So, I've been perusing a few threads here, in regards to pioneer spam, outpost building, and city growth. I already have an outpost mod I'm working on,s but I'm distracted with a couple of quest coding fests at the moment...
Anyways, several players have expressed interest in a more 'hands on' approach to city management. With that in mind, here is the 'design goals' statement I have in mind r.e. a mod to address this.
My issues with the current model:
1) The current population growth model works off of the concept of growth bonuses. Essentially, each city will attract population each turn, based on it's growth level. This happens in the background now, so players don't have to worry about assigning population to structures and such.
This encourages abuse, especially at faster game rates, where people build Pioneers to 'skim off' the excess population when a city hits it's population cap. Said Pioneers do not require food, and can wait around as long as a player wishes, until they are killed, found an outpost, or found a city. I think they can be used to boost population levels in a city as well (need to check this). While this certainly works, it encourages city and outpost spamming. Sure there are penalties (unrest) that tie into this, but the 'more cities makes people more scared' premise seems counter-intuitive to me.
2) Structures are no longer tied to population, just city levels. This is certainly easier, but once a structure is built it has no 'manning' requirements should the city then decide to drop it's population levels a LOT by spamming pioneers. Essentially, you have a bunch of population sitting around doing nothing while buildings are on autopilot. Apparently E:LH is an automated society, you just didn't realize it before...
3) Several modders have re-introduced population costs for armies from time to time. This makes sense to me, but of course is not part of the 'core design'.
Changes I have in mind:
1) (Re)Introduce new resources - Population pool.
Sovereigns will now attract/produce a number of people each turn. This will be tied to various bonuses, of course, but these will be for a global population pool, not for each individual city.
Three resources will be tied to this.
- Total Empire Population: A global counter showing the total population of your empire. Random events can tie into this variable... plus it makes you feel cool to know how many citizens are under your command...
- Total City Population: This will look the same as you see it now, but will be handled differently. Essentially population growth will be a direct result of adding new structures to the city (i.e. a Smelter might cost 30 population to build, and adds 30 to total city population).
- Available Population Pool: Any new structures, units, etc. will have a population cost, that is subtracted from this pool. If this pool is at zero, no new structures, etc. may be built.
2) Units will (again) cost population.
Most units will have a personnel requirement, that will be deducted from the population pool. Pioneers will cost the same in population as other units, but see below:
3) Buildings cost population among other things.
Essentially, you will need to provide citizens for the structure, which are deducted from the available pool of citizens.
4) New cities will not require additional population (over the Pioneer requirement), but...
New city sites will essentially be tents, when Pioneers establish a new city. The actual 'city hub' will still need to be built, and like all other structures will require population.
5) Cities will not produce population directly.
Sure, some city structures may provide bonuses to the growth of the global population pool, but will not accumulate citizens directly. New citizens will mainly be assigned via structures. I may also introduce a mechanic to add more population just because, but this will need to have controls associated with it.
6) City Hub Growth:
City Hubs may be upgraded ONLY if the required total population is on hand for said upgrade. Hence, total city population may have a slightly different effect on Hub growth...
7) New approach to Unrest:
Unrest will still be in play, but the penalties for multiple cities may be different. Example: There could perhaps be higher unrest bonuses for larger cities, which would of course introduce the need for morale boosting structures.
8) Players will need to accumulate population to build units/things...
Since almost everything unit wise and building wise will have a population requirement, Players will have to wait until they have sufficient population onhand.
9) Population Growth/Turn now a global stat:
Your Sov/Empire will have this stat. The higher it is, the more people that will be added to your Available Population Pool each turn. Obviously, you will accrue bonuses to this as the game goes on, and attract higher numbers of people each turn as the game progresses. HOWEVER, Cities won't be the primary driver behind this, and a control will need to be in place to ensure that 'City Spamming for the sake of higher growth bonuses' does not become an issue.
Notes:
On the Global scale, a Sovereign will see a new stat(s) across the top bar, next to Mana, Gold, etc. which will show available/unused population for upgrades, etc., and perhaps a global population count, although I might just leave that as a Ledger item. Population Growth per turn will also need to be shown somewhere.
What happens when a city is captured, and it's effect on global population levels, may need to be addressed, and I'm not sure how this would be handled. Currently, however, Global Population as I envision it is more akin to Fame, so this may be a non issue. Essentially, one might think of it as '50,000 people flocked to the Sov's banner this game', not 'You currently have 50,000 total population'. This could be tied into some sort of victory condition I would think.
The Plague Event: Since population is now tied to structures, this event will need to have a different approach. Not sure what to do right now about this...
Grain: Since City Hub level could still be tied to Grain, cities will still hit population caps, of a sort. That being said, this will need to be explored further. This may be a case where there is a disconnect between the grain resource and total populaton. Lots to think about here...
Elemental used to track craftsmen and such. Maybe there is something there to address the Grain situation and Plague situation...
Fame could play a role here. Where tracking growth bonuses introduces the issue of 'Sov still having the bonus despite losing a city' issue, perhaps the Sov earns more growth bonuses as he/she becomes more well known globally (i.e. becomes, well, Famous!).
The spells/enchantments that increase city growth may need a rethink...
Well, that's what I have so far. I'll probably jump into this at some point in the next couple of weeks. I need to button up a few things for updated releases first...
Comments, suggestions, etc. are of course always welcome!
N/A
I'm still experimenting on my end, as I may or may not be seeing some weirdness - boosting from 30 to 52 population (+20, plus + 2 from growth) did NOT bring up the city hub upgrade window. In the meantime, I think the key is to do <ModType>Resource instead of <ModType>City. My install is anything but vanilla at this point, and I'm still at 1.3 (the 1.5 crashing issues convinced me to not upgrade until 1.6, as I'd have to reconfigure a few mods I've been working on).
I have a one time bonus of +100 to Presige that I need to comment out. It didn't seem to be doing anything, but I have to comment it out and double check to see if that had some unknown effect.
Also, my boost was accomplished using the Mod folder only. I'll experiment more and get back with y'all.
I don't think a vanilla install is necessary for this, but if you are feeling the need anyways, that's your call.
OK, so I just did a more extensive playthough. I had hoped to just boost the city population to 47, but due to a lair being in the way I wasn't able to clear the lair or build until the +15 population would have boosted it to 52 my city was sandwiched between water, two resources, and a lair. Never been in that situation before, but I digress).
Well the city had the right population count, but showed a level 3 city. I continued playing until the population reached 155, but no hub upgrade windows ever appeared, and the city was showing as a level 5 city.
So, the short form, adding population via the resource tag seems to mess with city leveling a lot. I'll do another runthrough to see what's up. BTW, I'm just adding the code linked above to the Monuments XP mod/code for simple monuments. I commented out my other tags (was trying a few different ways to boost population), so those weren't in effect.
I did some further testing. Two runs.
This time, I was able to squeeze the +15 population in before the growth took the village above 50. Hubs functioned as normal, I chose a fortress just for fun. I took the town to 155+ population using growth only/no additional pop boosts from buildings to make sure the next upgrade level would take, it did.
Then, I added +100 population to a workshop, started a new game, built the monument (47 population), let the population creep past 50, hub upgrade functioned as normal. Built the workshop at around 57 population, which on the turn of completion upgraded the fortress to size 3, but my population cap was 125 due to food, so population dropped to 125 immediately after the hub upgrade. So I have a level 3 fortress at 125 population.
Again, the code I added was as follows (I'll use workshop since it's less wordy). Done via the mod folder btw:
When upgrading core improvements, I've found that you can just tack code on to the existing core code, using the above convention in the mods folder. No need to overwrite all of the other data, as long as you are adding new code/modifiers and not modifying existing code.
So, the short form, it would appear that:
In order for hubs to function 'normally', you need to let them grow to a level 2 town/fortress/conclave first. This could be accomplished by lowering the population threshold for a level 2 to say 31 population (so the turn after they are built they upgrade, assuming +1 growth), without interfering with construction of other buildings. Assuming that you don't complete construction on a building first...
Let me know if you can get the code to work along these lines as well. I can't imagine this is a 1.3 or earlier thing, but you never know...
@tjashen, I'll update on my retest this weekend.
@Primal, I like what was done with the faithfuls. That's along the lines of what I'd like start creating for specailists/master craftsmen. Though at my current rate it might be some time till I'm ready to implement that.
I've encountered similar problems when adding things to the game. Might try putting the file (not changing the file) in the main folder / directory to see if the game modifier is catching there. I know there should be no difference, but could be a limit to the number of files being read.
I'm running a somewhat clean install myself. I'm using some of Parrotmath's mods, my mods, and maybe one or two others. There's a bunch of mods I wouldn't mind installing, but I've been in modding mode for a while now.
The stuff I'm tinkering with tends to change the game in rather significant ways, as I EVENTUALLY want to do a top to bottom mod of the game. Dunno if I'll ever finish that goal though. Also, as previously mentioned, I'm still at 1.3, (holding out for 1.6 at this point).
I've been wanting to translate Warlords across for a while now. I need to get all of the underlying stuff working first, and then there's the whole class issue thing. Warlords heroes, and creatures for that matter, tend to provide a lot of army-wide bonuses.
Dunno how I'd 'pre-place' so called 'neutral' cities, probably the scenario route, but that's a subject for another thread, if I ever get that far. This would be more of a 'spiritual' mod than a 'literal' one. Air Elementals moving across the map at really high speeds might be a bit too much fun (Air Elementals have 18/36 moves in Warlords III, move rates in that game vary from between 14 and 50...).
Right now though, I'm pondering a reworked music .xml file that would use music from the Planescape Torment soundrack as ambient music in E:LH. For those who already have those tracks handy, of course! Mark Morgan wrote some killer tracks for that game. That's just for me mainly, though, and not for any of my mods.
As you might have noticed, I tend to lose focus easily, as I move on when the .xml for something gets a little too frustrating, and I need to take a step back for perspective, patience, and composure...
I would like to rework an AI mod, but the task will be daunting. Primal_Savage has shown some good values already on the AI, and I would like to extend this idea to the extreme, but I probably have to write a program to change all the XML for me. Take to long otherwise.
I'm always willing to help out from time to time. From the looks of things Primal_Savage is as well
Just a quick note. I'm still seeing things go wrong with population adders. In my latest game, my level 2 city became a level 4 city, with 165 population, skipping the level 3 upgrade entirely, even though level 4 usually requires much higher population to achieve. So that might not be the best way to go.
My idea of repurposing food per grain I think is the safer bet... or y'alls specialist idea.
So I've (finally) been playing the Undead faction (was holding out for the most recent sale that Stardock just had), and in testing my own suggestion for Davrovona's Level 6 and 7 cities mod (to allow Undead to have level 6 and 7 cities), another way to approach this crept into my brain.
Essentially, it would use the city leveling milestones as a way to create 'district hubs' which 'house' population (essentially you are building the new district because the city has grown in population size, and the peeps need somewhere to live). Those district hubs are then upgraded to one of several choices, which affect the city's output in some way. I.E. a 'research district', 'mining district', 'manufacturing district, farming district', etc. etc. etc.. Also, as you would likely be building one new district hub to then upgrade every level, the cities would be physically growing in size/bulk as more hubs are added.
District Hubs wouldn't 'require/consume' population to build. Essentially the city leveling mechanism is used to simulate this 'housing' of population, i.e. 'OK we now have over 250 citizens, time to build the next district!'
As districts would be tied to city level (i.e. district 6 becomes available when the city hits size 6), you would only have one new district to build each city level, and that district could only be 'purposed' once (once it's upgraded, unless you tear down the district hub and rebuild it that's it). But I'm envisioning cities having a LOT of levels (say 20). If I could tie city build radius to city size, that'd be awesome too, but I think that would need to be handled on the .exe end, and not something a modder could do.
This would change the city level up options as well. A lot of what you see now in the 'city leveling choices' would be tied into district hubs, instead of those being chosen in the city levelup window.
The city levelup window annoys me anyways, as you have no way to scroll the map once it appears, so if you aren't keeping good track of your cities, you end up 'guessing' r.e. which upgrade (conclave, fortress, town, infirmiry, strike garrison, etc.) you want... so I would like to simplify that choice, and handle those upgrades ingame. Unless Stardock figures out how to let us 'scroll around the map' underneath city upgrade windows or something...
Sure, you can name the newly established city 'Strike Fortress Draconis' or whatever when you first build it, so you can remember what you want it to upgrade to later when the Level 2, 3, etc. windows appear, but that's extra work. Once I'm ingame, I'm more focused on questing, unit design, expanding my city to that nearby resource and such.
What I envision r.e. city upgrades is more along the lines on how Hero leveling works (example: the First Aid trait is somehing you can only pick once, but that choice is always available to you each time you level up, until you pick it), but since I can't create a 'city upgrade tree' (that'd be an .exe thing), I'll need to go about it another way.
I'll keep everyone posted on my progress. This may or may not work, but I'm rather confident that the coding approach I'm envisioning should work; i.e. certain structures only become available at certain city levels, that's what I'll be piggybacking my concept on.
Of course, the elephant in the room will be getting the AI to understand what is going on, but first I want to at least demonstrate the concept using the mod route.
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