World History Mod Conversation

[Nightinggale]

Yeah my prefered setup for the gatherer system, would be to have the bonus resources permanent (just like they are now).

Either it regrow X units a turn or it becomes unavailable for a number of turns when it runs out.

Add two values to XML, one saying the number to increase each turn and the other is a max stored. I might prefer a max of 255 of the max as it mean we can store this in a byte, but we can always look at details like that later.

The non-harvestable version is a bit different. I would say we should make two yields, a harvestable and a non-harvestable. When the plot runs out of yields it simply change feature. The new feature will then turn back eventually. This will allow different graphics for the two features and we can make the AI only want to harvest from one of them.

Changing feature could be random, where the change increase when a counter increases. In fact running out of yields could also be random where the counter increases as the plot is harvested.

Now that I think about it, maybe it should be bonus resources and not features.

I wonder if you could take a look at fullerenes invasion code, and see if you spot anything that could be making problems?

I can't as I assume the problem lies in code not yet committed. This mean I don't have the code with the problem. Also I don't know what the problem is. With access to the code and a description of the problem I could take a look.

I currently just keep my world mod folder, updated with everything from the master tree, I have not yet figured out how to download other trees... I just click the download as zip button.

You should really get git working. It is a whole lot easier.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Now that I think about it, maybe it should be bonus resources and not features.

Yes, my plan would be for it to 'couple on' to the existing bonus features, and so just has a display 'counter' a bit like workers have when they are making improvements.

So it would either be:

(X) Yield_Type left
or
(X) Turns of gather time left for Yield_Type

Then when it is used up the message would either disappear (noregrow checked)
or
be replaced with:

(X) Turns till active Yield_Type

My thinking is I don't want it to gradually be restored, but rather go from 0 to X(max value) after so many turns. This way it makes gathering a very on/off way of getting materials, rather than being able to get a constant stream.

The bonus resource would not disappear, as it would still be used by a town and improvements built near it.

On the Towns issue I remembered another feature needed from RaR, the Fat Cross for Towns. So that Industrial and Modern age towns can grow approprately large.

 

[Nightinggale]

On the Towns issue I remembered another feature needed from RaR, the Fat Cross for Towns. So that Industrial and Modern age towns can grow approprately large.

Good thinking. That's another thing I will have to look into. This one certainly isn't urgent though

 

[Trade Winds]

I wanted to get your thoughts on some 'Historical Classifications' and what you guys think would be best from both a historical and game mechanic perspective.

Now I am thinking to keep renaissance colonies small and struggling, I can make it so that 'normal' improvements cannot be built on 'Non-Europe' continental tile sets and that in the imperial age you unlock colonial improvements, which will finally allow your overseas colonies to thrive.

I have been thinking a bit more on your ideas of the WHM where you want to represent those back steps in history as for example the transition from the Classical era to the Dark Ages, and the Renaissance to the Colonialism.

I think your idea of limiting building construction could be ok, in fact Spanish monarchs didn’t want their American colonies to develop too much to continue being dependent of European manufactures and to avoid competition. (This could be changed through civics or edicts)

But in such a rich environment as we have in Civ4Col, with professions and goods, these steps backwards could be represented in a different way:

First, backward progress could be represented through knowledge scarcity.

Let only master blacksmiths produce tools. So that if you lose your specialists in a war or invasion, or you colonize new areas, you need to build a mature society again after slow "Learn by doing" or transport your specialists or trade them from a foreign civ if you want progress. You may have a lot of old forges, but since you only have two blacksmiths, only one forge is operating because your other blacksmith is instructing new people. Also Europeans farmers weren’t used to the stone age infrastructure of The Americas, so their techniques were impossible to apply in not cleared fields, so they had to go back to Hunting-Gathering as you point, or live out of native charity.
This is similar to let only certain units (pioneers, explorers) do certain things (found cities inland)

(My current thinking on world exploration was essentially to have 'terrain lines' around the map of tiles like 'here be dragons' which no one can travel over unless they have a special promotion

In the same way, you can’t cross the Pacific ocean with tree caravels simply because you can't carry enough supplies for your crew. If from your isolated island civilization you want to risk manpower, ships and supplies sending your vessels out to the unknown with no grant for any return back, its up to you and your economy.

I hope this may lead to better ideas.

 

[orlanth]

For a Dark Ages, the tags available in Civ4EraInfos are fairly limited but maybe they could be modified to be able to apply a certain Censure or Trait or Civic during a certain Era. This Censure could then be modded to have negative effects on research speed.

 

[Kailric]

I have been thinking a bit more on your ideas of the WHM where you want to represent those back steps in history as for example the transition from the Classical era to the Dark Ages, and the Renaissance to the Colonialism.

But really was it a "back step", was the so called Dark Ages really all that dark? It was called the Dark Ages because between 410AD and 597AD there has been very little written discoveries that explains what the people in certain areas, like Britain, were doing. I watched this show the other day and it was very interesting.

When you think about it, it totally make sense. Britain was already populated when the Romans arrived, when they left in 410 did it all just go dark? Parts of Britain were commercial centers for the Tin trade and after the Romans left did this trade just stop? I bet not, I bet the merchants arrived from far off as Constantinople as usual and they didn't care who they traded with Roman or not, like all merchants they were looking for profits. So, they struck up trade deals with who ever was there. We have little evidence of "who" was there other than legends like "King Author" but the evidence for the trade is there and that video brings this out.

On the discussion of resources depleting I have been thinking about the metals; iron, silver, gold, etc. and how they can better be represented in the game. These types of resources do not recover. New technologies can better uncover what is already there, but once it's gone it's gone.

I watched another excelent video by Historian Terry Jones. That video clip starts at the time when Terry starts to talk about why the Romans decided to bring 100,000 soldiers to completely wipe out and Kingdom of Dacia. That reason being Rome had exhausted her supply of gold and Dacia was over flowing with it. Rome needed gold to fund its wars and Dacia was ripe for the pickings.

I would like to have circumstances like these brought out in the M:C mod. Were you must make trade deals or make War or your Empire will be crippled. Having rare instances of metals that deplete would be a good way to set this up. You would have to explore for new sources and found Colonies to supply your Empire. Civ4 did well in setting this up and I feel we should bring it to these mods.

 

[Nightinggale]

But really was it a "back step", was the so called Dark Ages really all that dark? It was called the Dark Ages because between 410AD and 597AD there has been very little written discoveries that explains what the people in certain areas, like Britain, were doing. I watched this show the other day and it was very interesting.

I think "the dark ages" is another victorian invention. The victorians were really interested in history, but they mixed up facts and wishful thinking. For instance they noticed that no british king were ever called "the great". They corrected that by assigning this name to "Alfred the Great" even though his actions is far from being great. In fact to avoid personal battle he dressed as a woman and ran away, living with peasants for a while (years?) before returning to the throne. Not something we associate with "the great". Not today and not back then. They also came up with the idea that Robin Hood could hit an arrow and split it completely. Not only are bows too inaccurate to do that, the part of the arrow where the string touches is reinforced (with animal bone if I recall correctly), which makes it impossible even with a perfect hit.

I saw the definition as "the time from the romans left until the renaissance". In other words it is the time without import of greek/roman culture. I never understood the hype with "foreign culture is better because it's foreign", but it is strong in history and for some reason is still strong with some people today

I would recommend the series "Inside the medieval mind" if you want to understand people back then better.

As for "the great", the victorians (and presumably most other people) had it wrong with Canute the great. Vikings had the habit of assigning nicknames to each other to tell them apart. Having several kings named Knuth (which became Canute in English for some reason, possibly due to latin writing monks) they didn't assign numbers. Instead they told about their actions or personality to tell them apart. Canute the great ruled from England to Latvia and the great empire is what gave him the name "the great" according to the victorians. However we have strong indications that the vikings didn't give him a name based on his land, instead it is based on him personally, in this case his mind. It would appear that he had a great mind. His military success would then be a result of being "the great" and not the other way around.

I would like to have circumstances like these brought out in the M:C mod. Were you must make trade deals or make War or your Empire will be crippled. Having rare instances of metals that deplete would be a good way to set this up. You would have to explore for new sources and found Colonies to supply your Empire. Civ4 did well in setting this up and I feel we should bring it to these mods.

That is an interesting idea and is quite realistic. However it affects gameplay and I'm not sure if I like the result or not. However I have a typical linux/open source approach to that: make a game option called "bonuses expires". People can then pick if they want to enable it or not. Maybe we should consider adding quite a lot more game options for the new features instead of just say "this is how it is". Most of the additions can easily be optional and some might be a matter of taste for gameplay.

 

[Kailric]

Maybe we should consider adding quite a lot more game options for the new features instead of just say "this is how it is". Most of the additions can easily be optional and some might be a matter of taste for gameplay.

I completely agree, we can create the options and then after play testing thoroughly we can vote on the "official options". All in favor say, Aye!

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Ok, back to the dark age debate.

Yes I know much culture, trade and other such things continued on in the dark ages and civilization did not descend into anarchy and total nothingness.

But the fact is things DID take a step back, public health under the romans was not rivalled until the industrial age.

Many major infrastructure systems fell into disuse and disrepair after the romans as much of expertise went with them.

The fact that a 'global' (roman map) empire dissolved, represents a step back in terms infrastructure, organisation, logistics, etc.

Much of Roman knowledge was saved and stored by christian monasteries, and this is actually believed to be the 'birth seed' of the renaissance, as society got back to a point where this kind of knowledge became important and valued, and understandable again and was 'released' into the public domain.

This is why I proposed the idea of a 'freeze' on certain buildings that if they exist, they can still be used, but cannot be built new in the 'dark age' until medieval technology advances and you unlock its 'replacement' equivalent medieval structure.

Another thing that could happen is say if you have over X cities, when you hit the 'dark age' every city over the limit, and furthest from the capital, automatically rebel. So if you want to keep your empire you have to fight to retain it, just like the romans failed to do in the west.

With the 'permanent delete of resources' I think we need to make the AI stronger first, and obviously able to cope with those 'sudden shifts' in resources.

My thinking was limited to the gather mechanic that can be used to boost 'income' in the short term, and allow things like the ancient society to evolve and the renaissance society to 'profiteer' off of a discovered bonus in the new world.

 

[Nightinggale]

But the fact is things DID take a step back, public health under the romans was not rivalled until the industrial age.

Æthelred the Unready decided to murder all Danes (also referred to as vikings). According to journals at the time he should have said the best time is to attack on a saturday because the Danes have a weird habit of taking baths. In fact in Norse saturday was literally named "washing/bathing day" and it still is in Icelandic. Scandinavia still has a corrupted version of the norse word, but the words for bathing and washing has changed.
This tells two things:
1: vikings were taking baths regularly. (in fact vikings were the people who paid most interest in personal hygiene in that era)
2: Æthelred didn't and didn't see the point.

Many major infrastructure systems fell into disuse and disrepair after the romans as much of expertise went with them.

The success of the railroad in the 19th century was not purely due to a great design. People actually came up with the idea to avoid the expensive tracks and use steam on roads. However that failed badly because the roads at the time was built by Romans. For some reason the romans didn't design their roads to handle the weight of steam engines. The result was that since they had to build new roads or rails, they might as well build rails due to being able to handle more wagons in each vehicle and at greater speed. This tells us that the roman roads England were used until at least 1850. Also railroads had a golden age because of no real competition. Sure England had canals from the 18th century, but they coexisted with Railroads instead of competing. Road transport was close to non existing until post WW1 where the military sold lots of surplus lorries.

Much of Roman knowledge was saved and stored by christian monasteries, and this is actually believed to be the 'birth seed' of the renaissance, as society got back to a point where this kind of knowledge became important and valued, and understandable again and was 'released' into the public domain.

I have from different sources that the birth of the renaissance was due to the Ottoman empire conquered Greece. Greece workers then fled into Italy and the city setting the fashion at the time was Venice. All of a sudden the trendsetters had a really cheap Greek workforce and Greek ways of building became popular. This created an interest for Greek culture and with perfect timing the Muslims in Spain was driven back and they left behind a library with Arabic translations of a lot of ancient Greek works. Those two events at the same time really made the renaissance come into reality. It goes without saying that once the interest in Greek culture was present, any knowledge in monasteries might have been studied and possibly copied for profit.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Well to be fair those points are some what wrong in your argument.

1.
Vikings washed, does not mean they built 'high tech' bath houses to the roman level. Maybe they did build bath houses, I don't know, but I have never heard or seen reference to them. There are plenty of ways to take a 'bath', from a river, to a bucket of water.

The point I was referring to was mostly in the realm of public sanitation and public works infrastructure.

Also the fact that the king of a country didn't take baths, proves that in much of the 'dark age' world there was a major step back in thinking.

2.
The roman design was nominally copied (both in road and also in the design of train 'wagons' using many of the same dimensions as was recorded for roman designs of wagons)
But 'proper' roads at least in britain, were not reimplemented to a high nation-spanning standard until the advent of the private toll road MANY years after the 'dark ages' and again 'borrowed' a lot of knowledge from the slowly crumbling roman designs.

3.
Many factors led to the renaissance, it's a big place we live in. But knowledge from the classical age survived much better in the east(at least in public application) than in the west, because of the nominal 'survival' of the 'Eastern Roman Empire' (which I stated in the beginning of my post on the dark ages), which greece was a big part of. Arabic Scientific development also thrived after the dark age period, in medieval times. (which is again why I said you would deveolop new things in the medieval period, not do nothing till the renaissance).

So as I said in the beginning... A Dark Age shockwave did hit Europe at the fall of rome and the end of the classical era, it was not always as total and 'barbaric' as was once thought, but it did represent a step backward, (in different ways for different places) SO I feel, especially with the more 'detailed' Col. engine, this 'hiccup' on the path to global dominance needs to find representation.

Not in the Total Annihilation of everything (again like I stated in m initial post) but in a way that does break certain levels of productivity, such as loyalty, or control, or economics, or 'industry', changes in faith and religion, organisation, public works, infrastructure, for a time things got 'less developed' until the new medieval social orders began to establish themselves.

Also Europe went from almost 1 undisputed super power, to the fracturing of a continent into 10s if not 100s of minor factions, that did not even have unified authority over a single 'country' of todays europe. Except for The Byzantine Empire, which was a long way away from western europe.

 

[Nightinggale]

Vikings washed, does not mean they built 'high tech' bath houses to the roman level. Maybe they did build bath houses, I don't know, but I have never heard or seen reference to them. There are plenty of ways to take a 'bath', from a river, to a bucket of water.

Vikings had wooden bathtubs, which more or less resembles a wooden barrel with low edges. The exception is Iceland where they dug holes in the ground and filled it with hot spring water.

The roman design was nominally copied (both in road and also in the design of train 'wagons' using many of the same dimensions as was recorded for roman designs of wagons)
But 'proper' roads at least in britain, were not reimplemented to a high nation-spanning standard until the advent of the private toll road MANY years after the 'dark ages' and again 'borrowed' a lot of knowledge from the slowly crumbling roman designs.

The romans did standardize the width of a wagon to be the width of two horses. This is because they had to pass stepping stones as their pedestrian crossings were raised to prevent wet feet. Their roads in England ended up with the same standard. In the early 19th century they still used the now really worn roman roads, which meant the wagons still had to comply with that old standard. A Liverpool-Manchester did copy that one to gain easy access to wagons. This is why the standard gauge is called Stevenson gauge (line was built by George Stevenson). However it didn't become the standard at all. At least not at first. England experienced what was to become known as the gauge war where the railroads disagreed on the gauge. Anything between 65 cm to 2,1 m was used and in the end a law was passed around 1890 to make Stevenson gauge a standard. The US made the same gauge a standard at around same time and changed gauge on 18000 km (or was it miles?) of track in 36 hours. Trains took twice as long to convert and the railroads had 3 days without trains.

This is getting off topic

So as I said in the beginning... A Dark Age shockwave did hit Europe at the fall of rome and the end of the classical era, it was not always as total and 'barbaric' as was once thought, but it did represent a step backward, (in different ways for different places) SO I feel, especially with the more 'detailed' Col. engine, this 'hiccup' on the path to global dominance needs to find representation.

Not in the Total Annihilation of everything (again like I stated in m initial post) but in a way that does break certain levels of productivity, such as loyalty, or control, or economics, or 'industry', changes in faith and religion, organisation, public works, infrastructure, for a time things got 'less developed' until the new medieval social orders began to establish themselves.

Also Europe went from almost 1 undisputed super power, to the fracturing of a continent into 10s if not 100s of minor factions, that did not even have unified authority over a single 'country' of todays europe. Except for The Byzantine Empire, which was a long way away from western europe.

I think was happened is roughly the same as what happened in China in 168. A great famine exposed that the central government was useless, which lead a "every man for himself" situation or rather city. China turned into a whole lot of city states, which slowly merged into new kingdoms and China reunited in 280. This is the whole "three kingdoms" time.

What is interesting here is the early time where the city states formed. Cities had to barricade themselves because other cities send raiding parties. Also people moved into the cities because the country side was full of bandits. I think Europe experienced something like this as well. It became a time of constant targeting by raiders. The difference between Europe and China is the external enemies. A whole lot of raids came from Lithuania (the reason why Lithuania became targeted by crusades during the age of crusades). The middle east and Africa supplied their share of attacks as well while the Huns and Vandals didn't make it easy to live either. This amount of external arriving enemies meant that the problem didn't go away like in China, but it lasted for centuries.... I can't even date an end of this problem.

I think it is the "fortify yourself or die" situation, which killed science and not leadership. It is also a killer for a country wide road network etc. In fact now that I think about it I question if the roman withdrawal was the major cause of the setback.

Gameplay conclusion:
Science and infrastructure is hurt by raiders. If we should implement this in the game we should have some "security" setting. Science flourish with civics which attracts raiders. Presence of raiders (barbarians) hurts science and we should likely have a cooldown timer for restoring normal science production.

Ideas for civic effects: science production modifiers. Barbarian spawning modifiers. Ability to spawn barbarians inside your own land (bandits).

The last one can be interesting. If a civic gives you some bonus you really want, you can gain it, but then you have to either live risky or guard everything.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Vikings had wooden bathtubs, which more or less resembles a wooden barrel with low edges. The exception is Iceland where they dug holes in the ground and filled it with hot spring water. (not very infrastructural thus not a valid reason against my point)


This is getting off topic
(Yes... Yes you are )

I think it is the "fortify yourself or die" situation, which killed science and not leadership. It is also a killer for a country wide road network etc. In fact now that I think about it I question if the roman withdrawal was the major cause of the setback.


Fortify yourself and die occured becasue there was no security, there was no security because there were no legions, there were legions because the Roman Leadership withdrew. With no new leadership taking over, there was no army, with no army there was no security, because there was no security, eveyone went into fortify or die mode.

.....At what point can you argue that lack of leadership and organisation is not the cause? and for a game about leadership and organisation, we need to simulate a major upheaval at the end of the classical era, so that if your achievements have rivalled that of the roman empire, you are going to have to fight to keep those achievements, or else.... welcome to the Dark Age.

So once again my point is... we need a dark age event..

 

[orlanth]

I would like to have circumstances like these brought out in the M:C mod. Were you must make trade deals or make War or your Empire will be crippled. Having rare instances of metals that deplete would be a good way to set this up. You would have to explore for new sources and found Colonies to supply your Empire. Civ4 did well in setting this up and I feel we should bring it to these mods.

That is an interesting idea and is quite realistic. However it affects gameplay and I'm not sure if I like the result or not. However I have a typical linux/open source approach to that: make a game option called "bonuses expires". People can then pick if they want to enable it or not. Maybe we should consider adding quite a lot more game options for the new features instead of just say "this is how it is". Most of the additions can easily be optional and some might be a matter of taste for gameplay.

Those are good ideas, but especially important to make anything like this very moddable and not mandatory as you say. It's more something that modders should carefully configure during mod design than an option that players would turn on and off on a whim - ie if you design a mod around certain resources depleting and some not, it would be unbalancing if players turn this on and off.

In 2071, I wanted to use Mining Vessels and Science Vessels to harvest certain resources by exploring Deep Space. In the 1.4 version (old DLL) there are several Features like various Asteroid Belts and Space-Time Anomalies that can appear in Deep Space tiles; by using a Mining Vessel to mine the Asteroid Belt or a Science Vessel to collapse the Anomalies you can gain certain rare yields (using a Civ4BuildInfos command that provides yields by harvesting a feature, like chopping forests in vanilla). You can't keep doing this perpetually in the same place, but have to explore and compete like in Kailric's example, and will be challenged by other civs wanting to do the same thing. You can also let new Features emerge or regenerate, either through existing XML-moddable values for FeatureGrowth, Appearance and Disappearance or via very customizable Events. In new 2071, I have also planned a few units like a Sensor Array that you can deploy with advanced technology, which has a large vision radius and will let you see any nearby Anomalies or Asteroids and hopefully seize the opportunity before your competitors do This already works fairly well using the existing DLL, with the exception that the AI needs a UnitAI script enabling it to search for and harvest nearby Features.

I think its best to keep things that are depleted by harvesting clearly separate from things that are perpetually there, so that players don't get confused about their role (ie if yields from a tile Bonus are something that can be gathered normally by workers in your cities' fields using the standard mechanism, don't overlap this with also having a unit leave the city and move onto the tile and move back and forth). Instead, there should be a separate system for gathering deposits or resources outside your city radius, which should likely be relatively rare so as to not create micromanagement, while still providing an interesting special diversion (ie like getting some extra yields from Hunting Animals works).

But it could also be good to let tile Bonuses also deplete in certain circumstances, ie with obsoleting technology or with depletion from an Improvement for a long time. If you want to mod ways to also have tile Bonuses deplete or regenerate under circumstances that you set up; a good way to accomplish this is the XML-modable system using the system of EventInfos and EventTriggerInfos, which can make Bonuses deplete or appear during many different specific circumstances that you set (eg after/before an Industrial Revolution tech or civic, etc). In RaR, I had used this to make several events where a local mine or fishery can get depleted from over-harvesting. You can even mod player choices with this, so the player can choose whether to slow their harvesting for a while to allow the resource to be preserved, or pursue intensive harvesting and allow it to get depleted.

Originally Posted by Lib.Spi't View Post
On the Towns issue I remembered another feature needed from RaR, the Fat Cross for Towns. So that Industrial and Modern age towns can grow approprately large.
Good thinking. That's another thing I will have to look into. This one certainly isn't urgent though

Yeah, the "big" cities are another feature I liked in RaR that I didn't expect to like as much as I did. This could work especially well with M:C's new features such as having local Population Maximum adjustable with advancing buildings and technology. Be careful with changing actual city layouts halfway through a game though because it can become incredibly frustrating if the entire planned layout of your cities can change in midgame, this makes it totally impossible to plan and was a major major peeve in Civ:Rev . Plus the physical locations and territory of major cities didn't change, but more people living and working in them was the real advance. But by acheiving a Fat Cross relatively close to the beginning, and using advancing Population Maximums to gradually enable more people to live and work in the same amount of territory, this could be really cool

Gameplay conclusion:
Science and infrastructure is hurt by raiders. If we should implement this in the game we should have some "security" setting. Science flourish with civics which attracts raiders. Presence of raiders (barbarians) hurts science
Ideas for civic effects: science production modifiers. Barbarian spawning modifiers. Ability to spawn barbarians inside your own land (bandits).

Those are good ideas and realistic. Something like this might work even better based around Prosperity rather than on Science itself - ie as you get more Prosperous (earn gold by consistently fulfilling the demands of Domestic Market) this gradually attracts raiders (interested more in loot than learning ). Your Prosperity could have Science-boosting effects that you would want to maintain by beating the raiders.

If you successfully repel the raiders it allows your Prosperity to continue to gradually build uninterrupted; if they successfully raid your city and sack improvements and disrupt your Domestic Markets trade this leads to a setback in local Prosperity that you will have to work to recover from.

You can reach optimal rates of prosperity, growth and science only by successfully protecting trade over long periods (just like the "Pax Romana" enabled gradual process of sustained development over hundreds of years). To make Prosperity of your cities something you strive to build and protect; reaching higher Prosperity levels for a city (like the Civ4 city Culture Levels of Developing->Legendary etc) should boost Domestic Economy demands there, and could also help research or generate trade points / FF Points.

Prosperity is in M:C but doesn't seem to have a significant role ATM, and needs to be made something substantial yet distinct from Fealty. So having it be generated by successful Domestic Market management over a long time, and gradually attract raiders that could disrupt prosperity if not defeated; would be a really interesting system

A Liverpool-Manchester did copy that one to gain easy access to wagons. This is why the standard gauge is called Stevenson gauge (line was built by George Stevenson). However it didn't become the standard at all. At least not at first. England experienced what was to become known as the gauge war where the railroads disagreed on the gauge. Anything between 65 cm to 2,1 m was used and in the end a law was passed around 1890 to make Stevenson gauge a standard. The US made the same gauge a standard at around same time and changed gauge on 18000 km (or was it miles?) of track in 36 hours. Trains took twice as long to convert and the railroads had 3 days without trains.

This is getting off topic

ok I'm not going to join the debate about that or public baths but its a good example of why XML-moddable flexibility is the way to go. There can be endless debates about what is thematic in various settings and time periods, but having a standard foundation of stable and flexibly moddable code is generally always the best to go so you can tailor the result to whatever your intention is.

Phew, that was a long post. Now I think I'll go have a bath. (Not in public though. )

 

[Lib.Spi't]

"But by acheiving a Fat Cross relatively close to the beginning, and using advancing Population Maximums to gradually enable more people to live and work in the same amount of territory, this could be really cool."

Yes this was exactly my intention. 'Culturally' you would have the ability to gain fat crosses in the classical age, but you would not have the population to really get a fat cross city cooking until the industrial age.

I think it will be something like, if you work the whole fat cross, then you will have almost no internal work happening until the industrial age, which puts city limits at about 20?(did I do my math right?) (for late classical and late medieval) in the dark age these kinds of pop boosting buildings would be the unbuildable ones.

"I think its best to keep things that are depleted by harvesting clearly separate from things that are perpetually there, so that players don't get confused about their role (ie if yields from a tile Bonus are something that can be gathered normally by workers in your cities' fields using the standard mechanism, don't overlap this with also having a unit leave the city and move onto the tile and move back and forth)."

The way I would approach this is actually obseleting the 'gatherer' when the equivalent 'improvement' comes along, so that gathering and 'constant' resource collection are not occuring at the same time.

I really don't like the idea of having 'special gather bonuses' mixed in around normal bonuses, I think this is even more confusing...

(However I think that 'chopping' system for 2071 would be great. I wondered what a lot of those anomalies were about, because they did not seem to provide anything, or were completely out of reach!)

 

[Trade Winds]

About the topic of the fat cross, I have never liked this idea. Especially in Colonization.
I want to found a city by an ore resource to have a metallurgic industry there, and among cotton fields to have a textile industry. Not having both industries plus other two more industries in a mega city.

I think it is more real to have regions of more important cities and less important cities over an economic area rather than a single city occupying and probably wasting a big area.

The idea of Greater city areas can be very well achieved by the idea of plotgroups, or having a good transport system between cities.

As an example, let’s take The Vatican, Washington DC, Berlin, Hamburg or Shanghai. These are very important cities, where the area surrounding is ridiculous to the importance they have. And these cities can thrive only because the reception of goods, not the production of these from natural sources inside the city area.
It is more fun for me have either rural cities or farming cities or whatever. The fat cross could be an on/off option.

Needless to say, cultural borders are different. They may be as big or as little as allowed.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

but we are talking about the difference between the ages,

Where you have a city of a million (Rome in the classical era, which struggled for a rival for hundreds if not a thousand+ years, to cities of 10+ million in the modern era.

You will still feel the benefits from 'specialising' cities, as in order to make good use of a fat cross you will have to build a lot of infrastructure, and there is no reason why you can't build 2 or 3 small towns in close proximity, to use the right tiles without having to build all the +pop buildings for 1 mega city. The fact is many mega cities, will require the outside delivery of goods such as food to sustain them, where a small pop city focuses on max food production to feed larger cities.

But I think it is pretty inconceivable to have a game span from the stone age to the modern age and not have the fat cross mega city ability...

 

[Trade Winds]

But I think it is pretty inconceivable to have a game span from the stone age to the modern age and not have the fat cross mega city ability...

Well, I agree with this bit. But couldn't it be a max. population limit rather than the usage of the fat cross? Having mega cities of an allowed population of 30 or more, only with the 8 squares around working mostly on factories and importing all the raw goods?

 

[Lib.Spi't]

No cause that isn't anywhere near as fun as a mega city of 100 importing raw materials from everywhere

ok 100 might be tough to pull off.... But now that I have said it... I want a city with a population of 100.......Just to see what that would be like!!!!!!!!!

 

[Lib.Spi't]

We could also introduce suburbs improvements that generate produced yields!!

Aw now I want to get to the modern era... just because!!!