Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

[MOD] Civ4 Advanced

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • [MOD] Civ4 Advanced

    Hi, I'm announcing a new modpack. No files yet; it is still in the planning phase.

    I have a few major gripes with Civ 4 (aside from it not working). Particularly, it seems overly-streamlined, simplified, and dumbed-down, while I like strategy games to become more complex and (when fun) realistic with each iteration.

    The major areas:


    1) Terrain.
    This concept is an abstraction of topology, rainfall, soil, rock, temperature, latitude, altitude, and flora, making it less flexible than "biome". Civ 4 has grassland, forest, plains, desert, floodplains, tundra, ice, coast, lake, ocean, and impassible (i.e. mountains). Some of these can also contain forest, jungle, and river. However... the real world has:

    Coniferous Forest (Canada)
    Freshwater Swamp (Everglades)
    Salt Marsh (Louisiana)
    Mangrove Swamp (Tropics and Florida Coast)
    High Desert (Tibet)
    Volcanic Plains (Indonesia)
    Dune Desert (Sahara)
    Badlands (Death Valley)
    Temperate Broadleaf Forest (North Carolina)
    Tropical Rainforest (Tropics - aka "Jungle")
    Cloud Forest (Peru)
    Temperate Rainforest (Washington and Oregon)
    Savannah (Africa)
    ...and many more, often with rocky, sandy, loamy, rich, poor, shallow and deep versions of the soil.

    Civ4 is simply incapable of differentiating between these things because it is too simplistic; unimproved, normal terrain generally gives 0-2 food or resources. So, how do you distinguish between high-value coniferous lumber, low-value paper-pulp-grade broadleaf forests, and commercially worthless (but fruit- and bush-meat-yielding) second-growth tropical rainforest in this model? You simply don't have enough variables to make 30 unique terrains or biomes. In fact, the effect of terrain on cities is vastly inferior in Civilization to Master of Magic, which came out over a decade ago.

    The fix: Advanced Terrain will feature many more terrain types (and some new associated specials). They will have increased precision in terms of output (e.g., 1.2 food and 0.4 shields).


    2) Resources and production.
    People either work the land or build things. If your entire population mines iron and coal, this does not increase your industrial output - it reduces it to zero, as there is nobody left to use the iron and coal. Stars! has mines and factories, MoM has workers and bonuses from nearby mountains and ore deposits, and Civilization has... loggers building airplanes out of trees? Well, that's retarded.

    Advanced Production will add the concept of resources and labor. Labor comes from population set to "worker" specialist, modified by buildings and resources, and is used to build things. Resources come from the map, and are turned into things by laborers. Ideally, a full economy could be set up with iron, copper, stone, wood, uranium, etc all being produced, tracked, and consumed by workers within an empire, but... it would be easier just to make a new game. So, resources will just be shields, produced by mines, and used by laborers in the same city (at no penalty), or laborers in connected cities that have a resource shortage (at a penalty, due to transport costs). This way, a small 3-population mining town in a rich mountain area could supply the resources for a size 30 city in the middle of a vast grassland to turn into tanks and planes. Just like the real world!


    3) Strategic Resources.
    The way Civ3 handled strat resources was terrible. The way Civ4 handles them is... Identical!! Except some units have dual requirements, which is even less realistic (an iron-age swordsman would kick the ass of a bronze-age swordsman). Did Hitler lose North Africa because he was unable to BUILD new tanks in an oil shortage, or because he was unable to MOVE his tanks?

    Well, the worst parts of strat resources (they are needed to build things, not use them... one deposit supplies exactly one empire... ) are hard-coded. However, it is possible to make them a little better.

    Advanced Strategic Resources will add many strategic resources (flint, obsidian, saltpeter, thorium, titanium, lead, latex, silk, lemons, tar, peat, diamonds, tin, zinc) that had immense historic (or future) importance in war and industry. However, they will not have black and white effects such as "without tar, you cannot build a wooden boat", because people are adaptive! There would still be steel bullets without lead, bone knives without flint, mylar parachutes without silk, corundom/carborundum sawblades without industrial diamonds, and so forth. As a last resort, anyone can buy materials on the international gray market for a high price, or refine every industrially useful metal from seawater if it is needed badly enough. So, the presence or absence of strategic resources will modify the PRICE and QUALITY of units built, never the AVAILABILITY of units. This was partly inspired by the "Cow Archer" thread, for civs without horses.


    4) Science, Technology, and War
    There are not enough units in Civ4. Can all sword-using warriors in Earth's history really be abstracted to a single unit? If you think the answer is "yes", you probably don't want a more complex version of Civ anyway. Furthermore, a peaceful society would not suddenly build battleships after the invention of steel, or machine guns after the advent of chemistry... designing a battleship is way more difficult than figuring out a good mix of iron and coal! It is TECHNOLOGY rather than SCIENCE, a distinction that Civilization never makes. In fact, the so-called tech tree is not even a tree, but a polyvine! Trees have leaves.

    Advanced Science and Technology will turn the "tech tree" into a Science and Technology tree, with the "trunks" made of sciences and the "branches and leaves" made of technologies. For example, the science of ironworking is necessary to discover the science of steelworking. However, the technologies "chain mail" and "longswords" would branch off of ironworking. "Chain mail" might lead to "plate mail" and "longswords" might lead to "greatswords", each of which is a leaf... meaning that they are technological dead ends. None would be specifically required for steelworking or any other science, although a certain number of technologies that use ironworking might be required. Obviously, knowledge of more advanced armor and weapon technologies would give the knower more powerful units, based on the same scientific advance.


    5) And more!
    There is so much to change, it's hard to know where to start. There are too many buildings, and they have overly potent effects, IMO; I want to manage an empire, not tell the people in Peanutville when and where to build their supermarket. Religion is currently... dumbed down to be politically correct. The loss of ZOC means there are no front lines; forts don't help here, or even help anything, as they're trash. Privateers and partisans are gone, infinite road sprawl is still a problem, mountains are ... no longer real terrain, artillery, bombardment, and softening are all messed up, and unit movement is still way too granular. No point in wearing light armor and riding oxen rather than wearing full plate and walking when both armies eat nothing, move 1 tile per turn through any terrain, cost the same and are equally effective in battle because Civ doesn't model armor or mounts other than horses!


    If you have comments, I'd be happy to hear them. If you want to code a sub-mod, work on some aspect of the complete mod, or use any of the ideas in your own mod, feel free - as in, don't ask MY permission! I won't be able to start work on this until Jan. 6th at the earliest; I don't intend to start until a 'stable' patch is out for Civ4 anyway; I have some heavy-duty AI software to finish before I start on something else; and I may drop Civ4 for quite a while if Dominions III or Galactic Civilizations 2 comes out prior to those conditions being met.
    -Cherry

  • #2
    I concur :-).

    More terrain:
    Low mountains.
    Canyons, ravine, gorge
    Caves
    Savanna
    spares Forrest (woodland, open forrest)
    Giant Grass
    Bare hillock
    Plateau

    Improvements:
    Path, Road, Highway (like settlers 3, paths could be made automaticly on well traveled tiles)
    Scout Tower

    Units:
    Healer, Barber-Surgeon
    River Boats
    Cavebear, Gepard, Sabertooth Tiger, Mammut, Buffles, Icebear, Elephant
    Horsescout/Horseman

    Featuers:
    Animals skould be able to propagate and have lairs.
    Unit carries some (half) of there pay in gold.
    Different upkeep (like more on horse units)
    Units uses food. Can store and find and steal food.
    Most units need a special buildings to be able to be made.
    Animals gives food when killed.
    Fields gives food when pillaged.
    Resources can move. Animal moves around and can be tamed or killed. Moves a bit random if not angry or frighten.
    Governors: Unit that you set on a city. Will have different promotions that gains extra commence, production, military exp, food, and so on.
    Getting more experience and promotions.

    Comment


    • #3
      Good ideas here.
      Terrain: You'll have to define the terrain AND to change all the scripts in order to add the new terrain types. From what I saw, the types sea/land/hills/peak seem hardcoded, the rest is not. I'd like a terrain to be something that turns into a desert if deforested by the way.
      Strategic resources: I concure with your analysis except for horses. Lack of horses cannot be replaced. However, as soon as you meet a civilization with horses, you get horses (they get loose, and you can get them by catching wild horses). It may not be immediate, but it happens soon enough.

      Looking forward to your mod, hope it's as good as your DominionsII work.
      Clash of Civilization team member
      (a civ-like game whose goal is low micromanagement and good AI)
      web site http://clash.apolyton.net/frame/index.shtml and forum here on apolyton)

      Comment


      • #4
        whoa. this sounds like it's gonna be a huge mod. hurry up, I wanna play it!

        Comment


        • #5
          Stars! has mines and factories
          I feel compelled to every time I see a Stars! reference.


          I think there should be a way to simulate the importance of Oil using Python.

          basically, take the number of oil resources x 100. That is how much oil you can use each turn.
          Each modern unit (ships, tanks, aircraft) then use an amount of oil each turn, prehaps 5 if fortified and 10 otherwise.
          If the total oil usage exceeds the oil income, then some units get the "Out of Fuel" demotion; which would be something like -1 movement and -50% strength.

          That's the basics, more stuff (like trading oil) could be built on top, and also civilian uses of oil.

          Comment


          • #6
            Sounds cool, you still working on this? It'd add a little more complexity to thre game which I always like. Though I'd like to know, if I get 3.2 food per turn will it be the same as if I got 3 food a turn or will it really be like 3.2?

            Comment


            • #7
              It would be easier to make all of the food/gold/hammer amounts X10, so you would be getting 32 food (and 20 would be required to feed each citizen).
              Those who live by the sword...get shot by those who live by the gun.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Qwertqwert
                Sounds cool, you still working on this? It'd add a little more complexity to thre game which I always like. Though I'd like to know, if I get 3.2 food per turn will it be the same as if I got 3 food a turn or will it really be like 3.2?
                Do we even know if the value can be stored as a float? I'll bet the XML file is looking for an int. Hope I'm wrong.

                Roger Bacon

                Comment

                Working...
                X