Space Empires

I was thinking of using space freighters or small space stations. It's something on the "worry about it after the base terrain is done" list. For irigation, do you use solar panels or habitats? What about mining? Maybe a small mining ship or the like. One of those things to ponder while cut-n-pasting, eh?
 
Mining and Irrigation is already done with mining-stations and hydrophonic-farm-panels ;)
But roads might be difficult (so, it's not changed jet, only green colored old-style roads).
I thought of little jumpgates, which would be aligned by the road-direction. Railroads could be bigger jumpgates. This concept would be (theoretical) similar to Master of Orion 2 ( JumpGates and StarGates ).

EDIT : Well, this works with the current one-tiled system, so there are interplanetarial roads. On multi-tiled planets, (rail)roads could be a thin infrastructure network on the planets surface. (maybe with some light, like the night half of our earth viewed from space)
 
I missed the mining stations, though I do have the panels you created. Of course, one could assume that energy is the equivalent of trade (like in SMAC) and use the panels for road, maybe add small stations for railroad. Another possibility is to have speckles of light in additon to the space structures so that it looks like the planetary population is growing (and where the graphic is over "coastal" area, which is unavoidable with a 4-tile planetary system, it just looks like extra stars or objects in orbit).

I may end up just offering several solutions so the user can pick and choose what fits them best.

Friggin' main computer isn't allowing other computers to access its files. May be looking at an OS reinstall this week (WinXP Pro) :cry: But I should still get the "proof" out before Christmas.
 
I came back to working on some mods with this terrain lately, and have discovered a weird problem. Basically, the terrain that a city sits on can only grow enough food for one citizen. Maybe this isn't a huge problem, but I was hoping to create some diversity between planets, with various food/shiled/trade ratings. Unfortunately, this only allows for one population on a single-tile planet.

Granted, you could allow for resources in space around it, but I had hoped to limit that ("coast" tiles produce nothing, though there are some bonus resources that stand in as asteroid fields) - production would be based on using the planet's resources and its population which you could turn into tax collectors, scientists, engineers, etc.

I find the mechanics of a 2x2 tile planet work perfectly (right now I just have all 4 tiles identical) and even allow you some new options where you can adjust production with your workers. One cool thing is the ability to make, for example, a tundra planet produce no food, but a small quanitity if it is farmed.

In the example, the volcanoe is a star, the LM Mountain a moon (settleable, but really just useful if there are resources there, or you want a remote ship yard for repairing ships). The grassland is worth 6/2/4 (food/shields/trade) and 10 food with irrigation, 4 shields with mines, and 6 with a road.

I guess all I need is help with a working 2x2 planet graphic ;)
 
Here it is, an absolutely hideous attempt at illustrating my idea:

(I'll have to go hunting around for the corresponding pieces in Civ3 itself).
 
Another post I'm afraid . . .

I've been back to looking at this terrain set, and have been wondering about perhaps putting "cities" on the stars. They won't represent an actual settlement, but instead ownership of a particular star-system. I've thought of this because of the oddity in the Civ3 engine where terrain under a city does not produce the proper quantity of food - it seems weird that the best place for a city is a rocky moon or asteroid belt because they produce less food. With a "city" on the star in a system, one could make use of all of the planets in the system.

All that is required for this is to change what the stars are - right now they're marsh which will dissappear when you settle it - turning into an earth-like planet. I'm working on switching the graphics for "mountains" and "marsh" around so that the terrain stays the same, however, I'd be interested to know what you think Vadus.

I'm also going to change the city graphics to somekind of symbol. Probably different sizes the represent "growth".
 
Hi Andrew,

first of all, many thanks for developing the space terrain :)

Also I had the idea to use multi-tiled planets while creating this mod, because, as you, I found out the one-tiled problems. But testing a bit with multi-tiled planets I got problems with the "edges" of the planets. I postet a picture here , showing that same planet-sizes could have different appearances, and I wasn't successfull to create a multi-tiled planet (e.g. 4-tiled).
Maybe you will have more luck, I'm looking forward to see a multi-tiled planet ;)
But pay attention, that you could always use one amount of tiles for all space-objects. (because the coastline (the bow) of one tile appears in every multi-tiled object.)
So creating a 4 tiled systems means, that also stars have to be 4-tiled. But you could use a trick to have smaller objects like moons (one-tiled) by overlaying the one ground-tile with another graphic (wood, jungle, marsh etc ..) . But than, there is still the problem, that you can't settle on it without dissapearing overlay :sad:

There was a reason, why I used marsh instead of mountains for the stars, but I can't remember why. I guess, it was, because if you settle on marsh, the ground turns into a earth-like planet, as you wrote. In on of the first versions, moons where marsh and mountains stars. But you can't settle on moons because of that, and so I changed marsh and mountains, and disabled the settle-ability on marsh ;)
 
I've managed to figure out some tricks with the terrain and have put together a little scenario with my one-city per system idea (i.e. "settling" the star). I'll have it up soon.

What I did was remove the worker job from the marsh/star terrain, so now it remains when you build a city over it. also, the cities that Vadus has made go great with it, as they are little orbiting space-stations hanging over the star.
 
Here's my scenario.

I haven't done a whole lot, it simply uses the graphics that came in Vadus' mod and nothing else so for the time being you'll have to deal with sailing galleons and cruisers through space :lol:

I've changed a lot of the buildings though, lots of new names and new functions
* Garrison is both a "barracks" and a "wall"
* Space Yards give you extra production and produce veteran air and sea units [your navy, as it were]
* Space Port is necessary for trade through space, and also a prerequisite for many other buildings.

As for units:
* Guerilla is your basic defensive units, upgrading to Marines and then TOW Infantry (I choose them solely based on their looks).
* Paratroopers and Modern Paratroopers are your offensive units, and they have amphibious attacks.

I've had some trouble getting the AI to settle more systems, so your palace produces settlers for free. Perhaps with larger (more attractive) star systems or some other fix this won't be necessary.

That's about all I have to say, there's not a whole lot to it so it shouldn't take much figuring out. Just stick it in a directory with Vadus' "Space" folder and you'll have the graphics. I hope people enjoy it and make some changes and suggestions of their own.

Thanks.
 
BTW, Vadus, I'm still alive. Unfortunately, I've had a rash of family emergencies, including the death of my grandmother, which added to the ongoing crap with my father's estate has meant no playtime for DB. Plus we have a houseguest in the same room as the main computer, so no graphics work. Andrew_Jay's March 15 post is essentially what I was planning on offering as a proof of concept - of course the final product would be more detailed.

Unfortunately, I doubt I could get it done before CivIV came out. My wife still hasn't won any grant money for her research, and I am hoping to move really soon.
 
Yes I do. Here's one of me in the Editor, using the terrain and settings to make a random map, because I can't use the default map since it's so small, as far as usable terrain goes. The map is really cool, though.
 

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