A Civic Center Mechanic Idea

[Coronaut]

Hello,

    
I’ve been playing 0 A.D for a while and have had a couple of ideas for a new mechanic implemented by mod or otherwise that could give more purpose to early-game aggression and late game strategy. As well as, give more purpose to the Civic Center(CC) itself.  

Idea: What if your first CC expanded as the game went on. I currently see that this could be accomplished in different 2 ways.

Implementation:
 

1) CC would gain max health throughout the game based on the game timer. 
Example of 1:
At the beginning of the game a player owns a CC with 3000 health. It would gain max health every second throughout the game. The CC max health would gain would then stop at 20 min, doubling the health the main CC had at Load-In to 6000. This could make late game a little more challenging, because more health = more damage needed, as well as make early game more important. A secondary mechanic would be that if you attack a CC its generation would stop for a short amount of time then begin again.  

     
2) Have the CC itself become larger (P1 1x1,  P2 2x2, P3 3x3) and absorb other buildings close to it and add their health to the CC’s own, as well as gain the attributes of those buildings. 
Example of 2:
If a farm with workers and 100 health was next to the CC at Phase Up the CC would delete the farm and garrison the workers within the CC. The CC would then gain attribute “Food Capital”, gain the ability to passivly produce food depending on how many workers are garrisoned inside. The number of possible workers would depend on how many farms are nearby at phase up (1 farm  = +5 food garrison). If a barrack with 300 health was nearby it would absorb it and add 300 health to the CC’s max health and give the CC the attribute “Military Power'. Adding the ability to spawn more units at once for a slightly better discount but more time.        
Or

3) Some complicated combinatination of both. 

I would like to write these modifications myself but I don’t have any programming or developing experience. Currently I’ve gotten as far as downloading the svn version,  attenpting to open the workspace (failed by the way), and having a look around the files. My main problem is I have no idea what anything does or how to develop modifications for games. 

Thanks for reading,

K(C)oronaut

 

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by Coronaut

[balduin]

How about the Civic Center (CC) changes it's "size" while upgrading from one phase to the other?

On every phase upgrade the health points double. To increase the size I would simply start with a small/basic model of the CC and on every level up from one phase to the other I would make the model bigger and look more powerful. However, I would not change the size of actual space the CC occupies. This sort of behavior is simpler to implement. You only need 3 different models of the CC and some logic to change the models on every upgrade.

 

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by balduin

[Coronaut]

On 3/30/2020 at 11:05 AM, balduin said:

How about the Civic Center (CC) changes it's "size" while upgrading from one phase to the other?

@balduin Would it be like the sentry tower to Defense tower upgrade? A visual growth rather than a physical one? That could work...and would be way easier to create.

On 3/30/2020 at 11:05 AM, balduin said:

On every phase upgrade the health points double.

What if: 

P1 CC's had 750 health (or somthing low).

Then, when you upgraded to P2, the only thing that would change would be that your CC's health. It would double to 1500. 

When upgraded to P3 it would have the normal 3000 health.

This could insentivize early a general playstyle of P1 rushing, then P2 eco booming, P3 siege and army counterplay? 

   

 

[Nescio]

Having civic centres for each phase has been requested multiple times by various people, myself included. It would be relatively easy to implement on the template side (cf. b/a/e citizen soldiers), but the problem is the art side: introducing new units is relatively easy, I believe, but creating new structure actors is a lot of work. Of the thirteen civilizations in game, three have civic centres that need to be redesigned (athen, ptol, rome), and only one has two centre sizes (sele), although the latter actor is not used:

Spoiler

If at some point in the future there would be three versions of each centre, then that would open up a range of possibilities for new mechanics, e.g. localized “phases”: new centres start as a village centre; once a village centre has the required structures (e.g. five houses) within its settlement radius (e.g. 100 m), it automatically promotes to a town centre, and when it has met the city requirements (e.g. market, temple, ten houses), it becomes a city centre. So a given player may have e.g. one city, two towns, and three villages at a given point.

13 hours ago, Coronaut said:

On 3/30/2020 at 8:05 PM, balduin said:

On every phase upgrade the health points double.

What if: 

P1 CC's had 750 health (or somthing low).

Then, when you upgraded to P2, the only thing that would change would be that your CC's health. It would double to 1500. 

When upgraded to P3 it would have the normal 3000 health.

This could insentivize [sic] early a general playstyle of P1 rushing, then P2 eco booming, P3 siege and army counterplay? 

Don't make it too steep. The problem is that it not only incentivizes that, it mandates it: any other play style becomes unviable, because slower players are put even more at a disadvantage than they already are in the current alpha.

Edited April 1, 2020 by Nescio

[Stan`]

@Nescio What's wrong with ptol CC?

[LordGood]

Faux Egyptian, Pylon treated as an administraative structure

that said 27 very important high detail buildings is no small task

[coworotel]

6 hours ago, Nescio said:

introducing new units is relatively easy, I believe, but creating new structure actors is a lot of work

Can someone explain why this is so? I'm surprised. I thought units were more complex because of all the movement etc.

[balduin]

@Coronaut Yes, you understood my comment. That is exactly what I meant.

19 hours ago, Coronaut said:

Would it be like the sentry tower to Defense tower upgrade? A visual growth rather than a physical one? That could work...and would be way easier to create.

Your proposal sounds good. However, you have to find out while testing it, if you achieve what you want to achieve with the proposed point structure. Maybe you will need to adjust it later after some testing and verifying. For the beginning I would start with that point structure.

19 hours ago, Coronaut said:

What if: 

P1 CC's had 750 health (or somthing low).

Then, when you upgraded to P2, the only thing that would change would be that your CC's health. It would double to 1500. 

When upgraded to P3 it would have the normal 3000 health.

This could insentivize early a general playstyle of P1 rushing, then P2 eco booming, P3 siege and army counterplay? 

 

[balduin]

@Nescio yes, it might have been proposed multiple times. The difference is that @Coronaut wants to put the effort in to actually implement it. It is not necessary to make it overly complex at the beginning. I would be happy if he can implement the logic to increase the points and implement the new CC styles for 1-2 factions. Then test it with those modified factions. The best way to start would be with a mod who introduces the new upgrade mechanism.

Once upgrading the CC works @Coronaut or we as a community can suggest more complex mechanics. I do like the village, town and city idea. However, there could be unintended consequences like players expanding too fast, because building villages is too cheap and so on. The 100m radius mechanism is more difficult to implement, because you have to evaluate constantly the entire radius to ensure the CC can be upgraded.

[LordGood]

8 hours ago, coworotel said:

Can someone explain why this is so? I'm surprised. I thought units were more complex because of all the movement etc.

all units use the same base meshes, which leaves the textures and armor pieces. This was a fairly simple affair until alexander ramped up the unit detail lol. The actor files become very busy.

Due to polygon reservations, buildings need to be made from scratch every single time, and regional architectural nuances need to be observed and replicated, as well as having the building layout make sense structurally, all this and falling within Civic Center standardization. Thats a ballpark 6-8 hour process. 27 times