Version 2.6 discussion

Yea the hard part is figuring out what the benefits of this would be. Originally, it was just meant to benefit every city that had it, and I think that we should keep this. So obviously, benefits shouldn't be too substantial. I'll try to make a quick draft of something that could start us off.

Identity - I don't think we need to worry about this as much as the others, since it's essentially a revamp of the religion column, which has already been established and works fine. But maybe some tweaking later would help to go along with the new sub-categories.
This should probably be renamed to Church, or Clergy. Since this column replaces the current Religion column, this is the socio-political interaction between church and state.
 
Wow, so many replies already!!! :D

Edit: About diplomacy changes - looks like it would require SDK changes in most cases (f.ex. if we want more attitude levels or better AI behaviour) so I suggest you take all those diplomacy suggestions to Civ 4 - Better AI mod forum. As they have the coders to add new features to AI functions, they can do these kind of changes and since Better BTS AI mod is currently merged to RevolutionDCM and to RoM we get to use those changes as well. ;)

Edit2: Actually any change that requires changes to AI as well has to be done through SDK changes which I can't do myself...
 
:(

Ok, I'll definitely make a post in that forum.


I am curious though what you think about the whole "supply wagon" / "attrition" concept?
 
So the limits of what we can do are fundamentally...

* New technologies or revisions of existing ones
* New resources
* New buildings or units
* New events

Or is there something more I'm missing?

EDIT -
If that's the case, I can probably create at least the framework for a few early to medieval religious events that might mimic what we're doing here.
 
New civics and religions are also apparently possible.
 
This should probably be renamed to Church, or Clergy. Since this column replaces the current Religion column, this is the socio-political interaction between church and state.

Apologies for the double post, I don't think you can call it church or clergy since secular/atheist is an option.

Besides, in an ideal scenario, this column won't even be in the socio-political civic screen and can replaced by an art/philosophy column. If it is indeed to be the "Master" civic for the religion civics I think something broad and all-encompassing like "Identity" would be more appropriate.
 
I've opened another thread for purely religious discussion, kind of like Lawrie and Heb's civic thread...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=303506

If there is anything super-special that winds up eating page after page of discussion for 2.6 before the spring semester eats all my time, I'll probably open a thread for it, too.
 
...new corporations, new promotions, more balanced things... :rolleyes:

Eh, the religion issue kind of ate all discussion. Problem with new corporations is how realistic do you want them?

Couple of corporation ideas...
1 - Blue Star Lines - Requires: Coastal city, Screw Propeller. Benefits: Culture, money. Resources required: Coal, oil, steel. Special building decreases naval build times by 10%.

2 - Frontier Furs - Requires: Rifling, Corporation. Benefits: Culture. Resources: Deer, furs. Special building +1 Happy, -1 Health extra w/ Tannery.

3 - Plate Meats - Requires: Refrigeration, Railroad. Benefits: Food. Resources: Cow, sheep, deer. Special building behaves like follow-on to Butchery with similar bonus.

Promotions -
I had been thinking about equipment effects on troop quality for a while now. Something like FFH2's bronze/iron/mithril weapons or the wootz steel promotion, but to reflect the fact that equipping a unit well was expensive in the medieval and earlier period. Case in point, a fine coat of chainmail could be more expensive than a longship to the Norse. This would be a line of promotions, both offensive and defensive, that cost money to implement, available to pre-gunpowder units and becoming obsolete with Matchlock. There's already an in-game precedent for this in the Sentry and Sensors lines of promotions, which only become available when the appropriate detection technologies are there, or the Torpedoes and Napalm promotions for aircraft, which reflect air units with specialized equipment.

Civics -
Similarly to the military equipment promotions, I was considering doctrinal effects on troop quality. That sounds like a very modern way of thinking, but it works in the Dark Ages, too - a Norse raiding band was much more effective than the Saxon levy it might face, because the raiders were warriors led by a warlord while the levy were farmers. So I thought of a military civic column like this...

Levies (default, drafting possible)
Warlords (Experience bonus, experience gain bonus, troops raised by food, less science) - Military Training (think Sparta as well as Stockholm)
Standing Army (Great General gain bonus, Barracks happiness)
Admiralty (Faster sea production, more experienced naval units, Shipyard/Drydock happiness)
Air Superiority (Faster air production, more experienced air units, Airport happiness)

The balancing issue, honestly, I'm not seeing a lot of the problems other people see, though I believe there should be limits on exploration, as the route by which silks reached Rome was pretty tortuous, not direct trade with China. Limiting the number of resources people can reach will by itself limit resource bonus acquisition, forcing them to colonize, which causes Revolutions to kick in as a civ balancer.

EDIT:
D'oh! Been meaning to do this for a while now; I took Crighton's "Gunships" module, which adds a few new helicopter units, and tweaked it for RoM a while back. Since it's pure-XML in the form I used, it works under current circumstances.

Crighton's Original: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10573
Mine: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11469

I think mine is a step behind his; frankly my computer never lasts long enough to build a helicopter force, so I don't notice the loss of the promotions. Anyway, integrating his work should be pretty straightforward based on my experience thus far.
 
Perhaps the idea of military doctrine could be added to the Military adviser screen. much like sit-rep and strategic advantages were.

This way, we don't have to sacrifice any of the existing civics to add it.

I very much like the idea of being able to customize your armed forces to reflect current needs/abilities.
 
I only started thinking of it after the religion discussion started moving those civics to the religion screen, which freed up a civic column. Otherwise, it is a relatively minor part of the whole and could be neglected safely.
 
Double post because this is substantially different from last post, and spurred by the religion events I've been posting. Zap, if you're worried about balance for the huge health bonus stacks it's possible to get from 50 different resources...

Crop Blight
Triggers: Grain-based agricultural resource. Expires with Agricultural Engineering.
Event: A disease has attacked the crops in your fields.
Options:
* Burn the fields and replant. (Eliminate farm on plot)
* Empty the granaries before it affects our people! (0 food in city)
* Import foreign grain (-(x) gold)
* Consume the tainted grain (-2 Health for (y) turns in all cities with access to plot)
 
I've noticed there was some discussion about diseases. You might not have encountered some of the events RoM has (not happen in all games) - there's already smallpox and plague events that spread to several cities, those were added in v2.2 (or earlier, can't remember which was the event patch). More of these events can be added of course.

Yesterday this thread got me thinking about one other thing (talk about ships and ports). Now the result of it can be seen in the following picture ;) and yes those features appear and disappear randomly between turns - just need lots of testing to get it balanced ;)
 

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That's great new that some disease is already in your game! You could definitely add more or even add techs involving it such as ...

Techs

Early Biological Warfare - Gives you the ability for trade caravans to spread Small Pox via blankets to a city they visit.

Leech Treatment - Allows you to build a medieval healers building. Gives some sort of positive and negative health. Perhaps + health for the city but spreads diseases.

Wonders

Cure for AIDS - Similar to cure for cancer.

Also disease ideas ...

o Smallpox
o Bubonic Plague - Increased by present of a granary and farms.
o Malaria - Increased by jungle, marsh, flood plain biomes.
o Yellow Fever - Increased by jungle, marsh, flood plain biomes.
o Bird Flu - Increased by chickens resource (need to add).
o SARS
o AIDS
o Nanobot Virus - Only unleashed in the future after discovering nano technology.

I am sure there are a lot more that could be thought of.
 
I've noticed there was some discussion about diseases. You might not have encountered some of the events RoM has (not happen in all games) - there's already smallpox and plague events that spread to several cities, those were added in v2.2 (or earlier, can't remember which was the event patch). More of these events can be added of course.

Yesterday this thread got me thinking about one other thing (talk about ships and ports). Now the result of it can be seen in the following picture ;) and yes those features appear and disappear randomly between turns - just need lots of testing to get it balanced ;)

I assume that's a storm cloud being used as a coast/ocean terrain feature?
(Its hard to tell in the picture as it blends in with the fog of war. you might want to make it lighter in color)



On a totally separate issue, please do not add any resources to 2.6. The current resource count is enough (or perhaps too much, given the occasional problem of resources getting left out from map generation) you also have to remember that, given too many resources, trading them becomes much less needed. After all, why bother when you have alternate versions which are just as effective? (lemons vs. apples, potatoes vs other grains, etc.)

In fact, you should drop obsidian. It has no real value beyond the early game, it usefulness in helping building the early units is debatable, and it devalues the strategic importance of copper. It also is just one more resource that might be causing other resources not to spawn due to having too many, on those few occasions where this happens. If you added obsidian because the frequency occurrence of stone was too low, you can fix that by increasing the occurrence of stone, easily doable from BonusInfo.xml
 
I assume that's a storm cloud being used as a coast/ocean terrain feature?
(Its hard to tell in the picture as it blends in with the fog of war. you might want to make it lighter in color)
Just check the info text on lower left corner about the terrain ;)
 
So more notes on the considered arms and armor promotions - I don't even begin to argue that they are in a final form; these are strictly draft ideas.

To summarize, arms promotions reflect quality of equipment, and are based off of the current state of the art in materials science. There is plenty of advancement after carbon-steel weapons become standard under the Romans; the question, though, is whether, say, a Viking longsword is really better on the battlefield than a gladius.

Armor promotions work similarly, but are obviously defensive in nature. I extended these fully into the plate of the medieval period, but tried to keep them from being too ridiculously overpowered.

I had considered adding tactical promotions for the ancient and classical, medieval, renaissance, industrial, and modern eras, but the longer I looked at that, the less balanced it (and I) became.
 

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That's great new that some disease is already in your game! You could definitely add more or even add techs involving it such as ...

Techs

Early Biological Warfare - Gives you the ability for trade caravans to spread Small Pox via blankets to a city they visit.

Leech Treatment - Allows you to build a medieval healers building. Gives some sort of positive and negative health. Perhaps + health for the city but spreads diseases.

Wonders

Cure for AIDS - Similar to cure for cancer.

Also disease ideas ...

o Smallpox
o Bubonic Plague - Increased by present of a granary and farms.
o Malaria - Increased by jungle, marsh, flood plain biomes.
o Yellow Fever - Increased by jungle, marsh, flood plain biomes.
o Bird Flu - Increased by chickens resource (need to add).
o SARS
o AIDS
o Nanobot Virus - Only unleashed in the future after discovering nano technology.

I am sure there are a lot more that could be thought of.

Don't forget Anthrax after researching Biological Warfare.
 
Don't forget Anthrax after researching Biological Warfare.

Anthrax predates biological warfare; it's another one of those diseases spread from livestock. Weaponized anthrax is kind of like weaponized smallpox; it just spreads quickly and is more robust than "wild" anthrax. Heck, there are various types of anthrax - elephant, bovine, you name a mammal, it has anthrax. Another disease event that you could associate with animal resources is spongiform encephalopathy (scrapie in sheep, BSE/mad cow in cattle, not sure about equine spongiform ecephalopathy). Could cause health penalties, food loss, or money loss, same as the ergot event I mentioned earlier.
 
Anthrax predates biological warfare; it's another one of those diseases spread from livestock. Weaponized anthrax is kind of like weaponized smallpox; it just spreads quickly and is more robust than "wild" anthrax. Heck, there are various types of anthrax - elephant, bovine, you name a mammal, it has anthrax. Another disease event that you could associate with animal resources is spongiform encephalopathy (scrapie in sheep, BSE/mad cow in cattle, not sure about equine spongiform ecephalopathy). Could cause health penalties, food loss, or money loss, same as the ergot event I mentioned earlier.

I was referring to weaponized anthrax. Smallpox is often more associated with its wild form and anthrax with its weaponized form.
 
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