Nomadic Civilization ModMod Development (FFH2+FF)

[Ingvar]

http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/gallerycrits/75184/75184_1216487947_large.jpg

That is one awesome picture! Saved it Thanks!

 

[Ingvar]

Number one reason nobody will want to move, even in the start of the game when they find a good unique feature, is research. If you don't have any cities, then nothing is granting you any research, even if we enable you to get techs from goody huts.

Thus, you'll want your wagons to maintain certain attributes of the cities and continue to act with them. Most notably will be research, but also you might want them to continue to produce gold to support units.

I thought about the cities bit some more, and here's what I came up with - some of this is repetition of a previous post, but I think a little bit more logical. I really liked your idea of having cities "off the map" and linked to the unit as an anchor. I think ideally that would be the best to implement.

Nomadic Tribe (city/unit) Mechanism in Ideal

Normal city generates per turn and stores these values:
- Food by means of working the plots and storing amount of food in buildings not consumed on the turn.
- Population by means of consuming food produced by working the plots
- Commerce by means of buildings and working plots around the city
- Research by means of buildings and working plots around the city (commerce converted to science?)
- Culture by means of buildings and specialists
- Production by means of buildings and working plots around the city
- Great People points by means of buildings and specialists present in the city

The main difference of the nomadic "city" unit is that it won't be working plots around it most of the time. That does not mean that people living that way do not generate the values above. There are two scenarios of where the nomadic "city" unit is present - in neutral territory and within other civilization borders. One thing that should be retained is the per turn value generation and retention of total amount over a period of turns. The most important thing is that it the values are generated and retained at all times - on the move, while "settled", in neutral lands and in other civilization territory. I figured that it would be helpful for figuring out how it should and could work to look at the values separately.

Food
Food is the first value that is available to normal cities. It is produced by working the plots around the city within the culture borders. Nomadic cities could do that in the neutral territory, but in other civilization lands that would not make sense. So instead perhaps a building could simulate the basic gathering of food in the vicinity, based on population number or "citizen" specialist - all those not involved in a "profession" are gathering a certain amount of food. Other buildings in later stages of the game could introduce storage of food, resource units could be used to produce additional food to add to the pool of food available.

Population
If the population is not working the plots around the city, then they are "specialists" and generate no food at all. Population grows based on food reserves. Ability to store food and gain food are the major factors in this. The solution to that would be generating food by other means. For example, certain units could create "food" units on bonus resources without improvements at first that could be brought to the city and stored there. While in normal game play planning where to put the city and how to improve land around the city determines food available, in nomadic "city" special "buildings" and resource units would replace that strategy. There probably should be a cap on how much population can be supported by the "city" and if population grows on surplus of food available it would be a necessity to spawn another "city" unit. So instead of building a settler, a "city" unit would have to invest time on a forested plot with a special improvement to build another unit like it to which the overflow of the population would transfer. It would be a decision made on where you are and the ability to cope with unhealthiness and unhappiness of the too big of population size.

Commerce
There's certainly some amount of inner tribal commerce going on, but that does not happen on the adjusted plots, but rather in the "city" itself. So in some way per turn value of produced commerce in my opinion should be based on the population size. This should be enough to maintain a couple of units and the city itself. In order to get ahead gold should be produced by selling movable resources, and creating buildings that add more commerce to the "city".

Research
Research is available from converting a certain amount of commerce produced by the city to research points. It is further enhanced by buildings. If a certain amount of commerce is produced by a building then research would automatically be available. I don't think there's much here to think about, if the "city" unit has the ability to act as a city but not tied to the plot - an "invisible" city in a sense.

Culture
Culture is produced by buildings within the city and by spell additions of culture to the city's culture value. As long as the cities of nomads exist off the map plot - this should prove to be as simple as balancing buildings that produce culture.

Production
Production is based on working plots and buildings available. In nomadic cities it would specialists with bonus of buildings to generate hammers. The difficulty would be in spawning produced units on the same tile as the "city" unit.

Great People
Just as culture - it's another value that is stored in a city array. So as long as city functions invisibly - it should work as well. Same difficulty in spawning the great person on the same tile as the "city" unit.

So, ideally the unit that represents a "city" would act as a city for all purposes but not be tied down to the map location. Could that be done by altering the game engine so it determines how to process the city fucntions based on a new attribute of a city "bMoving". And if that flag is set it looks up the corresponding unit to get the plot info for the city for whatever events have to happen. Another attribute might need to be introduced to to the unit "isCity" - that would hard link a unit to a city that is off the map by the value of the city name or an ID of some sort.

Another thing to look at would be an ability to call the city screen by clicking on the "city" unit. Would that require any SDK changes or will python interface addition would suffice?

I think that removing the ability to work the plots around the city would serve as a reason for increased mobility - at this point it doesn't matter where your city is, what matters is what bonuses you can get to, how can you use them, and how fast can you build "buildings" that allow you production increases. This way the only time the unit needs to be "settled" with extended culture borders shown on the map in is when a bonus resource is present - so that it can be worked and resource units produced. To induce further movement - the resource units spoil, and unhappiness is added to the city if it stays in one place for too long. That can be done by python events. Perhaps storing a counter in one of the unused fields and incrementing it if the location is the same as the last turn?

 

[xienwolf]

Man, I want to use the picture she has for an Avatar as a Manticore Great Person now...

Oops, forgot to check for a page 2 In regards to all the above, it'd be interesting to attempt linking a City to a Unit, and to see what happens when you toss a city out of the map. I'd imagine you would need a link on the Unit which points it to the city, and on the city pointing it back at the unit. Intercepting every possible call to one or the other and making it appropriate would be quite tricky indeed.

 

[Valkrionn]

How's the progress coming?

 

[Ingvar]

How's the progress coming?

Slow. Been waiting for the patch craziness with both FHF2 and FF to stop for a long enough while to redo units/civ with new schema files. I have buildings/units/promotions/spells all figured out - just need to make new XML files and test.

At this point most of the concepts are worked out. I've noticed that my request for no-cities civ is on the xienwolf's list to add to his modcomp/ff, as well as units providing resources. It will be a straight shot from there.

I'll start releasing portions of the modmod soon for some testing.

 

[Ingvar]

So it's been a month since I got the idea, almost. I'm still working on this - not as actively as I thought I'd be. But it turns out a lot of the ideas need major modding that I am not yet capable of. Meanwhile I'll share ideas and bits here.

Alternative Sea Travel:

Spoiler :

Thinking about the traveling/nomadic nation got me thinking about a lot of concepts that are taken for granted by sedentary civilizations. Harvesting, storing, transporting and selling resources; using other nation's buildings and improvements; hiring other nation's units or learning from them; and finally travel itself. Especially traveling across the seas and oceans. These abilities could be specific to a nomadic civilization, but could be of use to any civilizations. I am not sure of balancing this type of travel, but I think if there's enough risk and cost in using these spells it could be justified.

Sea Travel for those who have no coastal cities or no seagoing technologies.
There are benefits to having open border agreements with multiple nations. One of the benefits is using their transportation network. Open borders lets you use the roads when you might not have built roads in your own nation. I think same might apply to naval travel. Everything is bought and sold. So you need to get across a sea, and you do not build boats or have not port cities, what do you do? You charter a ship in a friendly port for a party of travelers. You steal a ship in a rival port in calculation or desperation risking everything including life and war. You board a regular transport. When you charter the ship you buy it, and then pay extra support cost for it each turn. When you steal a ship - you get it with skeleton crew and a some damage with a chance to be caught for the attempt. When you board a regular transport you share the risks all travelers have, and are limited in your choice of destination by established routes of travel and border agreements.

Easiest implementation:

Charter Ship
Requirement: unit must be in a coastal city, owned by a civilization with a seagoing tech.
Spell:
Costs 50gp
Creates a naval unit based on seagoing technology & buildings available in the city.
Unit is promoted to Charter (has higher gold cost per turn, decrease ship hold space by 1 if not 1, allow to ignore borders(?))
A miscast chance might be calculated if you charter a Lanun ship or an Evil civilization's ship - they will take your gold and cut your throat once away from port or sell you as a slave.
Could be nice to spawn a slave in the event belonging to the civ.

Steal Ship
Requirement: unit must be in a coastal city, owned by civilization with a seagoing tech, a ship should be present in the city.
Spell:
Converts one of the ships present in the city.
Unit is set with skeleton crew and 10 to 40% damage.
Caster is loaded on the ship and ship is moved two spaces out.
Miscast chance kills the caster with a message that the thief was arrested during the attempt. Another chance might be to start the war with the civilization in question.

Board Transport
This one would be more tricky to implement I am getting this idea from the "Adept traveling to Amurite capital to study" event. I've noticed that the adept is actually moving to the capital and stays there, so that means that there is a way to create predetermined routes of travel. The spell would involve looking at the trade routes available to the city and identifying the coastal ones owned by civilizations with whom you have open borders agreements. Then offer a python pop-up with the selection of cities with cost based on distance. Once selected a unit would travel to the destination and be immobile for the number of turns it takes to get there by ship. Movement would have to be calculated based on seagoing tech available to the city in question. For extra risk there may be a chance of loosing the caster with a message "The sea has claimed the transport. None have reached the destination."

 

[seZereth]

how´s it going?
I would love to see if this concept works out.
I might supply you with art, if it does.

 

[scaramouche]

I'm not a modder/coder, and I fully expect that many of my ideas are unworkable or silly, heh. Just a little disclaimer before I make a suggestion here.

So, often a nomadic civilization will have some sort of 'home base' still, especially in a fantasy setting. Some holy site that serves as a meeting ground and communal space and wintering area for all the various clans/tribes/whatever. So what if you allow the nomads one permanent city, that being their capital, and it's their holy place dedicated to Tali.

Then, whenever a particular place uproots and moves, it spawns an 'Ambassador' in the capital city tagged to that city. That ambassador has a spell that, like a Great Artist or whatever, provides a culture boost of whatever amount that city had when it uprooted/spawned the guy.

When you resettle the wagon into a settlement, it teleports the ambassador back to the city and he can just cast his spell to add all that culture back in.

Is that an impossible and overly tedious way to do it? It feels like a kludge, I admit, but it seems like it'd be useful to store certain city attributes in these ambassador guys for later. Anyway, just a thought!

 

[Valkrionn]

So, any new developments?

 

[Arctic Circle]

I hope to see this as a playable addition in the future. If it comes compatible with FF someday when I am done with Jotnar - then I will play it.

 

[Ingvar]

No new developments that can be posted. I've re-written units, some abilities, etc. I am trying to figure out very slowly how to get rid of needing to have one city and how to store information about the city somehow while its a unit. DLL coding, as it turns out, is *not* one of my strong points - so until xienwolf has the time to alter dll to add an ability to not have a city - it's mainly an exercise of what could be.

Basically, without somehow altering the tie of research, culture, bonuses to cities, and removing the "always must have at least one city" it's not very fun to play. Movable resources are very clunky without a unit being able to provide them without a building/spell pair.

Once I have a bit more time on my hands for this I'll continue poking around with DLL code. Meanwhile I am writing my ideas down and making pseudo-xml out of them to help me when I am ready to implement.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

good to know that this project is still alive

 

[xienwolf]

DLL coding is, as it turns out, one of my strong points -

I am guessing you meant to have a negative in there somewhere? It is still in the back of my mind to implement this, I just don't have much time lately for working on FfH, and there are a few priority items on the plate for when I do find the time.

 

[Ingvar]

I am guessing you meant to have a negative in there somewhere? It is still in the back of my mind to implement this, I just don't have much time lately for working on FfH, and there are a few priority items on the plate for when I do find the time.

Yep. That was a negative I am in no rush, really. It will be awesome when it's there, until then I'll just keep hashing out background ideas and all that. The more I think of it the more it looks like Civ was coded with intent to not have viable nomadic society as an alternative to city based one.

 

[cyther]

Any progress on this project?

 

[Valkrionn]

I'd love to see this make a return.

 

[cyther]

As would I.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

thirded. 10 chars