Maniac
Apolyton Sage
As mentioned shortly before I think it would be cool to have three major ecological strategies in the game: hybrid, terraforming and enclosed biosphere, or in other words pro-Planet, anti-Planet, and neutral. These would consist of a web of synergies between:
1) inherent faction boni/penalties
2) civics, both a special Ecology civics category and possibly some civics in other categories
3) terrain improvements/features
4) base facilities
5) secret projects
6) psi
7) ...
and of course the technologies which enable these.
With the exception of civics from a dedicated Ecology category, it's of course possible to use stuff from more than one ecological strategy/synergy web, if that's advantageous or creates synergies other than the ecological ones for whatever faction you're playing or strategy you're following.
Currently I only have a broad framework in mind, so I was hoping you guys could help flesh it out.
Terraformed Ecology
Synergy with terrain improvements/features: borehole, condenser, farm, forest (& tree farm), jungle, kelp farm
I guess this could be considered the baseline strategy, since you can build all terrain improvements and features here. Whether it's always desirable is of course another question. The terrain improvements listed here reap the most yields, but they should also cause the most eco-damage and thus fungal blooms and native life spawns. Hence when following such a terraforming strategy, it would be in your advantage to keep Planet as weak as possible.
An additional incentive to keep Planet weak and the Flowering Counter low could be Farms starting to upgrade to Outpost->Settlement->Eden after some technology such as Atmospheric Transformation is researched. These would provide more food. The lower the Flowering Counter, the faster these could upgrade.
There could be a base facility which decreases the Flowering Counter by a small amount every turn for each condenser worked by that base.
There should perhaps be some sort of extra incentive so that forests are desirable over hybrid forests while running the Terraformed Ecology civic.
Possible effects of a Terraformed Ecology civic could be a boost to former/worker speed (so you can build those boreholes and condensers quicker) and a boost to farm upgrade speed. I don't know - would this be enough incentive to go all the way with building planet-destroying improvements instead of trying to keep a balanced approach just enough to avoid fungal blooms?
Hybrid Ecology
Synergy with terrain improvements/features: centauri preserve, hybrid forest (& tree farm), fungus
Not sure how to implement this. Obviously having fungus and hybrid forests around your bases when following this strategy should be a good thing or at least not a bad thing. This is the case for hybrid forests, but not yet for fungus I feel. Any ideas?
Since the theme of this ecological strategy is living with and interacting with Planet, not working against it, I think it would kinda fit if this strategy allowed you to have many small bases. One way to do this which is currently implemented is giving free culture for a high positive Planet value at a base, so you can cover lots of territory easily. Given Civ4's maintenance model there should be some way to reduce number of cities maintenance (either that or changing city maintenance mechanics to something else
). I'd like to avoid complete locked-in specialization (that is, once you've chosen the hybrid ecology civic, it would be economic suicide to move out of it again), so preferably such a reduction in number of cities maintenance should be given by something else than a Hybrid Ecology civic.
Oh yes, currently there's the problem that if you have for instance a Forest with a Tree Farm on it, and you want to change it to a Hybrid Forest, the Tree Farm will be destroyed. This because features are created with a dummy terrain improvement and some python code. To work around this I was thinking forests and xenofungus in your cultural territory could automatically and gradually upgrade to hybrid forests when you're running the Hybrid Ecology civic. Simple to do in python. The other way around, hybrid forests in the territory of a "Terraformer" would change to normal terran forests.
Enclosed/Artificial Ecology
Synergy with terrain improvements/features: greenhouse, solar collector, tidal harness, windmill
Core words: Enclosed/artificial/contained ecology/biosphere; sustainability; self-sufficiency; renewable; recycling; non-interactive; independent isolated and possibly even hidden or underground/underwater bases. You don't suffer from bad terrain, but neither can you profit from good terrain.
Concrete this could mean that you don't suffer negative health from fungus or jungle, but neither do you get the positive health effects of a forest. Or your windmills would produce more energy, which is good when stuck in the desert or arctic, but you wouldn't get the food bonus from rainy terrain.
You wouldn't be able to plant any features, nor build condensers, farms or kelp farms. Already built improvements would be just as productive as a greenhouse.
The sea is kinda more problematic, as there currently isn't an alternative to kelp farms for food production. Perhaps kelp farms could be changed into a feature? This has several advantages. They could grow naturally, including over fungus, as in SMAC. And we could 1) allow windmills, mining platforms and tidal harnesses to be built on them, 2) just let these terrain improvements give the same food output as a kelp farm under the enclosed/artificial/contained/biosphere/non-interactive ecology civic. That way your sea bases won't suddenly starve when switching into this ecological strategy. There would be the same problem here though as with forests mentioned above: If you had already built a windmill on a sea tile, and want a kelp farm there too, the windmill would be destroyed. Some solution for this should be found first.
I'd suggest to implement supply crawlers in Planetfall as "formers" which can build robotic/automated greenhouses, mines, windmills, solar collectors, and possibly boreholes on a plot, and are consumed in the process. When these terrain improvements are worked, they would create a free specialist in the base (because the people are freed to do another job). Thus there would be a synergy between supply crawlers and this ecological strategy. First because the list of improvements which can be automated happen to be those this eco-strategy is best in, and secondly because crawlers wouldn't be able to benefit from the food bonus of moist/rainy/jungle either. So as a consequence there could also be a synergy between a specialist strategy and this eco-strategy.
Since this eco-strategy works with the theme of self-sufficient bases which recycle everything, it would fit for distance maintenance to form no problem under this strategy. Again though, I'm not sure if such a bonus should be given by the ecology civic itself, to avoid locked-in specialization.
For the same reason - the bases don't have any polluting emissions or large energy signatures which can give them away - it would be neat to have the ability to have hidden/invisible bases under this strategy. Think of the underground Hive, or the possible synergies with the Pirate and Angel factions. However something like this has never been done before, so it's probably just a wild dream. For instance what to do with cultural borders, or terrain improvements which would give the base away anyway. Perhaps the next best thing could be invisible mobile or immobile supply crawler units (SMAC style) which can somehow produce/generate units? Submarines, probe teams...
Something else... GeoModder originally suggested to have terrain produce nothing by itself at the beginning of the game, to reflect the planet being inhospitable. While I have found this to have some drawbacks, I've stuck with it so far because I want factions starting in the middle of a desert or arctic to be competitive with factions starting in a rainy paradise. And this isn't possible if a windmill on rainy produces for instance 2-0-3 while a windmill on arctic only produces 0-0-3. However upon writing this post it strikes me that by letting a windmill produce eg +3 energy by an enclosed ecology civic available as early as the Recycling tech, such "hostile" starts could be made competitive. 2-0-3 versus 0-0-6 already sounds better no?
So how would you guys feel about returning to a more traditional rate of natural terrain food production and terrain improvement yields, à la Civ4 and SMAC? Moist 1 food, Rainy 2 food, farms only gives +2 food, mines and windmills produce a little less...
1) inherent faction boni/penalties
2) civics, both a special Ecology civics category and possibly some civics in other categories
3) terrain improvements/features
4) base facilities
5) secret projects
6) psi
7) ...
and of course the technologies which enable these.
With the exception of civics from a dedicated Ecology category, it's of course possible to use stuff from more than one ecological strategy/synergy web, if that's advantageous or creates synergies other than the ecological ones for whatever faction you're playing or strategy you're following.
Currently I only have a broad framework in mind, so I was hoping you guys could help flesh it out.
Terraformed Ecology
Synergy with terrain improvements/features: borehole, condenser, farm, forest (& tree farm), jungle, kelp farm
I guess this could be considered the baseline strategy, since you can build all terrain improvements and features here. Whether it's always desirable is of course another question. The terrain improvements listed here reap the most yields, but they should also cause the most eco-damage and thus fungal blooms and native life spawns. Hence when following such a terraforming strategy, it would be in your advantage to keep Planet as weak as possible.
An additional incentive to keep Planet weak and the Flowering Counter low could be Farms starting to upgrade to Outpost->Settlement->Eden after some technology such as Atmospheric Transformation is researched. These would provide more food. The lower the Flowering Counter, the faster these could upgrade.
There could be a base facility which decreases the Flowering Counter by a small amount every turn for each condenser worked by that base.
There should perhaps be some sort of extra incentive so that forests are desirable over hybrid forests while running the Terraformed Ecology civic.
Possible effects of a Terraformed Ecology civic could be a boost to former/worker speed (so you can build those boreholes and condensers quicker) and a boost to farm upgrade speed. I don't know - would this be enough incentive to go all the way with building planet-destroying improvements instead of trying to keep a balanced approach just enough to avoid fungal blooms?
Hybrid Ecology
Synergy with terrain improvements/features: centauri preserve, hybrid forest (& tree farm), fungus
Not sure how to implement this. Obviously having fungus and hybrid forests around your bases when following this strategy should be a good thing or at least not a bad thing. This is the case for hybrid forests, but not yet for fungus I feel. Any ideas?
Since the theme of this ecological strategy is living with and interacting with Planet, not working against it, I think it would kinda fit if this strategy allowed you to have many small bases. One way to do this which is currently implemented is giving free culture for a high positive Planet value at a base, so you can cover lots of territory easily. Given Civ4's maintenance model there should be some way to reduce number of cities maintenance (either that or changing city maintenance mechanics to something else
). I'd like to avoid complete locked-in specialization (that is, once you've chosen the hybrid ecology civic, it would be economic suicide to move out of it again), so preferably such a reduction in number of cities maintenance should be given by something else than a Hybrid Ecology civic.Oh yes, currently there's the problem that if you have for instance a Forest with a Tree Farm on it, and you want to change it to a Hybrid Forest, the Tree Farm will be destroyed. This because features are created with a dummy terrain improvement and some python code. To work around this I was thinking forests and xenofungus in your cultural territory could automatically and gradually upgrade to hybrid forests when you're running the Hybrid Ecology civic. Simple to do in python. The other way around, hybrid forests in the territory of a "Terraformer" would change to normal terran forests.
Enclosed/Artificial Ecology
Synergy with terrain improvements/features: greenhouse, solar collector, tidal harness, windmill
Core words: Enclosed/artificial/contained ecology/biosphere; sustainability; self-sufficiency; renewable; recycling; non-interactive; independent isolated and possibly even hidden or underground/underwater bases. You don't suffer from bad terrain, but neither can you profit from good terrain.
Concrete this could mean that you don't suffer negative health from fungus or jungle, but neither do you get the positive health effects of a forest. Or your windmills would produce more energy, which is good when stuck in the desert or arctic, but you wouldn't get the food bonus from rainy terrain.
You wouldn't be able to plant any features, nor build condensers, farms or kelp farms. Already built improvements would be just as productive as a greenhouse.
The sea is kinda more problematic, as there currently isn't an alternative to kelp farms for food production. Perhaps kelp farms could be changed into a feature? This has several advantages. They could grow naturally, including over fungus, as in SMAC. And we could 1) allow windmills, mining platforms and tidal harnesses to be built on them, 2) just let these terrain improvements give the same food output as a kelp farm under the enclosed/artificial/contained/biosphere/non-interactive ecology civic. That way your sea bases won't suddenly starve when switching into this ecological strategy. There would be the same problem here though as with forests mentioned above: If you had already built a windmill on a sea tile, and want a kelp farm there too, the windmill would be destroyed. Some solution for this should be found first.
I'd suggest to implement supply crawlers in Planetfall as "formers" which can build robotic/automated greenhouses, mines, windmills, solar collectors, and possibly boreholes on a plot, and are consumed in the process. When these terrain improvements are worked, they would create a free specialist in the base (because the people are freed to do another job). Thus there would be a synergy between supply crawlers and this ecological strategy. First because the list of improvements which can be automated happen to be those this eco-strategy is best in, and secondly because crawlers wouldn't be able to benefit from the food bonus of moist/rainy/jungle either. So as a consequence there could also be a synergy between a specialist strategy and this eco-strategy.
Since this eco-strategy works with the theme of self-sufficient bases which recycle everything, it would fit for distance maintenance to form no problem under this strategy. Again though, I'm not sure if such a bonus should be given by the ecology civic itself, to avoid locked-in specialization.
For the same reason - the bases don't have any polluting emissions or large energy signatures which can give them away - it would be neat to have the ability to have hidden/invisible bases under this strategy. Think of the underground Hive, or the possible synergies with the Pirate and Angel factions. However something like this has never been done before, so it's probably just a wild dream. For instance what to do with cultural borders, or terrain improvements which would give the base away anyway. Perhaps the next best thing could be invisible mobile or immobile supply crawler units (SMAC style) which can somehow produce/generate units? Submarines, probe teams...
Something else... GeoModder originally suggested to have terrain produce nothing by itself at the beginning of the game, to reflect the planet being inhospitable. While I have found this to have some drawbacks, I've stuck with it so far because I want factions starting in the middle of a desert or arctic to be competitive with factions starting in a rainy paradise. And this isn't possible if a windmill on rainy produces for instance 2-0-3 while a windmill on arctic only produces 0-0-3. However upon writing this post it strikes me that by letting a windmill produce eg +3 energy by an enclosed ecology civic available as early as the Recycling tech, such "hostile" starts could be made competitive. 2-0-3 versus 0-0-6 already sounds better no?
So how would you guys feel about returning to a more traditional rate of natural terrain food production and terrain improvement yields, à la Civ4 and SMAC? Moist 1 food, Rainy 2 food, farms only gives +2 food, mines and windmills produce a little less...
