An Idea

[Azeem]

This could possibly be unbalancing, but it might be interesting to include - Industries. The production and trade of certain goods were practically essential for the development of various civilizations. Since city improvements can be set to require certain resources (even luxuries), how about adding improvements and wonders that require certain luxuries to sort of simulate the usage and processing of luxury resources?

For example:
Silk Weaver : Requires Silk to be within radius; gives +50% Luxuries and +50% tax output
Jeweler : Requires Gems to be within radius; gives +50% Luxuries and +50% tax output
The Silk Road : Great Wonder; Requires Silk and at least 5 markets within your empire; gives +1 trade bonus to all trade-producing tiles and 2 advances (to simulate the exchange of ideas resulting from the Silk Road)

[Gramphos]

It is possible that silk would become to important. But it sounds like interesting ideas.

[jordie]

Yeah, but thats just an example. There could be many different industries for the different luxuries... right? Then they would be equally important.

[Gramphos]

Maybe...

It sounds like something worth working with...

[Willem]

I've done that in my mod. I've created several small wonders for various resources, then set the "Required Resource Must Be Within City Radius" flag. It works well. I'm hoping though that they will finally move that flag over to the regular buildings. That would allow, for instance, Quarries in every city that has a Stone resource, which boosts shield production by 25%.

PS You have to be careful though that you don't make them to powerful. The example you've given strikes me as a bit to much.

[KenderBane]

Instead having industries give bonus percentages, you find a way to make them specialists (like entertainers, taxmen, and scientists) and let them give a flat number of points.

Like

Silk-weaver : +2 gold per turn, +1 Luxury; requires Silk

Jeweler : +3 Gold per turn, Requires gemstones

And so Forth ...

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

I just hope we can actually utilize more than eight luxuries with Conquests but I don't see that happening.

[Willem]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
I just hope we can actually utilize more than eight luxuries with Conquests but I don't see that happening.

Well you can already have more than 8 luxuries now, as of PTW. Before that, it would crash the game. Even though there's no further happiness effect after 8, you still have a trade item you can use.

Frankly, I think having more than what we have now would make the game to easy. In my mod, I've tried to add more unhappiness, by adding it to certain improvements etc. I find it's more interesting if everyone isn't ecstatic all the time, and with my cities always celebrating WLTK day.

[Admiral PJ]

Could have Cotton producing Cloth factories,
these were the first industries which started in 18th century Britain.

These ideas could be added to the CTP2 source code project, the source is being released.

I might try something similar in the game i'm writing.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by Willem
Well you can already have more than 8 luxuries now, as of PTW. Before that, it would crash the game. Even though there's no further happiness effect after 8, you still have a trade item you can use.

Exactly. You can ONLY HAVE 8 LUXURIES. Anything over 8 is just fluff and makes no one happy.

I think it would be an interesting twist to make a scenario where it was necessarily to acquire many different luxuries forcing civs to make trade pacts and seriously consider the disadvantages of prolonged wars.

[The Mad Monk]

You can only have 8 luxuries, but they don't all have to be the same luxuries. In HUGE map 24 civ games, collecting eight may well be impossible unless there are a few "spares" lying around. Besides, the way luxuries are distributed allows a form of "realistic" geographic control over the resource in question (cocoa is limited to one continent rather than being lightly sprinkled over the surface of the planet).

I've been busy adding new wonders that can only be built when certain resources are in the neighborhood. Such as the "famous winery" small wonder that any city with wine in its area can build, the "famous rum distillary" that goes with the sugar resource, and the "East India company" major wonder that anyone with access to tea and tobacco can build.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, based on what I've read of the 'Designer Diaries' for C3:C, I think there will be a lot more options available for luxuries both in Scenarios and the 'Epic Game'!
For instance: luxury, bonus and strategic resources, within a city's radius, can now be used to build improvements that build so-called 'treasure' units every X-turns. These can be sent to your capital for an influx of gold! In addition, you could also build improvements, dependant on luxuries, which directly increase happiness, commerce and/or production-as suggested by Azeem! Better yet, now that Imrpovements and Small Wonders can become Obsolete, you can have the same resources being vital for a different improvement/Wonder in each new age!!
So, as you can see, even if we don't get more than 8 luxuries having a direct happiness effect on our empire, there will be plenty of new opportunities for using them-so that they don't simply become 'fluff' !!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Egbert]

As a supplement to luxuries you could tag something as a resource and set that resource as a prerequisite for an improvement.

For example you could set gold as a resource and allow an improvement (say a "Jeweller") which may be built only if you have gold. The racket here is that if you have no gold you could import some for 20 turns, build jewellers everywhere and import no more gold. Meanwhile the poor AI will gladly waste money importing gold even if it has a Jeweller in every city.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
OK, based on what I've read of the 'Designer Diaries' for C3:C, I think there will be a lot more options available for luxuries both in Scenarios and the 'Epic Game'!
For instance: luxury, bonus and strategic resources, within a city's radius, can now be used to build improvements that build so-called 'treasure' units every X-turns. These can be sent to your capital for an influx of gold! In addition, you could also build improvements, dependant on luxuries, which directly increase happiness, commerce and/or production-as suggested by Azeem! Better yet, now that Imrpovements and Small Wonders can become Obsolete, you can have the same resources being vital for a different improvement/Wonder in each new age!!
So, as you can see, even if we don't get more than 8 luxuries having a direct happiness effect on our empire, there will be plenty of new opportunities for using them-so that they don't simply become 'fluff' !!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

So the game will now (er, then) recognize bonus resources for the purpose of building resource-dependent improvements?

Eeeeexcellent.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Uuhm, don't quote me on the bonus resource issue-'cause I'm not 100% certain of that one (though gems, gold and silver are 3 of the resources which can be used to build these 'treasure units' in Age of Discovery). What I AM certain of, though, is that improvements can now be given the 'must have resource in City Radius Flag' which, as you've said MM, is Eeexcelleeent!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.