VEM modmod: the Dutch - The Spice Must Flow

[Maniac]

I've made a modmod civ for VEM: the Dutch. I'll make this post more organized, prettified and official later, but now I'll be more short and to the point.

If you want to discover the gameplay possibilities of this civ yourself, don't read further and scroll to the end of the post to look at the screenshots.

The Unique Ability

The main part of the trait, and the major benefit of the civ is one extra gold on tiles that already produce 5 gold.

These are the methods to increase gold on a plot in VEM:

• Village 2 base
• +1 Village tech bonus, from Optics near rivers, from Economics elsewhere
• +1 near rivers
• +1 from that Commerce social policy
• +1 from Golden Ages

In other words, the civ's intended strategy is a village economy, centered around rivers, and with an incentive to get as many golden ages as possible.

The Unique Unit

The Fluyt provides 30 influence and 100 gold when used on a trade mission. Not counting Patronage boni, I value 30 influence at 240 gold. The unit costs 200 hammers. That means you can get 340 gold in return for an investment of 200 hammers. Perhaps that may seem much, but keep in mind that a hammer is more rare=>valuable than gold for the Dutch, giving all the gold boni they get. Still, this may need balancing after playtesting.

I like the concept of your influence with city states being influenced by geographical factors. So this unit is channeling a bit of the intention of the City State Diplomacy mod, with the nice twist that it only works for coastal city states, reinforcing the naval character of the Dutch civilization.

The Unique Building

The biggest bonus of this unique Watermill is the +1 gold on water tiles. Of course the riverside requirement of this building still remains, so you'll need to settle cities on coastal river deltas to be able to make use of it. Should make land grabbing decisions more fun.

Unfortunately, despite setting a coastal starting position bias for this civ, the civ doesn't always start near the coast. Civs almost always start near a river though, so even if it won't always be possible to make use of this water tile bonus for your capital, it should be usually possible to settle your second city on a river delta, by scouting along the river until you get to the sea.

Minor boni

These were mostly added for flavour reasons, and probably won't make that much of a difference in games.

• Double quantity of spices: this is reference to the trade with the East Indies of course. And it gave me a good excuse for the name of the Dutch trait.
• Extra yield on lakes and swamps.

I like how the Polder transforms a for everyone else useless feature type into a bonus.

Spice, marshes and lakes occur too infrequently and randomly to be a reliable bonus. Still, these little things can help to make city placement more interesting and varied compared to vanilla.

Credits

Pretty much everything of this mod comes from the Hukkak Revised Extra Civs Pack. I just edited the XML files to change the trait, unit and building effects.

THIS MOD MUST BE LOADED BEFORE VEM! Else VEM's production scaling and maintenance system won't be applied on the Polder and Fluyt. I guess there's no way to make it so the loading order doesn't matter?

 

[Maniac]

This minor mod above is my first attempt at Civ5 modding. As a consequence I still have a bunch of noob questions. I'm hoping Thalassicus or some other kind soul might be willing to set me on the right track.

I'd like to work some SQuirreL magic to make this mod

• self-adjusting to changes in future Firaxian & VEM patches
• work both under VEM and vanilla, with different effects of the trait, unit and building adapted to the different environments

In order to achieve the goal, I was wondering if it's possible to say for instance in SQL: "set the cost of this unit equal to the strength of that unit". Or even more: "set the movement points of that unit one higher than the movement points of that unit". The practical application of course being to set the movement points of the Fluyt one higher than that of the Frigate.

Looking at another mod, it seems possible to copy the values of a unit wholesale by

INSERT INTO "Units" (blah)
SELECT	("UNIT_FLUYT"), BLAH...
FROM "Units" WHERE (Type = "UNIT_FRIGATE");

but I haven't found an example of taking a value of another object and then modifying it. Also, am I guessing correctly that this INSERT INTO method only works to create stuff from scratch? And that I can only use UPDATE to modify a unit already defined in XML?


Regarding the second point, make the mod work both under vanilla and VEM...
For instance under vanilla I'd make the trait 1 gold on plots that produce 3 gold, considering the smaller availability of gold boosts. (Plus that would also make the trait useful for water times in a coastal city with a polder under golden age)

Therefore I'm wondering if you can think of some identifier specific to VEM that I could use as a condition in SQL to change the effects set in XML.

 

[Tomice]

A very well-though-out civ, it's fun to read the description alone! Sounds like a future must-have mod!

The only concern I have is that the UA might be a bit on the weak-ish side. You won't profit from it until midgame when you get the right techs/SPs, and if you for whatever reason don't choose commerce SPs, you will hardly have any benefit from the UA. Considering how (relatively) hard it is to get the bonus, the single extra gold doesn't seem that appealing.

Also, you have to survive without combat-UU and the gold from the Fluyt comes rather late, too (BTW, is it a frigate replacement? If so, does it have the same strenght?)



But my critic might sound harsher than I meant it. Playtesting will show the true potential of the civ, and I don't think huge adjustments will be necessary.

 

[Sneaks]

Here is my critical assessment of the civ:

First, there is a lack of real synergy between any of the unique elements. The only constant is that gold is somehow involved.

Does this alter my gameplay in any way? No, save for possibly spamming Fluyts if their hurry cost is less than just directly spending gold on the CSes.

I would consider reworking the polder significantly. Bonuses to marshes are generally not worth it, because the yield value of the farm that would replace it is almost always better.

 

[Txurce]

The Dutch strike me as two parts Arabia and one part Siam, which is relatively fertile territory. I agree with the others that on the whole its traits need buffing - given the absence of a military UU, a lot of buffing!

 

[Minog]

I have an idea. Why not have, instead of the spice bonus, the trait give +1 or +2 on luxury resources? It would blend well with the other part of the trait as getting a 5 tile in the early game is somewhat difficult, meaning the trait is fairly useless in the early game. This would make the trait easier to capitalize on in the early game, without overpowering it in the late game. You could even apply the +1 bonus to bonus resources as well if it proves weak, but I'm not too sure about that.

 

[mitsho]

First Wow, congratulations. Well thought out, apparently high quality. (Although I haven't tried it yet, it looks very good).

Generally I would love a kind of VEM+ Mod-Library, as I do not play the Vanilla game much anymore (just the scenarios, if/when I buy the DLCs sometimes later) and the other mods are mainly made for Vanilla (Pouakais Wonders for example I do use, but they are sometimes overpowered...) and the Civs are mostly overpowered as well (The Congo Civ though looks good). So if someone were to coordinate these civs and make them synch with VEM, I'd be very happy. Things that would be good to add in moderation are in my mind Civs, Wonders, Natural Wonders. (best all in packages) Units and other things do tinker with the main flow of the game too much.

Your Mod does that as well, even if it is adapted to the City State Diplomacy Mod which I don't really use (since the AI doesn't understand it really well, right?). So, bravo anew, I'd have other suggestions as well As long as these additional things are well-balanced and "quality"- wise good, because more is not always better.

Regarding the Dutch: I think I do see the symmetry with the gold focus, and the spices are a bonus too. The Fluyt is of course a CSD-unit (what does it replace?) and is thus dependend on style, I do like it as a idea and I wouldn't change it. I however always thought of the Polder as a UI (like the Moai or the Terrace Farm). It could like the Terrace Farm be a better Farm that for each adjacent Sea (or River)-Tile gets one more Gold or Hammer. (The problem is of course there is no distinct graphic possible). If you make it a Village "replacement", you could tie it also in with the UA, so that if you build the Polders perfectly, you can reach the +5 Gold easily and faster.

Just a idea, don't know if it's possible although the Moai and Terrace Farms do act similarly (higher yields for adjacent same Improvements and higher yields for adjacent special-types of tiles (there Mountains, here coast).

 

[Txurce]

Your Mod does that as well, even if it is adapted to the City State Diplomacy Mod which I don't really use (since the AI doesn't understand it really well, right?).

Side note: my second-hand understanding is just the opposite - the AI is very competitive regarding CS in CSD.

 

[mitsho]

It was more of a question, I have only played two or three games with CSD, then somehow forgot about it Not wanting to derail the thread, I always thought that because you cannot code the Diplomacy Units, they shouldn't know about them...

 

[Thalassicus]

@Sneaks
What if the Fluyt doesn't expend itself after performing the trade mission? We could park it at a citystate and use it as a more cost-effective method of gaining influence than normal gold purchases. I believe this sort of mechanism is technically feasible with Alpaca's CustomMission system (included in CiVUP).

This mod must be loaded before VEM! Else VEM's production scaling and maintenance system won't be applied on the Polder and Fluyt. I guess there's no way to make it so the loading order doesn't matter?

For Gazebo's citystate diplomacy mod we figured out a way to check if a mod is loaded, and use that information to do compatibility stuff that's independent of load order. I've altered VEM in v9.9 to make this more feasible for modmods. There's two new variables added to game's Global Defines table:

• LOADED_CIVUP = 1
• LOADED_VEM = 1

If the modmod's sql compatibility file detects these values are 1, the modmod can apply the changes VEM would have done. If these values don't exist it leaves the data in place for VEM to alter later. I've attached a sql file that should apply the necessary changes (if it works... I haven't tested it). Include this file in the modmod, add an appropriate UpdateDatabase statement, and update to v9.9. Any errors should appear in Civ V's /logs/database.log file.

However... this approach only works for certain types of data. In CSD Gazebo did it to detect whether to use the vanilla 100%-cities requirement for national wonders or the 75% requirement of VEM. This works because it's two different data tables, the vanilla table and VEM table. When modifying the same data (like how much gold is needed for the trait), I can't think of a method that's independent of both load order and what other mods are used.

Say this is what happens...

1. Mod X loads
2. VEM loads

When Mod X is loading, there's no way to detect if a) vem is not installed b) vem is installed but not loaded yet. It'd be necessary to create two versions, one that assumes VEM is installed, another that assumes it is not. To do both in one modmod, we'd need the "Dependencies" section of ModBuddy to be completed by Firaxis.

 

[Ahriman]

I'd agree that the core design feels very weak.
5 gold on a tile is very hard to come by, 340 gold for 200 hammers isn't that great a deal, and a UB that is only really helpful on coastal/river tiles is too narrow.

The core idea is reasonable but I would tweak the effects. I also quite like the idea of a pure economy civ with no military bonuses, which also fits the Dutch well.

The mentioned idea of a Polder UI that is boosted by adjacent coast tiles is interesting.

Another possibility would be a Harbor UB.

 

[Maniac]

A very well-though-out civ, it's fun to read the description alone! Sounds like a future must-have mod!

The only concern I have is that the UA might be a bit on the weak-ish side. You won't profit from it until midgame when you get the right techs/SPs, and if you for whatever reason don't choose commerce SPs, you will hardly have any benefit from the UA. Considering how (relatively) hard it is to get the bonus, the single extra gold doesn't seem that appealing.

The trait could pretty much be redescribed as follows:
"All river tiles produce one extra gold."
or
"During golden ages eligible tiles provide +2 rather than +1 gold."

Does that sound weak as well?

If so desired, it is possible to let the trait provide science or production rather than gold by the way.

I've pondered about the fact that the trait is useless in the early game as well. I don't see a solution as of now though. Extra gold on luxuries would detract from the water theme I feel. Kickstarting the bonus already from gold yield 4 would make it too easy to get it. After Economics that would mean every village gets +1 gold. Sounds as boring as a straight +20% gold income bonus.

BTW, is it a frigate replacement? If so, does it have the same strenght?

Yes.

Here is my critical assessment of the civ:

First, there is a lack of real synergy between any of the unique elements. The only constant is that gold is somehow involved.

In order to get the trait bonus the quickest you need to research Optics for extra village gold next to rivers. Thus it encourages settling near rivers and b-lining for the naval tech tree branch.

To benefit from the Polder bonus you are once again encouraged to settle near rivers and b-line for the naval branch for the Lighthouse and Harbor.

To get the Fluyt you need to research up the naval branch as well.

In the vanilla version where the bonus would kick in from 3 gold onwards, there would be a direct synergy between the Polder and the trait as well, because it would become possible to get the trait bonus on sea tiles as well.

I would consider reworking the polder significantly. Bonuses to marshes are generally not worth it, because the yield value of the farm that would replace it is almost always better.

Keep in mind you can get build Villages on swamps. The Polder turns the swamp into a 2f1h tile, better than Grassland's 2food0hammers.

Your Mod does that as well, even if it is adapted to the City State Diplomacy Mod which I don't really use

This modmod does not require City State Diplomacy. I was just pointing out that the Fluyt does the same thing as the diplomatic units in CSD.

I however always thought of the Polder as a UI (like the Moai or the Terrace Farm). It could like the Terrace Farm be a better Farm that for each adjacent Sea (or River)-Tile gets one more Gold or Hammer. (The problem is of course there is no distinct graphic possible). If you make it a Village "replacement", you could tie it also in with the UA, so that if you build the Polders perfectly, you can reach the +5 Gold easily and faster.

Sounds cool, though it doesn't seem possible with the current XML. You can't let the yield vary dependent on the number of bordering sea tiles. Only a boolean yes or no bonus for coastal land. If I made the bonus vary depending on the number of bordering tiles with that same improvement, I'd need to restrict the locations where you can build the improvement. Unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to allow an improvements only on and on no less than on swamps, coasts and rivers.

@Sneaks
What if the Fluyt doesn't expend itself after performing the trade mission? We could park it at a citystate and use it as a more cost-effective method of gaining influence than normal gold purchases. I believe this sort of mechanism is technically feasible with Alpaca's CustomMission system (included in CiVUP).

That would seriously reduce the influence of geography on city state diplomacy. You'd only need to get a single unit there and you're golden.

For Gazebo's citystate diplomacy mod we figured out a way to check if a mod is loaded, and use that information to do compatibility stuff that's independent of load order. I've altered VEM in v9.9 to make this more feasible for modmods. There's two new variables added to game's Global Defines table:

Thanks for the define and the rest of your post. I'll check it out this weekend.

Regarding spamming Fluyten, on reflection that would indeed be the consequence of that unit, and probably quite boring. When designing that unit, I was thinking of my last game where there was no world ocean because of several land blockages, meaning I'd have to settle and develop cities on different coasts to make full use of the unit. On most maps however one city would be enough to spam Fluyten, and the interesting added element of where to place cities to profit best from the unit, would be lost.

But I have an idea. How about significantly increasing the maintenance cost of the Fluyt ship? That way you'd be encouraged to develop coastal cities near city states to reduce transit time and thus profit the most from the unit.

Of course if maintenance cost was increased, the unit would become useless for military purposes. And I don't just want to give it a strength boost to compensate, as that would overlap with the function of the Ship of the Line (and the Fluyt's maintenance should probably be even higher than the Ship of the Line's to get the intended effect on city placement decisions). Fluyt ships were cargo ships. So how about working on that theme and make them support units for other troops, justifying the construction of a few for military purposes despite their high maintenance? I see three ways:
1) Make them a great general unit.
2) give them the reverse-great general effect of the Maori warrior.
3) give them a super-Medic promotion.

This would effectively give the Dutch a military bonus near the coast.

The fact the unit is naval can cause problems for that idea. Great Generals don't boost the strength of naval units. Does anyone know what would happen if Fluyt ships were made "great generals"? Would they only boost naval units, only land units, or would there be no effect at all? Same question with the Maori warrior. Anyone know if that effect works across unit domain types?

 

[Ahriman]

The trait could pretty much be redescribed as follows:
"All river tiles produce one extra gold."
or
"During golden ages eligible tiles provide +2 rather than +1 gold."

Not really. It will be a long time (not until midgame) before your river tiles ever give extra gold, and even then only if you trading post them. And "eligible" tiles are only plantation luxuries and trading posts.

The ability is useless in the early game, and remains weak all game without the Commerce policy that boosts trading posts.

Remember, that you have to have three out of:
River
Optics (if river) or economics tech
Commerce social policy
Golden age

to get any bonus on trading post tiles. That is a lot of requirements. Do we really want a UA that is massively dependent on a single social policy?

I think there is decent synergy in the abilities in terms of favoring coasts and rivers, but I would remove the river requirement for the UB.

The Polder turns the swamp into a 2f1h tile

I am confused here; the OP does not seem to fully describe the Polder?
If you remove the river requirement for the UB, then we are probably ok, given the weak UA.

That would seriously reduce the influence of geography on city state diplomacy. You'd only need to get a single unit there and you're golden.

Sounds fine to me. Many players do not like the city state diplomacy mod, and do not like the forced micromanagement for city state diplomacy.

Of course if maintenance cost was increased, the unit would become useless for military purposes.
1) Make them a great general unit.
2) give them the reverse-great general effect of the Maori warrior.
3) give them a super-Medic promotion.

None of these seem like great solutions.
The naval GG idea is interesting, but very situational, and not very sensible on a standard resourceless unit.

I would tend to not make the Fluyt a military unit. I would give it a trade-only role, and make sure that the AI knew how to use that. Maybe just make it a new class on its own, rather than replacing anything.

Another possibility; leave it as a frigate UB, give it a trade gold boost ability, but make this one-shot. So, you build it, you send it to a city state, you trigger the trade ability (maybe removing a dummy promotion) and get the gold, and then it is just a frigate (or a frigate with a small base bonus).
You'd also have to change the AI here though somehow; so it started with trade AI and then reverted to military AI.

 

[Maniac]

None of the effects work between domain types.

 

[tlaurila]

Could you make Flyut trade mission returns depend on:
1) Distance of CS (more gain the further away the CS is)
2) Current influence with CS (less return the better the current influence)
This would mean that the Dutch are encouraged to trade to the other side of the globe, and to place trade missions in as many places as possible. Less return on high current influence also means diminishing returns for excessive trade mission spamming, as previous missions have raised current influence.

Sounds like a neat idea if a standard ship is spawned when the fluyt is used in trade mission. What if the fluyt replaces caravel, is never made obsolete, and spawns a (normal) caravel on being used in trade mission? Then flyut trading could go on until modern times, but return is less, as you'd have to upgrade those caravels if you want to use them as navy. Caravels move fast enough that they'd be good "merchant ships" all the way to the endgame (just silly-ish graphics in modern). Balancing out the costs and returns would of course be the trick...

Dunno how the AI would know how to use all this.

Since it seems Dutch would be likely shooting for a diplomatic victory, making other bonuses to have that synergy might work?

 

[Txurce]

1. The trait could pretty much be redescribed as follows: "All river tiles produce one extra gold." or "During golden ages eligible tiles provide +2 rather than +1 gold." Does that sound weak as well?

2. I've pondered about the fact that the trait is useless in the early game as well.
In order to get the trait bonus the quickest you need to research Optics for extra village gold next to rivers. Thus it encourages settling near rivers and b-lining for the naval tech tree branch. To benefit from the Polder bonus you are once again encouraged to settle near rivers and b-line for the naval branch for the Lighthouse and Harbor. To get the Fluyt you need to research up the naval branch as well.

3. How about significantly increasing the maintenance cost of the Fluyt ship? That way you'd be encouraged to develop coastal cities near city states to reduce transit time and thus profit the most from the unit. Of course if maintenance cost was increased, the unit would become useless for military purposes.

1. This is a valid goal. The balancing comes down to managing a slow start followed by a roaring comeback. This is not a goal everyone will want, but then I don't believe in every civ being all things for all people. There's plenty from which to pick and choose, and this is an interesting variation on the Arabian model.

2. That beelining the top row is optimal for this civ really helps make it distinct. That is one of my favorite aspects of it.

3. It seems to me that your choices regarding the Fluyt come down to either the CSD model - where it would be a UU separate from the Frigate that expends itself - or a Frigate replacement that doesn't expend itself but must stay in the CS waters to have an effect, with the variable being how much it influences the CS.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thinking about what Txurce said, I believe the theme of the Dutch could be summed up as "water focused." Everything but the Spice bonus revolves around water, even the gold and marsh effects.

 

[Txurce]

Thinking about what Txurce said, I believe the theme of the Dutch could be summed up as "water focused." Everything but the Spice bonus revolves around that.

Well-summarized! And this does make the Dutch among the more unique civs - even more than the Polynesians and English and Germans (!).

 

[Thalassicus]

Right. The Polynesians and more "coast focused" (no river or marsh bonuses), and Elizabeth's main unique characteristic is she gets very early artillery.

 

[Ahriman]

I think that as long as the UB can only be built on a river delta, I would never play this civ. In some ways it is even a penalty, because it blocks the regular watermill. I might be able to build 2 of these, 3 if I'm lucky, and even then only by taking potentially substandard city placement slots.

Also, can the first post please be edited to fully describe the civ in a clear way?
The post talks about "the biggest bonus of this unique watermill is....".

Instead it should be in a format:
Unique building: Polder
Replaces Watermill
Can only be built on coast. Can only be built on river.
Maintenance: ?
+1 gold per water tile.
Other effects (does it still have +food and hammers? What effect on lakes and swamps?)
Specialist slots: ?