[Religion and Revolution]: Mod Development

[raystuttgart]

Small update on Monasteries and Forts.

Made some good progress last night with my coding efforts.
(I am still not done yet however.)

I am quite positive, that this will become an interesting feature that players will really like to use.

However, I have made some design decisions:

1. Although AI will try to take possession and generally know how to use them, it will not build these improvements itself.
(The logic for teaching AI when and where to build them became to complicated and imperformant.)

2. I will try to keep the involved features clean and easy to understand.
(It does not make sense to pack to much into that.)

The attached screenshots will basically explain what the improvements do.

Forts: Protection against Raiding Natives, Wild Animals, generally enemies
Monasteries: Positive effects with Natives walking by (unless you are at war with them)

These improvements can be built outside city borders and do also use the feature "Growing Improvements".

They will need to have a fortified Military Unit (Fort) or Missionary (Monastery) inside to be considered "active".

Edit:
Thanks to Schmiddie for creating the buttons for the BuildActions.

 

[Schmiddie]

Yea, I love this feature! Thank you ray for your efforts!

I think we will find a solution regarding a new published version of RaR...

 

[colonialfan]

As always Ray, fantastic job.

 

[HermanHeydt]

Looks great.

Maybe not the place for general comments, but I just had to.
Found this mod yesterday and I bow to all the work done.
You made this into an entirely new game - keep it up - I am utterly amazed...

 

[raystuttgart]

@team:
There is a small Easter present in my SVN.

I have uploaded a full implementation of Monasteries and Forts.

Although I tried to keep the features involved simple and clean, there is massive coding involved and I did not yet have the time to test everything thoroughly.
(But first tests were really good.)

Might be a good idea to clean cashes before using this update.

Additionall to what I have already written here:

Forts:

• Need Infantery (Professions like Soldiers or Hessian Mercenary) to become active
• Attack enemies walking by (and also kill Wild Animals by giving a bit of gold)
• Draw Raiding Natives to attack them (and thus lead to less raids on cities)
• Wild Animals cannot enter
• Use Feature "Growing Improvements"
• A Fort can only attack once a round

Monasteries:

• Need Missionary (Profession) to become active
• Expert Missionary (Units) increases effects / chances
• Apease Native wanting to raid (they get peaceful again)
• Passing Natives sometimes convert
• Passing Natives sometimes give presents (a bit of gold)
• Wild Animals cannot enter
• Use Feature "Growing Improvements"
• A Monastery can only use one of its features once a round

 

[raystuttgart]

Hi guys,

Roamty created some nice improvements for the Pedia Screens of Terrain, Terrrain Features and Improvements of Religion and Revolution.
(see here)

They will definitely be integrated in my private version.
(This also mean, that there are some more pedia texts and translations to write which is something I really love to do ... )

 

[Schmiddie]

Is there something new? I think we already have implemented these 3 features?

 

[raystuttgart]

Is there something new ?

Yes.

There is pedia text in these screens now.

Until now Colopedia for Terrain, Terrain Features and Improvements did not show that.
(It is like that already in Vanilla. The original devlopers of Civ4Col simply did not care about such details.)

The screens from Roamty give nice atmospheric information and look a lot better.
(This is not a "huge ingame feature" but still a nice and very welcome improvement.)

The attached screenshots show how it looks currently without Roamty's improvements.

Edit:
I have made some small adjustments and uploaded it to my SVN.

 

[Willi_Tell]

Oh yea, that's a good idea and well done!

 

[raystuttgart]

Oh yea, that's a good idea and well done!

Yes, Roamty's improvements to the Pedia Screens are really nice.
It is great to see, that some other modders have also started improving Religion and Revolution.

 

[raystuttgart]

Next (small) features are implemented.
(They are uploaded in my SVN.)

Drying Swamps and Planting Forests

This is a shrinked version of a "Terraforming" feature I had created for Path to the Throne.
The feature basically allows to transform Terrains and create TerrainFeatures by Pioneer actions.

It is DLL based and fully configurable in XML.
(There are new XML-Tags in Civ4BuildInfos to create such new Pioneer actions.)

So again, all of this and much more can be configured in XML.
AI will not get into problems with these features.

Balancing (prices and times) might still need to be improved.
At the moment I took the screenshots I had relatively low values to do my tests.

Drying Swamps

• only available on Terrain Marsh
• will transform it in Terrain Savannah
• takes quite long and is expensive
• only possible inside own borders
• will remove all Terrain Features first

Planting Forests

• only available on Plots without TerrainFeature
• will create a Terrain Feature that fits to the Terrain
• takes quite long and is expensive
• only possible inside own borders

It is pretty simple stuff but I hope you still like it.

 

[raystuttgart]

Just a small update so you don't believe that I am getting totally lazy.

I am currently working on this feature:
Runaway / Fleeing Criminals, Indentured Servants, African Slaves and Native Slaves
(The feature is not yet "perfect". I am still working out some details.)

Until now when such units ran away (by one of the LbD) features, they simply disappeared.

With this feature, the corresponding unit will be placed outside of your area of influence and start wandering around.
(I know that sounds a bit stupid, but I did not yet come up with a better idea.)

So you or another European Player could capture the "runaway" again.
(Natives will ignore them.)

Hope this will be fun.

 

[raystuttgart]

The next National Wonder:
(They can be built only once per Player.)

Central Customs Authority
(It is basically an extra powerful Custom House.)

Thanks to Schmiddie for the graphics.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Just a small update so you don't believe that I am getting totally lazy.

I am currently working on this feature:
Runaway / Fleeing Criminals, Indentured Servants, African Slaves and Native Slaves
(The feature is not yet "perfect". I am still working out some details.)

Until now when such units ran away (by one of the LbD) features, they simply disappeared.

With this feature, the corresponding unit will be placed outside of your area of influence and start wandering around.
(I know that sounds a bit stupid, but I did not yet come up with a better idea.)

So you or another European Player could capture the "runaway" again.
(Natives will ignore them.)

Hope this will be fun.

Sounds very interesting to me. Often escaped slaves would set up their own communities in the interior, from where they would organize resistance and (interestingly) establish economic links with colonial settlements. As such, I think that if you wish to develop this feature further, one idea is to make the escaped units able to establish "barbarian player"-owned settlements.

 

[raystuttgart]

I think that if you wish to develop this feature further, one idea is to make the escaped units able to establish "barbarian player"-owned settlements.

At the moment I will keep this feature simple.
It is just a little "fun feature".

So it will be little more than these units running away and potentially being captured again.

An issue with such "barbarian player"-owned settlements would be that they could not really do anything because they would not have any means of building up an economy and really doing anything interesting because the "barbarian player" would not have any ships or a "Europe Harbour" to sell his goods.

Maybe at some point in the future this concept might get expanded.

 

[mscibor]

Runaway / Fleeing Criminals, Indentured Servants, African Slaves and Native Slaves
[...]
So you or another European Player could capture the "runaway" again.
(Natives will ignore them.)

Hope this will be fun.

I like this feature

I have uploaded a full implementation of Monasteries and Forts.

According to screenshots it seems that you can build forts and monasteries outside cultural borders. When building one do you need natives approval (in the same way as establishing new settlement)?
I can also see that forts and monasteries inreases yields production. Does it mean that you can work this tiles while in town borders at the same time when they are active (with some military unit)?

 

[raystuttgart]

According to screenshots it seems that you can build forts and monasteries outside cultural borders.

Correct.

When building one do you need natives approval (in the same way as establishing new settlement)?

Nope.
Forts and Monasteries do not generate an area of influence so they don't take away plots from Natives.
Also you cannot build a Fort or a Monastery directly on plots owned by another Civ without declaring war.

I can also see that forts and monasteries inreases yields production.

The yield changes only result from forrests being cut down.
Forts and Monasteries do not directly influence yields.

Does it mean that you can work this tiles while in town borders at the same time when they are active (with some military unit)?

Theoretically yes.
But again, Forts and Monasteries do not directly influence yields.
I would rather build them short outside the city radius, so other improvements can be built inside the city radius.

 

[raystuttgart]

The feature Runaway / Fleeing Criminals, Indentured Servants, African Slaves and Native Slaves is now fully implemented, tested and uploaded to SVN.
(as mentioned here)

The feature could theoretically be expanded to a much bigger feature of course.
But at the moment I am simply happy with this.
(Recapturing the runaways was quite fun in my tests. )

As information for modders and modmodders:
There is a new UnitAI (UNITAI_FLEEING) for this.

 

[Schmiddie]

Hi Folks,

the last days I have totally revised all buttons, city management graphics and unit artstyles of the military units.

Some graphics are still the same, some are new. Furthermore I have implemented unit artstyles for the King's troops of Denmark, Sweden, Dutch and England (artillery, infantry, dragoons and cuirassiers). This lead to a big change of graphics...

Here - as an example - is the new unit graphic set of England (player). The kings troops got the previous player graphic (red uniforms).

I tried to hold them close to the revolutionary "continental" army uniforms:

artillery:
left: cannon
right: light cannon

Spoiler :

cavalry:
up: veterans
down: dragoons

Spoiler :

cuirassier:
left: veterans
right: cuirassier

Spoiler :

infantry:
left: veterans
right: musketman

Spoiler :

and last but not least: George Washington himself...

Spoiler :

The graphic update is uploaded to rays current version.

 

[raystuttgart]

Looks great !