World History Mod Conversation

[Fullerene]

If you plan on doing something again, then maybe we should merge master into world branch first. If we changed so much that merging is an issue, it might be easier to just start a new branch.

Also what is the hanging problem? We might be able to solve it together

The problem was that game just entered infinite loop sometimes, from what I remember from my January coding sessions. But I didn't manage to reproduce the circumstances today. My wild guess is that it has something to do with gifting cities back and deleting units, so that AI doesn't know what to do... or something like that.

My plans: finish this multinvasion component.

Spoiler :

Just saying again that I'm not sure how well the multinvasions fits into gameplay. At least the feature needs to be carefully balanced.

My further plans: When the World History mod is at playable state, I have plans to add/change concepts like nationalities/religions, different trade system that simulates global world map better, and propably some other things that comes to my mind.
OR
I take the industrial age stuff from the main mod and start to develop my modding idea.

But getting a somewhat playable and functioning All History mod is first in priority.

---

I believe that the multinvasion part is such a small pieces of code lines that it can be "cut and paste" from almost any SDK to other easily enough. So you don't necessary have to merge the branch yet.

But when we have playable WH mod up, I'd love to have own 'playground branch' to play with.

 

[Fullerene]

Just my opinions about fat cross:

Good:

• Can reduce micromanagement
• Allows bigger cities (more fun maybe)
• Less cities... means more room for tile improvements, also map may look prettier

Bad:

• May feel less 'Col' (personally I don't care how it feels)
• Maybe more boring to play... (Every city has all resources it needs)

Thinking further: How about only some cities have the full fat cross available to work.

M:C has already code for three type of settlements. We could actually keep this idea as it might work nice at least before industrial age. Some cities are military bases, some are religious centers and others are trade and agricultural centers. Let's say you could only grant fat cross 'rights' to trade cities.

Other possibilities are that fat cross is made available by some building: Best fitting are administration buildings like Palaces and courthouses. But they should be expensive to build or require some upkeep, so that player couldn't afford them in all cities.

Maybe some civics might allow using fat cross.

Idea that fat cross becomes available later on game is also interesting, since player has to make strategic decisions where to build cities early on.

Just throwing some ideas...

 

[Kailric]

Just my own opinions about the Fat Cross...

I don't even know for sure what a Fat Cross is

I am guess you all are refering to the number of plots a city can work. Normally it is:

***
***
***

So, just guess a Fat Cross would be...
-***-
****
****
-***-
Making 14 plots instead of 9?

 

[Fullerene]

Fat Cross = City Area from Civ4:

-***-
*****
**c**
*****
-***-

20 plots + city plot

Spoiler :

I hope I got it right

 

[Lib.Spi't]

With the fat cross issue, trust me it really won't be a problem.

The fact is you won't have to use the fat cross:

You can cluster cities together and let them pick and choose the tiles you want them to use from the fat cross.

To make use of a fat cross city you will need a population greater than 20, which I will make unachievable before the industrial age through pop limits.

The whole 'it's not col. with a fat cross' argument is mad, if all col. is, is an 8 plot yield limit then it would be rubbish!

The 'all resources from one city' argument is mad, there are going to be (in the first release version) 3 times the number of yields in game(tradeable yields), many of which will only be available on one continent, so it will be impossible to have all yields in one town...

I am still thinking of exact designs for the 'city types' but chances are there will be something like industrial and rural and mining types, which will get special buildings that will effect pop size and/or productivity, so there will still be reason for small and big towns/cities.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I have recently been thinking about the 'rebel sentiment' mechanic and the math behind it, it seems like another bit of really bizarre choices from firaxis...

Here is a guide to it:

Axxon's Guide on Rebel Sentiment

There are a few things that I would want to change, and a few things that I am thinking about wanting to change for WH.

The big one is that I want to reverse the REF growth/Sentiment mechanic. I want it so that as Loyalty (rebel sentiment) grows, the REF (opposition/rebel forces) will shrink (So REF will start Larger andshrink as loyalty goes up and you secure your place), as you increase loyalty there are less people to recruit. I would like to make it that there is a 'hard' bottom limit to opposition forces, by that I mean there will always be a rebel force when you declare revolution. (representing a hired merc force if you have 100% loyalty).

I am not sure if I like the math and system for fealty (the way it is different for City and total Loyalty) and that it is just a 'rate' system and not a stored system (like say culture) I don't know if I will bother conceiving of a changed math, or just make more buildings and bonuses for loyalty generation so that the player can stack the math in his favour even up to larger empires and cities, which is currently almost impossible in van. col.

 

[Nightinggale]

-***-
*****
**c**
*****
-***-

20 plots + city plot

Technically speaking this is called 2 plot city radius in RaR and the layout is
*****
*****
**c**
*****
*****

I have been wondering about adding it as runtime check. This will allow us to extend using special buildings and/or special city types. To be honest I'm using a modified version of RaR where I have disabled 2 plot radius as while it sounds cool, it also ruins some stuff in the game. The map is zoomed out in the city screen, making it hard to see each citizen, specially on low resolution monitors. This feature isn't just a good thing.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

ah ok, forgot about the corners, so 25 plots including center, makes fully exploiting it even harder.

I have never used a low res monitor so never seen that issue.

Can you remember does it only show the 2 squares, or does it show even further unusable ones too...

 

[Nightinggale]

Can you remember does it only show the 2 squares, or does it show even further unusable ones too...

It only shows those 25 plots. Nothing more and nothing less.

However to fully use this feature we will likely need to redesign the city screen to make the plot view bigger.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

on City Screen design, I was wondering if it would be possible to rework the yield layout so that the numbers sit to the right or the left of the yield picture, as this would help save a lot of space for multiple rows...

 

[Nightinggale]

on City Screen design, I was wondering if it would be possible to rework the yield layout so that the numbers sit to the right or the left of the yield picture, as this would help save a lot of space for multiple rows...

That would be fairly easy. There is code to calculate top x,y for each yield box. The number is then written on top of the box using a hardcoded offset. I think this offset is a percentage of box size to make it work on different resolutions, but that doesn't matter when it comes to moving it.

As for 2 plot radius we could also make it apply to specific civilizations as well. This will make the different civilizations even more diverse, which could make picking starting civ even more interesting if we balance this correctly. Think FFH/MoM where elves can build non-forest improvements in forests without clearing them, dwarves moves quickly around hills while other races have different bonuses. I can't remember them all offhand, but it really makes a difference which one you pick. In fact if you pick dragons you have 3 plot radius cities.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

yeah, I remember that.

I haven't yet got to the point of thinking about civ differences, I have done a lot more of that sort of design work for FTTW.

Right now I am not even thinking about that for Col, got plenty of other things to bring together first!

 

[Kailric]

From what I am hearing you are planning to have events like the "Dark Ages" to happen at some point in the game? While that's cool from an historical point of view this could be a point to introduce a Multi Invasion. What set up the Dark Ages was the collapse of the Roman Empire and what were the causes of that? Lots actually but Barbarian invasion for one. So, hordes of barbarians could be unleashed on the land, pillaging and looting, and the player must defend himself the best he can, and when the final barbarian has been defeated or assimilated the Dark Ages end.

Anyway, I have be contemplating just what to do in M:C with the whole final battle/conquest against the Pope. I will probably set up one of the Civs for testing a new play style or make a new branch that doesn't have a final conquest so to speak. The Pope will still be there to hound you (perhaps waging war) but he doesn't amass troops for a final confrontation. The goal will be to conquer or to assimilate all your rivals and be crowned Emperor(or the planned alternate ending discover The New World). The final battle will either be dropped or incorporated some other way. Already in the mod Saracen appear to harass players during the Viking age, I plan to add actual Vikings, and Magyar Raiders as well. Just so you know the game has limits to how many of these Raiders can be present at one time based on difficulty. The player will be expected to defend himself regardless, plus the AI will have this new goal in mind and will be attempting to conquer or assimilate you as well

Anyway, that's some of my ideas...

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yes my basic thinking with the 'Dark Age' is that conceivably by the end of the classical era you could have captured the whole of europe(more or less) and mediteranean North Africa, (Just like the Romans) which means we need something to shake up the player and keep the challenge going.

So my thinking was, when you research a tech (specifics later) at the end of the classical age, it triggers a 'Collapse' Event.

In this event is a Revolution, where 'hopefully' there will be a lot of towns around the edges of your empire (or everywhere) that will be under the loyalty threshold (say 30-40% maybe) and these will 'flip' to the rebels, taking any city based garrisons with them. Thus you have to fight to keep these Towns in your Empire.

(I intend to make it so that troops in flipping cities rebel, but troops outside of cities won't, creating a strategy of stationing troops outside of cities in forts, so they can 'subdue' revolts! This adds another reason to having a standing army instead of the levy in crisis approach)

In this event we can also have a raider spawning, (like your saracens) that start to appear around the edges, maybe it could be like 'Spawn min 3 squares from culture borders' or something like that so that you get the kind of hordes rushing inward on your empire.

As I am thinking that 'revolutions' will be like civic changes in civ (as the mechanic is already in Col., start a Rev. choose your civics (constitution) fight the Rev. army (rebel opposition)) The ensuing 'Anarchy' Revolution could have a timer of X turns, and at the end of X Turns the rebels turn into a faction, taking any cities you haven't taken back and any of their remaining army with them. If you take back all the towns but don't beat the army, they can go off and found their own towns.

If it is doable?? I think it would be...

 

[Nightinggale]

If it is doable?? I think it would be...

Maybe. If we split the post into fractions, then we can look at each and see if and how it could be done.

However first I would say that this could be a game breaking feature, at least if it is done incorrectly.

So my thinking was, when you research a tech (specifics later) at the end of the classical age, it triggers a 'Collapse' Event.

Random event with the condition that the player has a certain civic. If we then set the likelihood to 100%, then it will happen when the civic is added to the player or at the start of the next turn depending on how the code is. If we set the likelihood to say 20%, then it will happen, but then the player can't be sure precisely which turn it will happen in. Maybe the change could be 1-5% * number of civics of a certain category owned by the player. Imagine drawing a horizontal line on the tech tree and say each line left of the line adds to the risk of a collapse. That will prevent the player from just avoiding the trigger tech for strategic reasons.

The random event should have a setting saying that it can only happen once, or once for each player or whatever.

These trigger conditions would be good to have in general.

In this event is a Revolution, where 'hopefully' there will be a lot of towns around the edges of your empire (or everywhere) that will be under the loyalty threshold (say 30-40% maybe) and these will 'flip' to the rebels, taking any city based garrisons with them. Thus you have to fight to keep these Towns in your Empire.

Leaving your troops on the map unchanged is the easy part. However maybe the rebels will take over the plots next to the city and push your units to nearest valid plot. I'm not sure what the trigger conditions are for those moves.

I don't know what to do about city flipping.. at least not yet. Support for a random event where a city turns into barbarian or whatever wouldn't be bad though. Barbarians would need an upgrade for this as their current setup crashes the game if they gain a city. If I recall correctly, it tried to move a unit out of the city where it would gain the default profession. However default profession isn't set for barbarians. Or was it city growth where it would gain a default unit and it was the default unit, which isn't set
Either way there is an issue if barbarians should be able to control cities.

In this event we can also have a raider spawning, (like your saracens) that start to appear around the edges, maybe it could be like 'Spawn min 3 squares from culture borders' or something like that so that you get the kind of hordes rushing inward on your empire.

There is a function to tell if a plot is within visible range of a player. Barbarian/animal spawning use this if I recall correctly.

As I am thinking that 'revolutions' will be like civic changes in civ (as the mechanic is already in Col., start a Rev. choose your civics (constitution) fight the Rev. army (rebel opposition)) The ensuing 'Anarchy' Revolution could have a timer of X turns, and at the end of X Turns the rebels turn into a faction, taking any cities you haven't taken back and any of their remaining army with them. If you take back all the towns but don't beat the army, they can go off and found their own towns.

I'm not sure we need a timer. It might be way easier to just create a new player.

Be warned though. There is a hardcoded limit of 32 players at the moment. This can be increased to around 60 (not 64, which is otherwise a normal hard limit is programming). However increasing the max to more than 32 will slow down the game even in games with less than 32 players. The slowdown isn't big enough to avoid increasing the number of players if the increase is justified by gameplay. However it shouldn't be increased "just because we can".

If we have a big game and each player splits into two, then we can quickly go from 30 to 60 players and then we add barbarians as well. All of a sudden that 60 isn't high if you want to be able to split players into two. You can't reuse the slot of a dead player. Well you might be able to do that, but it would be ugly and likely to result in bugs.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

The city flipping part is I guess a part of old Col. but not Civ4 Col. In the original if you rebelled with cities that had no sentiment, I think it auto turned to a loyalist city.

With the not researching for strategic reasons, they could wait, but it would mean that they would cease to progress, and if they continued to do any kind of trade, they will auto research generate, basically if you want to progress through the game, you have to trigger the dark age event.

So a player can delay, but not avoid forever and the longer they avoid the further behind they will fall.

With the 'turning rebels into a civ' issue, there needs to be some kind of limit to the rebellion, and a conversion, so that the condition can be reset for the next rebellion (or civic change) so that rebel_leader can go back to his pre rebellion role (That of the King/Pope Mechanic) To create a certain 'urgency' to subdueing your kingdom.

With the stationing in forts, it might be worth looking into jimprovement, or Super forts code, and see if any of it can be ported to Col. part of the code lets forts retain the culture of the occupying units. It does a lot more besides, but this would stop the 'culture push' of a rebel flip.

As to the player cap. I am currently not planning to have really anymore 'playing factions' than is currently in M:C. with say 10 barb groups. to populate the continents. For the first version. But if non-player factions have rebellions too then it would fill up quick.

Can Ai factions have actual rebellions? Is that normally an auto lose if they beat you to it?

 

[Nightinggale]

With the not researching for strategic reasons, they could wait, but it would mean that they would cease to progress, and if they continued to do any kind of trade, they will auto research generate, basically if you want to progress through the game, you have to trigger the dark age event.

This can be an easy strategy if it is just one tech, but if it is a whole group of techs, then it will seriously stall a player using that strategy.

With the 'turning rebels into a civ' issue, there needs to be some kind of limit to the rebellion, and a conversion, so that the condition can be reset for the next rebellion (or civic change) so that rebel_leader can go back to his pre rebellion role (That of the King/Pope Mechanic) To create a certain 'urgency' to subdueing your kingdom.

I guess we can have one or more rebel civs and reuse those. I wonder what would happen if we run init player when we reuse it. It will keep relations with other players, but if it is a rebel at war with everybody like barbarians, then that wouldn't be a problem.

With the stationing in forts, it might be worth looking into jimprovement, or Super forts code, and see if any of it can be ported to Col. part of the code lets forts retain the culture of the occupying units. It does a lot more besides, but this would stop the 'culture push' of a rebel flip.

I have to consider if I like that idea. Perhaps it would be better to just make a new city type without a city screen (or should forts have a city screen?) and then they can spread like other cities spread cultural influence. I'm not sure I like the concept of having city like features in non-cities. It's the same as professions: if we keep vanilla layout as much as possible, then we will run into fewer issues. On the other hand having tons of fake cities might hurt performance and eat up memory.

As to the player cap. I am currently not planning to have really anymore 'playing factions' than is currently in M:C. with say 10 barb groups. to populate the continents. For the first version. But if non-player factions have rebellions too then it would fill up quick.

Can Ai factions have actual rebellions? Is that normally an auto lose if they beat you to it?

Yeah AI players can be affected by this as well. Besides remember that I have announced a few times that I will fix multiplayer. For all we know 20 people will join together and play the game. Considering that network games allows all human players to take their turn at the same time it wouldn't cause a long delay at end of turn and would be fully playable. It might be unlikely that so many people join together, but we shouldn't make a design which conflicts with it.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

well, as for multiplayer, I would design the game, and if there is a limit on multiplayer, then there is a limit on multiplayer... I have never successfully played anything multiplayer with more than 4 players, and I think a group of 20 is rare to non-existent, I wouldn't limit game play for the 1 group of people that join together in a 20 player game.

Well, with forts, it is only one square of Cultural control underneath the fort, as far as I am aware it barely impacts on performance, making a whole new city type seems excessive, unless the culture code is completely different from base civ4, but I cannot imagine that being the case.. but as an improvement, they are just like strongholds really, they just provide a defensive bonus to the tile.

As for the 'Dark Age Trigger Tech' it will be a 'gateway' tech, you have to go through it in order to advance to the medieval era. So if you don't research you will be permanently stuck in the classical era, with no more technological advancement.

 

[Nightinggale]

Ahh I misread forts as spreading culture. If the culture "spread" is just the plot, then we can do it in a way, which is a lot simpler than I first assumed. If there is a request to change owner, then it will be ignored if plot has a fort and current owner has at least one military unit or unit with military profession on that plot. I don't think forts should be mentioned in the DLL. Instead it should be a bool in the improvement info telling which improvements, which provides this ability.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

you know me, xml tags is always a plus.