More building slots

[pawelrut]

Fantastic stuff, hope you will make it work

[Tenerife_Boy]

This is outstanding work!

8/8/8/8 sounds right for me, it always had been silly that some settlements had more slots than others

Why? after all a city is bigger than a town and this is well represented in Rome 2.

Whatever the proportion will be, my bet is always to give more slots to cities.

[fightermedic]

Actually, its a completely arbitrary decision that some places are allowed to build more and different buildings than others.
The whole "only some places are allowed to build walls" thing is stupid to begin with. The size and importance of cities tends to change drastically over short periods of time throughout history. If there have to be limitations for gameplay reasons, at least there should be a logical reason to them.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

The reason is simple: The province capitols are the historical more important cities, where more people lived in ancient times and which had as only ones the manpower to build and maintain bigger temples and cultural buildings. And this good design decision of Rome II should be maintained in my opinion.

[Jake Armitage]

You're a f.....g genius Daruwind!
I sense the smell of a new dawn.
+ rep of course

How does all those slots work with growth? You can edit growth needed in startpos?

[Jake Armitage]

An idea for a new building chain could be to adapt the population scripts for a resource system.
Buildings now cost resources (like armies cost population), something like timber, straw, clay, stone, iron, marble and the new building chain gives you a growth bonus (or malus) to certain resources.
There could be mountain/hill caves, forests, pits and so on.
UI impostation will have to be checked for sure.

Populaion scripts could be adapted also for equpiments. You must equip units with proper tools for recruiting them. Swords, spears, armors (heavy and light)...
So you'll start building upgradable forges that produce some equipment every turn.

Another new chain could be buildings that represents countryside villages and towns. I don't know, something like agricultural villages, desert merchant settlements, nobility military castles with some houses inside where you can recruit province mercenaries as normal units... Dunno.. . They could be historically and properly named too.

Another chain could be obviously local upgradable wonders.

Seems I'm talking like a civilization fanatic with these ideas though.

[Daruwind]

Well, apparently it is a crazy amount of work to add slots for an entire campaign, but I think this is awesome to make some corrections. Maybe a good test project?

For Attila:
https://forums.totalwar.com/discussi...d-argentoratum
https://forums.totalwar.com/discussi...-building-slot

I checked Attila Startpos and this is the very same issue. They forgot to add these slots. So it is fixable however keep in mind that new startpos is not compatible with any other startpos mod (TPY, big overhaul mods....) But this fix is doable pretty well down the line. :-)

How does all those slots work with growth? You can edit growth needed in startpos?

Easily. Growth per slot is set in DB table, you can have different values for Major town secondary slots and Minor town secondary slots, each particular slot can have different value. Check video down, I tried to hover above each one before expanding. You can see the cost is either 1 or 0. Game seems to understand DB table even for more slots...ie setting cost for slot #10 for example. But this needs futher testing that it is really working. Building whole province in one turn is little speed up process. :-)

Buildings now cost resources (like armies cost population), something like timber, straw, clay, stone, iron, marble and the new building chain gives you a growth bonus (or malus) to certain resources.

You can check link in first post for my old resource mod idea. But really this is for now way in future. :-)

About cities. Game is build with Major/Minor cities in mind. Every Province needs a Capitol - Major city. There are problems with walls, siege maps if I remember correctly. (can remove walls from major, can´t have major siege maps for minor?). So having some kind of difference between minor/major seems logical. But creating system like 10/6/6/6 would allow quite easy reduction for 8/6/6/6 or even 6/6/6/6 for personal choice. Or even depiction of some more important cities. 10-8/6/6/6 Major cities are 8 while some would be 10 (red/orange cities on map lower). Look at DEI, it is even possible to have building chains for particular region..like resources and if set up even unique building (chains) like Pantheon just for Rome. But these are memories im digging from my old building tinkering...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Testing Italy province is going quite well. Got Rome and Velathri working, for now without on map representation. It is easy to add 4th building slot representation/animation for Velathri on map but adding like 5 more slots to Rome. Rome is actually pretty small and at the same time pretty big chunk of region... And for you guys, my first youtube video. Next stop will be little more tinkering with on map representation and starting the full 10/6/6/6. Even getting just these two slots cost me like week of my own errors in startpos. It is great fun really. :-)

-altered UI
-Italy Province with 6th slot for Rome and 4th slot for Velathri
-no on map representation for these slots.

[Tenerife_Boy]

Fantastic. I agree with the idea of 8/6/6/6 and the most prominent cities with 10/6/6/6
This system will be great with our alternative economy system submod in DeI.

[pawelrut]

Testing Italy province is going quite well. Got Rome and Velathri working, for now without on map representation. It is easy to add 4th building slot representation/animation for Velathri on map but adding like 5 more slots to Rome. Rome is actually pretty small and at the same time pretty big chunk of region

How is the on map representation affecting the AI path-finding? The cites in R2 are big as they are so adding more can create path-finding issues.
Also how time consuming is it to add the on map representation? I think we can live without if it's taking to long.

Do you need any help on this, I'm willing to give you a hand, maybe even recruit more people, divining the map between us.
Or are you in the Brooks's Law stage of the project?

[Vardano]

Fantastic. I agree with the idea of 8/6/6/6 and the most prominent cities with 10/6/6/6
This system will be great with our alternative economy system submod in DeI.

I don't see why this would not fit well with standard economy system as well.

[Daruwind]

How is the on map representation affecting the AI path-finding? The cites in R2 are big as they are so adding more can create path-finding issues.
Also how time consuming is it to add the on map representation? I think we can live without if it's taking to long.

Do you need any help on this, I'm willing to give you a hand, maybe even recruit more people, divining the map between us.
Or are you in the Brooks's Law stage of the project?

On map representation is just that, estethic feature. Armies,agents can freely move through them. Actual city borders or logic for that is from startpos and AI seems to head for city center which is clearly defined as slot 0 - main building. And so far it seems engine is quite well detecting new slot as part of city. How does it act in enemy hands, no idea Or so far, Etruscan League seems to work normally with them..You can check the very first pictures in thread about moving slot in Velathri...,moving actual slot,yellowish city line, there are like 3-4 stages showing progress. But you said it exactly, drawing one slot for Velathri is easy task,even extending city limits but for Rome and similar cities it will be nearly impossible adding so many slots around. Engine is drawing crazy yet working stuff while some parts are overlapping. So my idea is to use these slots without any on map representation and no extension to city limits either drawing them inside current city limits or switching them off. So Rome with 5 slots would look the same as Rome with 10 and that way AI won´t have any even slightly possible problems. :-)

That representation is tricky. Basically you have to draw whole city map for sprawl block,zoe map,examine each city differently then manually extend it... which is quite easy for small towns and quite slow for major ones. After messing with Rome, that´s why I moved to Velathri,it was way quicker to test and set up some parts properly. :-)

I probably need jus more time to figuring everything out...there is probably nobody able to help me in my madness

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Falco]

On map representation is just that, estethic feature. Armies,agents can freely move through them. Actual city borders or logic for that is from startpos and AI seems to head for city center which is clearly defined as slot 0 - main building. And so far it seems engine is quite well detecting new slot as part of city. How does it act in enemy hands, no idea Or so far, Etruscan League seems to work normally with them..You can check the very first pictures in thread about moving slot in Velathri...,moving actual slot,yellowish city line, there are like 3-4 stages showing progress. But you said it exactly, drawing one slot for Velathri is easy task,even extending city limits but for Rome and similar cities it will be nearly impossible adding so many slots around. Engie is drawing drazy yet working stuff while some parts are overlapping. So my idea is to use these slots without any on map representation and no extension to city limits either drawing them inside current city limits or switching them off. So Rome with 5 slots would look the same as Rome with 10 and that way AI won´t have any even slightly possible problems. :-)

That representation is tricky. Basically you have to draw whole city map for sprawl block,zoe map,examine each city differently then manually extend it... which is quite easy for small towns and quite slow for major ones. After messing with Rome, that´s why I moved to Velathri,it was way quicker to test and set up some parts properly. :-)

I probably need jus more time to figuring everything out...there is probably nobody able to help me in my madness

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

LOL

Amazing work!

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Only true genius master the chaos.^^

Map representation isn´t important in my opinion.

You would hardly recognize, if a city has 4 or 6 buildings on the map.

You have set the right course.

[Jake Armitage]

@ Drauwind

- Where is the link to your resource idea? Are you talking about that hammer UI? Anyway i wasn't thinking to have invented anything, just chatting for possible to do ideas.
- Which db table is the one affecting number of growth needed to expand slot? Always thought it was hardcoded.

I would say it is a bit early to talk about slot numbers. Probably this will end with the numbers you evidenced, but I would focus on thinking what changes will bring to Vanilla CA or (better) for DeI, and plan something to have a new and good balance.
Since everyone is rightefully excited about your discovery, the best way to plan it (obviously after you finish an alpha pack about all the work you're doing) is that people like you, Dresden or other experienced leaders propose a balanced innovation.
Then people like me (and others) will probably be glad to help you bosses, discussing ideas, dirty db works and UI drawings.
Soon or later, mostly likely the second, this will have to be planned, I think.
But these are surley things you already know.

[Jake Armitage]

I probably need jus more time to figuring everything out...there is probably nobody able to help me in my madness.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These are the borderline sketches between madness and geniality!
Necessary as water, anyway, those excel colors curves are really pro!

[Daruwind]

@Jake

www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?670293-Workshop-Meaningful-Resources-4-0-and-Buildings-Overhaul-Compilation&p=14162411&viewfull=1#post14162411
yeee,it is for R2 while being under Attila, Ancient Empires...old story,old stuff...some ideas about expanding resources, maps, building chains, ideas, unique buildings..there were some unused unique effect regarging whole economy stuff back in days i never used in any mod..;-)

Nope, it is not hardcoded. Easily missable,it is part of campaign_variables_table.
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_1
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_1_province_capital
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_2
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_2_province_capital
....

Well, we can at least separate Road´s effect from Main building chain and have it as separate building. Or both could add to overall effect in Province/Region.. Even if nothing else this would be nice. :-)

[Jake Armitage]

@Jake

www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?670293-Workshop-Meaningful-Resources-4-0-and-Buildings-Overhaul-Compilation&p=14162411&viewfull=1#post14162411
yeee,it is for R2 while being under Attila, Ancient Empires...old story,old stuff...some ideas about expanding resources, maps, building chains, ideas, unique buildings..there were some unused unique effect regarging whole economy stuff back in days i never used in any mod..;-)

Nope, it is not hardcoded. Easily missable,it is part of campaign_variables_table.
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_1
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_1_province_capital
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_2
settlement_development_point_cost_secondary_slot_2_province_capital
....

Really, really cool ideas there! Congrats, although being 3 yrs late.
Tx for those tables.

[Daruwind]

This is the old test just with Velathri 4th slot and UI. Just wanted to show the animation of city expansion in real time not just with pictures. Promise no more crappy videos or pictures for near future as you have seen everything for now. :-)
For keen eyes, second secondary slot is actually moved to new position and third is in original position of second slot.

[Jake Armitage]

Cool!
Seems everything is ok, or at least I do hope so!

[fightermedic]

a thought about map representation: do you think it would be possible to reduce all cities to only the main building visually? so basically to remove the visual groth of cities, so they would work like in med2 and rome 1 again? i alwayss thought that it's quite stupid, that rome ends up being amost as big as the whole of latium etc.