'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

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vodot
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'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by vodot »

Creating a new topic to track Resplendent, my mega mod which contains expands the Tech Tree (particularly in the Atomic and Digital ages) and doubles the unit count. There is still a lot to be done, but this will give me a place to plan and publish releases.

I'm also going to pause on Resplendent for a bit to review some of what is currently out there, particularly NExtended, Corbeau's, and Bard's civ2civ3 ruleset. I have a couple other things going on here as well (Civ Traits, and exploring writing some portrait+dialogue driven diplomacy)

I had originally just lumped this (very different effort) into the "Civ Traits" topic, but that makes no sense. :?
Last edited by vodot on Fri Jul 13, 2018 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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vodot
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by vodot »

From my original post that combined Resplendent and Civ Traits:

Hi all, I've never really posted anything here but years ago I created a private mod back in 2.2/3 that added (in addition to gobs of additional techs, buildings, and units) civ-specific traits and trait-specific units, buildings, and bonuses. I'm not sure how many others have attempted something like this, or how much progress has been made in 2.6/3.0+ towards making this easier than my kludgey method (which used new starting "technologies" as stand-ins for traits, then gave the techs the bonuses directly and called them as prereqs for units and buildings), but after reading a 2016 thread on the subject I decided to post the work that I've done in hopes of getting some feedback.

I hardcoded 57 nations to have unique combinations of two traits each (this drives some of the combinations which might seem odd or historically sub-optimal). I did not quite reach my goal of having every possible combination (78 of them) represented by a nation (see screenshot below). I've since edited this and now am missing only six --> four --> have all of the potential trait pairs.

I'm currently trying to pull my work forward into the 2.6 era and I don't see anything yet about native traits and so was by default planning to just update my old "technologies" method for 2.6+.

Please, before I get too far, someone let me know if there is an easier way to do traits/unique units/buildings in 2.6!

I'd like to post my custom unit gfx files, but I hesitate due to them being mostly old CivFanatics/Apolyton fanmade sprites of... uncertain copyright status. I'm sure if that was an approved method for sourcing sprites, then freeciv would already be full of those awesome gfx files today. But I can at least post my rulesets and everything else I was working on, while the search for explicitly open-source sprites goes on in parallel.

Lists of traits and the abilities/units/buildings they bestow:
  • Militaristic
    - Mounted and Siege-type land units gain +1 MP
    - Mounted and Siege-type land units built with +2 EXP
  • Agricultural
    - +25% food production all tiles
    - Unit: Peons (cheaper, immediate workers)
    - Building: Silos (cheaper, immediate granaries)
  • Diplomatic
    - +10% chance of espionage success
    - Free AI Love each turn
    - +2 MP all diplomat-type units
    - Unit: Envoy (cheaper, immediate diplomat [1-only])
  • Imperialistic
    - Halved waste and corruption in all cities
    - Unit:Expedition (strong, fast settlers [1-only])
  • Industialistic
    - +25% Production in all cities
    - Building: Forge (immediate, weaker factory)
  • Maritime
    - +1 Food all Ocean tiles
    - Naval units built as veterans
    - +1 MP all ships
    - Unit: Karakoa (immediate, cheaper Trireme)
  • Mercantile
    - +25% gold and luxuries in all cities
    - Unit: Merchant (immediate, fast caravan [1-only])
    - Building: Bazaar (immediate, weaker marketplace)
  • Naturalistic
    - +25% defense in hills, desert, jungle, and forest
    - All terrains cost 1 MP
    - +1 food and +1 trade in forests, jungle, swamp, tundra, and hills
    - Unit: Ranger (explorer with +1 atk and +1 def)
  • Nomadic
    - +1 MP all foot units
    - Foot units heal an extra +10% HP every turn.
    - +1 food, trade, and production for desert tiles
    - Unit: Nomads (cheaper, stronger settlers with pop_cost 2)
  • Philosophical
    - +10% science, gold, luxuries, and production in all cities
    - -25% corruption
    - Gains any technology known by 3 other civilizations
    - Building: Forum (immediate, force_content=1, +10% science
  • Protective
    - Units and cities are unbribeable
    - Ranged units and air units are always built as veterans
    - Building: Commune (immediate, weaker courthouse)
  • Scientific
    - +25% Science in all cities
    - Building: Archives (immediate, weaker library)
  • Spiritual
    - Halved war weariness
    - force_happy=1 in all cities
    - Building: Altar (immediate, weaker temple)
some todo:

Main 2.6 migration ruleset + spec effort:
  • techs.ruleset DONE
  • units.ruleset DONE* (dummy entries only, details not yet re-implemented from 2.2/3)
  • effects.ruleset DONE
  • nationslist.ruleset DONE
  • nations.ruleset DONE
  • ...every individual nation.ruleset... DONE
  • game.ruleset <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< I am here.
  • buildings.ruleset
  • governments.ruleset
  • Update tileset baseline from Amplio to Hexemplio
  • units.spec
  • buildings.spec
______________________________________________

Terrain tweaks 1.0:
  • Migrate terrain ruleset over
  • Include tile variants for Grassland & Plains
  • Pull in custom terrain gfx
  • Recolor some base terrain to match
  • Add 6-way matching to forests
______________________________________________

Terrain tweaks 2.0:
  • Strategic Resources
  • Redo terrain ruleset
______________________________________________

Terrain tweaks 3.0
  • Re-implement forests as new layer atop base layers
  • Update map generator
  • Config deforestation
Civ Trait list + Artwork + Unit Stat table are below.
NOTE: while I assembled and arranged it for my private use, the artwork in "Units.png" (attached) is not mine, and I am uncertain of the sources of many of the images. Some of the images were modified by me from their originals. I have Licenses to use some of them in Freeciv, but not all yet; in conversations with a bunch of people over on CivFanatics Civ2 Scenario League.
Attachments
civs5.png
Unit_stats (1).PNG
units (2).png
Wahazar
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by Wahazar »

Impressive project.
So if I understand correctly, each nation would have slightly different properties?
Is it for AI only, or general?
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
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vodot
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by vodot »

Wahazar wrote:Impressive project.
So if I understand correctly, each nation would have slightly different properties?
Is it for AI only, or general?
Thanks, it really is a bit of a mess at the moment. It worked best in 2011, ironically, and even then there were big unfinished chunks all over the place.

When you say properties, I can think of three potential differences that Traits could create: bonuses, unique units/buildings, and play style/strategy.

RE: Bonuses and UUs/UBs, those are designed to be useful to the AI, and the AI uses has access to them. RE: strategy, however, the AI is currently blind to the Traits coming from my mod. I haven't lifted the proverbial hood of the AI yet, so an imperialistic civ like Russia is not going to necessarily play more imperialistically. Still in many cases the combination of their unique units and buildings + the reinforcing bonuses they receive seems to help them along whenever they do make more true-to-role decisions (e.g. I have definitely seen the Vikings (Maritime + Militaristic) start harassing very early with veteran ships (which they can build from the start) and landing parties made up of veteran warriors).

As far as actually helping the AI to live into the role a bit more, there is hope on that front- as was pointed out to me in my first Civ Traits post, there are already a couple lines of code around two RNG 'AI traits': expansionist and trader. It would be easy to add some code around ensuring that civs with "Imperialistic" or "mercantile" are always in the top 20% or so of the "expansionistic" or "trader" AI spectrums, respectively; same for any future traits that get coded into the AI like aggression, etc.
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vodot
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by vodot »

To achieve something more complete and deliverable, I'm reducing the scope of resplendent in two significant ways so that I can expand it in one significant way and still have something deliverable.

First, I'm going to drastically reduce the Nation pool, from 78 to 21 "Core' " (core-prime) nations. I'm arbitrarily defining Core Prime as the list of playable civs from Civ2. One regret is that the Civ2 selection bias drastically reduces the spread of traits (only one "Nomadic" Nation, for example, survives in Core'), meaning I need to trim the trait list down from 13 down to 8. New Trait List:
  • Agricultural
  • Imperialistic
  • Industrious
  • Inquisitive
  • Maritime
  • Mercantile
  • Militaristic
  • Spiritual
This leaves the below Nations, with reworked Traits. As I have trimmed traits from 13 to 11 to 8 and Nations from 78 to 50 to 21 these selections are getting increasingly dicey (in some cases) but they're still at least partially defensible- and more importantly, who cares?
  • American (Industrious, Mercantile)
  • Aztec (Militaristic, Spiritual)
  • Babylonian (Agricultural, Mercantile)
  • Carthaginian (Maritime, Mercantile)
  • Celtic (Agricultural, Militaristic)
  • Chinese (Agricultural, Inquisitive)
  • Egyptian (Industrious, Spiritual)
  • English (Imperialistic, Maritime)
  • French (Inquisitive, Mercantile)
  • German (Industrious, Inquisitive)
  • Greek (Imperialistic, Inquisitive)
  • Indian (Agricultural, Industrious)
  • Japanese (Inquisitive, Maritime)
  • Mongol (Imperialistic, Militaristic)
  • Persian (Imperialistic, Spiritual)
  • Roman (Imperialistic, Industrious)
  • Russian (Agricultural, Imperialistic)
  • Sioux (Inquisitive, Spiritual)
  • Spanish (Maritime, Spiritual)
  • Viking (Maritime, Militaristic)
  • Zulu (Mercantile, Militaristic)
The new Nation-Trait distribution:
civs_core'.PNG
Second, I'm eliminating my entire expanded tech tree (with it's associated doubling of the unit count). I may elect to keep a few of the technologies and units that I feel are truly punching above their weight, but I am going to try hard to keep that number to 5 additions or less, probably all coming in the Modern or Atomic ages, particularly if the advancement simply postdated Civ2's release date (1996- 22 yeas ago!!).

Finally, the good news: These two major scope reductions will allow me to expand the scope of Resplendent out to include nation-unique units (with buildings as national proxies, until better modding capabilities are added), unique buildings, and unique small wonders. For replacements, I will use simply the standard civ2civ3 tech tree, potentially with some limited additions of my own, for the above-noted reasons.

If I prove capable of delivering this greatly reduced foundation, it should prove relatively simple to expand the mod incrementally to embrace some of this content I am slashing, rather than trying to deliver the whole massive project from the get-go. We shall see.
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vodot
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by vodot »

Reducing scope again to keep only the traits themselves and a single unique unit per nation, and adding the condition that it has to replace a default unit in the tech tree, which shall remain untouched.

I've also decided to use bard's excellent civ2civ3_earth as my baseline, while I work on tools to more easily propagate mods across different rulesets.
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vodot
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by vodot »

Last year, just before wrapping up a season of working on this project, I sought and obtained permissions from Fairline, Tanelorn, Broken_Erika, and CurtSIbling over at the CivFanatics Civ 2 Scenario League (http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.ph ... =Main_Page) to use their incredible artwork (with attribution, of course) in freeciv. The upshot of this for me is that I have a green light to proceed with my unit art, almost all of which is Fairline or Fairline-derived.
robthenavigator
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by robthenavigator »

Sorry to revive a slightly dead thread, but is there any way to install this? I downloaded the zip from Github but it doesn't seem to work with the Freeciv Modpack Installer and the Readme doesn't explain.
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vodot
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Re: 'Resplendent' Ruleset (expansion)

Post by vodot »

Hi Rob, I haven't worked on this project in a bit - and I left off in the midst of making it 2.6 compatible - so unfortunately installation is going to be rough and relatively manual. Feel free to grab and repurpose any of the assets, of course, and I'll do my best to answer any questions you have.
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