New Founding Cities Mechanic [IMPLEMENTED]

[Commander Bello]

Why not just have the pioneer be the settler unit? It makes sense; as that is what pioneers are. Older civ games worked that way and it was fine. It creates tension, do I want a second city or do I improve my first?

The question is, what is going to happen with the settler's equipment? It is my understanding that it should be consumed by the process of founding the new settlement as else it would be just some kind of transport unit which not only wouldn't make much sense, but even worse would allow for unlimited creation of new settlements literally only adding a new profession to the game but not really changing the mechanics.

Assuming the equipment would be consumed by founding the new settlement the easiest way to keep the one ship with two units (for most colonies) design, the creation of a "super-settler" as initial unit (with the profession of "super-settler only used this one time) and a "normal" settler profession seems to be the easiest way to introduce the new game mechanic of settlers needed for founding settlements.This super-settler then would carry the settler equipment plus the 50 tools of the pioneer. As soon as the build command has been completed, the amount of settler items will be deleted and the 50 tools are staying in the warehouse (actually that basic city building with which you start).

 

[raystuttgart]

The question is, what is going to happen with the settler's equipment? It is my understanding that it should be consumed by the process of founding the new settlement ...

Yes, that is the concept otherwise you could just pick ut the equipment again and found the 2nd city which would make the whole feature pointless.

Assuming the equipment would be consumed by founding the new settlement the easiest way to keep the one ship with two units (for most colonies) design, the creation of a "super-settler" as initial unit (with the profession of "super-settler only used this one time) and a "normal" settler profession seems to be the easiest way to introduce the new game mechanic of settlers needed for founding settlements.This super-settler then would carry the settler equipment plus the 50 tools of the pioneer. As soon as the build command has been completed, the amount of settler items will be deleted and the 50 tools are staying in the warehouse (actually that basic city building with which you start).

I don't really want to make this change just just to introduce a more realistic new mechanic / profession for founding cities which is of course also nice.
I want to change the mechanic of founding cities to introduce a tiny bit more challenge and the need of strategic decisions (especially to the early game).

Thus I also don't want to give away things for free in the first cities.
Thus I also don't really want to give Human Players a lot of Special Events to help.

We can give AI a little additional help with this though.
Because AI currently is not enough of a challenge to Human Players.

Why not just have the pioneer be the settler unit? It makes sense; as that is what pioneers are.

Generally yes, but it would be most likely easier for us to improve AI if we keep "Pioneer" and "Settler" separated.
We can assigne each of these Professions a special purpose and can prevent easier that Professions are wrongly used by AI if they would be more efficient doing something else.

Also Pioneers need only Tools, I was planning to have Profession Settlers be a little bit more costly (e.g. requiring a little Food and Wood as well, which would first need to be produced or bought from Europe for the 2nd / 3rd colony.)

 

[raystuttgart]

We can use the same mechanic to generally get gifts (pioneers etc) if you have a good relationship with the king, making the pre-WOI relationship more important.
...
What the king will give and how often can be affected by difficulty and 1 vs 2 plot radius settings (I assume 1 plot radius requires more colonies).

I am not completely against a few of these events. (e.g. Python or DLL-Diplo-Events)
They add flavour.

But they should not be used to simply kill all strategic decisions needed by the introduction of this change.
Because that would actually make the change in the mechanics pretty pointless again.

Sure, but I was referring to the issue of getting tools to do the task in question. It would be really bad to require contact with Europe in order to do... well basically anything because that would break stuff during WOI. Ok, founding new colonies during WOI would be an odd choice, but the game mechanics shouldn't prevent the player from doing so.

When you are preparing for WOI it is no problem anymore to produce tools on your own.
You could equip the profession Settler quite easily in your colonies. Thus I don't see any problem there.

It's likely rare with 2 plot radius, but it happens with 1 plot radius.

In 2-Plot DLL the cities start out as 1-Plot cities as well and need time to expand (by producing culture).
So basically in the first turns it is pretty much the same for 1-Plot and 2-Plot DLL. In the late game this feature should not be really problematic anymore anyways.

AI also tries to get a place with enough food to settle its first cities.
Personally I do as well. (I am almost always only settling my first colony only if I find at least 1 food Bonus Resource like Fish.)

But it is definitely true that food is more difficult to get for 1Plot cities in the late game.
But in 2Plot you will also need much more food to support the huge populations.

 

[raystuttgart]

I added a poll to the thread to figure out if community and team want to have it or not.

I also suggest the feature only to be implemented if there is a 2/3 majoritiy in its favour.
(I don't want to implement features that almost half of the community hate.)

 

[lyciummusic]

This is cool provided AI can handle it. But if not, how about adding a money cost to build cities? Something like 500-1000 gold.

 

[Nightinggale]

Why not just have the pioneer be the settler unit? It makes sense; as that is what pioneers are. Older civ games worked that way and it was fine. It creates tension, do I want a second city or do I improve my first?

The question is, what is going to happen with the settler's equipment? It is my understanding that it should be consumed by the process of founding the new settlement

Vanilla actually has the ability to make pioneers consume tools when founding colonies, but it's unused and disabled in xml. I removed it because the implementation was questionable and it turned out that it was buggy and could be used to get professions without paying the cost (scouts without horses, pioneers without tools, military professions without weapons etc), but you would gain the yields when the you let the unit join the colony afterwards, essentially free tools, horses and weapons. This exploit was possible even though the feature itself was disabled in xml.

The fact that it's in vanilla indicates that paying tools to found colonies was considered by Firaxis. They decided not to use it, which might be due to the implementation, but it might also be due to not liking how it affects gameplay.

I am not completely against a few of these events. (e.g. Python or DLL-Diplo-Events)
They add flavour.

But they should not be used to simply kill all strategic decisions needed by the introduction of this change.
Because that would actually make the change in the mechanics pretty pointless again.

That's why it should be tied to difficulty level. Sure it might make the mechanic more pointless on the introduction level, but the mechanic is introduced and on more difficult levels the player will not get such free gifts, or at least fewer of them, which makes the game mechanic relevant.

Master of magic got the difficulty level right in this regard. The easiest level is game breakingly easy. For instance you can find unguarded mana nodes. When you play on a more normal difficulty level (not even hard, just not intro level), then they will all be heavily guarded. However because you know the benefits of using them from the intro level, you know harvesting the mana makes your magic so strong that it's worth aiming towards beating the guards. If you started out with only strong and (for a new player) unbeatable guards, players would be more likely to skip this part of the game entirely.

New Players will most likely start with TAC which is perfect for new Players.

TAC isn't being updated. WTP is. That alone means it's possible that people start out with WTP. Making sure the introduction level is in fact an introduction for new players would be the right choice. If it means giving the player gifts, which breaks certain mechanics because it makes the challenge too easy, then so be it. We should have an intro level, which isn't meant to be played after you have tried it a few times.

In this case if the player needs settlers to found colonies, give the player a few settlers to try it out. This way the player will know the mechanic and what to aim for when later playing a more reasonable difficulty level where the player might not be given such gifts.

Writing this makes me realize we might want to add a difficulty level called tutorial, which will include extra popup windows and stuff like that.

 

[rah]

This discussion has convinced me it's a good idea.
Easiest way is to be able to create on on the docks like a pioneer and have the additional cost and the ability to create one later in cities once you have all the extra materials. But I'm on board with however you do it. Me like.

 

[raystuttgart]

Vanilla actually has the ability to make pioneers consume tools when founding colonies, but it's unused and disabled in xml.

I would simply have implemented a new XML-Option "Founding_Cities_Consume_Equipment" (or something like that) in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.
(Only applied in adjusted logic for founding cities.)

Then I would have changed settings in ProfessionsInfos.xml so that all other old existing Professions could not found cities anymore and only the new Profession Settler could.

I probably would not have fully trusted vanilla implementation on this either.

That's why it should be tied to difficulty level. Sure it might make the mechanic more pointless on the introduction level, but the mechanic is introduced and on more difficult levels the player will not get such free gifts, or at least fewer of them, which makes the game mechanic relevant.

I am ok with that if:

A) It is only fired for low Difficulty Levels
B) It is limitted to only one occurance (not reocurring)
C) There is at least some minor cost involved (Maybe 200 gold in Gamespeed "Normal")

We could simply implement a new Python Event that only triggers in low difficulty levels and gives a free "Settler Profession" after X turns and maybe 5 Population already.
Thus a WTP beginner should be able to learn that this new Profession is required.

Writing this makes me realize we might want to add a difficulty level called tutorial, which will include extra popup windows and stuff like that.

Actually I think there was a "Tutorial" Option at some point which I think was also using Python Events.
It was deactivated however in TAC because it messed with the new Python Events and almost everybody found it really annoying.

 

[Nightinggale]

Actually I think there was a "Tutorial" Option at some point which I think was also using Python Events.
It was deactivated however in TAC because it messed with the new Python Events and almost everybody found it really annoying.

That's because it was implemented poorly. We could do something like adding an enum of possible tutorial posts and then add CvGame::showTutorial(enum) and python expose this. Add that line whenever it's valid for the player to get a popup. showTutorial will then do nothing if difficulty level is too high or the enum has already fired during the game in question. If it shows, store that enum index in a bool array. The rest of the function is then a switch case for finding the string(s) in question from text xml and add it to a popup window.

Fairly simple to code and expand, low risk of bugs and it will only trigger for people who actually picked the tutorial difficulty level and they will not get the same messages over and over. It would then require somebody to write the tutorial texts and it would be really unproductive if we use programmers for that task. Ideally this would be a task for somebody who isn't already doing something else.

I would simply have implemented a new XML-Option "Founding_Cities_Consume_Equipment" (or something like that) in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.
(Only applied in adjusted logic for founding cities.)

Then I would have changed settings in ProfessionsInfos.xml so that all other old existing Professions could not found cities anymore and only the new Profession Settler could.

How about placing both bools in CvUnitInfo? It will result in the same gameplay functionality, but give us more freedom related to say treat natives and Europeans differently. I'm not sure it matters right now, but it might make future additions easier if the feature is easier to configure. Also I suspect using CvUnitInfo would actually be faster because odds are the unit data is already read, hence in the CPU cache while the GlobalDefines tend to need to be looked up. If we use getDefineINT, then it even needs to search through the list of defines to find the right one, which is significantly slower.

 

[raystuttgart]

I am open considering the implementation and XML configuration.

But yes, I could also have everything configurable based on the ProfessionInfos.
(I don't think we will ever use that concept based on Units only.)

 

[LordPer]

I like the idea of making it a bit harder to create a new colony, but must admit that I'm not that keen on introducing yet another profession for it.

Maybe something similar as DoaNE have done with a form of colony build kit that must be transported by ship or caravan?

Personally I would love to see colony mechanics that were in the original Colonization. There the city square itself was completely undeveloped, you had to use a pioneer to clear the forest, plow fields and build a road in order to get what Colonization IV does for free when creating a colony. At least you wouldn't get a free road and cleared forest if you spam and abandon colonies.

Also as mentioned I would like to see pioneers actually consume the tools when doing improvement, just like the original, that might to some degree even stop the AI to spam clear every forest in sight.

 

[Nightinggale]

Maybe something similar as DoaNE have done with a form of colony build kit that must be transported by ship or caravan?

How would that work? Some "found colony" unit, which then creates a colony with 0 population? Or does it contain a civilian unit, which is then added to the colony? We shouldn't do something because DoaNE did it, but if it's a good idea, then we could do something similar. Still I prefer to develop ideas rather than just copying, partly because we can't just copy the code, meaning copying isn't a development shortcut.

There the city square itself was completely undeveloped, you had to use a pioneer to clear the forest, plow fields and build a road in order to get what Colonization IV does for free when creating a colony. At least you wouldn't get a free road and cleared forest if you spam and abandon colonies.

We already talked about not clearing forests and that would likely be a good idea, particularly because I'm not aware of anybody actually being against it. I do recall something about some code not liking a colony without a road through. Skipping adding a road might be easier said than done, but I'm not against that idea.

We could also make the culture rating of a plot lose X% each turn with a minimum of 1. That way if you found and abandon you will get the plots, but you will quickly reach 0 culture and that way lose the plots again.

Also as mentioned I would like to see pioneers actually consume the tools when doing improvement, just like the original, that might to some degree even stop the AI to spam clear every forest in sight.

If the pioneers revert to colonists and the AI isn't aware of this, then adding that will not change how the AI clears forests. It is however an issue, which should be looked into.

While making pioneers use up tools would be interesting, it's not compatible with the current profession setup. We would have to introduce a new concept and then teach the AI to handle it accordingly. Currently I'm not aware of plans to do either, though admittedly nobody have really been working on it either.

 

[Commander Bello]

I do recall something about some code not liking a colony without a road through. Skipping adding a road might be easier said than done, but I'm not against that idea.

We could also make the culture rating of a plot lose X% each turn with a minimum of 1. That way if you found and abandon you will get the plots, but you will quickly reach 0 culture and that way lose the plots again.

You still have the three different road types, the path, the country road and the plastered road.
Why not create the settlement with the standard path as currently, just that it wouldn't provide any movement bonusses? The country road and plastered road then would just be downgraded in their effects.

Additonally, I have never thought about the settle and abandon expoit, but it appears to be quite strong as it currently not only provides you with land, but with roads for free as well. The above suggestion would work against the road part of that exploit, and decreasing the culture per plot per turn seems to be a good idea, working against the second part of the exploit.
I seem to recall that in CvGame there are already functions investigating the whole map. Decreasing culture could be easily implemented in such a function as I think.

 

[XSamatan]

More realism! Great!

 

[raystuttgart]

I'm not that keen on introducing yet another profession for it.

From everything I have seen it is probalby the easiest solutiuon however.
And it also fits the way almost all other important on map mechanics are handled (e.g. the Pioneer or Scout).

Maybe something similar as DoaNE have done with a form of colony build kit that must be transported by ship or caravan?

I actually hated that concept and it was quite difficult to explain for users.

Personally I would love to see colony mechanics that were in the original Colonization. There the city square itself was completely undeveloped, you had to use a pioneer to clear the forest, plow fields and build a road in order to get what Colonization IV does for free when creating a colony. At least you wouldn't get a free road and cleared forest if you spam and abandon colonies.

No seriously I think you confuse this with some other game.
In Original Colonization the founding mechanics worked as in Civ4Col.

Also as mentioned I would like to see pioneers actually consume the tools when doing improvement, just like the original, that might to some degree even stop the AI to spam clear every forest in sight.

That is how it worked in Originial Colonization, correct.
But everytime it was suggested Players and Modders did not did not like that.

This would be a "feature request" of its own though.
You could open a new thread and suggest it if you like.

 

[LordPer]

How would that work? Some "found colony" unit, which then creates a colony with 0 population? Or does it contain a civilian unit, which is then added to the colony? We shouldn't do something because DoaNE did it, but if it's a good idea, then we could do something similar. Still I prefer to develop ideas rather than just copying, partly because we can't just copy the code, meaning copying isn't a development shortcut.

Had to have a look to freshen my memory . In DoaNE you load the transport (a ship not so sure about the early caravan) with a "builder pack". The pack can buy be bought in Europe or loaded from a colony provided that all necessary resources are present. It seem to be like a hidden cargo spot that takes only the build pack.

When building the colony you can do that with any unit, just make sure the ship with the loaded pack is in the square next to the spot. Not sure how inland colonies are handled, didn't play that far. Guess it's handled by a caravan or similar?

Anyway, it's just something I remembered as a different take on colony building. Not necessarily the best, but can at least be used as inspiration?

 

[LordPer]

I actually hated that concept and it was quite difficult to explain for users.

To be honest I'm not so keen on it either, it was just to get some extra perspective on how it's been done elsewhere. That said, it's for similar reasons I'm not so keen on the settler unit either.

No seriously I think you confuse this with some other game.
In Original Colonization the founding mechanics worked as in Civ4Col.

The founding of the colony mechanics, yes that is the same. What I was talking about is what happens with the city square itself after founding a colony.

One correction though, the original game did actually create the road for free, but the rest remained undeveloped.

I remember this vividly since it took me a surprising long time to figure out that the colony often became far more productive after developing the city square, especially if the colony was founded on a forest square. Even if the colony was founded on open plains it became more productive after plowing the city square.

That is how it worked in Originial Colonization, correct.
But everytime it was suggested Players and Modders did not did not like that.

This would be a "feature request" of its own though.
You could open a new thread and suggest it if you like.

That is a pity, I actually liked how the old pioneers worked.

Well, if the idea have already been shotdown before then it might not make any sense to bring it up again. I will think about it though, maybe I find a good argument.

 

[raystuttgart]

One correction though, the original game did actually create the road for free, ...

That happens in WTP as well.
(It was already implemented in RaR.)

Well, if the idea have already been shotdown before then it might not make any sense to bring it up again.

It was once discussed in RaR early on. I think in 2012. It was heavily discussed in TAC as well. Probably in 2010.
So the dicsussion was not really recent. It is quite a bit ago and ideas and opinions might have changed.

So if you really feel you want to discuss it, don't be hindered by the past of the predecessors of WTP.
RaR and TAC are like Father and Grandfather of WTP and you know, different generations think quite differently.

 

[Nightinggale]

That is a pity, I actually liked how the old pioneers worked.

I looked at this as some point and considering how the civ4col profession system works, there is no clear way to implement this. It's not impossible, but we have to add a new concept in the code, something I at the time discarded right away because it will require more work than first meet the eye with new AI code and everything.

I'm not saying I'm against the idea. So far I have mainly been against the idea of how time consuming it can end up being before we have a proper implementation. We could make a dirty hack, which is faster, but then we have to fix bugs for years to come because hacked in features tend to be less stable.

 

[Tugboatspotter]

I like Nightinggale's solution where the first city is settled as an event granted by the king. This seems logical and elegant in keeping with the early game.

After that, I like the idea of the pioneer using up tools to build a settlement, if that turns out to be feasible. Again, it is more elegant than introducing a new settler unit.