Civ 3 mod for CtP 2?

[Pedrunn]

Ooops forgot the citywindow file to add in the ctp2_data/english/uidata.

[Immortal Wombat]

That is fantastic Pedrunn Really great. Working out the repercussions of the culture is the next task...

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
What you thought it was the hardest is solved Locutus.

No, actually, quite to the contrary, that was the easiest part. What you did was not very hard at all, I think I've done more complicated stuff than that myself (although that was a very long time ago, might even have been for CtP1). The part where the fixed number '41' is replaced by an actual SLIC variable is the hardest part, I don't think *this* part can be done. I would absolutely love it if you could prove me wrong though... Just replacing '41' with '{Culturepoints}' probably isn't going to do the trick (although I must admit I've never actually tried)...

But it's very good to see you're studying the UI files though, there's a lot of good work that can be done in this area and so far noone really accomplished much (aside from the diplo-parchments, but basically that wasn't very hard to do - just a matter of replacing one graphics file with another).

[Solver]

Very good, Perdun! Now I believe we can implement one of two parts of Civ 3 here. Obviously, the EventHandler should take place after construction of a building, considering whether that is one of culture producing buildings/ is it a Wonder. If returns true, culture value being added to the city. And, at the BeginTurn event, total culture value should be incremented.

Now, a bit more questions. Is there an ability to trigger victory with one hundred thousand culture points for the entire civ? I believe there is a victory trigger. Next, is there any way to make the cities revert? Again, I believe yes, for there's a city.owner property. Now we'll also need to work on the maths to determine the chance of a city revolting.

[Locutus]

Well, the UI is still a problem, but I guess messageboxes will do, at least for testing purposes.

Re: winning: I think GameOver(1, 1) makes the human player win, GameOver(1, 2) makes him loose (might be the other way around though, see SLIC docs).

Re: cities changing owner: yes, there's a GiveCity event. See Alexander scenario for examples of it's usage.

[Solver]

Hehe, thanks Locutus .

I guess then the code should be like this:

BuldingBuilt
If bulding = Shrine or Theater or .... culture +x ... if Arena or Academy or.... culture +y, for city.

I like it that, in Civ, when at peace one of my concerns is building Colosseums and Cathedrals even at cities that wouldn't need those for happiness purposes, just to bump my culture up.

[Locutus]

Yeah, something like that. And also add something to a variable (array-element) that stores of how much culture should be given to a city each turn.

The only problem I see with this code is for reloading SLIC: if you reload it, all variables are reset and culture is for all cities reset to 0. Normally not a big deal but in case of succession games and stuff it might get problematic. Shouldn't stop us from making this code, but we should keep in mind that this will create problems in testing and the whole culture feature should always be easy to disable for succession games and the like...

Yes, Culture itself is a nice concept, makes the game much less warmongish if properly implemented. Maybe we could even give an additional culture-bonus for very happy cities (in the green)? That would put people for the additional dilemma of choosing for collection of more resources (food/prod/comm) or more culture; and make celebrations more useful... just an idea...

[Solver]

I like the happiness idea! I think it should work both ways:

city with celebrations == bonus culture
cities with more than x culture per turn == plus y happiness


a thought: we acutally need two counters for the city UI: one for total culture of a city, one for a culture per turn meter.

[Solver]

A quicknote... in CtP 1, when omitting Robotics, I used to build the both +5 Happiness wonders... amusing, celebratings everywhere!

[Pedrunn]

Locutus,
I guess i exagerate a bit but are you sure we cant have those?
Maybe a Hamdlevent(BeginTurn) calculate tht, or

OpenInitialCityInterface(city_t)
Generated when a city is initialized, after all population is added.

whatever that is,
Anything!?!

[Solver]

I bet someone just should try the Culture: {culturepts} thing in practice...

[Aqtaca]

i really don't want to brag,
but i think the culture concept is wrongly approached in civ 3

the civilizations that had high cultural level didn't usually achieve capturing with it other countries that had low culture.

On the contrary, Mongolian nomads conquered China, mountanous Persians- Babylonia, bunch of tribes called Hixi-Egypt
And barbarian hordes overrun the Western Roman Empire...
Sure, these civs conquered many others, but with weapons.

I think we should try implemeting two new concepts that had far greater importance than mere culture.

I'm talking about religion and nation...

[Pedrunn]

Yep, aqtaca. But those civs with smaller culture conquered the ones with high culture military. But in most cases the culture of the higher cultured civ remained. After Macedonians (Alexander the Great) conquered Greece shouldnt we say that they were assimilated culturally although they kept the political control over the conquereds? Same thing with Mongols and Chineses. Or Hicsos and Egyptian. Or Barbarians and Catholic Romans.

We see the great nation impose their culture over the less firmly cultured ones. Shouldnt we say that many empires were culturally englobated in the case of the Ameriaca Way of Life or the URSS expansion.

Maybe take over a whole city may be a little over the edge but as see it is the best way to represent in the game.
But we havent showed the card yet. The community had no discussion yet about it. We dont even know who will make the code or even if it will be (A i see Strategic Resources are more important, anyway).

[Pedrunn]

DP

[Aqtaca]

I may have a solution for strategic resources...

it is taken from Alpha Centauri
if you remember it was possible to build a unit that would exploit resources from a location that wasn't part of your empire. It could be beyond your borders but not within the enemy borders.

Building colonies in civ3 can also be an option, but i don't see why would it have to be connected by road to a city.

Now, we must make a difference between strategic resources.

Stone
Copper
Copper; Tin; Zink- these are the metals that are required for Bronze (ratio ~85:10:5)
Iron ore
Coal
Iron ore + Coal gives Steel
Oil
Gas perhaps
Uranium
As for plasma, there is no resource- i imagine such weapons would require just small ammounts of it, ammounts producable in a lab.

Stone can be found everywhere, but the one you need for architecture can only be found in hills or mountains.
so, without those two, you'd have to import it.
Someone mentioned ancient Iraqi civilization that used mud to make bricks. Those were Sumerians, but they too imported stone from the mountains on the East. Naturaly, this import stone was used for temples and palaces only.
Even Egypt used those unbaked mud bricks for constructing houses. Only temples were made of stone. And occasionaly a palace or two.

Copper itself can be used for making tools, weapons or coins.

Later was discovered bronze, alloy of Copper, Tin and Zink. It was much more solid and powerful

Until came Iron. Iron in freestate can only be found in Western Greenland and in meteorites that were exposed to huge heat during their fall through our atmosphere. It is usually found in its ores hematite, geothite, magnetite, limonite, siderite,... tied to other elements and minerals. Once people discovered how to process iron ore, they got pure iron. Sharp, deadly and efficient.

Centuries passed, iron remained the best metal until we learned how to make steel. You just need to add carbon into steel, burn it and melt it.

Oil... i'll get back to this later, it's very specific.

So, all these resources apart from Tin and Zink are required in huge ammounts.

Uranium is rare, but it's also required in relatively small ammounts.

Now, the same source of massively used resource like iron, copper, coal,... could be used only by one nation. either by a colony, or by a unit trader...

however resources like stone and uranium could be exploited by more nations. In case of stone- you have entire mountain of it- why not share it with others, especially if it's outside your borders.
Uranium, too. It can be found only in certain places but you need so little, that it is shareable as well.

Now, oil is tricky. it's used in vast ammounts, found in few places, but where it is found it's found in huge ammounts. i don't know if it could be shared by civilizations. In the reality, it can be shared (like Gulf oil), traded, and it can be selfishly kept. but i don't know how to do it.
It can be found in deserts, yes, but also in Jungles, swamps, gleciers, tundras, even grasslands and plains. on sea floor as well, we should introduce oil sources in the sea.
And ecological catastrophies should happen occasionaly around it, causing food levels to fall.


Now, those were unregenerative resources.
you exploit them and they cease to exist at some point.

Regenerative resources are trees, animals, humans.

You need forests for timber/lumber
Horses for cavalry
Elephants for elephant... units?
now, although they are restorable, if you overuse them they can be exausted as well.

Mountain Lebanon was once densely covered by forests of cedar tree. But phoenician kings built fleet, temples and exported it in huge ammounts. Lebanon is a desert mountain today.

In prehistoric America horses existed, but humans that were predecessors of Indians hunted it for food so much it became extinct all until Europeans brought their horses.

[Aqtaca]

Pedrunn, i agree that barbarians conquered militarily advanced civilizations, i just wanted to point out those civilizations weren't saved by their culture. Sure, barbarians assimililated themselves, but this came later.

the importance that was given to culture concept is exagerted and unreasonable.

I think we should work on religion and nation instead.

Think of it-
Aztec empire sends it's prophets to Mongolia and to Crete, spreading the word of their God/Gods.
If conversion is succesful, with each turn the number of followers rises. The rate of growth would be dependant of many factors. But unless Mongolia reacts quickly, the city will soon be unreformable. Mongolians would have to destroy it if they'd wish their empire to remain free of foreign influences.
This religion concept would spread like a virus- ultimately conversing entire empire. In a way, it would place Mongolian empire under Aztec. Also, units that would be built in the converted cities from converted people would be influenced by that. They could rebel should pagan troops try to reform the city.

Or they could come to the side of Aztecs in case of battle between Aztecs and Mongols.
Entire cities would rebel, causing not formation of a new civilization, but rather joining to the empire that is home of their new religion. this would happen if there's a war between conversor and conversee.

The same principle would be for Nation concept. Let's say Aztecs took a Mesopotamian city, which wasn't prior to that influenced by them. Should they build army from that city's population, those units could rebel and join the mother empire again.
Spreding Aztec religion in that city should be a priority for the Aztecs, but nation concept remains.
"Although we are of different Gods, we are of same fathers and mothers"
Present Germans are Germans, but there are catholic ones and protestant ones.
Although Serbo-Croats are one nation, they are so divided by religion (Croats-Catholics, Muslim Bosnians-Muslim, Serbs-Orthodox Christians)
So, these two concepts would act together, causing all sorts of reactions. etc. division of nations/empires; division of religions; establishing headquarters of a religion (like Rome for catholics or Mecca for Muslims).
the same nation could be attacked by two different religions, causing even more divisions within it.

Interesting?

[Peter Triggs]

Originally posted by Solver
I bet someone just should try the Culture: {culturepts} thing in practice...

Tried it, no luck. I thought it might be possible to use the value array (assign a value to value[0] first) and then output "Culture: {value[0].value}" but I just kept getting that string. I was trying to trigger on the "Status" button; maybe this was wrong. Alternately, maybe you just can't format it like that.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
Locutus,
I guess i exagerate a bit but are you sure we cant have those?
Maybe a Hamdlevent(BeginTurn) calculate tht, or

Code:

OpenInitialCityInterface(city_t) Generated when a city is initialized, after all population is added.

whatever that is,
Anything!?!

I'm not sure what this is but I suspect it's of the build manager pop-up thing you get when you found a city, not what you need.

I did the same thing as Peter this weekend (but I tried it with a number of different types of variables: global, local, built-in, user-defined, etc) and with the same result. Maybe, just maybe, when you trigger it at exactly the right moment, you can get a value[0] to be displayed in the city screen, but it's a small chance and I haven't had any luck with it so far. If you study the UI files you can see that most of the other variables are placed directly as C++ strings, suggesting that it's all hard-coded.

[Pedrunn]

Yep i have tried a lot of new stuff with the UI this weekend but when it came to add anything new it was a total waste of time .
Stuff like...
Try to make possible to add new columns in the Science Manager to see the other civs advances. I did added the columns but they were useless.
Increase the choose advance screen to display more than 4 advances to choose. I did increase the size but just to have a useless space since four advance is the max.
...
I guess we can only change locations and sizes, no adding
If at least we had the source code

[J Bytheway]

I thoght the number of choices in the science screen was affected by ADVANCE_CHOICES_MIN and ADVANCE_CHOICES_MAX in Const.txt. That's how it worked in CTP1 - I increased them for my mod there.

[centrifuge]

Any updates on how this is progressing?

[Ekmek]

Any one got any more ideas on this? and for resources?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by E
Any one got any more ideas on this? and for resources?

For ressources: I already got the idea to make goods that are collected in the city radius as an advance prerequisite. That would also include certain terrains as prerequisite of advances. So an example would be if you don't know oil then you can't invent oil refining. But unfortunatly this concept require massive modification of the advance.txt, so a complete new not linear tech tree including certain some basic advance enabling advances that are given because of the ownership of goods. I already mentioned this idea in the whishlist for future mods thread. Another advance of this concept is that it is more connected to reality and it can prevents players from going to far ahead in science. I think this is a better implementation of the good concept. You can steal the advance and don't have to conquer the only oil good on the map. So tanks first then quonquer intead of conquer then tanks. Another advantage is that you have also a lot of other good dependant stuff like, buildings, tile improvements, units, feats, wonders and governments.

The consequence of this would be a complete new mod based on GoodMod1: The Mod of Goods.

I plan to design this mod as an add on to GoodMod1. As GoodMod1 that is actual an add on to CityMod2 or ApolytonPack or MedPack2

This will be GoodMod2: The Mod of Good dependant Advances

Maybe someone has a better idea for the subtitle. Of course this is an ambious project and so far I don't know the possible preriquisites for the advances, therefore I will start a discussion thread about this issure soon.

So GoodMod1 won't go obsolete, if you like the basic game I don't bother you to download the entire pack, but if you want play a new and differnt game than GoodMod2 would be your choice.

-Martin

[child of Thor]

Martin,
this sounds very erm...'Good'(he!he!), can't wait for the thread and as for the name, well at least it explains exactly what it's about

[Pedrunn]

I may be a dreamer and just a slic begginer who really want strategic resources in the game. I dont know wich functions do work and those who dont.

But can you guys explain me why strategics resources wont work using the following events.

SendGood(int_t, city_t, city_t)
Send a good from one city to another

and fuctions

CityCollectingGood(city, good)
Return the amount of a particular good being collected in the city (excluding goods being brought in via trade).  

mod_CanCityBuildUnit 
mod_CanCityBuildBuilding 
mod_CanCityBuildWonder

We could try to define wich city from the SendGood event is selling and by scanning its tiles to see if it has a certain good with CityCollectingGold, the player city who is buying the good can build a unit/buildings... with the mod functions and regular ones.

and message boxes would control if a player wants to buy the a good or not.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
I may be a dreamer and just a slic begginer who really want strategic resources in the game. I dont know wich functions do work and those who dont.

I don't know it either, so far not tried but I expect them to work.

Originally posted by Pedrunn
But can you guys explain me why strategics resources wont work using the following events.

Code:

SendGood(int_t, city_t, city_t) Send a good from one city to another

and fuctions

Code:

CityCollectingGood(city, good) Return the amount of a particular good being collected in the city (excluding goods being brought in via trade). mod_CanCityBuildUnit mod_CanCityBuildBuilding mod_CanCityBuildWonder

We could try to define wich city from the SendGood event is selling and by scanning its tiles to see if it has a certain good with CityCollectingGold, the player city who is buying the good can build a unit/buildings... with the mod functions and regular ones.

and message boxes would control if a player wants to buy the a good or not.

The only problem I see here is a problem of time Locutus is off for the next few weeks. When he is back he will be busy with uni, his mod about religion and Aplyton, Ben is working on the visible wonder mod, Dale wasn't never so deep in the goods issure, so I don't know if he has the time and I am busy with uni. So far I wasn't able to post the promissed discussion thread about the new GoodMod2., another reason for this thread is that I don't have the time to think about all the terrain/good-advance relationship on my own simply. My idea of strategic ressources are the connection with advances, for me the more logical sollution, in Civ3 you invent tanks but you can't build them afterwards, because you don't have oil. That's stupid, because oil is not the only fuel to power a tank, there are alternatives. And these alternatives were also there, when the internal combustion engine was developed, alternative would be electro engine. The reason why cars are fueled with patrol today is that the patrol technique was finished and useable in the real world before electro engine. Electro driven trains were developed nearly at the same time. So the big advantage of oil and oil products in comparision to electro power was that the technology was finished and oil is still to cheap. This keeps nobody from just burning it. And you saw that contries without oil ressources tried to developed alternative technologies or tried to produce oil from other ressources like coal or you could use use rape oil. And I am shure there are other possible ways to replace oil. You just have to find them and improve the technologies to perfection. And why not event fuel cells instead of internal combustion first. The world is full of alternatives, the only questions what is available, what can be easily invented, what, what is needed, does other civs has this technology.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

Those would feasably work to make it possible. Maybe.
But the first killer is that the killtraderoute function works on a GEA_trade route and an int. now even assuming the int is the good index (which it may well not be), it is still impossible to know which route is being cancelled. The GEA part cannot be read in slic.

After that, you get the real problem, which prevented Peter and myself continuing this spring: The AI.
There is no practical way of making it desire the goods, trade for the goods sensibly, and build cities near the goods.

Its a pain, but it looks like if it ever does happen, it'll be a MP-only thing

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
After that, you get the real problem, which prevented Peter and myself continuing this spring: The AI.
There is no practical way of making it desire the goods, trade for the goods sensibly, and build cities near the goods.

Its a pain, but it looks like if it ever does happen, it'll be a MP-only thing

I had already thought on this problem. I just did not imagined it was that big until now. And the kill trade stuff was something i handnt imagined before either .
I will go to sleep now. Dream about this