I'll be revealing the individual facets in an upcoming series of posts, but first let's talk about the goals for the TIMP project.
1) Utilize all the Button Bank slots: To place a tile improvement on the map, the player has to select it from the Tile "Button Bank" at the bottom right of the screen. As we discussed earlier, there are 5 Buttons with 12 slots each, only 3 of which can be used for TIMP placement. Of those, 34 of 36 slots were already taken, so the first goal was to activate the remaining two. This proved to be a LOT more difficult than previously imagined, because it turns out that both the "Road" and "OceanRoad" columns have a special property - any TIMP placed in one of these columns will automatically be treated as a road, graphically speaking. That means the referenced TIMP graphic is the first of 18, and the game will assume that the next 17 graphics (sequentially by TI ID number) will link together exactly the same way as all "other" road graphics. That required a number of workarounds, all to be discussed later.
2) New TIMPs: With all slots now available, Cradle 5 has added "Mega Farms", a new Land Food TIMP at level 4 ("Hydroponics" now shifts to L5) and "Advanced Trawlers", a new Ocean Food TIMP also at level 4 (with "Aquaculture" moving to L5).
3) Reorganize the Slots: As noted in several of the earlier posts, there's a limit to how much can be done, but as of now there are only land TIMPs on the "Land" button, sea TIMPs on the "Ocean" Button (with a single "road-type" exception), and a mixture of both on the "Special" button (see attached). Additionally the TIMPs are listed in descending order with the earliest ones of each type at the top of each column.
4) Expanding the number of graphics per TIMP: The base game used only a single graphic for each type of Tile Improvement. For example there was a single image for "Nets", another for "Fisheries" and a third for "Advanced Fisheries". This was discussed at great length in the "Revising Ocean Farms" series of posts, but the key takeaway is that it's possible to assign a different image for each of the terraintypes upon which a TIMP is placed. Thus "Fisheries" and "Trawlers" were given 6 images instead of 2, which greatly improves the "look" of the game. To put that in perspective, land terrain in AE has three levels of Farm, Production, and Commerce, but their total number of on-map TIMPs is only nine. By comparison, in the Farm sequence alone Cradle now places 13 different images on the map!
5) Simplified Slot Button Graphics: Under the old system, the slot button graphic was just a smaller version of the on-map image. But what happens when there's multiple images per slot? There wasn't a single solution, but in general the idea was to keep the graphics simple while offering some hint as to what each represents and possibly adding a clue as to the level. For example, the lowest level of "Ocean Food" had one fish, Level 2 had two, and Level 3 used three.
6) Review each TIMP series: Most Tile Improvements are hard-coded to provide a very limited set of effects. A TIMP can affect the amount of food, gold, or production provided in addition to the base value assigned by each terraintype. And while there are a few other features (forts, watchtowers, etc), those which upgrade over time are mostly restricted to the main three. Accordingly this aspect of the project looked closely at how those gains were represented, and while most made sense (Farms for Food, Mines for Production) Commerce did not. More on that later.
7) PW Cost per TIMP: As a general rule, TIMP costs in Cradle 3 & 4 are much greater than those in AE. For example, Farms in CtP2 cost 200 PW but in Cradle the cost doubled or tripled. Likewise, the first level of Mines is 300-500 in AE but 900-1200 in Cradle. As a result, it's very difficult for the player to build a sufficient number of TIMPs, especially during the Early Game. Accordingly, most of the TIMP costs have been reduced in Cradle 5, and are now much closer to those in AE.
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