walls?

[daladinn]

the great wall as mention by sureshot got me thinking about various different options.

currently we have ..
- walls = 25%
- castle = 50%
- various misc buildings that dotn fit the theme i am chasing atm.

what i propose has 2 simple buildings and a hard one
- raised walls = 25% (these walls are an upgrade to traditional walls and are just and extension of the original built to twice the height). requires castle
- citadel = 50% (this fortress is truely impressive and is the result of expanding a castle in to a perfectly designed defensive structure). requires raised walls.

the hard one...
-- outer wall = uses a market similar to the great wall wonder but circling the first harvestable ring of a city (9 squares). causes a penalty exactly like crossing a river and stacks with the river crossing penalty but only applies to hostile forces. requirement citadel

now i am not sure how the techs would be set up but i was thinking somewhere in the engineering tree.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Personally I don't think this will be of much use so long as cultural defenses are so much better than defenses from buildings. Of course, something like the option in Snarko's mod that made defenses rely on both of these (multiplied together) could make this interesting.

I would be more interested in more types of forts. I would like the the wall of stone spell to make a temporary fort instead of a temporary building. Of course, using it to collect resources would be to strong, and ships moving through it wouldn't make sense, so it should only have the defensive bonus, not the "act as city" marker. Perhaps there could be a low level fort (available with masonry?) that works like this and can latter be replaced with the real thing. Buildable watchtowers to increase line of sight would be nice too (the ancient towers should probably be made buildable and piligible too). I would love to have hight level forts wit their own "cultural boarders" based on the numbers and strength of its current garrison, but I guess we can't have everything (I don't think we can code this, but everything else should be easy enough)

What I would really like to see (as I have stated 3 or 4 times before) are unique forts. I'm thinking the citadel of light and the chancel of the guardian buildings would be better as terrain improvements. I would like the citadel to be a fort that offers extra line of sight and can summon fireballs. The Chancel should offer the defensive promotion and should sanctify nearby tiles (letting the Elohim hold hell at bay). The Pirates coves becoming forts that can blockade a large area of the surrounding seas on their own would also be nice, as would Magic towers for the Amurites and Sheaim, which would boost the strength/range of their spells/summons.

 

[Sureshot]

ya, since the unique features, the idea of more buildable cool improvements seems more possible, and a lot of fun

 

[Kael]

What I would really like to see (as I have stated 3 or 4 times before) are unique forts. I'm thinking the citadel of light and the chancel of the guardian buildings would be better as terrain improvements. I would like the citadel to be a fort that offers extra line of sight and can summon fireballs. The Chancel should offer the defensive promotion and should sanctify nearby tiles (letting the Elohim hold hell at bay). The Pirates coves becoming forts that can blockade a large area of the surrounding seas on their own would also be nice, as would Magic towers for the Amurites and Sheaim, which would boost the strength/range of their spells/summons.

Write the AI that understands it and I'll implement.

Initially this was the design for the bannor, that they would be able to build towers, walls, etc on the landscape to help them defned themselves. Unfortunatly its incrediably difficult to get the AI to understand. In what situation is it better to have a wall than a farm, a tower than a wall. It makes sense to push them a the borders, but then which borders are the most important?

It is to big a challenge, I'll fight the AI for spells, but not for walls (at least at this point). Its the same reason we will probably never have true terraforming (the ability to create water tiles or mountains to block off areas).

But it doesnt make me wonder about a multiplayer only version of Civ4 (no AI players) that removes all the AI logic and incorporates world changing decisions.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, I was mostly thinking of them from a human player standpoint, but the AI wouldn't be that bad off it it just built forts the way it does now and had them replaced with the unique version on completion, would it? The AI seems ok at building forts (especially on resources outside of city radii), and I was under the impression that they keep a garrison there as if it were a city. What would it hurt for the AI to get a few added bonuses from these forts even if they don't understand why? Would the AI really care where its free fireballs from its citadels came from, or why its units can see further than usual? I realize that the AI probably couldn't understand that chancels can hold off hell, but since they would put units in forts to defend them anyway they would still benefit from a free (perhaps random, perhaps temporary) defensive promotion. It could be a bigger challenge for pirates coves, but I don't recall seeing a Lanun AI build them in their current form anyway (although I could be wrong about that). You said that the AI now takes the strength and range of spells/summons into effect when making decision about what to cast, so if you can incorporate the changes that unique forts add to these the same way you made it understand Affinity and Extension promotions for the summoners, I don't see a problem.