Civ 3 mod for CtP 2?

[centrifuge]

The two things that I would most like to see for CTP2 is a diplomacy system similar to Civ3, and the strategic resources... We should be able to trade more than one thing at a time(ie. give me 10 gold per turn and an advance, and I won't pummel you) and it would also be nice to have a clearer idea of what the AI will and will not accept in a trade(trade advisor). As far as strategic resources, this is probably the best feature of Civ3, it just makes sense. If you don't have oil, you either have to find some, or trade for some or else you can't make that tank.

[Ekmek]

Don't let this die!

I helped put the Civ3 flics in, I hope we can see these in CTP2.

The only other thing is the resources. really if we can building units based on resources, civ3 would be pointless to play.

I see that the CTP2 terrain graphics are a little weak. Anyone know where better graphics are? If not, I'll do some work once I get my stuf set up (been without it for 2 months) and provide terrain TIFs from Civ3, AoK, and galactic battlegrounds.

[Solver]

Thanks for your support.

I wouldn't consider CtP 2 terrain graphics too weak, though.

I've downloaded a few SLIC documentation pieces and am now learning it... not too hard, knowing C already. From what I've seen, it's nothing too hard to keep a culture counter in the memory for each player.

The implementation of strategic resources, though, doesn't seem like an easy task to do.

[Locutus]

Strategic resources:
I agree, we definitely need a similar system in CtP2. Very, very cool and important system IMHO. The only reason why I haven't done any work in this area yet so far is because I thought others were working on it. IMHO the highest priority should be to make units depend on trade goods somehow (not too hard) and to find a way to tie the diplomacy/trade system into this (a bit harder). Making goods invisible and making stuff depend on roads and all that stuff is IMHO of secondary importance. The general principle should work first and our version doesn't necessarily have to be exactly identical to Civ3's version...

Culture:
It's easily doable but the problem is UI: how do you let the player know how he's doing culturally? Statistics should be available both empire-wide and on a city-by-city basis...

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Locutus
Culture:
It's easily doable but the problem is UI: how do you let the player know how he's doing culturally? Statistics should be available both empire-wide and on a city-by-city basis...

I gave a look in the UI some day ago. Specially the city manager screen. Trying to decrease the number of tabs. One for status and specialist, other for units and a third to inventory+Production (Just an idea though). I did change some stuff but to accomplish my idea would need a lot of effort and i am full with the space scenario and the Absolute State v2.0 mod. And i am positively sure that i can easily add another box in the status to add to the happiness and pollution ones a new one about culture. I may take a further look if its possible to write as the game goes by seeing how does the game writes in the others two.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Locutus
Culture:
It's easily doable but the problem is UI: how do you let the player know how he's doing culturally? Statistics should be available both empire-wide and on a city-by-city basis...

I gave a look in the UI some day ago. Specially the city manager screen. Trying to decrease the number of tabs. One for status and specialist, other for units and a third to inventory+Production (Just an idea though). I did change some stuff but to accomplish my idea would need a lot of effort and i am full with the space scenario and the Absolute State v2.0 mod. And i am positively sure that i can easily add another box in the status to add to the happiness and pollution ones a new one about culture. I may take a further look if its possible to write as the game goes by seeing how does the game writes in the others two.

PS: I Want Strategic Resources

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
I may take a further look if its possible to write as the game goes by seeing how does the game writes in the others two.

That's exactly where the problem is. Adding a new column probably isn't too hard, but I think the filling of the columns is hard-coded and out of our reach

[Ekmek]

in CTP2 you can trade units right? (I don't have my stuff up or I'd check). but could it be that we create commodity units that require resources and trade those units? and place a high value so the AI will trade. Then those commodity units are needed to make certain units.

on second thought, that might be too cumbersome...

maybe there is a way to link through asking for units or colonies (size 0 cities) and make the possesion only last for a number of turns?

just throwing out possibilities

[Solver]

Locutus, I've thought it over and decided that it's pretty easy to store the total culture value of a civ, and for each city. As for UI, the easiest thing to do is making each turn a Messagebox event without the Show(); action, so that it only saves in the message history, and have that messagebox tell your culture value.

As for specific cities, there might be a workaround, like getting the Messagebox for a city showing cities culture show up whenever a certain even is done... dont know what, though, havent still looked at the events (I started learning SLIC 2 days ago!). Is there any event that's easy for the player to trigger, while still not costing anything. And of course, that would trigger for a city?

[Locutus]

That's a very 'hacky' solution, but it would be interesting to see how it would work out. I'll have a look at the event list myself to see if there's a suitable event for cities. I'm not sure if it works correctly, but I *think* there should be a CityClicked event somewhere...

[Solver]

I had exactly the same thought when I wrote that . I'll be happy to offer some of my code, if I can, if we are to make something. As for the CityClicked, hm... if I was to get a messagebox telling me citie's culture each time I click a city (which I, of course, do many times I turn), it would get me rather crazy I assume.

As for the strategic resources. Is there a way to add new goods to the game? If yes, we could add a couple of them without screwing the old ones... would be better, IMO.

[Immortal Wombat]

Is there a way to add new goods to the game?

Of course. This isn't Civ2 you know

[Solver]

Man I wish I knew more SLIC... I know the darn language, don't just know the events .

I suppose that we should leave the current trade goods of CtP 2 as they are, and just create new ones for strategic resources. Exception: Oil, this clearly needs to be a strategic resource, we could replace it with, say, Amber, or whatever else.

What do you think the strategic resource system would be like? Sure, the original idea remains, if you don't have the resource, you don't have the ability to build a unit. But, how shall we define the 'Have resource' thing? I don't quite like it if one strategic resource would feed the entire civ... too easy. While the Civ 3 way of road connections isn't too easy to implement.

I think that we surely should have all the strategic resources that Civ 3 has, with their abilities (Iron for Swordsmen, etc). However, I would also like to see a few more due to the fact that CtP 2 is also in future... like the Plasma resource for Fusion Tanks, and something like that.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Solver
What do you think the strategic resource system would be like? Sure, the original idea remains, if you don't have the resource, you don't have the ability to build a unit. But, how shall we define the 'Have resource' thing? I don't quite like it if one strategic resource would feed the entire civ... too easy. While the Civ 3 way of road connections isn't too easy to implement.

The obvious way to start would be to simply limit the distace from the city with the resource where you could use it (obviously dependant on map size and the improvements in the city - airport, etc). You might want to do something special with harbours, but I'm not sure what.

I would also like to see a few more due to the fact that CtP 2 is also in future... like the Plasma resource for Fusion Tanks, and something like that.

The nearest place you're going to find any plasma is the Sun (or possibly a high temperature research lab...).

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Locutus
That's exactly where the problem is. Adding a new column probably isn't too hard, but I think the filling of the columns is hard-coded and out of our reach

I think I Beat you this time, Locutus.

I have an theory on how to implement a culture counter in the UI.

As i said i did looked for an way to implement this counter. I i think we can do it.

As you said i couldnt find a way to write inside a box like i told (Although i did make one). So i decide to make a simpler feature a one line only counter like the crime in the status tab in the city manager. And this is a first look of it (need some align but no prob).



The number was chosen ramdomly by me and this is where we should focus on. How to change it.

How to make the number change as the culture changes?

To make this modification in the game i needed add the following code in the right place in the right file (citywindow.ldl) plus a few others changes in the happiness and pollution box.

 	# Culture data
	Culture:CTP2_STATIC_BASE {
		int xpix 60
		int ypix 210	
		int widthpix 190
		int heightpix 18
		string text "str_ldl_Culture" //
		string pattern "uptg04e.tga"
	}

In the ldl_str.txt,

str_ldl_Culture 	"Culture: 41"

So the only thing we have to do is to edit the entry ldl_str.txt to to show us the culture within a city.

Eg.
In a code as you see i cant slic but i know how it works, I can understand them and even make small modifications still try not to laugh so hard,
if player has a shrine x=1, else x=0 (Shrine give 1 cuture point)
if player has a basilica y=3, else y=0 (Basilica give 3 cuture point)
message(1, str_ldl_Culture)
....
Culturepoints = x+y+....

and have the line in the ldl_str.txt,

str_ldl_Culture 	"Culture: {Culturepoints}"

What you thought it was the hardest is solved Locutus.
Now lets start a new thread about the CultureMod?

PS: Would also be nice to have a total culture points of all cities in the Empire Manager. Just need to find the correct file/place