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As a number of other people have been doing, I have been trying to think of ways for units to be customized. I really think the unit design in alpha centauri added to the game play. However until the sdk is out, it will be hard (or impossible to add customization on that level).
So I came up with the idea that I'm working on at the moment:
Once a tech has been researched it allows further research into different unit designs.
I'm including a simple proof of concept mod, in which once sailing is discovered it allows three new designs of Galleons to be researched. Of course really Galleons shouldn't be available as early as sailing, but I've done it this way so that it is easier to test. There are also a number of other gameplay things which would need changing in a larger scale test, like the cost of researching each design, and each unit type costing different amounts to build.
The design research is seperate to the standard tech research (although in this proof of concept once you have the first design, the other designs can be researched by the standard method, but I would change this in later stages).
So to test it, your civilization will need to discover sailing, then you should get a pop up screen saying that your engineers have came up with new designs.
Then go to the foriegn advisor screen and at the bottom of the screen where the different options are, there should be a new one called "Designs".
Click on this and you will go to the Design screen. There it will tell you what designs can be researched. So once you have discovered sailing, there should be three Galleon designs. Click on one of them to start researching it. At the top of that screen it tells you how much gold you are investing into design research each turn. For this test, the MK II design costs a total of 5 gold, the MK III costs 7 gold and the MK IV costs 10. For game balancing these really would need to be changed.
Maybe later I will see if standard research points can be invested. Also at the moment if you set the investment at a higher amount than the gold you have, no investment will be made each turn until you have enough gold.
I know that this design screen shouldn't be part of the foreign advisor and that the tech advisor would make more sense, but that can be changed later.
I have a number of other ideas of using this method, like when a tech is researched each civilization is only allowed to pick one design of each unit, or to allow further research into new designs as further techs are discovered. Also futher research into a technology could be done this way. So in effect the standard built in research method is used for general science research while development/design and further refinement of technology is done in this method.
I think these changes might work well, with other changes to slow the tech research down, so that totaly new types of units came much slower but it allowed you to refine existing types, and to incorporate new technology into these old types (by way of making a new design available when some other tech has been discovered).
Currently this is a basic proof of concept and a number of changes would need to be made for it to be usable in gameplay terms and the code would need improving to allow a lot of different designs to be added.
Also currently the AI isn't able to research these new designs (well at least until after it has researched Future tech), but I do plan to make it so that the AI can, and I don't think the SDK will be needed for it to work.
I'm uploading it now to see what people think and get some feedback/ideas.
Of course you could create a similar effect by just making the three new techs have sailing as prereqtechs but I think the method I am working on allows more flexibility
and works better with some other ideas I'm working on.
To try the mod out, unzip the file into the folder: My Documents\ My Games\ Sid Meier's Civilization 4\
So I came up with the idea that I'm working on at the moment:
Once a tech has been researched it allows further research into different unit designs.
I'm including a simple proof of concept mod, in which once sailing is discovered it allows three new designs of Galleons to be researched. Of course really Galleons shouldn't be available as early as sailing, but I've done it this way so that it is easier to test. There are also a number of other gameplay things which would need changing in a larger scale test, like the cost of researching each design, and each unit type costing different amounts to build.
The design research is seperate to the standard tech research (although in this proof of concept once you have the first design, the other designs can be researched by the standard method, but I would change this in later stages).
So to test it, your civilization will need to discover sailing, then you should get a pop up screen saying that your engineers have came up with new designs.
Then go to the foriegn advisor screen and at the bottom of the screen where the different options are, there should be a new one called "Designs".
Click on this and you will go to the Design screen. There it will tell you what designs can be researched. So once you have discovered sailing, there should be three Galleon designs. Click on one of them to start researching it. At the top of that screen it tells you how much gold you are investing into design research each turn. For this test, the MK II design costs a total of 5 gold, the MK III costs 7 gold and the MK IV costs 10. For game balancing these really would need to be changed.
Maybe later I will see if standard research points can be invested. Also at the moment if you set the investment at a higher amount than the gold you have, no investment will be made each turn until you have enough gold.
I know that this design screen shouldn't be part of the foreign advisor and that the tech advisor would make more sense, but that can be changed later.
I have a number of other ideas of using this method, like when a tech is researched each civilization is only allowed to pick one design of each unit, or to allow further research into new designs as further techs are discovered. Also futher research into a technology could be done this way. So in effect the standard built in research method is used for general science research while development/design and further refinement of technology is done in this method.
I think these changes might work well, with other changes to slow the tech research down, so that totaly new types of units came much slower but it allowed you to refine existing types, and to incorporate new technology into these old types (by way of making a new design available when some other tech has been discovered).
Currently this is a basic proof of concept and a number of changes would need to be made for it to be usable in gameplay terms and the code would need improving to allow a lot of different designs to be added.
Also currently the AI isn't able to research these new designs (well at least until after it has researched Future tech), but I do plan to make it so that the AI can, and I don't think the SDK will be needed for it to work.
I'm uploading it now to see what people think and get some feedback/ideas.
Of course you could create a similar effect by just making the three new techs have sailing as prereqtechs but I think the method I am working on allows more flexibility
and works better with some other ideas I'm working on.
To try the mod out, unzip the file into the folder: My Documents\ My Games\ Sid Meier's Civilization 4\
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