Replace trading post graphic with farms?

[Ykai]

Hi all,

Just a simple (or so I hope and guess) request: I would like to change the way trading posts look to be exactly the same as the way farms look.

On the one hand, trading posts are extremely useful and I need to build them. On the other hand, I find them extremely ugly and they disrupt my personal gameplay in the sense that I just don't like looking at my empire when it has been spammed full with TPs. I much, much prefer the look of farms.

Besides, it makes sense to me: on the grand scale of things, it has only been very recently that people started living in cities on a large scale, and economies used to be largely sustained by agriculture. Whatever there was outside of the cities, certainly wasn't as large as an entire tile in Civ. There should be farms all over the place.

I have no modding experience with Civ, let alone Civ 5. Could anyone tell me how I could get this done?

Thanks!

 

[Louis XXIV]

I was thinking of making it so Plantations are the cash crop places and farms are for food production. At a minimum, you can tell the two apart (which you couldn't do with two types of farms). Wait for the modding tools, I'm pretty sure it's easy to associate a graphic with a tile improvement and to change tile values, so I wouldn't worry too much.

 

[Paasky]

1) Create a backup of CIV5Improvements.xml (use ctrl+f in the steam folder to find it)
2) Open the original with notepad.
3) Search for IMPROVEMENT_TRADING_POST
4) Replace ART_DEF_IMPROVEMENT_TRADING_POST with ART_DEF_IMPROVEMENT_FARM
5) Save

And you're done.

 

[Ykai]

1) Create a backup of CIV5Improvements.xml (use ctrl+f in the steam folder to find it)
2) Open the original with notepad.
3) Search for IMPROVEMENT_TRADING_POST
4) Replace ART_DEF_IMPROVEMENT_TRADING_POST with ART_DEF_IMPROVEMENT_FARM
5) Save

And you're done.

Thanks for the suggestion. For some reason, doing this causes all trading posts to disappear completely. The graphic, I mean. The tiles are trading posts but look like they are unimproved.

Any idea what's missing? I've dug through that file to look for other references to trading posts but I haven't found anything yet

 

[Ykai]

Anyone have a clue as to how this is done with the new modding tools available?

I understand that the above solution involved editing the core game files. I have put the originals back and fortunately, this has not affected my ability to play the game or get steam achievements.

So, I'd like to do this through a mod. I haven't seen any graphics mods at all on here so far, is this because it is easier said than done... or?

 

[Tomice]

I thought about the exact same desperate move, but hopefully soon someone will come up with something more appropriate.

Ideally, they'd look like small versions of the cities of the same era and culture like in civ4. Or even better, like villages without scyscrapers, only using the smallest buildings. Onecould also keep the well in the middle as distinction.

 

[PTM]

Thanks for the suggestion. For some reason, doing this causes all trading posts to disappear completely. The graphic, I mean. The tiles are trading posts but look like they are unimproved.

Any idea what's missing? I've dug through that file to look for other references to trading posts but I haven't found anything yet

A cursory glance at the issue:
Unpacking the art assets reveals artdefine files, somewhat similar to those in Civ4. Improvement graphics are apparently tied to resource of the tile they're erected upon. There is more to it than this, however, because simply creating an entry to force a wheatless farm on all tiles does not work (even when correctly setting the landmark reload flag and copying the entirety of the three landmark.xml files into new files with the appropriate changes made).

I'll look at it again later, if not only because my own mod requires improvement graphics changes (I'm working on a growable cottage improvement for the science yield; I have a non-growable cottage in the game now using the manufactory graphic as a first attempt). Perhaps someone else can help in the interim.

 

[Thalassicus]

I feel the ideal look (though likely beyond our capabilities at this stage) would be like the farm on the edges, but with a small town in the center and a few trees scattered around. I agree the current graphic is... lacking. Farms in Civ V look so fantastic, best terrain graphics I've seen, then the gameplay actively discourages us from building them.

I'll experiment and see what might be possible. Trading posts have been one of the things that are unnerving. both visually and how they dominate gameplay. Firaxis just had to choose the worst-looking improvement as the one that's best to spam everywhere in the default game...

 

[poncratias]

Maybe


.) Scale the trading posts smaller

.) Change their graphics with towns graphic from Civ IV

.)would it be possible to have a randomized graphic for the trading posts, with like let's say , on one tile there are 3 huts, next tile got 5, next tile only 1 hut to see, etc...

 

[losteden]

This is perhaps one of my top 5 most wanted changes, the trading post is just god awful ugly and I actually made an account here so I could specifically post in this thread about it. I've taken a look at the XML files and I've attempted to do a few things. Unfortunately the Trading Post is perhaps one of the best tile improvements because you can build it on any terrain and it yields +2 gold which is +1 more than any other basic tile improvement.

At first I tried changing the value of the gold and food to make Farms more appealing to the AI unfortunately there is something built into the AI that makes it prefer Trading Posts over Farms even if the return numbers are in favor of Farms.

Alternate Solution

Instead I've resolved to simply remove Trading Posts from terrains like Grasslands or Plains, they can only be built on Tundra and Deserts now which I much prefer.

Unfortunately it requires modding a core file Civ5Improvements.xml and removing 2 rows for Trading Posts labled TERRAIN_GRASS and TERRAIN_PLAINS hopefully for the more desperate people, this will be enough. This will effect your economy but at least your city will look pretty

If you're worried about your economy you can adjust more numbers on several different tiles in Civ5Improvements.xml to make up for the loss of money from Trading Posts. For example I make mines produce 2 gold instead of 1 production and I make Livestock produce 2 production instead of 1 production. Voila! Also if you want brown farmlands you will also have to remove TERRAIN_DESERTS from the XML file as well. I tested this solution earlier and so far it seems to be working.

Edit: For anyone wondering you can also load saved games after you've made these changes, however any Trading Posts built prior will simply be ignored by the workers and no new ones will be built, you can even manually convert the Trading Posts into Farms and they will remain so throughout the game.

 

[Tomice]

I feel the ideal look (though likely beyond our capabilities at this stage) would be like the farm on the edges, but with a small town in the center and a few trees scattered around.

This! While trading posts should still be distinguishable from farms or newly founded cities, this look would be awesome.

 

[greatgeek]

Why not replace the trading post graphics with low population city models?