City Expansion mod

[Immortal Wombat]

Let the wonder possibilities drop, eh?
This discussion wasn't meant to be there in the first place.

It strikes me that there hasn't been a picture posted of all the suburbs together to compare.

Here it is. Any comments, suggestions, still welcome.

The ones with red dots are not set to be included by default, but the graphics are in the tile file nonetheless.

[HuangShang]

i never heard of the City Expansion Mod... what is it...

like the designs... do you mean the city change a little when it grows?

[Pedrunn]

As you know i have been using a variation of the BlueO city expansion and for that i have modified a bit of one civ3 city graphic. It is more red compared to civ3 graphic (Since they were getting confused with the plains color in the way they were) and the edge houses are changed to give an idea of continuation (they fit like a puzzle) while the city is growning.
For the dead city of it BlueO's ancient dead one works perfecly.

[Pedrunn]

For some reason the picture did not appeared in my last post.
No problem, though. Here it is:

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by HuangShang
i never heard of the City Expansion Mod... what is it...

The City Expansion mod was originally part of BlueO's Alto-SciFi mod.
What it did was to make suburbs of cities appear in the surrounding terrain as the city grew. So for every 3 population points (starting at 6), an "expansion" was placed as a good, just outside the city.
The way BlueO did it was to create new terrains, each of which had these city expansion graphics as goods on that terrain.

The idea was great, but the way BlueO did it had some drawbacks, namely that the goods could be traded, and so you got little cities flying across the map.

Pedrunn and myself have been working to convert this mod into a more up-to-date one, using Martin the Dane's TileEdit program, we can add tile improvements, and use them as the suburb graphics.

There are merits to both approaches, but I think tile improvements are slightly better, and more adaptable to the circumstances.

The tile improvements can give a slight commerce bonus, have the movement cost of a road (or railroad, or maglev, depending on era), and be pillagable etc. etc.

Pedrunn: that is nice! Do you mind if I use it to replace your previous ancient age suburb?

[Pedrunn]

It is yours, now!

Note: I am secure when i say that it is impossible to play with the good version because of a bug in the price of the good when traded

[Immortal Wombat]

What bug is that?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
Note: I am secure when i say that it is impossible to play with the good version because of a bug in the price of the good when traded.

I wouldn't be shure if you couldn't prevent the AI and the human from trading those "goods".

The SendGood event:

SendGood(int_t, city_t, city_t)
It does has in int_t as parameter, don't shure what it does represent, actual I am not shure I to access an int_t, if it is possible to use value[0] then it is ok but the question what does it represent in the end, if it is a good database index then it shouldn't be a problem to prevent everyone from trading certain goods.

But anyway as Ben already pointed out the tileimprovement version has huge advances.

-Martin

[Pedrunn]

I wrot this in the wonder possibilities thread. you must have missed.

As for the BlueO expansion, we can just forget it.

It has a major bug! Since the city goods arent in the beggining of the game their gold value isnt calculated.

This causes the good to have a astronomic value of thousands of gold (I guess the maximum) probably because of their rarity.
The only solution is to save and load the game.
Because the games re-calculates the goods during loading. Yet having to load the game several times during the play is a game ruiner

I hope my english is clear.

Martin, the city good would still appear in the trade screen. Using them was going to cause caravan losts. We would have to control the AI not to use the goods. I thnk it will just lead us to new bugs. So, the best is to work on the TI expansion.

[Pedrunn]

I will also leave the Wonder Possibilities thread drops, too.

This may make you made mad .
But i changed code of the city expansion to create wonders and it worked

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Also, I have allowed the pillaging of suburbs - it turns them into razed ones. I figured if you can raze cities, you should be able to raze suburbs. You cannot raze your own, or neutral ones.

Anyway it seems to be impossible to prevent the cities/wonders to be pillaged .
The other problem is when we create a imp over the city/wonder. I cant stop it either.

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
That's really wierd. It seems to work ok... but the reducing city thing doesn't work, and sometimes the medieval age suburbs downgrade to ancient ones.

It is wierder than you think. It follows a pattern. It places in the first expansion the correct TI. And for the next two expansions it places the ancient age one. Then it restarts the cycle by place one correct and then two incorrect. And so on.

It does not depend on the age but the number of graphics in the set. It happens with a set of more than two city graphics. In my case it was during modern age (3 graphics set).

I have know idea what causes it and there is nothing to relate it to in the code

I will try a shot in the dark by re- arranging the code since i think the problem lies in the ExpandCity function.

I will keep you informed!

[Immortal Wombat]

But i changed code of the city expansion to create wonders and it worked

Only a little mad, because my wonder code works too. Its everyone else's PCs that don't

Anyway it seems to be impossible to prevent the cities/wonders to be pillaged

I've done it for the wonders. The cities don't work, because it has to create the razed ones over the top.

I will try a shot in the dark by re- arranging the code since i think the problem lies in the ExpandCity function.

I think you are right. The Replace**tiles function is returning sucess=0, and it so it goes to the next age back, but I don't know why.

[Pedrunn]

DP

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I've done it for the wonders. The cities don't work, because it has to create the razed ones over the top.

What!?! I had tried the way you did it in your mod and it didnt worked! I alway get wonders being pillaged

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I think you are right. The Replace**tiles function is returning sucess=0, and it so it goes to the next age back, but I don't know why.

I have got a fix.
I re-arranged the code in a way that it only has one ReplaceTile Fuction now. But it wanst it that was causing the problem. Yet i liked the way it looked. And i think i will keep it like that.

Anyway, The problem is in the FAI_PlayerAge[] variable. I dont know why but to solve this bug i just changed it for the HasAdvance fuction.

Now i am aiming in fixing the reduce city. You also had this problem, didnt you? Any lucky?

PS: I have added the Medieval age city in the function.
PS2: I did some important changes in the tileimp.txt. once i finish with it i will attach here.
PS3: You will note that i made wonders possible to be created in any land tile (you will need to change your tileimp.txt.

Here is the new code:

[Immortal Wombat]

I "re-translated" the code from BlueO's, and I think it works pretty well now. I have to test out some more things, there are still some bugs, and I haven't dealt with the pillaging yet, but it works.

One wierd thing though, it works sporadically, on every 3rd population point, then every one, then every six.

[Pedrunn]

DP.
What a F***. It is the third time in two days