Vokarya's Workshop: Buildings

[Vokarya]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but the Jewellery building seems to be suffering from some very conflicting factors in the early game. The Jewellery comes available at Metal Casting and requires Gold or Silver or Gems to build. However, once you reach Currency and switch to the Coinage civic -- personally, I never run Slavery to avoid revolts and instability, so Coinage is the natural civic to switch to in order to get out of Barter -- you are cut off from Gold and Silver, so that means you either have to have Gems to keep Jewellery alive, or lose access to all your Jewelleries, until the Guilds tech and Guilds civic come around and remove that limitation. Giving something to take it away for a while and then give it back again is not something I want.

I have an adjustment that will help a little. I think we should take the bonuses from Pearls away from Bazaar and give it to Jewellery; the Pearls resource both enables the building and gives it +2 commerce. Bazaar gives a lot of benefits for fairly little cost right now , and I think cutting Bazaar down will help. As a slight offset, I would allow Bazaar to be built with Tea; Tea currently boosts Bazaar commerce but does not enable it.

 

[gay_Aleks]

So if you lack Tea, you can't build Bazaars?

 

[<Nexus>]

So if you lack Tea, you can't build Bazaars?

No, AFAIK Bazaar has several "OR" requirements. If you have any (Tea for example) you can build it.

 

[Vokarya]

No, AFAIK Bazaar has several "OR" requirements. If you have any (Tea for example) you can build it.

Exactly. I'm going to add Tea to the list of resources that will allow you to build Bazaars. A lot of buildings have OR requirements, like (Iron OR Steel) or (Coal OR Oil OR Oil Products), but you can only currently have one set of OR requirements.

 

[Vokarya]

Here are a bunch of the new buildings I promised at various points. I spent a lot of time trying to hunt down appropriate artworks, but I think I was able to find something good for all of these buildings. For a long time now, I've been trying to avoid new buildings that don't either fall under a tech that needs assistance (a 1-trick or 1.5-trick tech) or fit into an existing building line. All of these buildings are designed to do just that.

School of Medicine
This is a helper for Anatomy, which currently sits at 1.5 tricks (Doctor's Office and Medic II promotion). It is a National Wonder that provides +10% science to the building city and increases production speed of Doctor's Office, Hospital and Pharmacy by +25%.
View attachment 388201

School of Law
The School of Law is designed to be a twin to the School of Medicine. It provides a bonus to espionage instead of science and boosts production of Courthouse, District Courthouse, and Jail. I decided to give School of Medicine/School of Law three buildings each for symmetry's sake and because the initial bonuses didn't have enough long-term effect; Doctor's Office gets replaced by Hospital and Courthouse gets provided for free if you can build Supreme Court. I am also going to move Supreme Court from Jurisprudence to Constitution. I don't really like having a building and its prerequisite building at the same tech.
View attachment 388202

Gun Turret
The Gun Turret is an upgrade to the Ballista Turret/Cannon Turret. I don't mind buildings that are upgrades of existing buildings, but I would preferably like to keep it to one building per era. The Gun Turret is available at Repeating Weapons, just before Cannon Turret goes obsolete at Artillery. A building in a line has to come available before the building it replaces goes obsolete, or the upgrade path is meaningless.

The Gun Turret also increases the damage to 25% per turn. I don't mind diminishing returns on effects, and I want to be careful that turrets can't actually destroy units (at least not easily). If units start to disappear solely because of turrets, we need to scale back the damage.
View attachment 388204

Railgun Turret
The Railgun Turret is the final turret, increasing the damage to 30%. Railgun is another tech that I feel could use a little bit more content. The missile battery artwork is not ideal, but it is the best I could find.
View attachment 388205

Citycreche
Citycreche is one of two helper buildings for Organic Cities. This is the final construction building, giving a flat 50% building production. It also keeps Industrial Park's Engineer slots and free Engineer, without the Park's health penalty.
View attachment 388206

Waste Digester
Waste Digester is the other helper for Organic Cities. This replaces the previous Sewer System/Water Treatment Plant, giving more health than both of them put together. Sewer is +0.15 per citizen, WTP is +2 default and +0.15 per citizen, and Waste Digester is +2 and +0.4 per citizen. The Digester also lacks the maintenance increase and espionage weakness of the buildings it replaces. With these two building giving Organic Cities a fair amount of content alone, and eliminating +2 unhealth from Industrial Park and Waste Digester providing +0.1 health per citizen above Sewer System/WTP, I'm going to cut the innate +2 health from Organic Cities. I'd much rather have health bonuses from pre-Future Tech technologies be earned rather than just given.
View attachment 388207

Augmentation Center
Augmentation Center is a helper for Cybernetics, which one of a very few techs still sitting in true one-trick territory. Augmentation Center is a twin of Incubation Center, providing a free promotion and a free specialist. The differences are that the Augmentation Center provides the direct Combat AI 1.0 promotion -- and I am going to open up the base Combat AI promotion line to Hi-Tech units -- instead of Heal, provides an Android Worker specialist instead of a generic free Specialist, and lacks Incubation Center's +2 health and +30% heal bonus.

I also think that because there isn't enough real choice in the Transhuman Era, I am making the Augmentation Center and Incubation Center mutually incompatible. You have to choose one or the other; they both come at about the same time (late Transhuman) so you won't find yourself trapped by having one available for a long time if you want the other.
View attachment 388203

 

[oldnooob]

How about fixed anti aircraft batteries for cities?

 

[Rezca]

The turrets might slowly kill off a few units if an army is parked outside a city for ages on end with no way of healing themselves (Medic, Heal, etc) but any stack trying to undertake a city siege like that sort of deserves to be wiped out

...Well, I'm sure if you hit hard and fast enough maybe you wouldn't need healing, but I've found that's not often the case unless the tech difference between you and them is pretty high, then you'll need some sort of healing for prolonged invasions.

 

[<Nexus>]

Railgun turret
How about increasing its range instead of damage? 25% in the first ring and 10% in the second?

 

[Rezca]

Railgun turret
How about increasing its range instead of damage? 25% in the first ring and 10% in the second?

If there's a Medic II unit in the group, they could withstand the Railgun Turret. If they have a Medic III in the group, the turret would be worthless. The Adjacent Damage buildings are only really a threat to prolonged sieges that don't have a means of healing themselves, the Railgun turret shouldn't be any different - but then again I've never seen the AI carry around a Medic III before, and only saw a Medic II a few times....

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Frankly those modern turrets seem a bit overpowered to me, but I think testing is needed.

 

[Rezca]

Frankly those modern turrets seem a bit overpowered to me, but I think testing is needed.

A 30% would knock even a Siege Droid down to critical health in just three turns, and from my experiences unless nuclear missiles and (lots) of bombers are brought in.... Battles usually drag on a lot longer than just three turns.

I had lots of Stealth Bombers intercepted or even shot down in my last modern battle, and he wasn't even using Mobile SAMs either - just halftracks and Sam infantry.


Maybe instead of having Railgun AA turrets, you could merge them into a single building - it does adjacent damage (Less than the proposed 30% turret) and also have a chance at intercepting air units?

 

[Noyyau]

Do the "adjacent damage" buildings also work when a city is revolting? or do they get shut down like all normal buildings?

Would be an incentive to combine a normal siege with spies (either to make the city revolt, or to destroy that building).

 

[Vokarya]

How about fixed anti aircraft batteries for cities?

I think we have enough buildings that reduce air damage at this point, with Bunker, Radar Station, Anti-Missile Batteries, and the Arcology Shielding/Advanced Shielding.

 

[Vokarya]

Railgun turret
How about increasing its range instead of damage? 25% in the first ring and 10% in the second?

I can't do that with the XML as it stands. The XML tag is <iAdjacentDamagePercent>, so the only thing I can specify is how much damage is done to the adjacent tiles. I also would not want units farther away from adjacency to be hit; that would possibly get units caught in crossfire from multiple cities, which would be a bad thing.

 

[Vokarya]

Frankly those modern turrets seem a bit overpowered to me, but I think testing is needed.

We can test it. I looked at CvCity.cpp, and it suggests that these turrets have only a 25% chance to hit each turn, so if you use a big enough stack, you can have your damaged units heal under the protection of your undamaged ones. Or, especially by the time the Railgun Turret rolls around, just about every unit is move-2, so you can assemble your stack out of turret range, then move in and attack.

 

[Rezca]

We can test it. I looked at CvCity.cpp, and it suggests that these turrets have only a 25% chance to hit each turn, so if you use a big enough stack, you can have your damaged units heal under the protection of your undamaged ones. Or, especially by the time the Railgun Turret rolls around, just about every unit is move-2, so you can assemble your stack out of turret range, then move in and attack.

The AI might not be that smart though

But huh... The turret line really works like that? I thought it was guaranteed to do a percentage damage to everyone, I didn't think it could miss... So it has to pass a RNG check for each unit, and if it passes that unit gets damaged? Like that?

Maybe the Gun and Railgun turret could do the same amount of damage as the Cannon Turret, but have a higher accuracy? (Or the gun having higher accuracy than the cannon, and then the railgun having the same accuracy as the gun but more damage?)

 

[Vokarya]

The AI might not be that smart though

But huh... The turret line really works like that? I thought it was guaranteed to do a percentage damage to everyone, I didn't think it could miss... So it has to pass a RNG check for each unit, and if it passes that unit gets damaged? Like that?

Maybe the Gun and Railgun turret could do the same amount of damage as the Cannon Turret, but have a higher accuracy? (Or the gun having higher accuracy than the cannon, and then the railgun having the same accuracy as the gun but more damage?)

I don't want to mess with existing formulas; I'd much rather try things out within the confines that already exist and not change things around unless we have to.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm giving the entire building list a once-over right now to see if there are any more adjustments to make. One thing I think is a little bit anomalous is that the Port line consists of one River-only building (River Port) followed by four Coastal-only ports. I'm going to change the name of the River Port to Docks and make it River OR Coastal (like the Dutch Dike). Most of the time, it won't make a difference for coastal cities because Harbor will override the Docks fairly quickly (Docks is Sailing, Harbor is Seafaring), but I think it would be nice to have the option if you really need the commerce in a hurry.

 

[Vokarya]

Okay, I was able to work up the Quern and Mill buildings. The purpose of the Quern is to give a needed additional trick to Agriculture (although it requires Stone Tools tech as well). It provides a flat +1 food and requires one Corn/Rice/Wheat resource. I decided the Quern doesn't need a building graphic, just a button.
View attachment 388327

The Mill gives an upgrade path to the Quern. I don't like buildings that don't go anywhere. The Mill requires Machinery tech and increases the food to +2. The Mill eventually merges into the Food Processing Plant along with a lot of other food-producing buildings. I don't have any additional requirements besides grain on the Mill; Mills have a lot of possible sources (water, wind, animal) and the XML doesn't really allow mixing and matching that way.
View attachment 388328

One thing I am slightly concerned about is that Mill shows up at the same time as Bakery and provides a similar benefit. Do you think there would be a problem if the Bakery was moved to Calendar? I don't mind having both, because even the combination of Bakery and Mill is only enough to support one additional population, but I don't think they should show up at the same time. The other mods in my collection that have a Bakery are VIP and World of Legends; the VIP Bakery is available at Calendar and the WoL Bakery shows up at Pottery. I think Pottery is too early but Calendar would be a good fit.

 

[<Nexus>]

The Mill gives an upgrade path to the Quern. I don't like buildings that don't go anywhere. The Mill requires Machinery tech and increases the food to +2. The Mill eventually merges into the Food Processing Plant along with a lot of other food-producing buildings. I don't have any additional requirements besides grain on the Mill; Mills have a lot of possible sources (water, wind, animal) and the XML doesn't really allow mixing and matching that way.
View attachment 388328

Maybe +1 with river access? Or is it only possible to have +1/river tiles?

One thing I am slightly concerned about is that Mill shows up at the same time as Bakery and provides a similar benefit. Do you think there would be a problem if the Bakery was moved to Calendar? I don't mind having both, because even the combination of Bakery and Mill is only enough to support one additional population, but I don't think they should show up at the same time. The other mods in my collection that have a Bakery are VIP and World of Legends; the VIP Bakery is available at Calendar and the WoL Bakery shows up at Pottery. I think Pottery is too early but Calendar would be a good fit.

Why Calendar? It feels too artificial for me, since neither Mill nor Bakery has anything to do with season of the year. You can mill the stocked grain and bake bread in winter too.

BTW, I wonder if we really need Mill as a new building? Why not upgrade it to Bakery? It is just trivial that a bakery needs a mill, so the Bakery building could represent both. Not to mention the fact that we have 2 mill improvements.