Good Possibilities

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by E
Has anyone been working on these good possibilities?

As I said last time, I don't have a tech tree and I don't have time to make one and John has no time to do one either. So the answer is no.

-Martin

[Ekmek]

Just a random thought the other day:

Civ3 might have it backwards with technology revealing resources. If the source code allows it (or SLICing) ,aybe it should be that you can only research certain techs if you have a good/resource in your teritory or acquired by trade?

Alsao I'm for a consumption use system, but also thinking that with the source code coming whenever it might be possible to create Economic victory conditions using goods, such as Oil Monopoly where you control all of the oil. (even economic great leaders is a possibility, like civ3 great leaders and scientific leaders but have them appear when you find/or build an improvement on a resource. They give you either bonus cash, or a free economic building or something)

[Ekmek]

I also thought of the possibility of WONDER GOODS. Probably have to be done with the code but it would be instead of just strategic, bonus, and luxury a good that offers special traits like some RoN resources.

I.E citrus lets ships heal at sea.

Or bronze gives better armor in the ancient age

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by E
Civ3 might have it backwards with technology revealing resources. If the source code allows it (or SLICing) ,aybe it should be that you can only research certain techs if you have a good/resource in your teritory or acquired by trade?

It is not a problem to find out if a civ has a certain good in its territory via slic, the problem is to find out whether there is a good incoming by trade. Here we need the source code. But actual I prefer a source code solution as it makes modding easier afterwards.

Originally posted by E
Alsao I'm for a consumption use system, but also thinking that with the source code coming whenever it might be possible to create Economic victory conditions using goods, such as Oil Monopoly where you control all of the oil. (even economic great leaders is a possibility, like civ3 great leaders and scientific leaders but have them appear when you find/or build an improvement on a resource. They give you either bonus cash, or a free economic building or something)

I think the economic victory conditions can also be sliced, the consumption use system is also possible but would survive a /reloadslic. Unfortunatly uni starts in 3 weeks again and I won't have time to do anythink here. Currently I am trying to improve my GoodMod AI, well so far I found a way to make it to respect the city cap, and also a way to make shure that it captures undefended cities, only the city cap compound is missing here, yet.

-Martin

[Ekmek]

Thanks for the feedback Martin, I dont want to burden you and I do appreciate all your GOOD work.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Martin,

Have you ever considered using this model for how resources interact with the developement of technology and vice versa:

The resources have to be know to start with: man was mining resources like obsidian for arrow and spearheads, and trade was developed because it was often found far away. They would have seasonal camps to dig and then haul the goods back to home. This process was repeated up into the Bronze Age. But the important part was what was driving the process.

The problem is how to model advances that depend on two seperate parts that function independantly of each other, but are required: the resources have to be available and the skills have to be mastered. It is up to some genius to come up with a new idea on how to improve a process by either changing materials or improving the process itself. Call it the Eureka factor.

This is sort of what we have already with the science costs. I would like to suggest that because many of the technologies are possible with many different materials, so there shouldn't be a restriction based on resources except in some specific cases, especially in modern times. This allows a civ that has limited natural resources to still get advances but of a unique nature. More to follow...


D.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Martin,

Continuing right along, a good modern example is the differences in the technologies used by the Former Soviet Union vs the US. Much of the military hardware the US produces relies on exotic materials and plastics to do the job. The Soviet scientists did the same work with exotic steels.

When the first Mig 29 (F-15 equivalent) was brought to Japan, the American's jaws all hit the ground because they had assumed that you couldn't build a Mach 2+ interceptor without titanium and aluminium. And there sat an all steel interceptor. The Soviets didn't have access to elements like titanium so they figured out how to do it without. Genius is almost as powerful as stupidity when it comes to figuring out how things work, but with slightly better consequences.

So this leaves a model with one part time invested in a technology which relies on an engineering approach, and one part for the Einsteins, Da Vinci's and Archimedes of the world. C3C's scientific leaders are a good idea, but it should be limited to advances only.

This leads me to the need for different leaders in the fields of culture, military and sciences. But that should be for another thread. What we need is a function that will do a check using the PRNG to determine if a certain advance should happen in a given branch of the tech tree. This should depend in part on what resources the civ has at their disposal, from trade and territory.

It is also a good way to allow for tech leakage from trading resources with another civ.

Oops, getting off topic. Back to trade: since it is the foundation of civilization, we need to make it so that each improvement should have a required trade good. A show I watched cover this topic very well: the archeologists found a city in a river valley about 20 miles from the coast. They found cotton cloth and fish bones everywhere. One valley over, they found massive irrigation works for cotton fields (massive for 9-10,000 BC) and cotton fishing nets at coastal settlements.

The city in the middle made fishing nets from the cotton grown in the next valley and traded the nets for dried fish. This drives me towards a missing component in the trade models: everything is based on raw materials. The real money is made in trading finished goods. And that means being able to do something better than anyone else.

So if you have cotton in one city's backyard, it should be able to produce trade goods like clothe and fishing nets depending on what technologies are available. This makes it better to produce the finished good as opposed to the raw cotton. I can think of many cases where this is going to be a royal pain, but it would fit nicely with the tech tree and improvements.

So for a civ with a foundry in one city without raw resources has to import them, which means you need to get a trade route setup to a city that has the wanted resources. This ties in with the need to make colonies in areas where there are no established cities to source from. This would really make the search for goods more important that it is now.

Currently, I just drop a city where ever there are resources I want, or take a city with a trade good. With a good supply of caravans, I'm usually able to keep trade going with neighbours until they start wars and choking my routes. Then I'm only trading internally. It would be nice to make this tactic next to impossible to keep up.


D.

[The Big Mc]

Do you know what the problem is with every single civ like game Today and for that mater the rest of time

You . We know to much about the past, That’s why strategic goods is a bad idea (same with what you are putting forward).

Oil has been known about for centuries (long before the birth of the car) . in civ terms you will always know that oil is a modern strategic good .

Same with everything else you will always beat an AI in a Straight fight because you with out noticing it cheat.

The second point I want to make is that the Russians were way smarter than the Americans in the cold war. Will you are taking about the intercepts the Americans called the Russians backwards for using valves in there radio. Of course the Americans finally cottoned on that valves help with EMP.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by The Big Mc
Do you know what the problem is with every single civ like game Today and for that mater the rest of time

You . We know to much about the past, That’s why strategic goods is a bad idea (same with what you are putting forward).

Oil has been known about for centuries (long before the birth of the car) . in civ terms you will always know that oil is a modern strategic good .

...edit......

True there is that, but if we can give the goods a value of scale - so the computer can tell which goods are worth most, then it wont matter. The positive thing about strategic goods is summed up in the name - they can be strategic

If the AI will/can fight/deal diplomatically with the human player to get/keep access to the goods then its going to make a much more interesting and tactical game. 'If' being the important thing

[The Big Mc]

child of Thor just remember when we get an ai as smart as the human It will demand rights.

what you are saying is lets get the ai to cheat so it makes a city in the desert that virtually starves so it can get oil for in 200 turns

[child of Thor]

maybe...

it will have to cheat - Ai is too stupid, atleast for another decade or more .As long as its inteligent cheating i dont mind a little