the wait for civiliza d4

[dexter4dxm]

oh one more thing. tile improvement building. IMO, the whole tile improvement thing is the worst thing about Civ2, it takes way too much micromanagement, and even civ3 has bad worker automation. i never played the CTP series, but from what i've heard it has a nice way of dealing with this. now, i have no understanding of how exactly the "public works" system works, but i will be adding something along those lines into the game. settlers will only be used to build cities, and there will be no worker or engineer units. after your public works points build up you can start building roads and such just by pressing a key and clicking on the tiles you want to improve. roads and irrigation must be linked to each other, but you can build mines and silos anywhere within your limits. just out of curiousity, can anyone tell me just how close this is to CTP's method?

[JamesJKirk]

That's pretty similar to CTP, the only differences are that I don't think irrigation has to touch water in CTP, and the public works are taken from a certain percentage, set by the player, of the overall production points of your civ. It sounds like your stockpiling idea would work with this concept pretty well

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by JamesJKirk
That's pretty similar to CTP, the only differences are that I don't think irrigation has to touch water in CTP

i don't mean necessarily touching water. the tile the city lies in will be the starting point for irrigation, and all irrigation tiles you build have to be adjacent to a city tile or adjacent to another irrigated tile. for now this will only apply to actually building the roads/irrigations and won't take away from existing ones.

[dexter4dxm]

i just came upon a problem. there's no way of telling who built what roads, and so now you can build roads off other civ's roads and cities, which is a bit too unrealistic for me. i'm not sure how i'm going to handle this. any suggestions?

[Dale]

Multiple maps

Dex:
I saw this problem in my first attempt at HoE (History of Empires). So when I restructured the entire code I made a huge change to the way maps and player items are handled. It's a little heavier on memory, but has HUGE benefits. Here's how it works:

1. I create a copy of the main map for EACH player.
2. I turn all tiles to "unexplored" so they come up FOW.
3. I place player known items on the map (their cities, units, improvs, roads, etc).

Disadvantages:
- Takes heaps of memory (I'll have 16 copies of the map in memory, though each copy holds less info than the main map).
- Lots of doubled information, more chance of errors (even though I'm coding heaps of checks).
- Slows performance a bit, but I believe the benefits outway that.

Advantages:
- Each player only knows what they've seen. This fixes a huge problem where (for example in Civ3) the AI knows everything about you once they meet you. Now they make reactions to what they "know".
- Easy to tell ownership of items.
- Swapping maps for updated info is now VERY important.
- Fits perfectly into OO-Programming.
Game holds players.
Players holds a map.
Map holds cities.
City holds buildings.
Map holds armys.
Army holds units.
Map holds improvs.
Map holds goods.

Hope this helps mate.

[dexter4dxm]

Re: Multiple maps

Dale, thanks for the advice! i like the idea, and i will highly consider implementing it in the release after this next one, as there's no way i can get that into the game in a couple of weeks and still get through this huge list i have

[dexter4dxm]

ok guys, less than a couple weeks left

i'll post a screen soon if u want

[JamesJKirk]

Originally posted by dexter4dxm
ok guys, less than a couple weeks left

i'll post a screen soon if u want

Well, no one else is biting, so I will...ahem...

Do it Dex, post the pictures, c'mon!!!!

[dexter4dxm]

okay, as soon as I figure out why the AI players refuse to build settlers anymore

[dexter4dxm]

here's a couple a new shots for now...

[dexter4dxm]

i will try to get some more shots later, hopefully showing the modern/future eras

[Miznia]

Nice. Are those farms in the desert? Or why is there irrigation everywhere else? Is it a freshwater source thing?

Did your AI build those roads by itself?

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by Miznia
Nice. Are those farms in the desert?

yes.

Or why is there irrigation everywhere else?

because the AI player researched refrigeration before i did, and they upgraded all their irrigation.

Is it a freshwater source thing?

there are no water source restrictions.

Did your AI build those roads by itself?

yes, and it upgrades the roads when it researches the proper technologies, which is why you can see highways in its territory.

[JamesJKirk]

Did your AI build those roads by itself?

yes, and it upgrades the roads when it researches the proper technologies, which is why you can see highways in its territory.

Does this mean it goes road->railroad->highway, or something like that? I do like the idea of highways, but I wonder if you do include rails, which you should, that there would be too little time between when you'd have them, although since it's automated perhaps it's for the best

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by JamesJKirk
Does this mean it goes road->railroad->highway, or something like that? I do like the idea of highways, but I wonder if you do include rails, which you should, that there would be too little time between when you'd have them, although since it's automated perhaps it's for the best

railroads will be in the game, but you won't lay them down like roads. instead you build railroad stations in your cities, and that links them together automatically (if they are on the same continent), similar to how airports work (except airports don't have that continent limitation obviously). there are still 3 levels of roads however; it goes: road->highway->circuit (circuit is from some advanced transportation tech you get in the future era).

linked railroad stations can be used to share larger populations between cities and to transfer units between cities quickly. one interesting thing is that this includes sea units, which means you can build a ship in a non-coastal city and railroad it over to a coastal city so you can use it.