Vokarya's Workshop: Buildings

[<Nexus>]

I agree with Urza.

I don't think we should be helping smaller civilizations at all.

I think this is an ultimately wrong approach. Small civs need a help not because human players should be encouraged to play small but because small AI civs should be competent and mean a challenge.

I hadn't really thought about it before now, but I think the "go-big" push is fundamental to the entire game

There is no need to encourage players to play with a "go-big" attitude. That's already there when he decides to sit down to play Civ4 I just cannot imagine any player without the thought in mind: "Let's conquer the world!".

 

[Vokarya]

I agree with Urza.

I think this is an ultimately wrong approach. Small civs need a help not because human players should be encouraged to play small but because small AI civs should be competent and mean a challenge.

Why? Small AI civilizations should get conquered just like small human civilizations do. The snowball needs to work on both sides. So it's up to the player to do that before another AI does.

If we specifically need to help small AI civs, then we do it with AI-specific mechanics, not mechanics that help small human civilizations just as much and create unwanted additional effects.The commerce snowball is my target here; I think treasury levels especially are out of control.

 

[Vokarya]

Go ahead and try removing the cap for domestic connections on Ports and see how that works. It well very aptly illustrate my point.

I wouldn't remove it; maybe ramp it up slightly (no more than +10 at the International Port level, maybe even combining it with 1 commerce/2 cities). I was really thinking of the foreign cap; max 65 commerce at 1 commerce/3 cities means you need to connect to over 195 cities before the limit means anything. Either bring the cap down or ditch it completely, but don't have a meaningless cap.

 

[<Nexus>]

Why? Small AI civilizations should get conquered just like small human civilizations do. The snowball needs to work on both sides. So it's up to the player to do that before another AI does.

Did you notice that the AI has problems with maintaining a big empire - especially if rev. is on?
So I think it's better to have many smaller but competent opponents than just one that collapses on its own without human aid.

 

[Vokarya]

Did you notice that the AI has problems with maintaining a big empire - especially if rev. is on?
So I think it's better to have many smaller but competent opponents than just one that collapses on its own without human aid.

I think that means we need to do more work on Revolutions, not continue with Ports the way they are. Personally, I would like to see fewer revolutions, but revolutions that spawn more enemy troops, with a bigger cool-down if you successfully defeat the revolution.

The other OTHER thing I want to do is reduce some of the "walls of modifiers" we have in many places in this mod. It's not just Ports; the terrain adjustments for mounted units, the ship-vs-ship modifiers, the current state of air promotions, and the resources produced by Omnifactory are all things that I think could be cut down. I want it to be easier to understand what a given thing does at a glance, and not have lots of little traps that don't mean much 90% of the time but 10% of the time are fatal.

 

[Gildurath]

Glad to see the ports thing being looked at. I have played this mod forever, and it always stuck me as odd that when you upgrade from Seaport to International Port that you actually go down, or is there some reason for that?

Also the samething occurs when you build the Food Processing, it replaces so many things that it is actually worse to build versus keeping all the buildings. I fixed this in my own XML, by leaving the bakery in place instead of replacing it, and bumping up the food productions to at least match the buildings it replaces, Butchery, Quern/Mill and Cannery.

Also I found the following XML errors in the CIV4BuildingsInfo.xml:
Line 61703: <iCitiesRequiredPerForeignConnectedCity>3</iCitiesRequiredPerDomesticConnectedCity> = <iCitiesRequiredPerForeignConnectedCity>3</iCitiesRequiredPerForeignConnectedCity>
Line 93859: <bPrereqBuildingClass>1</bPrereqBuilingClass> = <bPrereqBuildingClass>1</bPrereqBuildingClass>
Line 110827: </PrereqFreature> = </PrereqFeature>
Line 115147: <iDomesticConnectedCommerce>1</iForeignConnectedCommerce> = <iDomesticConnectedCommerce>1</iDomesticConnectedCommerce>
Line 116228: <bPrereqBuildingClass>1</bPrereqBuilingClass> = <bPrereqBuildingClass>1</bPrereqBuildingClass>

 

[Vokarya]

If you have a situation where building a Food Processing Plant causes you to lose food, I would like to see it. As I calculate it from the XML, the only circumstance that would cause you to lose food is if you do have access to Rice but don't have access to any of Apple/Crab/Fish/Lemons/Olives/Potatoes/Shrimp/Whale/Wheat. Potatoes + Rice but none of the others still causes you to gain food, and any one of the others + Rice would net zero. Anything more than that and you would be gaining food.

You do lose commerce for upgrading to a Food Processing Plant, but you would usually gain so much more food, and I rate 1 food = 2 commerce, that I think it balances out.

If you are going by the "actual effects" text, I think there are bugs there. I am pretty sure at least that there are problems with building replacements that have specialist slots.

 

[Gildurath]

If you have a situation where building a Food Processing Plant causes you to lose food, I would like to see it. As I calculate it from the XML, the only circumstance that would cause you to lose food is if you do have access to Rice but don't have access to any of Apple/Crab/Fish/Lemons/Olives/Potatoes/Shrimp/Whale/Wheat. Potatoes + Rice but none of the others still causes you to gain food, and any one of the others + Rice would net zero. Anything more than that and you would be gaining food.

You do lose commerce for upgrading to a Food Processing Plant, but you would usually gain so much more food, and I rate 1 food = 2 commerce, that I think it balances out.

If you are going by the "actual effects" text, I think there are bugs there. I am pretty sure at least that there are problems with building replacements that have specialist slots.

The only thing I am missing is the potatoes. And I am going by the actual effects texts, which there may be bugs with. And now that you mention it. I think I did an actual test last game, I only play about 1 epic game very 6 months, and you are correct, it still increases.

 

[Vokarya]

I like the idea of moving Fusion closer to the back half of the Transhuman Era. It puts the Fusion Power Plant and fusion ships off until later in the game.

One thing that I noticed is that this opens up room for Transhuman Power Plants. As it currently stands, the Fusion Power Plant/Power Receiver combo is available early and that makes any other hypothetical Transhuman power plants redundant unless they were backed up with a lot of bonuses (like Matter Decompiler). If Fusion is later, there is room for some early Transhuman plants.

The current power plants have one or more restrictions:

1. Dirty
2. Risky
3. Restricted (location)
4. Cost a citizen

Coal and Oil Plants are #1, Hydro is #3 with a bit of #2 (dam burst event), Nuclear is #2, Solar is #3, and all of them are #4. Power Receiver is the only power plant that lifts all the restrictions, but it requires going through the ITER/Fusion Power Plant chain first.

I am leaning towards at least two other power plants in the Transhuman Era:

• Ocean-Thermal power plant, available to any city on an ocean (not a lake). Like Solar Plant, it would be clean power without any other costs.
  
• Geothermal power plant, available to a city with Geothermal Energy in its radius. Because this is more limited, I am strongly considering having it not cost a citizen.

Are there any other power plants that could work?

 

[<Nexus>]

Are there any other power plants that could work?

Well... I think your list covers everything but for the sake of brainstorming:
Anti-Matter Plant, Zero-Point Energy Plant and Singularity Plant are cool names but I cannot think of anything to make them different from Fusion Power Plant.

But there is one thing I would change in the concept: Change restriction #4 to Maintenance cost. Reasons:

• a bigger city needs more power, thus consumes more Coal/Oil/Uranium; needs a bigger dam; etc.
• Decision making: The new, clearer plants would cost more, so the player has to decide whether he wants more or in a city. A small city should be fine with a Coal Plant but it should hurt a large metropolis.

 

[nionios]

Sorry for being a bit off-topic:
What about the Three Gorges Dam which provides power to all continent cities but the employed citizens on existing plants still remain?Should't power plants become obsolete and free the employed citizen in each city?

 

[Vokarya]

Sorry for being a bit off-topic:
What about the Three Gorges Dam which provides power to all continent cities but the employed citizens on existing plants still remain?Should't power plants become obsolete and free the employed citizen in each city?

There's supposed to be an XML tag that shuts off power plants if you have 3 Gorges/Fusion Power Plant. I accidentally removed it and I will put it back in my next upload.

 

[nionios]

I think there's a 'black hole' with Art Gallery:
AG requires Artist Guild or Sculpture's Workshop or Painter's Studio or Photographer's Studio.But if you build Advertising Agency(replaces Artist Guild) and Design Studio(replaces Painter and Photo Studios) prior to building Art Gallery there're no prerequisite buildings for AG. Okay, it's Sculpture Workshop that remains but I consider it as a special building because requires Stone or Marble in city vicinity.
It's a bit coplicated to understand. I realised that when I couldn't build Art Gallery in a certain city. At first I thought that AG is replaced by another building but there's no such info.

 

[Vokarya]

I think there's a 'black hole' with Art Gallery:
AG requires Artist Guild or Sculpture's Workshop or Painter's Studio or Photographer's Studio.But if you build Advertising Agency(replaces Artist Guild) and Design Studio(replaces Painter and Photo Studios) prior to building Art Gallery there're no prerequisite buildings for AG. Okay, it's Sculpture Workshop that remains but I consider it as a special building because requires Stone or Marble in city vicinity.
It's a bit coplicated to understand. I realised that when I couldn't build Art Gallery in a certain city. At first I thought that AG is replaced by another building but there's no such info.

Good catch. I will add Design Studio to the list of possible prerequisite buildings. The intent of having the prerequisite building is so that Art Gallery isn't too similar to the other art buildings.

If it wasn't for having Painter's Studio and Photographer's Studio, then Art Gallery probably wouldn't have a prerequisite building at all, but those two studio buildings are important for keeping Perspective and Photography as viable techs. Otherwise I would probably have to merge Perspective/Free Artistry and Photography/Telegraph. I always feel art technologies have problems with adequate tricks; I don't really like flat upgrades to buildings, and after Wonders, the occasional free Great Artist, and some one-time-only things (build Culture at Drama, culture slider at Music) there isn't much left. New artistic MEDIA get the advantage of being able to build actual buildings. Cinema is probably my favorite. It serves as a great upgrade to Theatre and makes Motion Pictures able to be separated from Mass Media.

 

[Vokarya]

I finally found the name I was looking for to name a Transhuman Era science building. The name is from the Civilization II Test of Time scenario: Infomatrix. (In that scenario, it's a literal reskin of University. All that can be done with buildings in Civ II scenarios is renaming and tech requirements. Nothing else can be changed.)

So this is a new building that I want to add:

Infomatrix
Requirements: Advanced Computers tech; any player has built the Internet; the city has a Network Node, access to Power, and Microchips resource.
Replaces: Library, University, School.

Effects:

• +60% science. This should be enough to supplant Library (+15%) and University (+25%) and School (flat +7/turn).
• 3 Scientist slots, covering the slots from Library, University, and School.
• +1 happy/25% science and +1 happy from Subsidized. The University + School combo is normally +2 with Subsidized but I'm willing to chop off a point here.
  
• No culture. I thought about this, but this is a late-game building and there are many other sources of culture available at this point in the game. I'm fine with a trade-off of culture for science.
• Can stand in for University for several buildings. There are several National Wonders that you should have built by this point, so I don't need to have Infomatrix replace University for everything.

Also a few tradeoffs:

• ACV migrates to Railgun tech.
  
• ACV SAM migrates to Skyroads tech. Advanced Computers no longer needs these with the Infomatrix.
• Plasma Armor strikes Railgun tech and just stays at Controlled Plasma. I'm considering moving Controlled Plasma up in the tech tree a bit. CP is skating on the edge of how viable its tricks really are. International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor isn't worth very much until you have Fusion. There should also probably be a little more space between Modern Armor and Plasma Armor.

 

[Vokarya]

I also noticed Network Node should require Microchips rather than Nanobots (shouldn't have a resource requirement farther down the tech tree). Several civic buildings also don't have <bRequiresActiveCivics> turned on and I think all civic buildings should. This is pretty important with Estate.

 

[Vokarya]

I want to do a little bit of happiness pruning on buildings. I noticed that buildings generate a lot of happiness in the late game, and while I do believe that the very end game is where a lot of rules get broken, there is a limit. If you look at BTS, the only buildings that provide flat happiness with no conditions are Temples and Colosseum, and those generate +1 each. Other buildings generate happiness through resources (Broadcast Tower, Cathedrals, Forge, Market, Theatre), culture spending (Broadcast Tower, Colosseum, Theatre), civics (Barracks) or state religion (Cathedrals). In AND, by the end-game, it is easily possible to generate +25-30 happiness from buildings alone. Happiness from buildings has much less of an opportunity cost than other sources of happiness. Tightening this a little increases the value of other sources of happiness, like trading for resources and culture spending.

So these are the tweaks:

• School: Move the max happiness down from 4 to 3. This also changes the happiness rate from 1/25% to 1/33%. That makes it harder to get +2 happiness (you need 70% science rather than 50%) and much harder to get +3 (you need 100% rather than 75%). I noticed School was a very efficient building for generating happiness in new cities founded off-continent during the Modern Era, and I don't think that is quite appropriate. As a bit of a give-back, I also want to give School an additional +1 science and raise it to +8/turn.
• Stadium/Zero-G Sports Arena: I think Stadium can be taken down to +4 happiness (was +5) and Zero-G Sports Arena to +6 (was +8). Those two buildings are providing massive amounts of happiness. Taking them down a bit would be a benefit.
  
• Arcology Shielding: I think the +1 happiness can be removed here. This comes very late so I don't think the happiness is necessary but it does compound the final problem.

 

[Vokarya]

Here are some more building tweaks.

Research Laboratory: I think the spaceship production bonus is unnecessary here. One of the rules I try to work by is "a bonus you can't avoid isn't a very good bonus." In regular BTS, the Laboratory comes at Superconductors which is much closer to the end of the tech tree. To take advantage of the Lab's bonus, you have to research down that path and that can put off other spaceship parts. The only parts that are on the Lab tech line are Thrusters (Superconductors) and Stasis Chamber (Genetics). In AND, the Research Lab comes so much earlier that I don't think there is enough opportunity cost involved. The reasons to build the Research Lab are keeping up in Science and that it is a linchpin for a lot of other late-game scientific buildings. That is enough by itself. Instead, I'm going to give this bonus to Starport. That gives it an advantage over the Spaceport. The primary purpose of the Spaceport is that Spaceport is a stepping stone to other orbital buildings (Orbital Factory, Zero G Arena, Orbital Hotel).

Plague Hospital: I want to make this a chain building to Hospital. It's a subtle push to weaken a very old civic (Charity) that should be abandoned by this point.

Expressway: Like the Plague Hospital, I think this should upgrade to Transporter. I think a lot of ways to move people become superfluous once teleportation is available. I'm half-considering allowing Airport, but not Spaceport, to upgrade to Transporter as well. I want to increase Transporter's commerce to +1/2 cities (instead of +1/3) but take away its Spaceship bonus as well. I don't want to stack too many spaceship production bonuses. I'm willing to let Accelerator and Advanced Quality Control get small bonuses, and spaceship production is appropriate on National Wonders (it's possible to beat a spaceship production bonus by building parts in multiple cities) and World Wonders (as a reward for beating your rivals to the Wonder).

City Park: I want to make Fertilizers a bit less one-dimensional. Right now they focus on Food and Health. I noticed City Park was a bit inexpensive for an Industrial building (cost 125) so I'm increasing its cost to 200 but adding +50% production with Fertilizers. Since Fertilizers come after City Park (Organic Chemistry vs. Biology) this is a place for a good bonus.

Grain Silo: I think this should upgrade to Farmscraper. I noticed that Grain Silo is a small number of Industrial Era buildings that don't have upgrades, and I think storing food is somewhat redundant when producing quantities in a city is available. Farmscraper will gain Grain Silo's primary abilities, adding +20% food with Fertilizers and +4 health (equal to Grain Silo's maximum). Farmscraper can also replace Grain Silo as an OR prerequisite for Food Processing Plant, and I'm not sure why Grain Silo is a requirement for Orbital Factory. I think having a Spaceport or Starport is enough of a requirement.

 

[Samson]

Grain Silo: I think this should upgrade to Farmscraper. I noticed that Grain Silo is a small number of Industrial Era buildings that don't have upgrades, and I think storing food is somewhat redundant when producing quantities in a city is available. Farmscraper will gain Grain Silo's primary abilities, adding +20% food with Fertilizers and +4 health (equal to Grain Silo's maximum). Farmscraper can also replace Grain Silo as an OR prerequisite for Food Processing Plant, and I'm not sure why Grain Silo is a requirement for Orbital Factory. I think having a Spaceport or Starport is enough of a requirement.

Are you saying that once upgraded from grain silo to farmscraper you would no longer get 50% of food kept after growth? If so, this would be a major downgrade if you have significant food surplus and are still growing.

 

[<Nexus>]

Are you saying that once upgraded from grain silo to farmscraper you would no longer get 50% of food kept after growth? If so, this would be a major downgrade if you have significant food surplus and are still growing.

I think (hope) he just meant that storing food is an effect not that interesting own it's own anymore. Fully merging it into Farmscraper is a very good idea, but dropping the food storing effect would be a very bad one.