Civ-specific improvements?

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Rooster
Actually, I was reading through the manual today and it turns out you can set the Era to "none." This makes the tech unresearchable (is that a word??). But, you can assign it to civilizations as default techs. Now, this could easily be put to use for making civ-specific units/improvements. Just add one required tech as the civ specific one, and one as a normal one. That way, you could make a civ-specific improvement in any era... thoughts/comments??

If it works, this helps somewhat. However, it's only good for improvements that are allowable at the beginning since you can only set up ONE tech as a prereq for an improvement.

You can't, for example, create a civ-specific improvement that has to wait until Construction. Nor can you create an improvement specific to just two civs (say the Greeks and the Romans).

Restricting improvements to specific civs as with units seems the ideal way to go.

Appreciate the info!

[Hastur]

Here's a thought...

You are restricted on improvments (and wonders) to requiring only a single tech... but you can also require a resource. Since almost all of the resources become available later in the game, you could tie the improvement or wonder to your "civ tech" such as "Greek" AND to a resource such as iron which would then require iron working. There aren't many resources available to tie these civ-specific improvements/wonders to but its' better than nothing.

[Kuciwalker]

You could give each civ it's own civ-specific tech, setting the age to none, and make an improvement called "Greek Infrastructure" or "American Infrastructure," etc. This improvement would cost only 10 shields, to make it simple and easy to build, and Greek-specific improvements, for example, could require a normal tech, but ALSO require that you have built "Greek Infrastructure."

[Ray K]

Originally posted by skywalker
You could give each civ it's own civ-specific tech, setting the age to none, and make an improvement called "Greek Infrastructure" or "American Infrastructure," etc. This improvement would cost only 10 shields, to make it simple and easy to build, and Greek-specific improvements, for example, could require a normal tech, but ALSO require that you have built "Greek Infrastructure."

That's a good idea. How can you keep the Civs from trading techs?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Ray K


If it works, this helps somewhat. However, it's only good for improvements that are allowable at the beginning since you can only set up ONE tech as a prereq for an improvement.

You can't, for example, create a civ-specific improvement that has to wait until Construction. Nor can you create an improvement specific to just two civs (say the Greeks and the Romans).

No, you create the one "era - none" civ specific advance which is given to the Chinese at the start, then create a new tech which has Construction as its only prereq and as low a cost as possible, then you make the Great Wall available with that new advance instead of construction.

Or, the method already suggested - create the one "era - none" civ specific advance which is given to the Chinese at the start, and a very cheap building/Small Wonder that doesn't do anything called Chinese Culture or something, and then make it required in order to build the Great Wall. I like small wonder because it would then disappear from your build cue after you build it once, and so your governors wouldn't be trying to build it all over the place.

There remains the problem of keeping the AI's from trading it - but maybe you can't trade such a tech (maybe that is wishful thinking, too).

Also, this technique (either version) requires that you either create new techs (which in turn requires using something more than the stock editor) or that you change the tech tree all around to free up some slots

[Kuciwalker]

Barnacle Bill, I made it an improvement because a) it would be the prerequisite for civ-specific improvement in the city it is built in (the same way a bank requires a marketplace) and b) you could make it generate, say, one culture point per turn. You might even make a small wonder, called perhaps, as you suggested, Chinese Culture, that gives you Chinese Infrastructure in every city. Oh, and you can create new techs if you have downloaded the hacked editor; unfortunately, it is still a little buggy.

[open air]

idea: what about using the strageic resources... this would only work with a premade map, but....

say you change iron to the english (as an example), and make all the improvments or units you want only that civ you have, require that resource...

then in the map, place the resource by that races starting position, and away you go...

Problem: (thought of this as i was typing that up.... ) you can't set certain civs starting points...

[Kuciwalker]

The problem with using resources is that you'd have to add them, and adding resources is WAY buggier than adding techs; it will probably never work, because of the way the graphics are stored.

[Admiral PJ]

I'm sure the BIC file can be editied manually or with a hacked editing program to allow more flexible techs.
It might be possible to make a cut off tech tree, that only say one civ can access by making itself as a prerequisite so therefore it can't be researched( probably would make the computer explode though


I'd love to be able to do this.. perhaps we can have a special building which is needed in each city to build certain special cultural improvements.
This special building.. like a English Government Hall , would be built from one of the starting techs(which wouldn't be reserachable for now at least) and then you can use the regular tech tree to build your special buildings, but they just have a requirement for the English Gov Building.
This is easier than mucking around with resources, which would probably confuse the AI anyhow.