mrakomo

Join Date 07/2007

Suggestion: City production templates

I like a template production as it was in Civilization, Call to the power. In the standard Civlization you have to manually set the production queue (no matter if you produce units and/or city improvements). Let us say you have the template "new city". In the template are tasks build an inn, build a spearman (3x), build a marketplace). You define the production template, so you can create let us say "war prep" template (which produces several attack units) etc.

The reason: if you found a new city, you usually use the same starting production scenario. If you go to war, you usually don't create a single unit and go to war with it, but you create a small army of units (let us say a two catapults, three defensive units and one or two attack infantry units).

Behavior: set the production template as the production in a city. The city reports the "production complete" after the units of the template are produced.

Adjusting templates: some units become obsolete in time and so do production templates. If you upgrade an obsolete unit to the new unit (let us say dread knight to angry dread knight):

old template: dread knight, catapult, dread knight, catapult, archer, archer

after upgrade: angry dread knight, catapult, angry dread knight, catapult, archer, archer

If the production is already in progress (let us say the first dread knight is already produced, the catapult is being produced), after the catapult is completed the angry dread knight starts to be produced).

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Do you have Galactic Civilizations, 1 or 2? Made by Stardock, it has a very similar idea, with "governers". I would like to see that here too.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The way governors worked in Gal Civ 2, I expect you should have something like this.

Successfully updated karma reason!

It's been a little while since I've played Gal Civ, with the generals could you program how they work or were they just pre-made templates, because the OP is wanting to be able to setup there own according to what they think is important to do in a new city.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Idea is great, and I have to say I don't know why I didn't write about it myself . Nevertheless, the credit goes to you.

The question, however, is not whether or not to implement it, but how. Here are a couple of ideas how - IMHO ofc - should the system look like:

1. General template description

There are two types of templates: training template & building template. This is done, as it's easier to manage and understand. In other words: 2 + 2 =/= 2*2. I know it sounds strange, but in case of 5 building templates and 2 training templates in the 'one template' solution we would have 10 (2*5) templates instead of 7 (5 + 2). As the game progresses (6 building templates & 10 training templates) we can clearly see the advantage of divided system (16 vs. 60).
Every city will be able to choose if it want to have one, two or none templates assigned to it. In other words: you will set the building plan template, while you will choose which units to build manually.
Of course, you will be able to save your templates. Although, if it happens that you will want to train a unit that is untrainable (lack of facilities, no required techs or resources) you will be informed of it, and you will be able to choose whether to stay with the template, or change it. In case of sticking with the 'too ambitious' plan, the system will eagerly wait for all requirements to be satisfied to train the first unit/build the first building in the list. Alternatively, there will be a check-box with such description "Skip unbuildable/untrainable buildings/units". In the last case, the untrainable units will be skipped, and trainable one will be chosen.
Access to "template manager" will be provided in the city screen, as an additional tab; alternatively you will be always able to access the manager choosing "Kingdom Report" and an appropriate tab.

2. Kingdom report

IMHO "Kingdom report" menu has to be expanded, and I am not only considering templates. Nevertheless, I think that in the "Kingdom report", where all the cities with their income, population be presented, there should be also a tab related to templates, where you can easily set/delete/modify the template for one/all/some cities. Here is a pseudo-picture (ASCII art ftw!):

3. Strategy map information

1.1. Text and icon info

1.3. No info (the zoom-out too big)

Player have following options regarding this kind of info representation:

Show none (only the city name).
Show the template/templates.

Note: There are two types of templates, so in order not to clutter the screen with two templates present near the city I vote for a yet another option available to the player: "show only building template", "show only training template" & "switch between templates". The switching mechanism would work like this:

So above the city you can see that it build buildings that will increase the money income and that in the barracks some defenders are trained.

Note #2: In case someone is infuriated with the additional icon and text above his city, there should be option to see this info in the "info card" after hovering over a corresponding city.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Red1939, great job, great post!! I've not much to add. Just to show support here!

I've proposed exactly the same template system a while back, but seperating it to "training" & "building" template is definitely much better. Micro is reduced, and we still retain full control.

I've envisioned a combo of "Event log" & build template to simiplify micro. Gamer only need to browse a text based log to see any new & useful changes. Gamer should not need to cycle city to city, unit to unit to check what requires their action/attention. When some thing is built, show it to the log; when an enemy enter your unit's line of sight, tell me in the log; when you ally request something, show it there.

Successfully updated karma reason!