Sea colonies and resources

[Kuratko]

Just an idea:
When Civ3 was published, some people complained that e.g. Oil cannot be placed at coast or sea tiles. This is now possible with 1.29f. We can now place strategic and luxury resources on any tile, even coast, sea and ocean. In my minimod I tried to enable Oil and Colonies on Coast tiles. I also gave to all naval transports the ability to build colonies (warning, any units carried by the ship would be lost upon buildign the colony; creating new unit, say a Sea Engineer with colony building ability, would make more sense). To access it, however, a connection to road network is still needed. Again it is possible to enable some Sea units to build roads/railroads, which looks weird at the first sight but you can think about them as cable or pipeline connection.

Might be interesting for some mods, what do you think?

[Willem]

But what's it going to look like when the AI starts building railroads all over the coast squares as well? Which will happen eventually, if you allow road building. I'd like to have that ability, but doing it this way just doesn't seem practical to me. Maybe if we're really nice Firaxis will give us a unit like the supply crawler in SMAC, so we can exploit all resources anywhere.

[Thrawn05]

I don't think the editor will let you change which type of tiles can build roads/rails and such. I would like though, I was thinking of preventing roads/rails being built on mountains to make things interesting.

[Willem]

If you set the terrain to have a 0 commerce bonus, then the AI, or you for that matter, won't be able to build roads. But you also won't be able to connect resources. And there's currently no way to stop railroad construction once there's a road in place.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Willem
If you set the terrain to have a 0 commerce bonus, then the AI, or you for that matter, won't be able to build roads. But you also won't be able to connect resources. And there's currently no way to stop railroad construction once there's a road in place.

Fine by me, I better get editing. This would making war interesting since mountains can block your tanks.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


Fine by me, I better get editing. This would making war interesting since mountains can block your tanks.

A better way of doing that would be to make your Tanks a wheeled unit. That way it can't travel through Mountains and Jungle without a road. So you have to get some Workers in to build your attack route first. That would be more realistic IMO.

[johncmcleod]

This would be a great idea. You'd have to make it take way more turns to build though. And is there a way to make a certain tech required to build roads on a certain terrain type? It would be stupid to be able to build the roads like that during the ancient ages. Maybe you could make a new tech that would allow you to do this. And so what if the AI builds roadsall over the coastlines? Sorry if this is a dumb question but I don't get the problem with that.

[Kuratko]

Originally posted by Willem
...there's currently no way to stop railroad construction once there's a road in place.

I guess there could be one but I did not test it. Give to the selected naval units the ability to build road but not railroad. They are separate in the editor.

Still there's no way how to stop the AI from building roads on every coast or sea square available.

The problem is that Firaxis made no difference between commere bonus given by the roads and their transport/connect function. They made them even completely indistinguishable by the 1.29f patch by forbidding to build the road while there's no commerce bonus. Before 1.29f you could set some terrain types to have no commerce bonus with roads and you would build roads on that terrain only for transport reasons which the AI did well. I do not fully understand why Firaxis made that impossible, unless they really want to minimize the number of decisions the AI must take.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Kuratko


I guess there could be one but I did not test it. Give to the selected naval units the ability to build road but not railroad. They are separate in the editor.

If you don't have all the Worker flags checked, you can't automate the unit, it will just sit there. Which means the AI wouldn't be able to use it, and that would give the human to much of an advantage.

[Willem]

Originally posted by johncmcleod
And is there a way to make a certain tech required to build roads on a certain terrain type?

No there isn't, you can only select a single tech in order to build all roads, regardless of terrain. I kind of figure there should be myself. I don't think a Worker should be able to build a road through a mountain until Engineering, but there's no way to make that work.

And so what if the AI builds roadsall over the coastlines? Sorry if this is a dumb question but I don't get the problem with that.

Because it will look strange, not mention butt ugly. It's bad enough it ends up all over the land, I certainly wouldn't want to see it in the ocean as well. Especially on every single square. It just wouldn't look right IMO.

[Level]

Resources Cuold be on coast before you just needed a harbor to use them.
To get Resources outside of your terartory you need colonys and roads so you also need to let colonys build on watter.

[Willem]

Ideally, the way it should work is if you build an Offshore Platform, you'd be able to access the resource if it's in the city boundary.

But life is seldom ideal.

[Adc]

Originally posted by Willem


No there isn't, you can only select a single tech in order to build all roads, regardless of terrain. I kind of figure there should be myself. I don't think a Worker should be able to build a road through a mountain until Engineering, but there's no way to make that work.

You could make the original worker wheeled, and then a new non-wheeled worker (engineer maybe) apear with engineering. Also make the worker upgrade. However this will make roads through jungle also imposible till eng.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Adc
However this will make roads through jungle also imposible till eng.

Well that's the thing isn't it? I've already made my Settler wheeled, so if I did that to my Worker as well I end up screwed with those frequent times I find myself surrounded by Jungle.