportunity where you need to chose between a mountain or jungle specialist for you Military Academy. Or between a Marine and an Airforce Officer

Another building for the modern era is a Metro, (ot Public Transportation System), giving commerce or hammers per people.

 

[Hawawaa]

Naval Academy and or Naval Intelligence. xp for boats, science and production bonus to building boats. Also random idea give this to the great admiral when he makes it he gets used up. I like that channel idea too.

Dock- only buildable on a river. Small bonus alone but other cities built on the same river you get a bigger bonus. (more bonuses as you progress to new ages)

Highways. As already stated.

Subway system/ the already stated "metro system" is cool.

Playing to much sots 1 and 2 lately so I can't think of anything else right now.

 

[jacktannery]

I think it would be interesting to have buildings that were only able to be built in coastal cities and would give (resource: gold, food, etc) per city connected by harbor so the more cities you had on the coast the more benefit. This would represent the importance of connecting your coastal cities instead of just using roads. Thinking about the Venetians.

It would also require an investment so wouldn't be too OP or screw with balance too much. Also maybe if city is blockaded the effect would be shut down to force protection of your trade network.

No ideas on name, just the concept.

Similar to some of the suggestions in the naval thread, so sounds great to me.

Increasing the bonus for the # of connections is a nice twist. Ideally the Foreign Trade Route mod could be worked into it, too.

+1 for this - this is a great way to make coastal tiles without sea resources better without just adding +1 gold to the tile. Perhaps we can have two of these buildings:

1> Wharf (req. harbour)- gives +1 gold (or whatever) for each sea-connected city in your civ BUT -1 production per sea tile resource worked by this city.
2>Custom's House (req. wharf) - gives +5 gold (or whatever) for each civ you have open borders with BUT -1 production per sea tile resource worked by this city. Can we make this one a national wonder - req. wharves on all coastal cities?

Note that the -1 production (or food or whatever) is to represent the traffic damaging fishing, but also to stop coastal starts being overpowered in every situation - it also does not affect crappy coastal cities without resources, only really powerful ones with multiple resources. We also need to be careful not to make coastal/river starts too strong in comparison with other starts, otherwise human players will just spend hours re-starting games until they start with the best start - for example if we brought in Hawawaa's dock it would overpower rivers (river starts are already very strong); but otherwise I love the idea of the dock if we could make it work.

 

[BigBadBear]

I'd like some buildings that enhance production on normal sea and coast tiles. Something like a windmill park that can be built with / after electricity is researched?

 

[rhammer640]

+1 for this - this is a great way to make coastal tiles without sea resources better without just adding +1 gold to the tile. Perhaps we can have two of these buildings:

1> Wharf (req. harbour)- gives +1 gold (or whatever) for each sea-connected city in your civ BUT -1 production per sea tile resource worked by this city.
2>Custom's House (req. wharf) - gives +5 gold (or whatever) for each civ you have open borders with BUT -1 production per sea tile resource worked by this city. Can we make this one a national wonder - req. wharves on all coastal cities?

Note that the -1 production (or food or whatever) is to represent the traffic damaging fishing, but also to stop coastal starts being overpowered in every situation - it also does not affect crappy coastal cities without resources, only really powerful ones with multiple resources. We also need to be careful not to make coastal/river starts too strong in comparison with other starts, otherwise human players will just spend hours re-starting games until they start with the best start - for example if we brought in Hawawaa's dock it would overpower rivers (river starts are already very strong); but otherwise I love the idea of the dock if we could make it work.

I dont really like the -1 production cause coastal cities are already low on that usually to begin with.

I like the idea of having a national wonder on top of the wharf or warehouse or whatnot because it would be something that would reward the idea of playing a total coastal civ like the Venetians were etc.

We could have the warehouse to increase production due to having the ability to bring and store materials etc. req harbor. I like the idea of a building adding production to coastal cities due to the usual lack thereof.

The national wonder custom house would be a gold increase per city connected by harbor and require 75% of all cities to have harbor. This would make it so you would want to have more cities on the coast even after you got the national wonder instead of just rushing it then moving inland.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thinking of a game-to-world idea, what modern infrastructure could consume iron (steel)? The main uses of long-steel are:

• Reinforced concrete
• Railroad tracks
• Steel building girders
• Wires

Perhaps a highway interchange?