Buildings

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I think it is about time we got started thinking about what buildings we are going to have in the game and their affects.

I am going to try to help with this a lot more than in other areas, because I cannot help with the unit models and other people had the units covered.

I think we should first decide what type of tech tree to have. I think one similar to the RTW tech tree would work best, because there are such major developments during our time period and a flat tech tree would not take those into account.

[Narayanese]

I think having barracks and stables isn't good, as those were present in all cities. Basic early units such as gothic swordsmen and knights and militia should be recruitable from the first turn after all, only units that were designed after 1402 or that are made up by bourgeois should reuire big cities imo.
Banking and guns are the two most evolving features of the period I think, so those should improve with city size.
Also the amount of gold you make has to be reduced so that it is the treasure that limits army size, and forcing to player to cycles of peace (where units are dispanded) and war which is more realistic and good for gameplay.

Just my thoughts...

[Yggdrasill]

Good ideas Narayanese especially the one about cycles of peace to replenish ones coffers...

My thoughts on the subject...regarding units. I think it would be very detrimental to the game balance and the way units relate to each other (cost-effectiveness) if we keep the old system of upgrades through blacksmiths and armouries. All the balancing of the units that we make in an effort to force the players to use proper units in their proper timeframe will go down the toilet if new units have to compete with the old ones that have seen extensive retraining and thus have superioir weapons and armour. Armour and weapons upgrades are going to be reflected by different unit stats. So an early 16th century man-at-arms is going to have better armour value simply because he had better armour available than his counterpart in the mid 15th century. Additional armour and weapon upgrades don't fit in the equation.


In my opinion, armouries and blacksmiths should have an economic effect only - as an increase in trade (after all, weapons have always sold well), and perhaps a decrease in the cost of units (basic market dynamics - the more goods on the market, the lower the prices).
Only gunpowder units should perhaps receive some kind of additional upgrade possibility (better rifles, firing mechanisms and better gunpowder).

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I like the idea of not using armor and weapon upgrades, however, I am not sure if we can use them to lower unit cost that would be interesting to look into.

I think all units that are not; elite, province specific, introduced post 1402 or somewhat rare should be trainable at the beginning, but we will need to also take into consideration if a city was known for or not known for something. Take Crete they had excellent archers from what I know, that province should start with the ability to train Cretan archers and possibly more advanced archery buildings than other cities.

We could also make it where every city starts with a certain level of barracks and such, but allow lower levels so that if somebody pillages a city it must be rebuilt from square one.

I like the idea of limiting money flow, but how will we do this exactly? We could lower the overall fertility or trade benefits or we could simply make troops more expensive than in RTW. Where basic archers may cost 190 in RTW we could make them cost two to three times that in CTW and keep the overall money scheme relatively unchanged.

[Narayanese]

We could use the temples (of which you can only have one per city) to be used to represent a dominant guild/industry in each city. Thus weponproducing citie could have Weponsmith and armourproducing cities armoursmith, and other cities whatever they were famous for or had as dominant industry. Thus we could also ditch the blacksmith tech line.



I like the idea of limiting money flow, but how will we do this exactly? We could lower the overall fertility or trade benefits or we could simply make troops more expensive than in RTW. Where basic archers may cost 190 in RTW we could make them cost two to three times that in CTW and keep the overall money scheme relatively unchanged.

Yes, lower trade benefits, raise unit costs, and don't include farming upgrades, I think.

On training times: Maybe we could have zero turns for levies, one turn for professional troups and two or more turns for troops who have been granted land (eg knights). Thus restructuring of the society to get more knights and similar would require long time, while you could get levies in an "emergency".

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I am not sure that troops who are granted land should necessarily take longer. For example the Ottoman Timars were used as a fast response low cost force to take on military duty without the need to pay them as a staqnding army. They would be raised quickly, perhaps instantly like levies because they were already trained and equipped and merely needed to be mobilized and thrown into battle.

I like the idea of getting rid of farming upgrades, not only are these pretty unrealistic by this time period, but fertility should be the deciding factor.

I am not sure if it would be best to use temple as trade buildings, because religion should also be important. I believe hearing that CA is going to include an actual religion system, like in MTW so having temples for a society's god(s) is important. What sort of bonus should these give? In my opinion only a bonus to population loyalty or possibly religious zeal if possible.

I think we could get rid of forums, curias and such if we are going to decrease the power of trade and instead have these trade (job trade not commerce trade) buildings. This would also allow for larger or more advanced facilities.

[Ignoramus]

For the Catholics, we could use the many Monastry orders.

[Narayanese]

I am not sure that troops who are granted land should necessarily take longer. For example the Ottoman Timars were used as a fast response low cost force to take on military duty without the need to pay them as a staqnding army. They would be raised quickly, perhaps instantly like levies because they were already trained and equipped and merely needed to be mobilized and thrown into battle.

What I was thinking was that those troops (knights, timarli, other nobles) should be a standing army rather than a quickly recruited force, since they did cost a lot in upkeep during peace too, letting someone have state lands and not asking for tax is a big loss of income. If they were already built they could be mobilized instantly after all, I think the building should represent giving out fiefs or waiting for noble youths to train. Allowing traing of big stacks of nobles fast would be strange as there are only so many availible to mobilize.

Happyness for "temples" is good. At least in protestant sweden the church also had a police role, preasts were helping with bureaucracy and keeping an eye on dissidents, and levy recruitment (at least after 1680, I'm not sure about details). I doubt the monasteries gave the same benefits though, these I think were more for learning and for locking landless nobles away (locking jobless nobles away might have helped reduce rebellions though).
Yes monastery orders could be a good idea. Sufi groups/orders are hte same sort of thingin the muslim world arn't they?

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Maybe we could have the nobles be quick/instant to recruit, expensive to recruit to symbolize the lands granted and have an exorbitantly high upkeep to prevent them from being held around after wars. This would force people to dismiss them after the fiercest fighting had passed.

Does the AI dismiss troops if running low on cash?

I do not know about the sufi sects, but I like the idea of monastic orders and such. Did some of the orders involve themselves in communities differently, because then we could make the temple vary somewhat and unique units is another possibility.

[Ignoramus]

Maybe we could limit the creation of Teutonic Knights, by making a temple, a monastry of the Teutonic Order.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Like with Woads. But we also need to find other sects/orders that had some unique practice, or we could just introduce Templars and other knightly orders that way. We would have to make the knights specialized as well.

[Yggdrasill]

OK now that we have completed unit selection, one thing became apparent. In order to properly mimic the advances in infantry tactics and gunpowder weapons, pike formations and gunpowder units should be the only ones eligable for receiving weapons upgrades, and only attack bonuses, not armour bonuses. I don't know if it is possible to restrict attack upgrades to only specific types of units, but if it is possible, then this is what we should do.

[Celtic_Winter]

how about the way buildings are going to look in the game? I mean it would be silly to see renaissance soldiers marching next to a bunch of little huts. Most of the Roman buildings can be kept since Southern European buildings haven't really changed but a lot have to be edited.

[Ignoramus]

Can you make watchtowers on the campaign map into mound with wooden palisade on the battelmap?

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I am not sure about the watchtowers...

I think we could restrict it to only weaponry upgrades, but not only to pike or gunpowder units. What is your reasoning behind that? We can definately restrict the upgrades to no armor upgrades and I think it would be good to make temples trade buildings that give realistic bonuses instead of the current unrealistic system. This could change with the expansion of course.

[Narayanese]

At about which year will each city size be reached for the larger cities? I suppose it depends on farming and health and population upgrades, if we have less of those it'll take longer.
There is a risk that the largest city size will be reached in mid 15th century, in that case it would be better to have a late marian reform, in say year 1500 or 1530, and have all 15th century development tied to city size instead.

I wonder if the weapon classes heavy light missile other are tied to the function of the unit or only to upgrades, if the latter then we couluse them to chosse which weapons can get weapon upgrades, if we want such (which I'm not so sure I want).

[Ignoramus]

Well, the Marian reforms should be about 1453 A.D., this way 102 turns without gunpowder, and the rest with.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I think there are two ways to go with Marian reforms, have an early (1450ish) reform, or have a late (1500ish) reform but allow Turkey to have almost all gunpowder units from the beginning. We could slow Turkey's development by making gunpowder buildings take a long time to access or build and still keep some super elite units for after the reforms.

Personally I usually have become a superpower with no competition after 100 years of gameplay so I prefer the early reforms. Hopefully we can slow down the human controlled juggernaught with some of our new features, but without touching the battlefield AI there is not all that much we can do.

[Saranalos]

Maybe we can give the non-playable factions more money... Although people would allow themselves to use those factions, so they would have more money.

[Narayanese]

We could have a building line like 'technological progress' that is very cheap (or free) to build but takes a lot of time (like 30 years for each advance), and gives access to the late units, and have few other buildings (with the good side effect that we don't have model buildings) so that the AI will be going for that building line rather than build something else.

[Yggdrasill]

We could have a building line like 'technological progress' that is very cheap (or free) to build but takes a lot of time (like 30 years for each advance), and gives access to the late units, and have few other buildings (with the good side effect that we don't have model buildings) so that the AI will be going for that building line rather than build something else.


I was thinking something similar. That way we can ensure the proper sequence of advancements, unlike 'Oh I can build XY building now but I don't have the money so I'll wait a decade or two'

[Uesugi Kenshin]

That would make sense, have a gunpowder line of cheap but long to build buildings and then give the Turks some of the early ones thus fixing the Turkish problem. But I think we should still have the Marian reforms give access to the best units. This way we could keep people from having some of the later units until after they were invented or around that time. I still support the early marian reforms though.

[Narayanese]

Is it possible to only allow the advancement line after the marian reforms? It looks so in export_decr_buildings. In that case we should have the marian reform to simulate the early changes, and a building line for the later ones. That building line would also have to include a late (late 14th century or early 16th century for most factions) access to pikemen.
With the line availible berfre marian there'd be too little incentive to start building it early.

Faster movement on the strat map for armie would be nice, I find it take strangely long time (>1 year) just to go from say tarentum to venice in vanilla. Didn't it take the napoleonic army just a few months to reach moscow from whatever central european place it was before the attack on russia? (it would take longer if you have to live off the land i assume). Is it possible to give mounted infantery the same mouvement speed on strat map as cavalry?

Did anyone get my 2 files with banners for the demo?

Could yggdrasill or someone send my info on gascon infantry (clothes and armour), and info on whatever other unit that could be reskinned ftrom the current ones.

Suggestion on unit names
* Light English Archers instead of Yeoman archer (yeoman means free farmer btw I think)
* Heavy English Archers instead of Longbow archer ('English' in the name so that the same name can be used for mercenaries)
* German Men-at-arms (or preferably a period german name) instead of Gothic Men-at-arms (gothic meant barbarian, not a nice thing to call a unit)

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I believe Yeoman has become a British term of rank or position, because in a short story I read about the sinking of the HMS Hood the English admiral had a Yeoman signaller or something. Myabe for the period it is inappropriate though...

I think we should have faster movement on the strategy map, but if we put it too high armies will not be able to intercept invaders before they reach a city. I think that armies should still be interceptable.

[Narayanese]

We could have both port and wharf (wharf as an upgrade from port), and cities with port can not build ship, as think more cities had merchant port then had a ship building industry. Ledhungaskip (levy ships) would still be buildable in a port, as well as any ships recruited in similar way (ie built by fishermen for tax reduction). Price not building time should then be what keeps people/AI from upgrading too much.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Ok, so we could make fairly simple non-combat oriented cargo ships buildable everywhere to allow sea travel but keep them with low combat values. Then once you get an actual ship building industry you get real combat ships which easily trounce the transport ships.

This would be an improvement over CA's system because Triremes are not that much better than Biremes and to get good combat ships in MTW took forever.

[Narayanese]

On a second thought, tying what ships one can build to port level isn't good because then we can tie it to what year (via the "technical" building line) it is, and there was quite a lot of advance in shipbuilding, the use of cannons on ships is the most important feature. A hidden resource for coastal provinces would be the solution for having boats not buildable inland.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Ooooh. Good point I forgot about that. Then we can allow every port to get transport ships and let only those with the tech. buildings to progress to further much more combat capable craft.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

This Monday, since it is Memorial Day and I have no school, I am going to attempt to make up a fairly basic tech tree just so we can have something to work from or with. If anyone has any specific building suggestions please post them now so I will have them when I write up the vague tech tree. I will also e-mail it to people if they wish once I have made it so we all know what it looks like and such.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

This is what I have done so far, please comment and propose changes!

Citadel: Total War Tech Tree

Technology Advancement Buildings: (All names subject to change)

Gunpowder:

Gunsmith: Allows handgunners and other extremely early gun units. Low quality conscript troops for the most part, requires a low level barracks to train units, level two barracks.

Gunsmith’s Workshop: Allows Arquesbusiers and other slightly newer gunpowder units. With a high level barracks also allows Janissary Arquesbusiers and other unique units, level three and up.

Expert Gunsmith: Allows gun cavalry, including unique fire-before-charge units and such. Requires a fairly high level stable, three and up.

Ships: (A bit iffy on how to get this to work)

Port: Allows one trade fleet and the construction of transport type ships with weak combat attributes. Should we expand this further for more trade fleets or allow the maximum number of trade fleets from the beginning?

NEW SHIP LINE:

Shipwright: Allows the construction of the first real combat ships, still fairly small and not gunpowder armed.

Later Age Shipwright (Don’t know what to name it): Allows the use of larger non-gunpowder combat craft and with an Expert Cannon foundry allows the construction of the first gunpowder-armed ships.

Master Shipwright: Combined with a Master Cannon Foundry allows the construction of the largest most powerful gunpowder-armed ships.

I believe that is all of the technology building lines that we will need.

Normal buildings:

Barracks Line:

Militia Barracks: Trains militia soldiers of all (depending on quality some may require level 2) types.

Barracks: Trains regular soldiers and with a Gunsmith allows the training of handgunners.

City Barracks: Trains adept/professional soldiers and allows the training of more gunpowder units. Raises valor of militia?

Metropolis Barracks: Trains the best regular soldiers and increases the valor of Barracks soldiers. Allows the training of more unique/professional gunpowder units.

Royal Barracks: Trains the best and newest infantry. Allows Janissary Heavies and other exceptional and rare units. Increases the valor of City Barracks units.

Stable Line:

Stable: Allows the training of scout/router chasing level cavalry.

Cavalry Stable: Trains mainly non-lancer regular cavalry. Combat capable, but still light cavalry.

Regimental Stables: Trains professional medium cavalry and with an Expert Gunsmith trains some gunpowder-armed cavalry. Increases the valor of Stable units.

Noble’s Stables: Trains noble cavalry units and allows the training of more adept gunpowder cavalry. Increases the valor of Cavalry Stable units.

Royal Stables: Trains the best cavalry, knights and the best trained gunpowder armed/age cavalry. Increases the valor of Regimental Stables units.

[Ignoramus]

Not bad, but don't the buildings sound similar to Medieval?

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I know it sucks. I am horrible at the names, but if anyone would like to assist with names that would be great. I could not think of too many original ones...

[Narayanese]

I don't like the tech tree. It wouldgive the same problems as in vanilla with most early units unavailible from start, and a weakened AI building only a few differnt low quality units.

A counterproposal (hastily put together):

Development line

Develpment 1 (name: Very Late Medieval)
20 turns, free, requres Marian reform, requires town exp 1
gives all pre-1480 units

Development 2 (name: Very Early Renaissance)
20 turns, free, requires town exp 2
gives all pre-1500 units

Development 3 (name: Early Renaissance)
20 turns, free, requires town exp 3
gives all pre-1522 units

Development 4 (name: Mid Renaissance)
25 turns, free, requires town exp 4
gives all pre-1550 units

Development 5 (name: Late Renaissance)
30 turns, free, requires town exp 5
gives all pre-1600 units


Town expansion line (Palace)

Town exp 1 (name: ?)
1 turn, quite cheap
gives all premarian units except cannons

Town exp 2
1 turn, quite cheap

Town exp 3
1 turn, medium cheap

Town exp 4
1 turn, medium cheap

Town exp 5
1 turn, medium cheap


Cannon factory line

Cannon factory 1 (name: Cannonmaker)
1 turn, expensive, requires town exp 3
gives the cannon units and the cannon ships (some of them also requires a development building)

Port line

Port 1 (name: Trading port)
1 turn, medium expensive
gives trade

Port 2 (name: Major port)
1 turn, very expensive
gives more trade


Temple types
1 building building-lines that makes towns different

Weaponsmith

Armoursmith

A few different monastery types

Some merchant guilds

The pope (in rome)

etc


Wall line

wall 1 (name: Low wall)
1 turn, expensive, requires town exp 2

Wall 2 (name: High wall)
1 turn, expensive, requires town exp 3

no barracks line
no stable line


Edit: I would be nice to have two types of building trees: one minimal and one complex (switch by replacing the file), as long as it doesn't interfere with unit balancing.

[GodsPetMonkey]

Now we are starting to go places… but here is what I was thinking… we do need to get away from the tier based on city size that we have in normal TW games.

My thinking is that city size should impact on the cities civic abilities (like trade, taxation, amenities, religious buildings, etc), but even small provincial cities would be able to supply men for service with recent technologies.

So lets break it up… here’s my idea!

City level buildings would be like in RTW, this is hardcoded, so we can’t do anything, though the population’s would be about 1/10th of what they are in reality (so 24,000 really represents 240,000)

Technological Advancement –
The idea behind these structures is the quantity of industry is not important as its quality… the ability to cast high quality cannon is not dependant on the number of casters in the city, but rather the capability of the workshops available. So, it is similar to Narayanese’s development line in that it allows for training tiers of units based on the timeline.

Manufacturing –
Most soldiers can’t provide their own armour and weapons from just the tools they have at home… the middle ages are over ;-).
My thinking about this line of buildings is whilst the technological buildings determine what can be built, these determine how fast they can be trained! Each level is tied to a cities tier.
As an example, the first level of a gunsmith may be “Firearm Importer”, he can import firearms from other cities (this is abstracted) but the amount that comes in is not rapid enough for the quick raising of large groups of gunners, so even the most basic of firearm units takes 1 or 2 turns. However, a higher up tier, say “Master gunshop” has a larger number of highly skilled gunsmiths, and is able to produce guns on a mass scale, meaning gun armed troops that have little training (so we are not talking janissaries here) can be done in 0 turns, with other units receiving a considerable reduction in training time.
Make sense? These buildings would be the ones that do the actual training (from the games point of view) but what can be trained will depend on what technological building is present.

Civic Buildings –
Finally there are civic buildings, like I listed above, this is all about advancing the cities. They would be tied with city tier, and larger cities would confer better benefits, like greater trade, or thanks to better governance, more tax. You get the general idea…
What would be really neat is if we could get it so certain cities focus on civic advancement (trade hubs, important places of culture, and thus cash making cities) and others on military advancements.

I'll work on actual build tree if you want.

[Narayanese]

For me, you're welcome to work on the tech tree.

On manufacturing buildings changing building times: I think this would require each building level to have it's own units with separate model and unit entry, and that would lower the unit limit a lot.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I like your idea Godspetmonkey. I am going to take a more in depth look into it to try to find building types and such.

[GodsPetMonkey]

For me, you're welcome to work on the tech tree.

On manufacturing buildings changing building times: I think this would require each building level to have it's own units with separate model and unit entry, and that would lower the unit limit a lot.

Yes, my bad, I thought there were training time modifiers, but there are only construction time modifiers.... se each level of unit would need a new entry in export_descr_unit.txt, and while we wont be using all 500 avialable slots, it's still not enough... oh well.


Still, it can be used for things like valour and weapons upgrades. My main point remains, a small city should be as capable of providing men for duty as say provisionatis (of any type) as a large one.... It also means AI armies consisting of largely militia class units are going to be much rarer.

Not all units should be buildable at baser levels though, mostly for balance reasons...

[Narayanese]

Not all units should be buildable at baser levels though, mostly for balance reasons...
But it hasn't to be like vanilla with militia early and regular units late.
We could for example have good quality militia, and royal regiments, restricted to cities with good infrastructure.

[GodsPetMonkey]

But it hasn't to be like vanilla with militia early and regular units late.
We could for example have good quality militia, and royal regiments, restricted to cities with good infrastructure.

My thinking precisely!

The best of the best should not be buildable from the outset (for instance, the best armoured knights should require the best armourers). But the backbone of the army of that period should not be restricted to the biggest cities... though it should make more sense to train them there (valour, weapon, armour and morale upgrades, granted from different buildings only available to higher tier cities).

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Good points guys. As well as the best armored knights and other elite nobels I think the Janissaries should require more due to their position as the elite of the Ottoman army. I will be starting to do a LOT of work on this after the 21st when school ends.