Some rambling ideas for 1.23

[gatinho65]

These are some of my thoughts. I'll put them in this thread so as to not overwhelm the 1.23 thread, where I already posted something too long lol

All civilizations alter their environments, that seems to be a defining trait as we all know. Most of the ones we are familiar with, certainly our own, are quite destructive of their environments and resources over time. However, more sustainable practices, technologies and beliefs have also been around as long as human societies have existed. I think it would great to use existing game mechanics to see how those play out, tweaking numbers and incentives/disincentives and adding some additional improvement build options.

Let's safely assume that the traditional trajectory of chopping, mining, cottages, industrial revolution, resource extraction, modern/future tech has already been pretty much planned into the game to be successful. The challenge is to create some alternatives, or just tweak things so that different pathways carry advantages/disadvantages in contrast with this 'main' pathway through the eras as long as the game lasts.

In some ways, what needs to be altered is that penalties for the traditional approach are more realistic lol, meaning stronger. Certainly most of the civilizations in the game collapsed in the real world, usually in some way connected to the devastating costs of their way of using/abusing their natural endowment of resources and the social/political consequences that followed.

Changing calculations so that resource management, landscape alteration, pollution, health, happiness all have real consequences in the game depending on choices made from the beginning (or at any point going forward in time) should be a basic approach. And throughout the eras there should be options for altering pathways that moderate the penalties or create new benefits. A civ that starts out on the traditional pathway could make a change and perhaps gain success and mitigate costs of earlier fast advancement (bad health unhappiness pollution and dissent), and a civ that starts out 'green' could change its mind and maybe leap into contention or avoid elimination.

The possibility that the traditional civ will still overwhelm and conquer the more sustainably oriented (or you could say less utilitarian) civ should always remain, but it should also be possible to hold out, survive/thrive until the benefits of alternative pathways really kick in.

Different religions have had a variety of beliefs and approaches towards the nonhuman world, including even its inanimate components. Those could have an impact on the game, as they influence tenets and civics. Without having to create new traits, civics or religions, I think we could add aspects to them that have consequences in the game depending on chosen strategies.

We could say for example that Christianity has a utilitarian approach to resources (all made for mankind) and that will have different benefits and penalties over time compared to a religion like Voudoun that has a more enchanted and less utilitarian view. Since HR has a bunch of fabulous religion choices already, its just a matter of giving each one a set of characteristics with pluses and minuses when it comes to techs, improvements and their eventual consequences for health, unhappiness, dissent as well as wealth and progress rates.

A Christian civ could 'suffer' if it goes a green way, or a nature cognizant civ could 'suffer' if it goes the traditional utilitarian way. Just examples. But then you could always change religions and gain a different set of benefits, as well as costs. There should be something less neutral about the religions/tenets when it comes to resource use and development strategy. In the real world belief systems had everything to do with relationships with and use of the natural endowment, with significant consequences.

Existing civics could be tweaked in the same way. I'm assuming that there lots of fractions involved lol, so it may not be easy to get things set up, but it is possible. Right?

Land use options: There should be a way of altering ALL landscapes except arctic, as there are in the real world. Many of these are very ancient, even altering deserts so that they are inhabitable and productive. The game already offers many options but most of them degrade the environment/resource over time. There should be alternative improvement builds that are sustainable. Some can even add value over time and as the eras advance.

Forests: not the same thing as a bunch of trees lol. They should have a random but decent chance of growing in existing plots and spreading to adjacent plots.

Forests are home to animals. The animals should spawn there as long as the forest stays intact and should be able to spread to adjacent tiles along with forests.

Camps should preserve the forest but lower the chance of animals spawning over time.

There could be a hunting preserve improvement, where the yield of animals is less to begin with but steady over time and allows animals to still spawn with fair chances and spread to adjacent squares. Hunting preserves are ancient, they should be available with Walls and require Record Keeping.

If a forest and its animals, even with camps or preserves, makes it into the later eras, the value should go up significantly because there will be a lot fewer of them, bringing in increased income and then later increased culture. If wonders increase in culture production over time, it should be possible to do this with certain improvements, like hunting/animal preserve.

Animals near humans sometimes rampage, even today lol, so if you have an elephant preserve you could add a small risk for a rampage to an improvement nearby as a random event. Or a leopard or tiger or bear eats someone or something lol

Tree farms: not the same as a forest lol, but it should provide added health and good income and production, though slightly less than a real forest. Something that shows up over time rather than in straight up hammers. Could be placed on any terrain except desert, but with the need to have access to fresh water or be improved by qanats and later irrigation. Scandinavian tree farms are as far north as the tree line, so even some of those tundra plots could have tree farms as long as there is enough moisture or access to fresh water.

Tree farms that have been around 100 years could turn into/be replaced by Prime Timber, very useful for ship building.

Fish sanctuary: Could be build in the city on a water square and not produce anything by itself but keep existing fish production sustainable and steady all through the ages, while other civ's fisheries decline over time.

Deserts: I'm not sure if you can daisy chain farms from oases already in the game but there should be a way to expand outward. Qanats are ancient Stone technology and could be placed to increase food production and daisy chained over desert squares and savannas from fresh water sources. I don't know what the value of the later irrigated farms/orchards is, but perhaps the qanat version could be slightly less productive until those other options are available. The real benefit of qanats is making harsh terrains an option for a city. It could be a building that provides the technology in the city and that then allows orchards to be built in desert squares. It should be available with Agriculture and Pastoralism.

Savannah: already improvable by pastures. They could also be improved by qanats and orchards or farms. They could also be improved with tree farms. There could also be a game preserve improvement, which allows spawning and hunting of some of those terrain using animals like leopards and deer.

Terrace: could be added to hill plots to increase food production. Terraces are used for all kinds of crops, not just rice. The type of product could depend on the base terrain and how wet it is or how adjacent to existing fresh water. They could be a good alternative to mines and quarries, especially in areas without forest.

Compost: as old as nomads learning that communal toilets at various camps throughout the year seemed to grow more useful plants lol. It could be included in Agriculture. It could be a building that holds the night soil. As time goes on the farms in cities without this building will start to decline in production and the land deteriorates, while the cities with compost continue to produce at the same rate.

Biochar: could be part of Calendar and also require Pottery and a kiln built in the city first. It could be another building that afterwards adds a bit of production to the cities farms and orchards. These farms and orchards will also continue to sustain productivity without decrease and land degradation. We should call it terra preta, or use the Tupi Guarani word for it if anyone knows what that is lol

Rotational grazing: could be another building that adds this quality to pastures. Pastures would produce less overall (mimicking the effect that comes from moving the herd) but the land and production decline wouldn't happen over time. There is probably a cool ancient word for this from some culture.

Aquaculture/aquaponics: also part of Calendar and requiring Fishing and Agriculture first. Could be built next to water source and then daisy chained out on flat terrain. And there could be an aquaculture/terrace option for hill terrains or daisy chained from them. They should add food production and health, especially for interior cities without coastal access. And they were used by ancient south american cultures even in harsh desert areas without rainfall, as long as they began near rivers or springs, so they should be buildable on all terrains.

Bee hives: produce food and income and can be built anywhere, even deserts near springs. Can be used alone. There could also be beekeeping building that will add a small productivity boost and sustainable production to the cities orchards and farms over time. Could come with Pastoralism.

The alternatives to mines and quarries and forest chopping could be a bunch of bee hives, terraces, aquaponics, tree farms, camps, preserves, and rotated pastures. Civ's will miss out on hammers but will escape land deterioration and rises in poor health, unhappiness and dissent, plus declining production over time.

Aquaponics, camps, tree farms, hunting and forest preserves should all be available on jungle terrain too, long before jungle clearance is available. People once cut down trees with stone and obsidian tools, I don't think jungle clearance should require iron working lol. It could take longer for sure, so that could be the way to distinguish jungle removal before iron working.

Even as techs advance into the far future, food production will still be basically the same, so all these early improvements are just as valuable as man reaches for space. However, unless they are done right, civ's will run into trouble meeting their basic needs.

I'm assuming that each improvement in the game has numbers for health, happiness, pollution. I think that all the versions of farms and orchards and aquaculture should start with the same cost and produce the same. However, the change comes over time. The loss of productivity and/or the increase in unhappiness unhealthy and pollution should begin to kick in as the eras advance unless the civ has built the sustainable improvement building.

The land deterioration should also kick in as the years pass. That means that even though the increase in cost or wait in time to build them was felt early in the game, as the civ's age that investment can pay off if they are lucky, play smart diplomatically and escape the stronger civ's.

Mines and quarries should have a built in time span, with some random variability. With enough time, a mine and quarry will be tapped out. This will force all civ's to avoid covering every hill with a mine early in the game, because otherwise they will run out of resources down the road. However, teaching the AI to NOT cover their civ's with mines and quarries might be tricky lol, that's where the actual modding is something I know nothing about. Ideally, having a built in code that makes civ's aware of over-extraction should prevent the 'traditional' civ's from jumping so far ahead of the 'alternative' civ's.

With Education there could be some more advanced buildings specializing in any of these sustainable industries, having a substantial but fair cost to build but giving a boost to production and culture. Later, it could provide a boost in commerce as organic production versus the fertilized industrial production.

A beekeeper upgrade/building in Horticulture could do the same. A sustainable planning building with an era appropriate name could be available with Urban Planning. An ecology building could be available with Ecology in the industrial era.

Maybe with these buildings they could produce something to be traded, a skill/knowledge product like fish or stone. As long as the trade continues, the other civ gets a reprieve from decline, but not what the buildings provide, they will still have to build their own.

As the industrial era is reached and gaining access to the techs and improvements that cause pollution are inescapable, the benefit of the sustainable early investments should become an increasing factor, while the deterioration of the non-sustainable versions should have had a real impact already. In fact, civilizations in the real world collapsed LONG before even the medieval or renaissance eras. The negative costs of the nonsustainable ways of developing should start a lot sooner than the modern or industrial eras.

We will still want to build railroads and industry etc, but especially during this era the benefits of an earlier-more expensive-more time consuming build will pay off, while the costs of the 'traditional' way will be very real. The sustainable civ might be behind the traditional civ, but things might change as they catch up due to social costs and consequences of the more 'advanced' civ with its declining land and depleting resources.

If Fertilizer boosts production for a while, that should also deteriorate with time, and fairly quickly too. And/or, cost should increase as more inputs from refining are required to get the same yield. If a civ with the sustainable buildings wants to use a building available with fertilizer, they should start suffering the same consequence, losing health and pollution benefits and paying increasing input costs.

Maybe there should be an overall boost in culture and commerce for any civ in the Industrial/Modern later eras that has invested in the sustainable versions of improvements and that still have forests and animals. These places would increasingly have value in global terms as other civ's face climate change and pollution and health costs.

If a civ has skipped all the earlier options for investing the sustainable practices, era specific versions should be available but at significantly higher cost. So, adding a compost building for example in the renaissance era should be a lot more expensive and time consuming to build than it would have been back in the ancient era. Industrial and modern era builds of sustainable options should be even more expensive and time consuming, but the increase in health happiness (and decrease in pollution and land degradation) should also be measurable and advantageous.

So, just my preliminary thoughts, so sooo many of them lol I'm a very speedy typist and I had probably a bit too much coffee this afternoon. Thanks to anyone who actually bothers to read it all!

 

[gatinho65]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=361799 Orion's Agriculture Mod.

There is a lot about this mod that sounds intriguing, if it was balanced in the way I've already babbled on about at great length lol.

Certainly even ancient civilizations spread in unlikely environments. Nothing about the blazingly hot rainless wastes of Mesopotamia suggested civilization, except access to water along portions of those famous rivers. But even then, basic stone technology had to overcome access barriers to the river and create irrigation systems to grow crops, most of which were gathered outside the region where they were then planted and produced to create surplus enough to grow and develop.

I think it is wrong to assume that creating the food producing bonanza of an area like the dry Central Valley of California for example had to wait for modern technology. The recent BBC documentary on Angkor Wat also showed how astonishingly advanced things were there in a flooded jungle environment. There are civ's in mountanous South America that are only now revealing a few secrets, but wealthy advanced cities were built on the 'impassable' terrain of our game lol. And of course the amazing civ's along the dry desert fog coast of the same continent arose in almost impossible circumstances long before the famous Inca.

I really like the idea not only of various development paths, but of having ways to mitigate the resource limitations of environment, with balanced costs in terms of time and resource allocation. I think ancient civ's were actually pretty good at plenty of things we think of as modern or 'advanced'. But they also failed fairly frequently, even before conquests and diseases. Incorporating real LIMITS that recognize a finite planet would be a fascinating addition to the game. If the math and the coding and performance preservation still makes that possible lol

 

[gatinho65]

Even in the game as it is now, the hammer resources aren't equally distributed. In many ways, what I'm proposing is much like the real world, where certain 'hard assets' had to be acquired in ways other than simple extraction. Trade and conquest are the obvious choices, which are already in the game.

Say a civ in a certain environment is strongly encouraged to choose a religion/tenets and a development path that pretty much is based on food production and commerce, creating resources that could be traded for stone and other mining/quarry products. Especially if done in a sustainable way, using improvements suggested above, this could be a really viable strategy.

IF the real penalties of extraction are included in the game. And of course to keep in balance and fairness, even a food based civ without the sustainable production path should suffer declines and consequences just as a mining/industrializing civ does.

This has been true in the real world as well. The rice producing areas of Asia lasted forever while they were using poop and other methods to sustain productivity. Only since the Green Revolution and the massive input of industrial fertilizers and oil based (finite) additives have limits briefly been overcome, methods changed, and declines become a more drastic. Once soil has been destroyed by modern methods however, you can't just revert to poop and think things will improve or go back to the way they were. Reading about the absolutely astonishing rates of suicide among Indian farmers in recent times is educational.

All the hippy stuff people talk about now was just standard practice for much of history, which is how some older civ's managed to stave off collapse in some cases and avoid overshooting their resources. I think much of what I'm proposing is just the 'way things were' in some places before we got so dang advanced lol.

I suppose one big disadvantage in the game is that so many of the cultural wonders require those hard assets. And most civ's don't seem willing at all to trade those assets. Maybe that would have to be tweaked a bit in order to give a composting beekeeping civ the ability to build enough wonders that a cultural victory is actually possible, even without stone and marble to begin with. Somehow trading away marble and stone and copper for honey or wild game should be made more attractive lol;

Or, some early cultural wonders could be clay/adobe and wood based, just as they were in the real world. Not all civ's that created early wonders made them with stone. Even some Asian wonders, Japanese temples among them, were made of wood and are just simply rebuilt over the eras as the original decays. Maybe because some early wonders melted or rotted away eventually as the civ's faded and couldn't maintain them, we don't know much about them, but we can be creative in reinventing/re-imagining them.

The game really offers us a way to play with alternatives that I think should be taken advantage of. No question it has been designed with a certain pathway as being primary, but after all the wonderful work done to truly make the game LOOK diverse, some actual diversity of development strategy would be even more exciting.

 

[gatinho65]

I guess it would only be fair to offer any assistance that I can in making any changes that you decide might be included in further HR editions.

The only game I have ever loved from the start was SimCity, and I tackled the incredibly daunting learning curve involved in order to actually create some content. Luckily, it seems civIV modding is more text oriented, rather than having to deal with lots of complicated graphics software. At least until it gets to creating the graphic content, which it seems (to my ignorant eyes anyway lol) to often be skillful reskinning of existing content whenever possible.

I do have time, that is the one resource I can make available. I also am good with research and have plenty of interest in helping out with any texts needed.

I'm perfectly willing to learn how to do something with python and XML, if that is something where it is even worth getting me up to a useful level of knowledge and competency lol. You would have to judge that, as someone who has already negotiated that learning curve. No question I'm a Luddite by temperament, but I'm also a quick learner and love a challenge. And again, I do have time, at least in the near future. I just need guidance, which is often lacking even in the FAQ's and tutorials among the modding crowd. Just let me know what you'd like me to do and I'm very willing to give it a go.

edit: It seems that some part of the modding involves plenty of cut-paste-replace data-entry like tedious stuff. That I should be able to manage, if you tell me exactly what it is I need to do lol.

I'm going back to read old development threads to catch up on past discussions. For some reason, as I mentioned previously, it took over a year for my account to activate here lol, so for a long time I simply didn't hang around or participate, just stick around long enough to make sure I was up to date on versions of the mod. I also did stray to play with a few other games I came to later than most people lol, like Tropico (love that one).

 

[gatinho65]

So I just reread the Feedback: Improvements thread with all of these ideas in mind, so I probably paid more attention this time lol. Some useful things in there that give me more perspective on your thinking about these issues (depletion/sustainability etc) already.

I want to acknowledge something that I'm sure every online writer/producer has to deal with, and that is the fact that there will always (hopefully) be new people jumping in who have missed out on old conversations. Thank you for always at least appearing to be polite about it lol, I've never seen any posting by you that makes anybody feel bad for asking something you've likely answered many times already. Online life has become so incredibly toxic and ugly, such consideration isn't at all to be taken for granted. So an official thank you from a nooby

I have new respect for why HR is so fun to play already with different improvements and alternatives to mines/quarries/workshops/cottages. It sounds like a lot of serious effort went into creating balance as well as just more fun. And I would have known why there aren't jungle camps already if I'd reread the thread before my long post lol.

But as far as depletion goes, sounds like this is a a difficult choice that has come up before.

Is depletion/sustainability FUN to play? Even if it is possible to put into the mod in a balanced way? Clearly not to everyone. I personally would be totally interested but I also see that this is a real dilemma for the Creator of an excellent and popular mod. If it were easy to actually create alternative submodules or components, than maybe it could be just that, an optional way to play HR. But since that seems unlikely (at least until you say otherwise) I can see why it is a big decision to make, aside from the work of the actual modding itself. Maybe just not worth it, if too many players wouldn't like it. And that is certainly a valid position.

Yeah, no question it would 'suck' to have your fabulous city start to hit serious difficulties with soil erosion, fishery depletion, empty mines, pollution accumulation, and all the social economic chaos that would follow. But that is certainly something real and it doesn't really have to mean the end of the game. You can already conquer new territory, send out colonists, take over less depleted cities, or go out with a bang as you collapse lol. Those options have always been part of the game, nobody is guaranteed success even without depletion.

At the same time, certainly many real world Cultural Capitals have declined in population and commercial vitality over time. There is no need for a Legendary City to be as huge as it may have been when you built all the wonders. As long as it cranks out culture, who cares if it has empty mines, abandoned fields, and just enough food to survive and loses a lot of population? That may be a lot more true to real life than in the game now, where cities just boom and boom and boom.

Having migrating Great People would help, you could at least move the heart of your civilization somewhere else less depleted. Since building a new palace and creating a new capital is already possible, I'm not sure having a city or three start to decline is really as terrible as it seems. But yeah, it would probably still suck and require something other than building culture/wealth whatever and hitting enter over and over, more actually PLAYING the game lol.

It would require better planning for development, not covering everything with mines right off the bat, so that there are still hills left for later on. Planning ahead, that rather rare quality of current real world civ's lol.

But could the AI learn to do this as well? Maybe not, so that is a real issue too. But even adding sustainability/depletion factors wouldn't stop anyone or the AI from going gung ho for military conquest, if they do it fast and smart enough before they collapse in their own filth lol. I don't think adding resource expiration dates and pollution costs to the game means you can't play as before.

I'd like to think that bringing in some of what I suggested would be a way to mitigate depletion. If every era has available 'buildings' for purchase that provide sustainability, on an increasing scale of cost and time needed to build them, that could be an option. If your farms are salty and depleted, than buy the compost or biochar building and get rejuvenated. If that is possible in the coding. And of course, you could start out sustainable in the beginning and not face drastic changes later on as everything depletes. Especially if some religions and tenets are given certain kinds of favorites with values that make it the smart choice.

It sounds like mine/quarry depletion is already possible, even if you haven't included it yet. Maybe farming depletion isn't an option. What sort of things can be fractionally calculated? Sounds like there are built-in constraints. Sounds like fractional health and pollution aren't possible, so limitations there as well.

Maybe farm/fish/resource depletion could be done on that chance random calculation, rather than as a steady fractional percentage. That way there is a chance, which you could make as high as you want, that any given farm tile depletes. With enough time, enough farm tiles have exhausted that you have to do something, that is the idea.

Another possible option is having a chain of improvements that takes depletion into consideration. So a farm (the un-composted or biocharred version) depletes. Then, you could destroy it and put in a Restoration improvement, with cost and time requirements, no production, but the removal of any pollution and health penalties. Or, if that is a coding issue, than it builds health instead, making it 'look like' the pollution was removed. (We know already that many things in the game are approximations, as long as the overall effect is what we want.) Then, after a certain amount of time, you could build a tree farm or even a composted farm, if you've bought the compost building.

Or, a mine could deplete. Again, build a Mitigation improvement, then after some time you could build a tree farm or a windmill or something. The Mitigation improvement will remove the pollution.

Just a few examples, but you get the idea. Since some buildings already have 'retirement' dates, I'm assuming that time limitations of things can be programmed. But maybe not for improvements, you'll have to let me know how hard that would be. But if there was a sequence of builds connected to appropriate techs that included the cycle of exploitation, decline, mitigation, new investment and production, that would be actually very cool and prevent things from getting 'unfun' later in the game. The simplest way to add those factors would be the goal, whether it is buildings that add compost or whatever, or remove pollution, as long as the effect is one of depletion, sustainability, renewal, those aspects now missing from the game.

Another aspect might be linked to the era. Just as some improvements gain values or penalties with the era, those could be used to create strong incentives for mitigation. Non-renewables could deplete faster because they are exploited more after industrialization. Farms could exhaust faster or produce less or pollute more, whatever. Then there is incentive to purchase and build the sustainability buildings that are the stand-ins for the concept. That should be easy enough for the AI. Even if the AI may not learn how to build sustainability early when it is cheap, it will do so when it is forced to, even if it is expensive. So too for the human player who still loves those mines workshops and refineries lol.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Xyth]

Sorry I haven't responded to this yet. I have many thoughts and ideas about it, but it's outside the scope of 1.23 for now. It's a huge project to develop and balance something like this, and there's already enough projects of similar size on my 1.23 todo list. I need to focus on those first.

I will say though, that I would like to eventually add a full climate/environment system to HR. Not just anthropogenic climate/environment change, but natural cycles and events as well. It would be based on Platyping's Local Warming and Seasons modules, with many additions and changes by me. I already have complex region detection code in place. It's currently used only to place Natural Wonders, but I built it with future expansion like this in mind. The goal is to add some 'predictable randomness' in a less static world, with positive as well as negative effects. Sustainability options would obviously be a part of this. Perhaps in 1.24.

 

[gatinho65]

Ha, no worries I've been stuck at home with a really nasty flu thing and this has been my escape, spewing forth in a rather manic way, under the influence of fever, exhaustion, medications, restlessness, coffee lol.

And probably not really an actual set of suggestions for the next edition. Just more fantasies about what might shape the mod in the future. Not particularly rigorous in the way I presented them either, and certainly far from concise lol, so apologies for that.

Wow, a whole climate system, including localized effects, ambitious and fantastic. Advances in the way we can look at climate history have shown how just a few years of drought, rain, chill, whatever can dramatically influence things as finely calibrated as a civilization, especially if they are living on a knife's edge as a normal state of being. Adding some of this 'predictable randomness' to the game would be simply amazing.

I can't wait for the projects you are already working on for 1.23, plenty of time later for any of the sorts of things I've babbled about. I'm happy that they are of interest to you, or at least aspects of them. Its really an unexpected pleasure to find that people with talents in something like games can create things that aren't just about exciting new ways to blow things up lol

And thank you for posting your take on all those modules in the other thread. Its actually really cool to see what it is that you look at as interesting or not so interesting, plus to get an informed opinion on what is doable and what isn't.

One of the other games I've come to just love is Banished (very much worth looking at as it also definitely deals with limits, starvation being a big factor in the game lol), and the creator keeps a log of his thinking process as he goes about tackling what he want to do. Really fascinating, even if some of the technical language is above my ability to really understand.

You do much the same, as you post what you are working on and in how detailed your responses are to any questions or comments. Its far from usual, and I certainly for one enjoy and appreciate it.