Patch idea: Units need buildings

[muxec]

The idea is:
You need stable building for horsemen, knights, etc.
You need factory to build tanks and modern units.
You need carpenter's house city improvement to build caravels.

Is it good?

[Gen.Dragolen]

Muxec,

And you're not the only one: the mod I've been working on has building prerequisites for most units.

In the same theme, I have been assigning prerequisite buildings for many of the wonders, too. Imagine building the Great Lighthouse and not even having a harbour in the city. Or the Great Library and no basic library, though this example is open to revision.

The only problem is that this may complicate things for the AI Civ's and their notorious lack of effort to build improvments. I know they can handle having a population cost for each unit, but it may prevent them from starting to build some units or wonders in my case if they won't build the prerequisite improvment.

This bears some testing to see if the coding can handle it. But I do like the idea. It works well in other games like AoE2 and such.

D.

[candidgamera]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
Muxec,

And you're not the only one: the mod I've been working on has building prerequisites for most units.


D.

Absolutely. And like the buildings/wonders require buildings idea.

Am very curious how you are doing this with the existing game?

What would be encouraging is if you can do it, then there's no reason Fireaxis can't impliment this at some point.

Is it just one building required or several - some cases like carriers IMHO should require several.

Getting the ai to build the right buildings would be better than what I'm doing now to cut down unreasonable numbers of units on ai's part: boosting the maintenance costs.

[Optimizer]

Now, this is a good idea! They don't need to introduce it in the standard rules, but it should absolutely be an option in the editor!

[muxec]

See HoMM3 to example of this idea.

[Cyclotron]

I disagree. In my opinion, such buildings only increase tedium... and remind me too much of bad RTS games. For example: If you need a factory to build a tank, why not just ditch the factory and add more shields to the tank cost? From what I'm seeing here, this is more like a "hey, neat idea" proposal as to one that actually changes gameplay for the better. I'm all for it if it does something, but all your idea seems to do is add unecessary hurdles to building basic units.

[candidgamera]

Originally posted by Optimizer
Now, this is a good idea! They don't need to introduce it in the standard rules, but it should absolutely be an option in the editor!

right, to keep everybody happy.

[hr_oskar]

I agree that it should be an option in the editor, but cyclotron7 makes a good point.

I made a mod where a lot of wonders had building-prerequisities; seemed like a neat idea. But I don't have it anymore, mainly because the AI couldn't handle it so the wonder race got too easy for me. Also it did add tedium, as I mostly felt bothered having to build stuff that I otherwise didn't necessarily need.

A more fun idea might be if certain buildings reduced the shield-cost of certain wonders and/or units. No precedent for that in the Civ games, so I don't expect to see it.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by hr_oskar
A more fun idea might be if certain buildings reduced the shield-cost of certain wonders and/or units. No precedent for that in the Civ games, so I don't expect to see it.

Actually, such buildings already exist. Factories and power plants add shields, which is the same thing as reducing the cost of wonders, units, and buildings. There is a definite precedent. As for buildings that only benefit certain types of projects, there is less of a history of that, but I would fail to see why this is more desirable than the present system.

[hr_oskar]

Well, I meant that that would be more desirable than the idea of building-requirements.

And obviously I did not mean general production boost given by Factories and such.

[Adagio]

Re: Patch idea: Units need buildings

Originally posted by muxec
The idea is:
You need stable building for horsemen, knights, etc.
You need factory to build tanks and modern units.
You need carpenter's house city improvement to build caravels.

Is it good?

I like the idea...we have had more threads about this...

As long as it's not a improvement required for every unit...

[Willem]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen

And you're not the only one: the mod I've been working on has building prerequisites for most units.

How do you manage to do this? There's currently no way to select a building anywhere on the unit screen.

[candidgamera]

So then, Willem how many threads on this same topic have you participated in?

barrumpa bum bum

[Willem]

More than a few now. I'm in favour of the idea myself, but I see no way of implementing it. Perhaps I've missed something?

Although I can see that it might pose a problem for the AI, if it never builds the needed structure. I think, if it is possible, it should be restricted to only a few units. ICBMs and Tactical Nukes would be good, as would UUs.

[candidgamera]

Willem:

Would like to see it especially used for more modern units like naval (battleship & carrier), aircraft in general, and armor - there were never enough armored divs or panzer divs to go around. In real life even for the US now, carriers are only built in one place. Although the British are modularizing construction at many yards, as I understand, of their two new full-sized ones to be fielded by 2015 - to keep their shipbuilding industry as whole going. Surely for the ones you mention too.