World History Mod development thread

[EviltheMonkey]

Ok, maybe cutting the ancient infantry down that much isn't such a good idea. Its just that I was aiming for a uniform unit size over then length of the game (whether or not thats reasonable is another question), and an ancient army would often be around 20,000 strong and except in a few cases (Imperial Rome being the prime one) that would be a mix of spear, sword and axe depending on cultural preferance more than anything. I guess I just have a problem with the Axeman unit in the vanilla game

I'm not sure about the unit per tile limitation idea. For one this limit would have a lot of altering factors (terrain type, tile improvements, units present and even tech level to some degree) making its implementation difficult. Secondly for the numbers involved it maybe an irrelivency anyway depending on the size that a unit represents. If we could impliement a system of flanking (ie. a bonus for attacking from multiple dirrections), it would encourage a player to spread his forces out. This is also a wise thing to do to avoid an enemy bypassing your army with a cavalry force and attacking your cities, which still happens to me sometimes (good AI, silly Monkey )

Would be nice to hear kevins opinion on this. I guess he's concentrating on the map for now...

 

[moopoo]

the flanking thing could be adopted from the Afterworld(?) mod, where you get a bonus if you're attacking someone not facing the same direction as you

 

[kevinman4404]

@the scoreboard issue: Originally, I was just going to have the top civs, and the rest in the foreign advisor. However, the collapse/expand may also work, as long as the player knows he/she can do that.

@ETM: I am not yet sure how unit quant. is going to work. Cuz on the one hand you have power, as some stuff is clearly more powerful than others, and then you have numbers, which would suggest that an infantry, with huge numbers, would be stronger than, say, a cavalry or catapult. I have no idea how I can balance these both without all their strenghts being the same, or different than we'd all expect.

I do agree with flanking, but without animations, how are they going to face different directions? Something to think about. I definitely prefer this to a pertile limit.

@CheScott: not yet.

As for progress, I am giving the North America to Shiggs for his mod and he may have it ready in a couple weeks. (heh it's kinda bugged, so hopefully he'll be ok)

For my mod, I made my first at all progress in ages by understanding C++ a little more, and managed to disable a lot of Rhye's code. However, the map still won't be loaded!

I have disabled anything to do with settler maps, dynamic names, etc... anything in rhyes.cpp, which I would have thought would be the only things that might be causing it not to work.

Do you guys think it would be worth it to cancel everything of Rhye's and see if it works, or would this just be a huge waste of time? Cuz I have no way of knowing if its Rhye's stuff that isn't letting the map work.

I have also brought back in all of Rhye's xml in case there were any discrepancies there. And fiddled with where I place the map, the extension, and I made the map, internally, the same as the map he uses, (though with a different size of course).

And again, it is a simple ctd in the middle (.civ4WorldBuilderSave) or beginning (.civBeyondSwordWBSave) of the loading screen, with the error report thingy.

Does anyone have any ideas to try?


I will hopefully start the coding for wintermod (see front page) tonight.

And I've been away for a week or two because of exams, final tasks, etc. But back now

Kevin

 

[moopoo]

If you've ever played the afterworld mod, your units can see based on the direction they are facing. I'm sure this could be adapted for battle situations

 

[Gooblah]

New Eras:

Well, this one is a doozy. I think I touched on it before. Assuming we begin in 4000 BC, and the eras are not Civ-specific, it'll be hard to come up with things. I believe these new eras should be tailored to regions, such as:

Western Europe
Eastern Europe/Russia
China/Korea/Japan/Mongolia
India
Southeast Asia
Middle East/North Africa
Persia
Andes
Mesoamerica
North America
Sub-Saharan Africa

From there, the eras could be defined by 'power shifts', i.e the transfer of power from one Empire to another; for example:

Middle East: Sumerian-Akkadian-Assyrian-Babylonian-Hittites-Babylonian-Persian- Hellenic-Scythian-...-Islamic

Thus, era changes could be defined as "[Civ Adjective] Era", with each Civilization granted its own "era graphics". If the Romans took over a sizable chunk of Eastern Europe, and the Vikings spawned, they would enter the 'Roman Era' at spawning w/o the accompanying techs. Furthermore, one could split Historical Eras and Technological Eras...tech eras being the current model, allowing tech granting to any civ within that era, historical eras being the ones I describe above.

 

[Gooblah]

Boy, I'm in a brainstorming mood today:

Royal Marriages:

Royal marriages usually took place to unite two nations. Of course, this union could be broken up quickly (for example, Bloody Mary and that one Spanish guy; Mary died, Spain and England broke apart). Thus, a few requirements should be in place for this concept:

1) Aristocracy, Monarchy, or a similar Civic must be in play in both nations.
2) Royal Alliance (or a similar tech) must be researched by one Civilization

Now, there are a few rules.

1) This concept will be a diplomatic arrangement, similar to that of an Offensive Pact (detailed in one of my previous posts).
2) The marriage can be broken in the following ways:
a) relations turn sour; i.e, the diplomatic modifiers on both sides fall below a certain point
b) 'incompatible religions'; i.e, a Jewish-Muslim marriage wouldn't work...neither would a Catholic-Protestant
c) change in government; Civics or bloodline changes

 

[TheLastOne36]

New Eras:

Well, this one is a doozy. I think I touched on it before. Assuming we begin in 4000 BC, and the eras are not Civ-specific, it'll be hard to come up with things. I believe these new eras should be tailored to regions, such as:

Western Europe
Eastern Europe/Russia
China/Korea/Japan/Mongolia
India
Southeast Asia
Middle East/North Africa
Persia
Andes
Mesoamerica
North America
Sub-Saharan Africa

From there, the eras could be defined by 'power shifts', i.e the transfer of power from one Empire to another; for example:

Central Euroep would have to be part of Western Europe with the Era's, as we advanced with our fellow catholics, and not with the Greeks/Russians/Ottomans.

 

[Gooblah]

So we could shift it to this:

Mediterranean Rim (North Africa, Palestine, Iberia, Corsica/Sardinia/Sicily, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Italy)
Western Europe (Britain, France, Benelux, Germany (?), Austria, Switzerland, Hungary)
Eastern Europe/Russia (Poland, Czech Rep, Slovakia, the Balkans, the Ukraine, Russia)
Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Baltic States, Iceland)
East Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia)
India (India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal)
Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesian archipelago, Papua New Guinea, Australia (?), New Zealand (?))
Middle East (Mesopotamia, Arabian Peninsula, Egypt)
Persia (Iran, Caucasus, Afghanistan, Pakistan)
Andes (Pacific South American coast)
Mesoamerica (Central America, Caribbean)
North America
Sub-saharan Africa (The Sahel and south)

 

[TheLastOne36]

Did you here me?

Central Europe advanced with Western Europe because we were all catholics and shared stuff like technology. Eastern Europe advanced with Russia/Greece/Ottomans. Poles/Czechs/Austrians/Germans/Hungarians all advanced with Western Europe.

 

[kevinman4404]

lol he must have forgotten Poland = central europe. I guess some people divide Europe into two rather than three, and in that case Poland would be East.

For the regional eras, it does make sense that the historical ones (ie dark ages, etc) would not work, as, for example, that didn't apply to the Americas. Do you really want it subdivided so much? Could we just do Europe/Americas/Colonial/Asia (with maybe a couple subdivisions)/Africa? Haven't really thought about it but do you really want to be that detailed?

For the other eras thing, I don't know if I understand it or not, but you want graphics specific to each of the eras (is that feasible?) and you can't research techs unless you're in your own era (ie Sumeria is in the Sumerian era)?

heh and I was curious, with your bloody mary example, wouldn't England have been protestant and Spain catholic? Or was this before reformation, etc.?

@moopoo: k

And guys I guess I'll just go ahead and disable everything Rhye changed in his .dll. Probably will be a waste of time and will make me even more lost, but it's the only course of action I can think of...

Kevin

 

[Gooblah]

Sorry dude. Hehehe, I'm not European..by a long-shot.

Simplify the eras, then:

South America, North America, India/SE Asia, Africa, Russia/E. Europe, Western/Central Europe, East Asia, Middle East. Done.

Graphics Example:
Romans conquer all of Europe except Scandinavia. Vikings spawn. Vikings enter Roman Era, with Roman symbol graphic thing. Russians run through and conquer area, with the most culture, land, etc in E. Europe. Vikings enter Russian Era, with Russian graphics. Each major Civ would have it's own graphics, minor Civs with the same generic graphic (err..a pic of that region?).

 

[moopoo]

LOL I'm not sure why i posted the same thing so many times up there =S

 

[Grishnash]

Stand To Attention! I have an idea for armed forces in this mod. Now, I know there are a lot of ideas running about about this, but I thought "Ah, hack! I might as well!"
It will probably be alot like what's already been posted, but I haven't really read any of them, so there! We all just think alike
Armed Forces:
Now, I don't know where to start... Hmm..
I think that the armed forces (Don't know why I don't just say 'Army') in the game aren't the best. So, I've came up with an idea on how to better fit armed forces into civilizations. I think.
1: First off, units (Army), like settlers, take food to build. When the unit is built, you can put the unit in reserves, when you do this the unit goes away and you get back 50% of the food it took to build, however, that unit can no longer fight. You can always get it back, however when you do this, you lose 75% of the food it took to build, also, if you are at war, unless you are the defender, you get +1.
2: You can also assign the unit to 'City guard' this gives back 25% of the food it took to build, but the unit can still fight. However, if you take the unit out of the city, you lose another 60% of food and get +1 no matter what.
Hmmm, darn. I forgot most of the good stuff and I just can't bring it back up in my head
3: Anyways. Unit outside of cities take food to stay in duty. Every unit out side of a city takes 1/4 a food from all cities. I.e. You have one archer outside your cities and 4 cities, each city loses 1/16 of a food. Cities can not lose size this way, however they can stop growing, which is rarely good for an empire. You can alway shift the food around, so that a city with lots of food can take the toll for a city that has little food but is trying to grow.
4: Improvements (towns) also take a toll, slowing them down in growth.
5: Air units intercepting is the same as being outside of the city, and loses food.
6: Units in reserve do not cost normal Army Unit cost, instead, they cost normal unit cost. So, you save money puting your men in reserve.
7: Units take more food per turn when healing.
8: Units outside of cities give unhappiness, units on duty in cities give unhappiness, unless at war. However, units in fort do not give unhappiness nor do they take extra food when healing.

9: NEW-ADDON:
Active training. Active training is like the culture and research at the top of the screen, you can + or - how much you want. What it does: For every 10% of AT you put on, 5% of your cities growth-food turns into hammers that goes towards the building of a unit (the draft unit), when the unit gets all it's hammers it will appear in the city it was built, and I think, maybe it will start out as 'City Guard' or in reserve. This does not take up the building que, so you can be building a Bank in a city, and still have a unit pop up from Active Training. Also, if you switch a city to build a unit, the hammers that were going towards your free unit will covert to hammers for the unit you start to build.

Spoiler Reasons... Kind of.. :

Reasons:
1: = Settlers take food because your taking people from their normal homes and sending them out to settled somewhere else. Units your taking people from their normal lives and training them to become soldiers. In both cases the city growth is slowed down, less people are working normal jobs or building new homes or have time to start families. Also, If a city is size five and has 5000 people, and you have ten warriors, does that make your civs pop 1500? Why and how do you have more soldiers then anything else? And when your not at war, why can't you send your soldiers to do some work, and help your empire grow? I got a size four city I want to grow but it's taking too long and I've got 10 archers sitting there with nothing better to do then shoot birds!
2: = Well, this takes care of the whole, "Why can you have tanks roaming around your city? If you did that IRL your people would freak!" I think all cities have their own "City Guards" standing by, hack just not to long ago, the militia of my city was call out to deal with some bad guy... yes... one guy..... But they sure don't have armors and gunships laying about waiting for a enemy to get near them.
3: = Since a turn is like a year or ten, I would think those units would need to constantly need to be replaced with younger men.
4: = Same as above.
5: = They really can't be in the sky and bed at the same time.
6: = I'm not in the army, I and haven't asked, but do you get paid for sitting at home waiting for your commanding officer to give you call? If so, then here I come armed forces
7: = Heres the thing: When a units hurt, does that mean men have died and the unit is no longer in full platoon or some men are hurt and ammos gone? Either way, renforcements would come in to bring the platoon back up to full combat ready. Which means that house you were planning to buy? Maybe not...
8: = No one likes it when their kids/parents/friends/partners/brothers/sisters or someone they know goes off to war. Or even just walking around the contrysid of some far off nation. And I don't think anyone would like it if seeing a army gunship or tank with an every day thing. Although, I don't know about Americans, their police seem an awfull lot like soldiers keeping order in a land they just took over. I mean, they have trucks with sonic blasters patroling the streets. And their S.W.A.T could take over a small nation. Hack a medium size nation.
And just to make forts better.
9: = This seems more like what goes on nowadays... It's kinda not right that you can't Train a bunch of kids to shoot people at the same time as building a hospital in New York.

Oh, well! I know I had more, but I just can't remember it
So, what do you think? Good Idea?

Hows the mod coming along? I think It's about time you start putting together a team, it will get things done quicker, unless you don't want one.

Keep up the good work (not that I'm seeing much... but still )

 

[MikeJep]

With the above post in mind...Grishnash's...

Maybe to create an army it takes a small amount of hammers. (this is the cost of recruiting those poor slobs out of their huts in terms of man hours)

Once the Army is built xx amount of food is deducted from the city(the population rolls back if necessary). (this is the cost in poor saps leaving the city)(food=people)to me @ least.

These armies are basically proto-units, just rabble w/o any weapons w/ a warriors stats. Weapons (think spears, ax, sword) build for just straight hammers.
An army could pick up maybe 3 weapons. All the same or different.
###
For example.
city builds army for 10h and 50food (w/e)
army picks up one unit of warhorses (+1movement/no defence/gives class mounted)
picks up one unit of ax(+1damage/+20%to melee units/gives class melee)
picks up one unit of swords(+2damage/+10%to city attack/gives class melee)

However make it so that the mounted class negates the melee class so that the unit is now a ax/sword mounted unit (+3damage/+10%tocity/+20%tomele/+1speed).
####
Also I just thought you could make some cities(through buildings or events) produce better weapons then others. Also allow civs to buy/sell weapons.

 

[moopoo]

ugh. This has become too complicated for me. I vote Kev sticks with the normal unit system, or a slightly more advanced one.

 

[kevinman4404]

ugh. This has become too complicated for me. I vote Kev sticks with the normal unit system, or a slightly more advanced one

Agreed, but I do think there are many good points, not to mention ones that would be very easy to do.

Here are some comments *pants*

Outside soldiers should take food to maintain, this is done in pretty much every history/army game.

Don't know if I could do #4.

7 is interesting, but I'll have to see if I can do it. Entirely possible.

Overall there are a ton of food costs going on at once here, and it's really very overwhelming; and it would have to be all or nothing, so we are going to have to decide on how important this food cost idea is to us, and how much the issue debalances the current game.

In the spoiler:

1. Don't understand the 1500 pop. part. Lol and about sending soldiers to do some work, I don't know what I could do unless we can double them as workers. But then, why would we get workers in the first place? Lol we all know that soldiers don't do any constructive work though Kidding, I wouldn't know

2. Tanks in cities will = massive unhappiness, perhaps more.

3. Uh... perhaps a little too exacting. Doubt that this will be neccessary, especially remembering that the passage of years is ONLY a timeline for the tech tree so civs will research optics near 1500, education 1700, etc... The movement of the units is independent of this. And the mod would be year by year until the 1900s, and maybe weekly after 2008.

4. lol?

5. Quite exacting, but if we go with the food I'll make sure I include this

6. Where is this issue in the game?

7. A VERY good question. So you're saying if being hurt means units from that little platoon have died, that it should become less powerful? And I'm honestly not ready to have anything to do with ammunition As of now, the units represent platoons, but we'll have to decide on whether we want it to be that exact. Plus I don't know how to weaken the attack of the units as they are hurt.

8. lol, where were you going with this?

9. I don't get it

Another comment: why should sending out soldiers not reduce city population? This was clearly visible in France under Napoleon, who was quite ambitious with his recruitments

I'm hestitant to make players have to train weapons, but maybe buy them, and just this as I see it would be like creating a whole new game's worth of coding, data, etc. Then again, ammunition is an often-traded commodity, and let us not forget Canada's role in the world wars, most characterized by donating air personnel, food and ammunition/weapons.

this is the cost of recruiting those poor slobs

lol

~~~

Now, here are things things, concerning the points above, that we must decide upon:

1. SHOULD UNITS COST FOOD?

2. KEEP UNIT REPRESENTATION AS IT IS OR MAKE THEM INTO PLATOONS REPRESENTING SEVERAL UNITS?

3. SHOULD WE HAVE TO MAKE/BUY WEAPONS/AMMUNITION, THEN ATTACH IT TO A UNIT?

I really should probably withhold my vote, caz I don't know how much I am willing to add yet, and I'm not terribly decided on any of those three points. So let me know what you (plural) think.

~~~

Grishnash, admittedly progress is extremely slow. I have done a bit of python for the Wintermod feature. Troubleshooting, my biggest worry, isn't getting anywhere.

I would love to assemble a team, but really the purpose of that would be to catch up on the bulk work once I have a working mod, as this huge problem is pushing everything else back. What I need more anything is someone, anyone, who can understand code and help me figure out where the problem is, or even just someone (anyone) who can give me suggestions as to what I can do to get closer to finding it, as I am pretty much directionless.

I will deactivate the rest of Rhye's code additions and see if I can run it with my mod. If it doesn't, I will be so unbelievably lost Caz then it won't be his stuff that's causing problems, but something unidentified on my end that I may (and probably won't ever) never find.

Hope this helps
Kevin

Hehe, minus the spoiler, my post's the longest now

 

[Tee Kay]

1. I think there should be certain civics that allow food to contribute to unit production, like in Chinese Unification.
2. Nah. The mod is complicated enough as it is. Or if you want you could reintroduce the "Army" concept from Civ3.
3. Yes, I think that's a good idea. Look at the modern world - there's a few arms-manufacturing countries (mostly and ironically permanent UN Security Council members ) and most of the Third World and minor Western countries buy most their weapons (tanks, planes, etc) off them.

 

[EviltheMonkey]

Ok, lets try and rationalize the arms trade (in game not RL obviously ).
If we are going to represent industry as the processing of raw materials into finished products, weapons can be represented in this way (anyone familiar with colonization's economy system will know exactly what I mean; ore -> tools -> muskets). Some weapons would be fairly simple to make and there is unlikely to be much trade in them except for civs that lack the raw materials (so if you want to get some swords in and lack the iron it might be cheaper/less hassle to buy the finished product from your iron rich neighbour than import the ore and build a blacksmith yourself). Later weapons will be more complex, requiring more varied raw materials and production facilities, for example muskets might need copper and tin processed at a foundry to produce bronze and saltpetre and coal processed at a powder mill to make gun powder. In this case a civ might lack the metals but have plenty of saltpetre so it could import the bronze, make the powder itself and bring the two together at an arsenal to make the muskets or (if they're feeling lazy) just buy the guns.

So I would propose the following 'weapons' as tradable commodities:

Spoiler :

Swords (represents all pre gunpowder edged weapons, requires iron or bronze)
Guns (represents muskets to late 19th century rifles, requires iron or bronze and black powder)
Munitions (represents all modern guns and conventional warheads from the first cased ammunition onwards, requires steel and explosives)
Warheads (a nuclear warhead, requires weapon-grade radioactives, aluminium and electronics)
Steam Engines (used in 19th century warships and needed for railroad construction, requires iron and coal)
Petrol Engines (needed for some ships, tanks, mech inf, and early aircraft, requires steel, rubber for tires and fuel oil)
Turbine Engines (need for late game ships, jet aircraft and power stations, requires steel and nickel)
Rocket (needed for a space program, missile based weapons and modern aircraft, requires aluminium, and chemicals for fuel)

Obviously the weapons you need will change depending on the unit your building and a lot of units will need other resourses (horses, cloth for sails or uniforms, metal for airframes or chassis maybe even canned food for provisions if we're feeling like workaholics )

 

[Gooblah]

I suggest the creation of "Convertors". These would be buildings (or Corporations?) that could be placed in a city to convert one resource to another (like Oil-> plastics, etc).

 

[MikeJep]

Shoot now I am getting very excited about this mod. I know there is work on QR currently. I don't think modding the city interface would be impossible (might be hard though I had a hell of a time getting a new interface into civ) to create new buttons to open up a screen which allows the user to modify the "converter" buildings production rates.

For me the more complex the game the better.
I wish firaxis would make a massive online civ game were you could play as royal families , political parties, generals(warlords!!) or as the board of a multinational corporation. (corporate republic anyone)