Some ideas for game mechanics

[Eusebio]

Sorry if I made any spelling or grammatical mistake, english isn't my mother language.
These are some ideas I was wondering if would be good (or even possible) to add for this mod. I'm not really good with programming, so I don't know what is and isn't feasible in Civilization IV. They're basically all about adding new mechanics to the game, and maybe they won't be that interesting in terms of gameplay, as they would add what might be seen as unnecessary challenges to the game (one of them could easily lead to some unfair situations), so this should be taken into account.

1 - Map Exploration Mechanics
This might be nitpicking from me, but I always thought it was weird that a civilization in the Prehistoric Era was able to 'map' it's entire continent before discovering the technologies necessary to do this. I think that, in the ealier Eras, you shouldn't be able to map the lands you discover (for a long time, Europe didn't have a clear idea of how Asia and Africa really were, for example). There are 3 kinds of tiles in terms of exploration: the unexplored ones, the dark spaces you haven't set foot yet; the visible spaces, those tiles inside your units and cities' fields of view, very bright, where you can spot other units; and the explored spaces, those you have seen in the past, but aren't currently being seen by any unit. In my opinion, there should be a mechanic where one given civilization, before discovering some specific techology (maybe "Exploration" in Ancient Era) shouldn't be able to get these explored spaces. Any tile that would become an explored tile should convert back to an unexplored one. You could still send your units to explore the lands if you wish, but given that all tiles will go back to the unexplored state once the units leave it, there's really not much of a point in doing so until your civilization reachs a certain level of development.

2 - Less Fragmented Empires
Another problem I have with the gameplay is that sometimes empires become really fragmented in it's geographical distributions. I have seen a lot of civilizations that spread cities so far apart that their borders didn't connect until much later in the game. I think that cities under this condition should be harder to maintain in order to encourage players to build cities somewhat next to each other, thus creating a cohesive national region. I know there are some mechanics in the game that deals with this (city maitenance getting bigger the farther it is from the capital, and cities in other continents getting even harder to keep) but I still think it's far too easy to have a really fragmented empire, something I don't think it would be true in real life. There is a "Trade Group" mechanic in the game that tells which city is connected to each other; we could use this mechanic as a way to tell the game to add even bigger penalties in production and maintenance to all cities not connected to your capital (this way, even cities in the same continent would have penalties for being unconnected). A player could deal with this problem by sending units from connected cities to those unconnected ones, like soldiers to help defend these cities or early merchants to rush the slower productions in there: but this would mean making sure these units get into these distant cities, and other players could easily prevent this from happening, therefore simulating the complexities in dealing with such geographical fragmantations.

3 - Resource-Dependent Technologies
I said there was an idea that could easily lead to unfair situations, and this is it. The concept here is simple (though I don't know if it is possible): link certain technologies to access to certain resources; if a civilization doesn't have access to said resource, than it won't be able to research the technology (or will have a harder time doing so). For example, "Animal Riding" in prehistoric age. If a player doesn't have access to horses (be it troughd irect access to horses or trough commerce), it shouldn't be able to research this technology (or it should take longer for him to do so). This way, we could simulate how certain geographic conditions impact the development of civilizations: the Aztecs and Mayans didn't have any cavalry because there were no horses in Pre-Columbian America, for example. This could create dynamics that are as interesting as they are unfair: a civilization that begins in a small isolated island whitout horses in it would have an even harder time to fully develop, if it would be possible at all.

As I stated earlier, I'm not sure how feasible any of these ideas could be, nor if they would be interesting in terms of gameplay. My approach here is more of a simulation one, and this could lead to unfair situations that aren't really fun in multiplayer matches, for example. The approach here is mainly to add new mechanics to the game that could lead to interesting situations that would require different strategies in each game, where the fun would arise more from the story being told than from becoming the winner; basically, Dwarf Fortress' "Losing is Fun" motto applied to Civ IV.

 

[cobbaut]

1 - Map Exploration Mechanics

I like this one.
The other two are also good suggestions, but I'm not sure (my) gameplay would be more fun.

 

[Somebody613]

All of these are making the game more challenging, but at the same time more realistic.
So I say it'd be good to at least make them as a "more realism" option of sorts, because those make sense (though, yes, I'd hate to play WITH them as well, lol).
And techs CAN be linked to at least map resources - there's definitely a tech that requires some lava-based improvement or whatnot.
That would make sense, actually even more than the reverse "tech reveals resource" mechanic.
And it could (if already isn't) split between Tech A that reveals the resource, and Tech B that is dependent on having it.
Not just building stuff, but actually researching it, lol.
Just make sure that none of these techs are required for the Era progression (cause it'd make civs stuck in their current Era, and that is a BAD mechanic).
Unless you make it not binary, but a penalty (though I'd see it much more logical to be binary, if you can prevent the Era problem).
And, in fact, this would make civs more diverse like in Real Life - as in, someone has Horses, yet someone has Camels or Elephants, leading to very different UNITS.
Also, much better trade "logic" - trading not just "hammers used as Science", but actual TECHS (otherwise currently unavailable altogether).
I LIKE IT!

As of map revealing, again, it makes it a harder game, but it's also kinda more FUN, so why not?

And as of fragmented empires - do you know how much I HATE that?
As in, don't EVER agree to a cultural subsuming of a city that is on the other SIDE of a gulf (like Greece for Ottomans on Pit's map).
You will keep LOSING WORKERS A DOZEN, unless you micromanage Forts ALL THE WAY to that stupid city.
Because these DUMBASSES will try building ROADS IN THE WILD - and, predictably, will become ANIMAL FOOD en masse.
DAMMIT THE STUPID AI, lol.
The same, of course, applies to remote cities on the same continent - the IDIOTS will auto-build roads to get there and will become road-mince for wildlife.
And all of this on a map WITHOUT barbs or wars, it's literally on ANY map.
DAMN.

 

[Thunderbrd]

1 - Map Exploration Mechanics
This might be nitpicking from me, but I always thought it was weird that a civilization in the Prehistoric Era was able to 'map' it's entire continent before discovering the technologies necessary to do this. I think that, in the ealier Eras, you shouldn't be able to map the lands you discover (for a long time, Europe didn't have a clear idea of how Asia and Africa really were, for example). There are 3 kinds of tiles in terms of exploration: the unexplored ones, the dark spaces you haven't set foot yet; the visible spaces, those tiles inside your units and cities' fields of view, very bright, where you can spot other units; and the explored spaces, those you have seen in the past, but aren't currently being seen by any unit. In my opinion, there should be a mechanic where one given civilization, before discovering some specific techology (maybe "Exploration" in Ancient Era) shouldn't be able to get these explored spaces. Any tile that would become an explored tile should convert back to an unexplored one. You could still send your units to explore the lands if you wish, but given that all tiles will go back to the unexplored state once the units leave it, there's really not much of a point in doing so until your civilization reachs a certain level of development.

As an option something like this is planned to be available later.

2 - Less Fragmented Empires
Another problem I have with the gameplay is that sometimes empires become really fragmented in it's geographical distributions. I have seen a lot of civilizations that spread cities so far apart that their borders didn't connect until much later in the game. I think that cities under this condition should be harder to maintain in order to encourage players to build cities somewhat next to each other, thus creating a cohesive national region. I know there are some mechanics in the game that deals with this (city maitenance getting bigger the farther it is from the capital, and cities in other continents getting even harder to keep) but I still think it's far too easy to have a really fragmented empire, something I don't think it would be true in real life. There is a "Trade Group" mechanic in the game that tells which city is connected to each other; we could use this mechanic as a way to tell the game to add even bigger penalties in production and maintenance to all cities not connected to your capital (this way, even cities in the same continent would have penalties for being unconnected). A player could deal with this problem by sending units from connected cities to those unconnected ones, like soldiers to help defend these cities or early merchants to rush the slower productions in there: but this would mean making sure these units get into these distant cities, and other players could easily prevent this from happening, therefore simulating the complexities in dealing with such geographical fragmantations.

Interesting idea and I think there's something of that in place already in that it's a lot more expensive when your cities aren't connected to your national trade route and bonuses aren't being shared so that can be a hefty penalty. Maybe more could be done but if it was I'd like to see something like colonial splitting options on non-vassal games.

3 - Resource-Dependent Technologies
I said there was an idea that could easily lead to unfair situations, and this is it. The concept here is simple (though I don't know if it is possible): link certain technologies to access to certain resources; if a civilization doesn't have access to said resource, than it won't be able to research the technology (or will have a harder time doing so). For example, "Animal Riding" in prehistoric age. If a player doesn't have access to horses (be it troughd irect access to horses or trough commerce), it shouldn't be able to research this technology (or it should take longer for him to do so). This way, we could simulate how certain geographic conditions impact the development of civilizations: the Aztecs and Mayans didn't have any cavalry because there were no horses in Pre-Columbian America, for example. This could create dynamics that are as interesting as they are unfair: a civilization that begins in a small isolated island whitout horses in it would have an even harder time to fully develop, if it would be possible at all.

As I stated earlier, I'm not sure how feasible any of these ideas could be, nor if they would be interesting in terms of gameplay. My approach here is more of a simulation one, and this could lead to unfair situations that aren't really fun in multiplayer matches, for example. The approach here is mainly to add new mechanics to the game that could lead to interesting situations that would require different strategies in each game, where the fun would arise more from the story being told than from becoming the winner; basically, Dwarf Fortress' "Losing is Fun" motto applied to Civ IV.

We've discussed this in the past and may circle back around to it. We have the means to do it with our coding but we haven't designed the tech tree to work well with it and changes to the tree are hugely disruptive to other elements in the game so take a lot of work. The current unit review project might end up making it a little easier to adapt adjustments later. Or harder if the documentation on it isn't kept up on as changes are made.

 

[Eusebio]

Is it possible to create an event that applies a modifier for the income being generated for a certain number of turns? By that I mean that during these turns, after all the player's income is calculated as usual, the final result gets multiplied by some number (1.5, 2, 0.5, etc.) in order to reduce/increase it.

 

[Toffer90]

Is it possible to create an event that applies a modifier for the income being generated for a certain number of turns? By that I mean that during these turns, after all the player's income is calculated as usual, the final result gets multiplied by some number (1.5, 2, 0.5, etc.) in order to reduce/increase it.

It's possible and fairly easy to implement in c++ code. However, the entire event mechanic should undergo a bigger overhaul at some point, with the goal of making it more meaningful in ways akin to what you suggest.

 

[Galadrion]

Hm, some interesting ideas in here. I can see the exploration idea leading to increased patrolling/long-range recon missions, although the AI programming may need to be tweaked to emphasize this a bit more, or they'd be put at something of a disadvantage.

The "fragmented empire" idea is a good one, though it would probably drive up the operating costs of both overseas colonization (which is appropriate) and conquest (again, appropriate). Again, the AI programming would need to be tweaked, or expansion/war could easily leak to the collapse and dissolution of all sides of the action. War is already a hideously dangerous undertaking for the AIs, possibly a little more so for them than for the player; this could be crippling for them if not implemented carefully and correctly.

The idea of resource-dependent technologies is already in the game, in one case anyway: Waterproof Cement. If you don't have a volcano within one of your cities' fat crosses, this technology is simply unavailable for research. Technically, the religion techs are similar, not in that they are resource-dependent, but in that they are gated by outside influences. Personally, I would argue against making a technology unavailable because of resource availability (and would also argue that Waterproof Cement shouldn't be so unavailable), but could see the research costs for such selected technologies being considerably higher - a factor of two or three wouldn't be too crippling, in my opinion. (Probably around three. That would encourage people to delay researching such technologies for around a third to half an era, until the costs of other contemporary technologies start becoming comparable.) Particularly apt technologies for such resource-dependence could include all of the 'Punk techs, Animal Riding (as was suggested) and/or Megafauna Domestication (which I've seen referred to as Animal or Prehistoric Punk), maybe Refining (with oil as the restrictive resource) and Railroad or Steam Engine (with coal likewise) - I'd argue against restricting both RR and SE, though. Similarly, almost any power-generation technology could be added to the list, with the appropriate fuel resource as a gate. Again, though, the AI programming would need to be adjusted to compensate for the changing rules-ground; this would change the investment costs for these technologies, altering the return-on-investment curves and possibly throwing off the value of a given technology at a given time. It's not that this is a difficult or impossible proposal; it's just that implications (probably) go farther than anticipated and have some wide-ranging consequences.

 

[Eusebio]

Do you guys think simulating attrition, like Rise of Nation does, would be interesting, gameplay-wise? The idea was to create a new attribute for units, I will call it "autonomy" just for the sake of this post; it would be a positive integer that would vary depending of the unit. The mechanic is pretty straightforward: whenever a unit spends one turn in a tile not belonging to it's or a allied civilization, there would be a 50% chance for the autonomy number to be reduced in one. Once this number reaches zero, the unit dies. Once the unit spends on turn inside a friendly tile (be it from his civ or an allied one), this number resets to the unit's default.
Of course, there could be ways to circumnavigate this. First, some units might naturally have a higher default autonomy number, like explorers or scouts. There could also be some promotions, civics or leader traits designed to increase/decrease it. But the main way to mitigate this, as in Rise of Nations, is to create "supply units", like supply wagons. They could have an effect on the area surrounding them negating the autonomy-decreasing effect of non-friendly tiles. Of course, once those units are targeted and destroyed, it's aura goes away and your army start receiving attrition again, making it strategical to target enemy supply units.
One problem here is that this idea could clash against the fixed borders setting, somewhat. One could simply "cheat" this mechanic by converting an enemy tile to a friendly one with their military units.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Do you guys think simulating attrition, like Rise of Nation does, would be interesting, gameplay-wise? The idea was to create a new attribute for units, I will call it "autonomy" just for the sake of this post; it would be a positive integer that would vary depending of the unit. The mechanic is pretty straightforward: whenever a unit spends one turn in a tile not belonging to it's or a allied civilization, there would be a 50% chance for the autonomy number to be reduced in one. Once this number reaches zero, the unit dies. Once the unit spends on turn inside a friendly tile (be it from his civ or an allied one), this number resets to the unit's default.
Of course, there could be ways to circumnavigate this. First, some units might naturally have a higher default autonomy number, like explorers or scouts. There could also be some promotions, civics or leader traits designed to increase/decrease it. But the main way to mitigate this, as in Rise of Nations, is to create "supply units", like supply wagons. They could have an effect on the area surrounding them negating the autonomy-decreasing effect of non-friendly tiles. Of course, once those units are targeted and destroyed, it's aura goes away and your army start receiving attrition again, making it strategical to target enemy supply units.
One problem here is that this idea could clash against the fixed borders setting, somewhat. One could simply "cheat" this mechanic by converting an enemy tile to a friendly one with their military units.

A morale system is in design, as is some supply side stuff, both optional of course. Attrition would seem related to morale and a possible effect at very low morale could be to regularly check against full on going awol. Will have to add that into consideration further I think.

 

[Eusebio]

A morale system is in design, as is some supply side stuff, both optional of course. Attrition would seem related to morale and a possible effect at very low morale could be to regularly check against full on going awol. Will have to add that into consideration further I think.

I could try to implement this myself, depending on how complicated this could get. Is it possible to implement this attribute with this new mechanic using/editing some python script? Or is it more complicated to work with these kind of modding (balancing and AI-adjustment issues aside)?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Naw its fairly simple C++ modding but it's coding rather than python either way - and then it gets far more complex to consider into the AI. There are some steps taken towards this system structure already and once I can get back into a modding routine it won't be too far off I don't think.