Some suggestions (date, tech and other stuff)

[riadsala]

Hi, I've been playing the new civ a fair bit recently and have thought of a few minor tweaks that I'd like to see. Anybody know if these have been done already, or would be easy to do?


1) Remove BC/AD date. How about having just "ancient" , "classical" etc until you adopt a state religeon. The once you have an offical state religeon, your calander changes accordingly to the number of years since that religeon was founded. It wouldn't affect the gameplay, but would be a nice touch and give some added importance for religeons.

2) Make it so you can't see other civilisation's scores in the diplomacy panel in the bottom right corner. Would be nice if you didn't know quite how well you were doing pointwise against the AIs. Instead you could jsut have the AI names in the order given for "somebody has compiled a list of the mose powerful/cultural/advanced civs in the world" pop up boxes. You could also add in a "rough indication of how well you are doing comparitvely when you get the mouse-over pop up box.

3) Have the option to chose a random map type when you are starting a new game. So you could end up playing a Terra map, but for all you knew, it might be a single continent map. Similarly, you wouldn't know if you were playing on a globe or a flat earth with edges.

4) Have an option to remove the ability to choose which tech to research. Instead, it could be generated semi-randomly. Rather than research more or less just happening, it depends on what you do in the game.

Some examples

At the start of the game, research would depend on your surroundings. If you have a city on the coast, there's a much higher chance you'll develop fishing, sailing, etc. If you're near stone, you're going to be more likely to develop techs such as construction. If you are trading with other civs, you'll be more likely to develop techs leading to writing, currancy, etc. If you are at war, you're more likely to develop ewarchery. (also, if you're fighting barbarians, you'll research more military.

Then as the game advances you get given greater control over research (in a silmilar way that you get more control as you can adjust the culture slider). But have more options to balance in your budget. Increase the cultural slider, and you're also increasing the chances of developing cultural techs. Could also have "defence research" budget. Building universities, libraries, etc, improves the chances of discovering more theorecitcal/engineering techs (physics, space race stuff), etc.

Could be fun if done well.

SOrry if these have been suggested elswhere.

 

[Red Door]

Hi, I've been playing the new civ a fair bit recently and have thought of a few minor tweaks that I'd like to see. Anybody know if these have been done already, or would be easy to do?


1) Remove BC/AD date. How about having just "ancient" , "classical" etc until you adopt a state religeon. The once you have an offical state religeon, your calander changes accordingly to the number of years since that religeon was founded. It wouldn't affect the gameplay, but would be a nice touch and give some added importance for religeons.

2) Make it so you can't see other civilisation's scores in the diplomacy panel in the bottom right corner. Would be nice if you didn't know quite how well you were doing pointwise against the AIs. Instead you could jsut have the AI names in the order given for "somebody has compiled a list of the mose powerful/cultural/advanced civs in the world" pop up boxes. You could also add in a "rough indication of how well you are doing comparitvely when you get the mouse-over pop up box.

3) Have the option to chose a random map type when you are starting a new game. So you could end up playing a Terra map, but for all you knew, it might be a single continent map. Similarly, you wouldn't know if you were playing on a globe or a flat earth with edges.

4) Have an option to remove the ability to choose which tech to research. Instead, it could be generated semi-randomly. Rather than research more or less just happening, it depends on what you do in the game.

Some examples

At the start of the game, research would depend on your surroundings. If you have a city on the coast, there's a much higher chance you'll develop fishing, sailing, etc. If you're near stone, you're going to be more likely to develop techs such as construction. If you are trading with other civs, you'll be more likely to develop techs leading to writing, currancy, etc. If you are at war, you're more likely to develop ewarchery. (also, if you're fighting barbarians, you'll research more military.

Then as the game advances you get given greater control over research (in a silmilar way that you get more control as you can adjust the culture slider). But have more options to balance in your budget. Increase the cultural slider, and you're also increasing the chances of developing cultural techs. Could also have "defence research" budget. Building universities, libraries, etc, improves the chances of discovering more theorecitcal/engineering techs (physics, space race stuff), etc.

Could be fun if done well.

SOrry if these have been suggested elswhere.

First of all, I dont remember seeing these anywhere.
1.Wow! Good Idea!
2.I like the points idea, it makes you realize how much you're behind/ahead/
3.That's okay. I don't know about that.
4.I dont get that.

 

[riadsala]

First of all, I dont remember seeing these anywhere.
1.Wow! Good Idea!
2.I like the points idea, it makes you realize how much you're behind/ahead/
3.That's okay. I don't know about that.
4.I dont get that.

hehe, don't worry, I probably didn't explain it too well. Should really think more before I type!


3. - WHen you choose what type of world to play on, (Continents, Terra, Great Plains, Ice Age, etc), have an option for Random too. This means that you won't know at the start of the game whether your world is round or flat. Likewise, you won't know if there's likely to be another continent. Maybe you're on a "continents" map (where there's usually another one or two populated continents), maybe your on a terra map (where there's an empty continent for you to find), maybe your on a one continent world (so there's nothing for your exploring boats to find).

4)(have thought about this some more, and decided that a system similary to the "Great People" system might work)

basically, remove the current system of generating research points. Class the techs into different types (they are already loosely labelled, and each tech could be in more than one catogary if needed). Then each turn you have a very small chance of discovering a tech in each catorgary. These chances are highly influenced by the map area surrinding your empire, and what you've been building, doing in the game.

so maybe, have the following tech types: marine, militery, science, philosphy, engineering, economy (i've probably missed some).


Then each turn you accumulate science points from various places. If you have your main cities on the coast, you have an increased chance of developing a marine tech. (you you will likely discover fishing, sailing, etc).

If you behave in a warlike way, you will be more likely to research new offensive units.

If you're peacefull, you'll be more likely to develop currany, writing, (all the techs related to trade basically).

If you have certain resources (maybe even still hidden on the map), you are more likely to develop the tech that goes with them and allows you to use them.

and so on.

Hmmm, I've turned the idea into a far larger vision than I had originally.

 

[Thalassicus]

Another option would be to have a Blind Research choice, in the manner of Alpha Centauri. With Blind Research enabled, instead of selecting techs directly, you had a dialog box with checkboxes for Explore, Discover, Build and Conquer. Checking one or more boxes focuses research on techs in those fields.

I really like the date idea, the current dating system is almost always inaccurate anyways. Sim City 4 took that route, removing specific dates and just displaying the month and # of years since starting the game. It makes a lot more sense and makes the indicator actually useful.

 

[riadsala]

Another option would be to have a Blind Research choice, in the manner of Alpha Centauri. With Blind Research enabled, instead of selecting techs directly, you had a dialog box with checkboxes for Explore, Discover, Build and Conquer. Checking one or more boxes focuses research on techs in those fields.

I really like the date idea, the current dating system is almost always inaccurate anyways. Sim City 4 took that route, removing specific dates and just displaying the month and # of years since starting the game. It makes a lot more sense and makes the indicator actually useful.

Agree. I was origainlly going to suggest the SMAC style blind research, but then fought it would be nice if the gameplay influences the research too. Either suggestion would be nice.

Any ideas how to implement the year idea then? I imagine changing hte year display to give the era rather than year would be easy enough. but not sure how you'd get it to switch to start counting up tehyears once you have a state religeon.

 

[Thalassicus]

Actually, displaying the age would probably be harder, but both might be possible with scripting.

For a simple turn indicator you would set the year increment for all turns to 1, and remove the AD/BC. After founding a religion, it might be possible to have a script fire that resets this variable to 0.

For an era indicator it would likely be possible to create an array of strings, from Era[0] = "Ancient" on through the rest. Then, you would display Era[0] at the start of the game in that area of the screen, and increment the index and re-display the string every time you enter a new era.

I've looked into scripting in this game very little, however; this is just speculation from modding previous games

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Blind reseach could probaly be done with a little Python Script that over-rides the normal "Pick your next tec" with a "Pick your Focus" popup. A second script would then take the yearly science output and alocate it towards Tecs that apropriate for your focus. I'm not shure how this would work with the AI?

 

[Thalassicus]

You know, now that I think about it the techs are already categorized. It's how it determines what techs to recommend to the player, and what the AI chooses to research. After looking in the CIV4TechInfos file, the categories are:

- Growth
- Science
- Gold
- Culture
- Production
- Military

Each tech has one or more of these categories listed in its <Flavors> line, with weights ranging from 1 to 10.

All it would take is: remove the science advisor, replace it with a dialog box with those checkmarks. Then, when onTechAcquired() runs, change research to the tech that has the highest weight out of the selected flavors. I'm not very fluent in this language yet, but I'll see what's possible after Christmas.

 

[riadsala]

Sounds good. Would you mind PMing me if yo uget anything done?

I'll have a look if I get desperate, but haven't done any programming since 1st year uni "programming for scientists" on java.


As for how it would effect hte AI, surely you/we could jsut leave the AI alone? It already "cheats" in various ways and it wouldn't really matter if it was still able to picks it's own research.

 

[Dogzilla]

1. I like seeing the date so I can see how I'm progressing vs. history.
2. This is a resonable suggestion, you can get a good idea of how others civs are progressing by looking at the foreign affairs screen (for techs) or just looking at the map and seeing how large their civ is. A numerical score is probably more info than you should have.
3. I wouldn't use it, but it seems easy enough to add.
4. Why would anyone want research determined by some random algorithm? Isn't the whole point of the game making choices and steering your civ in the direction you want it to go? Why not have the computer decide what to produce or where to move your units, too?