Rhye's Catapult

I disagree with your AI inability to handle it comment! (although I must secretly admit the infeasability of the pop up system, however much I love it :p)

The AI managed aquaducts and hospitals just fine in c3, and I doubt it suddenly became ******ed in that area just because of an expansion pack... err, new game.

As to the crowded thing, I hope to gawd the AI picks up on it. If not, I'll just snap the disc in half and never look back :p
 
I think the AI might understand the idea of having to build a building to allow its city to grow more (there actually aren't any buildings like that exactly in Civ4). What it probably wouldn't be able to do (under my model at least) is decide whether or not it would be better for each individual city to be kept as a colony or upgrade it to a full city. It might be possible for a person who knows C++ well to code it in once we get the SDK, but I see no way how the current AI would have the ability to undertand it.

Oh, and when I was talking before about adding an early cannon unit, I meant to have that instead of the trebuchet, not both. I agree that adding in both would be excessive.
 
Aeon221 said:
I really REALLY like the Crowded effect, but I think the fort one is a good idea too. I can count on one finger the number of games I bothered to build a fort. Give it a lot of bonuses and strength and... well... then it becomes fairly useful.

But the crowded thing is just brilliant!
I think something along the lines suggested here for forts is definately called for, but I see less justification for the crowded thing.
 
Gunner said:
@Blasphemous
Civ is not a realistic game at all. You can press a button in regular Civ4 and prevent a city from growing. Essentially everything that the player does makes no sense if you take it in a litteral sense as the leader ordering that thing to be done. For example, since when did your country's leader order all of his citizens exactly where to work? And determine when and where to build a factory, university, or bank? The fact is that essentially everything in Civ4 is abstracted so that its fun to play. I honestly think that adding in little modifier popups for every single colony you have would end up being a pain to manage. I think my system would be much simpler and be more in keeping with the level of abstraction found in most of the rest of the game.

Actually I don't think what either of us thinks is really that important, because I doubt that the AI would be able to handle either model very well (or even at all).
First of all, let's remember that the point of this project is to mod the game for a more historically credible and realistic worldmap game. Obviously the game is unrealistic, but if we can change that some of the time and stick to the game's style that's a good thing.
Even if realism is not such a virtue itself here, keeping in line with the rest of the game is, and building a building to trigger an event is definately out of line with the style of cIV. We had that in Civ3 with Aqueducts and Hospitals but in the sequel that was deliberately left out for a more realistic and organic system called "Health". What we need to try and do as much as possible here is use the existing game mechanics and expand on them, rather than creating mechanics of a kind the game does not ship with.
I agree that the popups system is ultimately unworkable, both because of the bother-factor and because of AI stupidity, but also now that I think about it because of the Rule of Style (that we must keep in style with the game's original mechanics). This leads me to think we should stick with the following model:
1. A new column, Emperial (or Colonial), is added to the civics screen.
2. Colonies do not have some or all of the Draft and Hurry Production buttons. These are replaced with colonization-specific actions. Each action corresponds with one Civic or more (not necessarily from the new column). One of these actions represents a brutal act of overtaxation, netting a hefty :gold:/pop boost but also creating some :mad:/pop (1.5/pop?) and increasing chances of flipping to Barbarian - a chance that will be inherent to all colonies.
3. Colonies receive certain bonuses and certain limitations, corresponding with certain Civics (mostly in the new column, but sometimes not). Colonies would typically get some kind of :gold: bonus relating to resources the colony has access to in combination with the number of trade routes. Colonies would usually be limited in growth in a few possible manners - automatic :yuck:; higher :food:/growth costs; higher :food:/pop/turn eaten; sometimes max 1pop/garrisonned unit (only effective at time of growth). Colonies all receive 1:gp:/turn, with some civics increasing this bonus and/or adding %:gp: bonuses.
4. Any Colony hitting size 6 automatically morphs into a city. We can add additional ways to morph, such as a certain level of culture or a certain income. The player's control of the morph would be indirect - only through the mechanics controlling the factors that lead to the morph. An exception can be any great person being able to trigger a morph in a Colony he is in.
5. One Civic in the new column will end colonization, removing most growth barriers (except for the auto-:yuck:) and disallowing all the colony-specific actions. Like with Emancipation, Colonies would get :mad: for every rival with this Civic unless you have it too. This should also increase chance of flipping to Barbarian.
 
I like that new idea you have using civics for colonies Blasphemous. I don't think it would be productive to speculate on what the exact values should be now, but it is good to get a general idea. One thing I would change, though, is that rather than having to press the button to make the extra money and stuff it should just be persistent. By making it persistent there is a much better chance that the AI could do it, and it would also reduce micro management.


On a different note, how did we get moved to the main C&C forum? Did Rhye request it or did a moderator just do it because there was no file?
 
Probably because we lack a file :p

I would suggest Colonial Policies, rather than Imperial Policies.

Here are the civic steps that make most sense to me based on what I know of the subject:

1) Settlement*:
No upkeep
starting civic

2) Military Colonies:
med upkeep
Cities under size 4 get a bonus to military unit production and defense, malus to growth
Newly conquered cities take longer to assimilate

3) (Overseas) Colonization:
low upkeep
Ships move faster, cities under size 4 get a commerce and food bonus for being on water

4) Imperialism:
med upkeep
Cities under size 4 have a severe malus to growth, but get a significant bonus to commerce for each resource in city radius

5) Economic Imperialism:
high upkeep
Malus to happiness for non-users
Significant bonus to commmerce in cities _larger_ than size 6
Settlers cannot be built
Newly conquered cities take significantly longer to assimilate

****
I have no idea what to call the settlement civic, its just the only thing to pop into my head :p

The others are intended to represent the real world at various stages.

-Military Colonies were used by many ancient civilizations to establish a stronger control of conquered regions. Retired troops (often part of the unit that captured the territory) would be settled in the occupied lands as farmers in a strictly laid out town. If there was an uprising, they formed a fairly effective veteran militia for the support of the local garrison.

-Overseas colonization is meant to model everything from the Phonecians to the Brits, and I think it would do alright at that.

-Imperialism is a bit different from this in the real world, but the basic idea (exploitation of resources using the minimum possible paid labor in order to maximize profit) would be modeled along these lines. It would be better to think of the small cities as labor camps, as opposed to actual cities. However, as Imperialism was inherently unprofitable for the government, high upkeep is a must. Individuals made fortunes, not governments.

-Economic Imperialism is the current system at work in the world today. As I have it above, it is an admixture of decolonization, nationalization, and the multinational firms (Walmart, McDonalds, Ikea) that derive massive profits without direct control over a region (as many thought necessary in the past). The idea is to include within the choice the factors that made said choice both necessary and desireable.
 
Hello Rhye!
Here are my ideas for the mods:

- revolutions: as an addition to unhappiness we could introduce revolutions when a city that was unhappy/unhealthy(!) for a specific nr. of turns can have a chance to revolt. This chance would be affected by the number of unhappy/unhealhty citizens, the size of the empire, and by the distance from the capitol city. A revolted city could become barbarian, or a new nation (if the 18 limit can be changed or there's a free slot) and can affect the neighboring cities as well, regardless of their happyness/health, taking them to the new nation's side. After the discovery of the liberalism (or constitution?) the revolution's chance would increase, and even the capitol city can revolt (in this case I think that the empire should be splitted into a few nations). Will increase even more with Industrialism (or Communism?). These increases could be balanced with some civics: let's say the increase would diminish if the representation civic is chosen for liberalism/constitution and if the state property or environmentalism civic is chosen in case of industrialism/communism. This decrease can be extended for other technologies too.

- for colonies: what if the migrating nations get one type of "colony" or camp which is highly mobile but allow only a few, specific improvements (like advanced barracks which give production if a military unit is produced in the city, or the excess food is also added to the military unit production), and can have a chance to become city if it's population is over 3 (the player could not prevent or trigger this, maybe indirectly). The overseas colonies would be available for everyone and behave differently.
 
thank you all for your input, though you know it's quite early for that.

I haven't followed your discussions too much because I was involved in investigating the SDK.
It was driving me crazy trying to find out what was causing crashes, error popups etc.
In the end I asked Firaxis lads and got the true answer: it's hardcoded, it will be fixed in the expansion pack
 
Rhye said:
it's hardcoded, it will be fixed in the expansion pack
Ack! If I didn't know better I'd think they do this on purpose again and again to keep us buying. :(
 
So you mean that no new patch is planned? When the expansion pack will be available? And the SDK? Is there any documentation about the SDK available?

Rhye said:
I think it's tester's fault. Including me.
If anyone had found out this issue one month ago, it would have been included in the patch. Now it's just too late.
 
Gunner said:
So did they definitely say that it would be impossible to increase the limit even with the SDK? I thought that idea was that there wouldn't be anything hardcoded once it was released.

It's called a bug. Sucks, but it happens...

enen said:
So you mean that no new patch is planned? When the expansion pack will be available? And the SDK? Is there any documentation about the SDK available?

A new patch (including SDK) is already done, but awaiting approval from 2K Games before it can be released.
 
So you mean that no new patch is planned? When the expansion pack will be available? And the SDK? Is there any documentation about the SDK available?

It means that it will be the last patch before the XP... And the XP will be available in about six months...
 
Moving on, what resources and religions will be included?

I'd like to vote for only having three religions in the game, since there will be so many ups and downs with regards to the number of active civs. Plus, 7 religions seems to split everything up too much, so that some people end up with multiple religions, only one of which is useful.
 
Aeon221 said:
Moving on, what resources and religions will be included?

I'd like to vote for only having three religions in the game, since there will be so many ups and downs with regards to the number of active civs. Plus, 7 religions seems to split everything up too much, so that some people end up with multiple religions, only one of which is useful.
I'm too tired to agree or disagree right now but a thought just came fluttering by saying that some of the game balance rests on the number of religions and we need to be very careful here.
 
Though we cannot decide on the exact number of religions for obvious reasons. I was wondering, as the Civ 3 version was great because of historical and real world accuracy, whether ancient european Polythesium based religions would be included.

The fact that Civ 4 though it includes many ancient Europian Civ's failed to include their religions even if they failed the test of time bewildered me. If a Civ that has only been great once and no longer is can be included cannot religion?
 
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