New Profession Ideas

[Kailric]

Bandit: These guys have Hidden Nationality and can Raid other Civs Treasure Units, Pilgrims, Immigrants, and Cities. They don’t completely destroy the Units they Raid, but rather steal some of the Gold. After a Raid the Unit goes into Hiding for a few turns. When Raiding Cities, special Raider promotions will add to the success and also the City defenses present will modify it as well. Outlaws make the best Bandits.

Pilgrim: Your units can go on Pilgrimages with the Pilgrim Profession. There needs to be a Shrine set up in a foreign City, or they can always take a Pilgrimage to Rome. You will be able to Gift Relic units to other Civs which they can use to Build a Shrine in their Monasteries. Pilgrim Profession will cost Gold and perhaps Incense (if added as a Yield). When the Pilgrim visits the Shrine the gold is Given to the Civ along with a Cultural boost, like AI Pilgrims give to the Player. Your Units will also receive a Pious Promotion. This Promotion can perhaps Give an Extra Bonus in Combat vs Civs that do not have your chosen Religious Civic (or Religion when we add this), or perhaps some other benefit. Also, there could be a random chance to get a Divine Protection Promotion that gives the Unit the one time ability to return to the nearest city instead of dying in combat.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Some interesting ideas

So raiding a city would be a bit like the old indian raids but you get to make off with yields from enemy cities?

 

[Kailric]

Some interesting ideas

So raiding a city would be a bit like the old indian raids but you get to make off with yields from enemy cities?

Yes, they could function like the AI Bandits do, except if you Unit dies you get nothing.

 

[drjest2000]

One use of pilgrims by monarchs in the period was to invest spies in foreign lands, gather intelligence on enemies, etc. So consider the idea of allowing the player to "see" the city screen of an opponent's city if a pilgrim is present. Probably a coding nightmare, but I recall something similar being in Civ4 and wonder if it might also be present in Civ4Col's code, but disabled (like the Vassal code)

 

[Kailric]

One use of pilgrims by monarchs in the period was to invest spies in foreign lands, gather intelligence on enemies, etc. So consider the idea of allowing the player to "see" the city screen of an opponent's city if a pilgrim is present. Probably a coding nightmare, but I recall something similar being in Civ4 and wonder if it might also be present in Civ4Col's code, but disabled (like the Vassal code)

I have a whole write up on spy ideas here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=521179.

But yeah, perhaps a spy profession would work better as not all pilgrims were spies. Technically the ability to see other's cities is present as you can press ctrl-z I think and it allows you to open all city screens, so perhaps this wouldn't be all that difficult to setup if you have a spy present there.

 

[Kailric]

Porter Profession

So your Serfs can transport goods around your realm. They can't leave your territory (can't be peddlers) so this would be a good Profession for them.

 

[Nightinggale]

With the current code, we can just make them peddlers and the outcome will be the same. I still like the idea though. I would like to set a limit to how much each cargo slot can hold. Peddlers would then be able to carry 30 units while porters can carry 40. Carts would then carry 70 and full blown wagons can still carry 100... or whatever we come up with.

This capacity should then be able to be modified by civics.

 

[Kailric]

With the current code, we can just make them peddlers and the outcome will be the same. I still like the idea though. I would like to set a limit to how much each cargo slot can hold. Peddlers would then be able to carry 30 units while porters can carry 40. Carts would then carry 70 and full blown wagons can still carry 100... or whatever we come up with.

This capacity should then be able to be modified by civics.

Yeah, variable cargo capacity would add some realism for sure so I am all for a test run of that. I once tried to make it so only wagons could transport Lumber, but realized the AI was freaking out over it so I stopped production and never went back to it. Probably the biggest expense for large projects back then was transporting the materials. Yields themselves could have cargo space point value. Like a crate of goods = 1 cargo space (with the max being 100), and materials like Lumber = 10 cargo space. But, that maybe making things to tedious.

For the Porters, we could have a Expert Porter as well, that can treat all terrain as roads. Or perhaps a Civilian promotions that gives that. The Profession Graphic would be a guy pulling the cart.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I would say the better approach instead of variable 'weight' cargo, is to simply increase the amount of cargo you need. so if we want it to be like only 10 lumber can be carried and the price is 100 for a building, just increase the amount of cost to 4 or 5x times, we could go all the way to 10 but then you are entering into yield production issues.

I think most projects are already reasonable in this regard and only mega projects would need to be altered.

I think variable cargo yields just makes the whole thing more complicated to keep track of as you need to start thinking about yield specific transports and such when organising your empire.. it just feels like manual prospecting all over again, interesting in principle, but a nightmare without some serious 'managerial' assistance.

 

[Nightinggale]

I think variable cargo yields just makes the whole thing more complicated to keep track of as you need to start thinking about yield specific transports and such when organising your empire.

I fully agree. This is not a transport simulation, but an empire building game. People can figure out the current system and so can the AI. If we mod the current system, it will have to be an improvement without breaking the simplicity.

Having a unit/profession specific max capacity for each slot is fairly simple to understand for players and it isn't that hard to implement either as it is "just" a matter of changing a few hardcoded 100 with reading a cached value in CvUnit.

Anything like the unit can carry 10 yield A, 30 yield B, but not yield C at all can't avoid being messy.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I still prefer sticking with the simple more slot, less slot system, rather than variable size slots. That just makes for a mathematical pain in the ass player side.

The idea of some civic/techs adding or removing one or more slots is interesting though.

 

[Nightinggale]

The problem with the fixed slot capacity is that the smallest possible transport will be able to carry 100. If you take a standard serf and give them a "transport profession", you get a transport unit for nearly nothing. If it can carry 100, then you will do just fine with just that type of transport through the entire game and you will not invest in better transports because they are too expensive and the nearly free ones can get the job done just fine.

I would like the cargo capacity printed on top of the unit or something. It will be annoying if that info is too well hidden.

It is a valid point that once you have multiple slots, a capacity of 100 is likely ok. It makes no sense to have 6 slots of 10, which would provide less than a single slot of 100.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I don't really agree with your logic on that one.

The statement that 1 person with one slot can do everything is nonsense? If it were true then why buy better ships? Why not just use wagons instead of the better transports?

The other thing is that we already have this unit in the form of the peddler. (Does he cost some tools I forget?) It hasn't removed the need for better transports.

That's one of the reasons why exclusive yield slots work, because it means upgrading is even more beneficial, because you can tranport multiple goods types instead of just 1 or 2.

If you have 5 cities all requiring multiple yields you are either going to have to use loads of pop to shift stuff around, or have chronic short falls.

If it was true, then we would need to readjust values like consumption so that it is no longer true.

Also if we include a concept like jroute, with route substitution, then say that porters treat all routes as none for movement speed, then that would give you plenty of reason to upgrade sharpish.

 

[Kailric]

I love it when you two debate, I just sit back and take notes

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Hey Kail.... Take a note of this!!

 

[Lib.Spi't]

The scariest part of that emote is it appears to be partially vomiting out of it's eyes!?!?

 

[Kailric]

The other thing is that we already have this unit in the form of the peddler. (Does he cost some tools I forget?) It hasn't removed the need for better transports.

This is true, I rarely use Peddlers for plan transports, but they do come in handy at times for sure for those oops, I need a quick delivery of Grapes, moments. Your Units are way to valuable to just use them as transports if something else can take their place.

That's one of the reasons why exclusive yield slots work, because it means upgrading is even more beneficial, because you can tranport multiple goods types instead of just 1 or 2.

I actually am not following what your suggestion is, please explain again, this time a little more slowly and less vomit please

Also, I just thought of the Master Porters... the nearly useless Cottars that are currently in the game would be awesome for this job. I remember reading about those guys, and when I saw the art work I thought it reminded me of Cottars so I added them and was like, now why the heck I add this guy Now I know why, introducing Cottar 2.0, who has a new promotion (actually haven't added this, just an idea) : Expert Porter, they can use all terrain as if it was a Road(means they can move 3 spaces road or no road) Makes sense, since these guys where basically your mobile home owner who moves from place to place doing odd jobs, all that moving around has made them an Expert at moving stuff

Here's an idea, just like with vanilla's limit of Treasure Units can only be transported on 6 slots ships, we can make Yield Units require a certain number of slots as well (is this what you are suggesting Lib?) so that say Lumber requires at least a 2 slotter. That way, you'll save your poor Porters backs

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I actually wasn't suggesting anything

I was speaking to previously suggested concepts by Night and others, about something that is in use in Doane.

That is 'mergable' cargo slots, so you have 100 space in one slot and you can put 30 grapes and 10 wood and 60 wine all in that same slot.

So I was just saying, not having that concept and sticking with vanilla unique slots, is another reason to want to upgrade your transports, as 1 man can only carry 1 good, but a wagon can carry more types of goods at once.

I think RaR makes use of the slot 'size' for stuff?

Where treasure is I think 2 slots and a train was 6 slots and so on.

I do like that idea as well, rather than variable slot/yield sizes.

It keeps the math much more rounded and simple, but at the same time adds that logistical thinking of:

Is it better to transport slow or fast, I need this route to handle heavy goods, so I need heavy transports.

I think it will be particularly good for WHM, with loads of yields and loads of transport types, you can really begin to think about the way you tranport goods along certain routes.

But without having to do weird quantity capacity maths. Like each of these slots is 70 with 3 slots that's (pull socks off to find toes) 210 and my logs take up 10 each and my wine takes up 2 each so I can transport.....

 

[Nightinggale]

I was speaking to previously suggested concepts by Night and others, about something that is in use in Doane.

That is 'mergable' cargo slots, so you have 100 space in one slot and you can put 30 grapes and 10 wood and 60 wine all in that same slot.

I have been thinking a bit about such a system. DoaNE has 30 yields/slot if I remember correctly. I'm not saying that is what we should have though.

I think would be doable with a yield array and a counter (cache) of total cargo. I would add a new function to JIT arrays, which adds the entire content of the array and return that. Such a function would make it easy to add an assert to catch counter bugs.

That's basically as far as I have come because whenever I look at the code, it's always some other task I need to handle first. Another reason for me not to handle this task is that it is in fact somewhat complex to implement and can't be done quickly.

Such a system would be awesome, but I wouldn't want a fixed amount of yields/slot. Instead it should be values from unitInfo + promotions + civics (cached).

So I was just saying, not having that concept and sticking with vanilla unique slots, is another reason to want to upgrade your transports, as 1 man can only carry 1 good, but a wagon can carry more types of goods at once.

I think RaR makes use of the slot 'size' for stuff?

Where treasure is I think 2 slots and a train was 6 slots and so on.

RaR is quite simple in this regard. Treasure units can only be loaded onto transports with 6 cargo slots (originally galleons only, but now it can't tell a galleon from a train) and it somehow restrict usage of two empty slots. People have made bug reports telling that they can't use all slots in galleons.

I like the concept of size though. However I'm fine with the unit being able to use any transport with enough slots. If the unit uses 3 slots, it can be loaded into a ship with 3 slots.

We can take this concept one step further though. We can define how many yields a unit is in unitInfo and then it will take up space together with yields.

Example:
a ship has 3 slots and a capacity of 150. That's 50/slot. We have some civilians using 40 each. That will allow us to add 3 units or 2 units (80 cargo) + yields (70 cargo). However we can't add more units than there are slots. We can also load a unit using 60 cargo space, in which case it will take up two slots. It will only be able to handle 3 units, even if they only use 25 each because... well you can't have more units than slots.

A cheaper boat with a cargo capacity of 35 will not be able to load any of the units. It would be able to take the civilians if you get a +5 cargo space/slot civic/promotion.

It sounds cool in principle, but coding it might take some time. The worst part is actually the GUI. Leaving coding it aside, I'm not sure how to graphically handle loading/unloading yields if there are more yields than slots.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yeah, to be honest I don't really like the Doane system.

I actually find the 1 yield 1 slot principle to be a good game mechanic, as it often forces you to choose what you want to carry.

Do you take 50 of the more expensive, or 100 of your cheaper product?

That kind of thing.
I know some people don't like the 'logic/realism' of not being able to stuff their ships to the brim, but I think it adds an interesting game mechanic, that forces you to choose, or get better transports.
It not only means they carry more, but they are also more versatile as a transport.

I prefer the whole working system of slots rather than quantity/size.

It is easier to handle from a math/thinking side, that example you gave just seems like a headache to constantly work out and deal with in game..

I do like the idea of being able to increase/decrease slots by certain means (civic/promotions, etc.)

Where you could trade off something for greater/less capacity.

Like you say, the alternate way would take a long time to implement, and I personally don't think it would make the game better, it is certainly not a feature that I feel I couldn't live without when playing Doane, and I certainly don't miss it when palying M:C.

I also like the idea of things being moe than 1 slot in size. (In RaR I was sure I could only take 3 treasures on a galleon)
A man is 1
A Wagon is 3
A train is 6
A Construction yield is 2
etc.
All being a simple XML integer with a hover text saying how many slots they take up.