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TheLimey
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I am not sure what you expect of SLIC2, Wes, but how would you propose to implement the decreasing return idea. Happiness is a 'permanent' effect of permanent buildings. Of course, theoretically, their may be a 'create happiness' SLIC function which can dynamically set up a named effect for that turn, and it may even have the ability to specify a particular building. I doubt it, however.
The way I see many of these ideas being implemented is through having non-buildable buildings and wonders created and destroyed through SLIC as circumstances dictate.
Its going to be a bit of a fudge, but SLIC was immature in CtP1, and CtP2 is going to be the first 'real' SLIC, and they won't have had any feedback until its out.
We'll have to wait until the patch, or even the next version, to let them fill in whats missing.
SLIC is perhaps the most promising feature in any civ game, ever... rules.txt really doesn't even compare.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:14
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As far as diminishing returns, I meant grouping Wonders to *keep* this from occuring.
Ex: Having one Ramayana-type of wonder in effect will probably help most of your cities. Builing another Wonder with the same effect will probably benefit only the largest of your cities. See what I mean? If you deny the AIs access to any more Ramayana-types once they complete one, this will force their construction into another category of Wonder, should they be building another happiness wonder.
The aips are set up so that Wonders have individual priorities. The AIs go after the highest-rated one on their list, and I would bet this is not influenced by that they currently have active, so we would need something to force them into another category sometimes.
Btw, from what little I have heard of CtP2's SLIC, it *will* be much simpler, easier to use, and more versatile than the current version.
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Mr Ogre
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Azeroth
Jan 1970
time: 05:14
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One of the simpler things I've added in SLIC2 is the idea of "mod" functions. I only have them hooked up to a handful of systems right now, but they're very easy for me to add, and I will definitely be doing more. SLIC2 has true functions, so what I've done is made some predefined functions that the game will call to modify various calculations. I don't have one for city happiness yet, but I'll add that. When you write your mod, you'll just have to write a function named mod_CityHappiness, something like this:
int_f mod_CityHappiness(city_t city, int_t happiness)
{
if(CityHasWonder(city, WonderDB(WONDER_SLICED_BREAD)) {
// Add 5 happiness to the city that invented sliced bread
return happiness + 5;
}
return happiness;
}
This function would be called during the happiness calculation phase for each and every city (so, yes, it'll slow things down a bit, but not too much). You can see that you'd be able to modify the happiness more dynamically than this with a bit more code.
A problem with these things is that many systems are order dependent, so I just have to choose one spot in the sequence to check for a SLIC function. But I think that'll be a pretty minor complaint  It'll generally be after everything in the game runs.
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Diodorus Sicilus
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Steilacoom, WA, USA
May 1999
time: 05:14
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The Civ concept of "Wonders" has always had a gap in it, IMHO. On the one hand, most of the game wonders have Civ-wide effects. On the other hand, they are (usually) built using one city's resources. In CivII you could speed up construction using Food caravans to shuttle resources to the one city, but on the one hand the wonder was always located specifically in a single city and on the other hand with few exceptions in Civ II and exclusively in CtP one city built the entire Wonder.
This has always seemed wrong to me. A "Wonder of the World" did and should require a massive undertaking to build, and should include resources from all over your Civ. Even "Edison's Lab" required the American system of mechanical education and patent law to make it work, in addition to a single genius.
Therefore, instead of an artificial numerical limit on Wonders, why not a two-part "realistic" limitation:
1. A Wonder would require several orders of magnitude greater outlay of resources than any conceivable city improvement. Building a Wonder, therefore, would require allocating a portion of the entire civ's resources to it (rather the wsay PW % is allocated in CtP now).
Obviously, you could only allocate to one Wonder at a time, and if for some reason that Wonder is not completed, the allocation already spent does not "roll over" to a new Wonder - you start from scratch.
2. Certain wonders are incompatible. You cannot build a peaceful Happiness Wonder and then turn right around and build the Garden of War or some other militaristic Wonder. In other words, the allocation of civ-wide resources sets your civ on a certain course, which will be reinforced by the choices then offered in the Tech Tree. Example: building the LightHouse or some similar seafaring wonder would open up tech relating to sea and ocean faring and trade and close off tech branches concerning land warfare - you have set your course towards a maritime civilization, and you are stuck with it for the near future.
Note that this "direction" does not last the entire game. Wonders go obsolete, and civilizations change their nature over centuries as the resources and requirements change - otherwise the Scandinavians would still be raiding Europe's beaches instead of sunbathing on them!
Finally, a note about "Ages" - I hate 'em! They are artificial distinctions that in most cases merely show the Europocentric view of the author. Medieval and Renaissance, for instance, have no meaning when applied to Asiatic history, and the Renaissance period saw the beginning of the destruction of all the native American civs, not their "rebirth"!
Furthermore, they encourage artificial distinctions in military/economic matters as well. Hence, every Civ game classified the Pikeman as a "medieval" unit, despite the fact that the two-handed steel-tipped 20-foot pike was the weapon of Alexander the Great's pezheteroi and hypaspists - his "phalanx"!
The fact is, as long as all the Civ games remain strictly linear, with little or no provision for civilizations to really "rise and fall" and no massive changes in real government structure when governments change (an ancient Theocratic God King/Emperor has the same degree of control over his armies and cities as a medieval European king - right) then the Ages are largely meaningless. Even in city architecture, the invention of steel load-bearing structures or concrete changes the look of a city (skyscrapers) more than merely entering the "Industrial Age" or "Modern Age" did.
I know, I know - "Ages" make easy artificial distinctions and "measuring points" for how well or how fast your civ is progressing, so they will doubtless stay in the game, and even proliferate: but disussions over how many Ages there "should" be are as artificial as the Ages themselves - have as many as the game needs to be playable, but realize that they are artificial constructs of the popular historian, not realities of history.
And, finally, this may or may not be the Genetic Age we are entering: Genome coding and genetic manipulation may turn out to be merely a footnote to general molecular or atomic manipulaion and engineering or a sub-species of nanotechnology - we just don't know yet, and prognoticators of long-term tech trends have a lousy track record. I know from that firsthand - I've been reading hard science fiction for over 40 years, and virtually all the writers missed, among other things, the miniaturization and ubiquitization of computers, televizing the first moon landing, the complete ceasing of manned extra-orbital flights after those initial moon shots, and the social/ecpnomic consequences of the instroduction of such things as the Pill, home computers, cell phones, and the internet. basically, the results to a civ of new technology not already on the ground in the world today are pure speculation, and we'll probably get it wrong but Whadahey, it's the speculation that's part of the fun...
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TheLimey
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You are wrong about the one city having to 'entirely build' a wonder in CtP.
Any unit in civ can be disbanded within a city to reclaim 1/2 of its production cost towards the current item. It doesn't seem to overbalance the game either.
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meriadoc
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Troy, NY
Dec 1999
time: 00:14
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I'm not writing this to advocate one form of Wonder-building over another. I personally have no problems whatsoever with the current one-city per wonder approach. However, Diodorus Sicilus's idea of building Wonders using a civ-wide building system, somewhat like public works in CTP1, is interesting. After all, he's right - Wonders being the massive undertakings that they are perhaps should require more than one city.
I also have an idea for a compromise as well. The wonder is still built like normal - it just gets placed in the build queue for a city. The, if you want more cities to work on that wonder, simply add the wonder to their build-queues as well. The production resources from the second, third, and so-on cities will get automatically added to those from the first city. When the wonder gets completed, it ends up in the first city.
------------------
The Electronic Hobbit
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I love playing WITHOUT WONDERS MYSELF!!..as a change of pace
Wonders are great but i agree with a previous post that they give a quick lead in the rankings...(rankings ARE decieving)and i love excluding them..to see all the SO-CALLED EXPERT Civers...S-Q-U-I-R-M..LOL..but i agree it would be better to make it so you had A SINGLE Wonder per Civ and would be crucial to protect that to maintain a certain level of status or rankings..then build another or even improve that wonder..to advance..
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Milkman
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Oak Harbor, Washington, USA
May 2000
time: 05:14
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Was looking at old topics and got a idea from this one. I always liked the idea of a wonder that gave the big bonus to Civ that built it. But a small bonus to all other civs after certain amount of time. Take edisons lab for 1. U.S. got a big help by having it. But didnt take long for its inventions to reach other civs and get used.
Say one civ builds a wonder increasing food. It gets a 20% food bonus to all cities. After a few turns, other civs learn how to do this. They use the info but not on huge scale. No wonder, but they get say 5% food bonus to all cities. Allows a Civ to get the big bonus for building a wonder but not leave other civs in the dust.
As far as Wonders giving u chance to discover new tech every turn, I would change that. Make it into a % bonus to overall science.
No idea if this could be put in through editing files or slic though.
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wheathin
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Good idea... Maybe limit it to two though. Otherwise, you force players to found dozens of cities just to get the capacity for future wonders. It seems like a game with this restriction couldn't have more than about 20 wonders - you'd run out of decent cities. AT the very least, you'd need some sort of Civ2-Caravan idea, to allow you to transfer production?
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:14
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How about axing most of the swap build ability, ok a proportion of units build can be used to build other units, and possibly a smaller amount for a city improvement could be used for another city improvement and the same goes for wonders, but make it less than it is at the moment say only 30% and not valid for switching between units and improvements and wonders. This would make it more realistic, and may already be possible to an extent by modifiying some of numbers in CTP
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I play Rogue Spear/Urban Ops a lot online one thing that appeals to me is the "RANDOM MAP".Option in Multiplayer .so that NO one..not even host knows if it is a sniper..rush or assault map..so you cant pick a sniper rifle or machine gun or assault..w/o taking chance it may be wrong..Having said this..I would like to see an option where you could say if there were 30 wonders..make it where there were only maybe 10-12 available...and maybe one civ was given the luck of the draw..say London Exchange..but MAYBE..MAYBE another Civ didnt have that option..but Maybe they Had Internet..instead..and say you wouldnt know what a particular Civ was building until maybe 5 turns before it was built..makes a more interesting spin..for us out there who like "Challenges"..Thats why I enjoy playing No Wonders sometimes...just for a change of pace
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wheathin
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I dunno big dave, I think you need to have the wonder-swapping ability. Otherwise, civs will be crippled just for guessing wrong (more than they already are when you build the last available wonder).
After all, it makes even less sense that after you've got the bottom half a pyramid built, you HAVE to stop just because someone else beat you to it. Egypt's pyramids didn't prevent the Mayans and others from building their own.
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Daniel Frappier
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Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Jan 1970
time: 05:14
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---------------------------
Otherwise, civs will be crippled just for guessing wrong
---------------------------
It is a 2 sided sword. If it happen to a weak Civ then it gets weaker but if it happen to the #1 Civ then it gives a chance for the other Civs to go back in the game.
For me the predictability of the game (knowing who will win 200 turns before the end) is one major problem and this would be one thing to help solve it.
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Talon438
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Some wonders should be on the terrain in several places like 2 pyramids some where controlled by seperate civs that way people can steal wonders or take over the terrian instead of building them that way it wont affect small civs as much. I repeat this would only work with some wonders.
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chatgr
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Maybe it sould be an option for diplomacy.
Stop buildinding new wonders or else.
Or maybe two civilaizations that have a race
with two wonders each could agree to build only one wonder each.
Or maybe there could be a wonders pact.
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Adm.Naismith
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Milano - Italy
Oct 1999
time: 06:14
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Well, sorry for jumping in without CTP knowledge (but having played a lot Civ/Civ2 and SMAC).
In my opinion, when two or more cities (same nation) start building the same Wonders, the rules must be that one is also the city where the Wonder will be built, the others simply support (no more by CIV Caravan or SMAC supply units) the building, introducing some % of shields lost for inefficiency and transporting costs.
This will avoid the trick to start same Wonders in two or more cities, just for switching when new Wonder become available by tech research or tech trade.
I'm not sure about the problem of losing the wonder rush: how can I do with an almost finished Pyramid? Considering how often old Wonders become used as deposit of raw materials (stones and metal) for other building, I simply suggest they slowly become consumed adding resources to the next buildings in the same city at half the rate of shields, for the same building turns (you will end losting 50% resources).
Ok, it's really a draft formula, please correct it as you like. The concept is I can reuse something, but not the workhours spent (they are fully lost), and taking the time to recycle some parts.
If you think this only work for stones and the like, please consider how often also ideas and tools can be used in a different project.
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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
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07-07-2000 06:11
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