Project Road Map

[stmartin]

It's time we make a plan. Frankly speaking, until now we don't really have a high level plan. We think about what to include in the next release, and we go all out and implement those things, giving little thought to what might be next. But since this project's scope is getting a little bigger now, sooner or later we will need a proper plan, a road map. So here we come up with one.

General guidelines:
1. History. Or at least Romance. Clinch to it. It means we discard ideas if they do not have a base in this legend.
2. Be a eager learner, but also try to be unique, even experimental. It means if an idea is new and adventurous, it is preferred.
3. First system, then content. It means we prefer to design structures first, and then add all the details.

Stepping Stones:
0. Legions: finish it up.
1. Victory: anyone can win...and lose.
2. Strategy: bring strategies, both military and political, to the game.
3. Bureaucracy: how the government works at that time.
4. Allegiance: make all heroes(hopefully including strategists and politicians) into real human being.
5. War: war is a cruel art, not a toy, try to bring it back to reality.
6. Our People: make the empire dynamic and your people alive.
7. History: historical event, would-be event, scenarios and maps.

This is really long term plan, the actual order may vary, and there may be alternative stepping stones that we could pursue. So, to speak the truth, this is more like a dream. However, legions were once a dream too, and it has come true.

Current work:

1. finish up Legions. Tech rate, new promotions, new heroes, may be bring some of the leaders into our hero club too.

2. prepare for Victory. So it seems this Victory thing is quite popular on the market. We don't have a ready design for it right now, so it's up to us all to work together and make up something worthwhile.

 

[Dknight99]

Well it sounds great and i have a few ideas myself. Right now I am working on the music pack to have custom music for all the civ's diplomacy screens and when zoomed in to cities. ^^ So I'll let you know when that's done.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Rhye's Victory.py file has some code you should be able to borrow for the victory conditions. The way the functions are called might be different (heck, what do I know, I'm no coder), but if I can understand some of it, it shouldn't be that hard to incorporate in this mod.

 

[Calcobrena]

You mentioned possibly trying to add strategists and politicians further down the road. Maybe have politicians use similar mechanics as spies when they go into a dif civs territory, but they have different missions. Also they could be stationed in one of your own cities to give it some sort of boost, production/food/research. This would be kind of similar to how ROTK games make use of these officers.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

2. Strategy: bring strategies, both military and political, to the game.

Something like a popup from a strategist quoting one of the 36 strategems from time to time would be helpful.

Examples:
1. Cao Cao would do well to befriend Sun Ce initially while he's surrounded by enemies. "Befriend a distant state while attacking a neighbour"
2. Liu Yao's best strategy is no. 36: retreat
3. While attacking Dong Zhuo, it's best to involve him in wars against Ma Teng and Han Sui, so that his flank against you is open: "Entice the tiger to leave its mountain lair" and "Watch the fires burning across the river" then "Loot a burning house"

 

[King Coltrane]

I would add to your road map an implementation of terrain alterations, such as diverting rivers. I dont know the extent to which you could implement this, but it had a huge impact on the nations in the novel. it's been a long time since i've read the book so im not sure about specifics, but i'm sure many of you would agree with this.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I can't agree more. Right now certain cities are trash because there are no rivers around them. If some advanced techs like Ancient Sanitation or Disinfection can allow river diversion it would be very interesting.

 

[Kalimakhus]

There are functions in the CvMapGenerator class that creates rivers. Whether these can be used after the initial map generation, I don't know. Also there is no Remove river function (to divert a river you will need to remove it from somewhere and add somewhere else). Anyway, it is a good idea and is worth looking at it. It should however be a worker mission that takes a lot of time to be accomplished (Provided that it is implementable of course).

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Well, it didn't take that long to construct the Grand Canal (at least it was completed within the reigns of 2 Sui Emperors), so maybe it should be doable within the timeframe of the game? What more suitable for idle workers to do than to create new canals (without destroying old ones)?

 

[Kalimakhus]

5. War: war is a cruel art, not a toy, try to bring it back to reality.

I thought I might through some of what I think about this item.

We have got WW, but I think it might not be enough. War, continuous war, starts to pay off after a while even with WW. In my latest game I had 12 in my cities because (We influence other civilizations) = I subdued many rivals into the vassalage state of course by spending almost 90% of my time in war. WW doesn't add up from a rival to the next. Speedy wars (take a city or two, vassalize) just get you all the way without any noticeable WW.

So what can be done about it? Besides WW, we should have peace time versus war time gauge reflecting how people react to the continuous state of war. You accumulate WW points for every turn you be in war (no matter with whom). The counter doesn't start to go down until a number of peaceful turns have elapsed. WW shouldn't simply disappear once you sign a peace treaty or finish-up your enemy it just has to take some time for your nation to heal.

War should cost you. We have unit's maintenance. Actually they make you go to war rather than not. The rational is: I need troops even to maintain peace (deter my rivals). If I have the troops and I pay for them anyway then why not put them into something useful. Let them pay for their maintenance and win the game for me the easiest way possible.

I think we should have a cost modifier for war times. In real life troops cost you much more when they go to war than while sitting in their barracks. We can also have some production hit during war times so civilian projects in cities will cost more hammers because a percentage of production is diverted to war efforts (= replenishing the lost material in battles fields).

War in the battle field itself shouldn't be a walk in a garden. The AI does a very poor job defending their cities and their independence that such is the case now. We should lend these poor morons a hand here. A civilization under attack might receive a free Homeland promotion for all their troops (say +20% str inside home borders + 20% city defense). Of course this shouldn't be given to civs starting the war even if they ended up defending their cities at some point. (let the player work a little to get the AI declare on him). The AI also wouldn't draft units or even have the decency of building defensive units when attacked. (some will build workers in a besieged city). I think besieged AI cities should spawn some defensive units at the cost of some population points. I prefer these to be a dedicated new unit or units (Militia) so they might have 0 move and thus they can't leave their cities. Once the state of war is over any such units still alive would rejoin their cities recovering some of the population points spent in spawning them.

One last point about the (take a city - vassalize) syndrome. I was going to mention it in the balance thread but here is a good place as any and it is connected to the subject. I think there should be something done to lower the likeliness of the AI capitulating. For instance the AI shouldn't capitulate until only one city is left. The reason why I think this is a matter of balance is that the latest games I have started to become a little dull because they tend to end up in the same manner. Running around with an invincible army, take cities, vassalize, heal, next target. Different leaders differ only in the early turns, or more accurately in how many turns it will take you to reach this stage of (take - vassalize - next). For Cao Cao you need only get Laws of Wei for you would already have killed more than enough civs. For other civs you need different amounts of time to build up your armies and economy. This early stage is the most interesting along with one or two somewhat difficult wars against worthy opponents (Mainly Yuan Shao, Cao Cao, and Sun Ce) if and only if you go to war with one them early (say he declared on you).

 

[ono-neko]

I am not sure I agree with ability to changing the terrain, specifically in this case, the river. I'd rather to tone down the river's bonuses, or give something to make non-river tile a bit better.

 

[koap]

I think we should have a cost modifier for war times. In real life troops cost you much more when they go to war than while sitting in their barracks.

Quite agree, especially there should be a severe economic penalty for the invaders. We already have unit supply in the game, maybe it would be better to introduce the concept of hero supply, and make it expensive.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

How is stepping stone1 coming along? I'm kinda bored playing conquest/diplo/culture games. I want UHVs for the Shan Yue!

 

[Kenjister]

Well, I know the creators are at the moment in "hibernation", but I was wondering if there were any plans to add a few more heroes here and there? They don't need any new promotions or anything, but it would be great to see an official Yuan Shao, Cao Cao and Liu Bei in the game!
I've added them in my version myself, but the official quality is so much better. It's really great to be able to see the leader death in action for those big three.