Supply Building other than a city?

from Elemental Forums

I've been thinking about trying to create a new building that would lay a small-ish zone of influence around it that could be used to bring resources into supply so you can build on them. Let's call it an outpost for now. The outpost would be able to station a garrison, and maybe even train units, but couldn't have improvements attached to it. It would probably provide a defensive bonus to the units inside or something as well.

Thing is:

-I don't know if this is even possible (I figure I'd need to find where cities are defined and play off of that)

-Why would anyone build this instead of a city?

That second one is what's stopping me from even starting. Right now cities just cost gold and some turns (to train the pioneer, etc). What could I do with this building (or maybe alter with cities?) that would make this building worth constructing instead of creating another city?

I figure I try to get some mod practice in before release and figure this would be good. I would have to create a tile and do all that's involved in that, then create the xml for it and get it in the game. But the first thing I need to figure out is how to make it worth building. Having it cost just materials I guess would be a start.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't know if it'd be possible either. Perhaps early on in city/outpost development you could create a building to "define" the "city's" function between city, outpost, and fortress. Then have a specific set of building you can build afterwards.

If it would/could be anything like GalCiv2's starbases, I'd build 'em and invest in 'em.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

*Note to self, research GalCiv2 starbases*

The use of a building is an interesting idea. I could then go through the improvement system. At least that's another possible avenue, which is always a good thing to have. Thanks :D

 

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I think this is a good idea. I'm all for anything to plus up the empire development side of the game, because right now it is a bit lacking.


I want cities to have more stats, like happiness and other needs. It might make sense to build an outpost because you wouldn't have to worry about those issues.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

What makes your idea tempting is the cost to start new cities. I sent a pioneer to a location with great resources today and then hit an enemy faction taking 4 cities. the cost of a new city went from 800 to 6400G. I was hosed. So a low cost way to get supplies would be great. Better still if supply wagons had to run from A to B to feed the supplies to the supported city. This would force the player to not overextend and to have supply wagons to use the outposts.

Good ideas. B)

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I haven't done any peeking into the xml yet, but I looked up how the starbases worked - and by looking at that, it might be best to play off the city building and use early improvements to set the course like Folick thought about.

I think the trick will be defining this building and disabling improvements that wouldn't be compatible with an outpost while enabling things that let you upgrade your outposts.

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Should work, see https://forums.elementalgame.com/390276

Now, I'm not sure how you would get it build, but I imagine you can create a unit and give it the ability to place an improvement.

Provided such a unit is possible, the improvement itself would simply need a few xml tags as follows:

 

<RequiresCity>False</RequiresCity>

<SupportedTerrainType>Land</SupportedTerrainType>

<ZOCMinRadius>1</ZOCMinRadius>

<ZOCMaxRadius>5</ZOCMaxRadius>

<ZOCRadiusTurnsBeforeUpdate>1</ZOCRadiusTurnsBeforeUpdate>

 

This 'should' give you an improvement that starts with an influence radius of 1, and grows 1 square per turn, for 5 turns.

An example of the complete Improvement text would be:


<ImprovementType InternalName="Malloreon_Watch_Tower">

<DisplayName>Watch Tower</DisplayName>

<Description>Watch Towers increase your realms area of influence</Description>

<TileDesign>Malloreon_Watch_Tower_01</TileDesign>   

<RequiresCity>False</RequiresCity>

<SupportedTerrainType>Land</SupportedTerrainType>

<DrawnIcon>watch_tower.png</DrawnIcon>

<IgnoreDuplicateImpLimit>True</IgnoreDuplicateImpLimit>


This would cause the game to look for the tile called Malloreon_Watch_Tower_01 and refer to it as Malloreon_Watch_Tower. I'm not sure yet about how to assign graphics to the cloth map, but it might be the <DrawnIcon> tag, in which case the tower.png would be the graphic that shows up on the cloth map. The <IgnoreDuplicateImpLimit> is important when building the same improvement several times per city - it might not be necessary in this case, as this improvement cannot be built in cities anyway.

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Damnit, beat me to the punch. I was just looking into this and the reason Pioneers can settle is because of their Pioneer Pack which allows them to have this:

    <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Unit</ModType>
      <Attribute>UnlockAction</Attribute>
      <StrVal>BuildTown</StrVal>
    </GameModifier>

If we can find the BuildTown action then we can replicate it and do something like BuildTower or BuildFort or BuildTradingPost for a Worker Pack. My theory is that they can even be upgradable and have their own special and unique tiles that can be placed. Lemme know if someone can find that code. We can make this happen :)