City Building Mod

Discuss modding questions and implementation details.
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l3lessed
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City Building Mod

Post by l3lessed »

Hey Everyone, I'm starting this thread because I have an idea bouncing around in my head to make DFU a whole new type of game for non-combat centered players. I brought this up in my terrain modifying thread, but I want to create a separate thread to track ideas pre-development for myself and the community.

I'm getting to the place with my two large mods that I can move on to a new large mod. I've been bouncing around two separate ideas. The first being a updated followers framework to allow npcs to be recruited and follow you around like in skyrim; this thread is not about that one.

The second idea I have been having is a city building and managing mod. The purpose of this thread is to compile and list of both my ideas and the community's for a citing building mod and its possible features.

MOD Concept

One of the more interesting aspects of Daggerfall for me from my first time playing it to now is the city system. It on face value is a pretty simple system, in that it has preset cities with prepopulated npc lists, and those cities are part of territories that keep track of you and your criminal record.

While being straight forward, it is actually a very large and complex system that, if developed, could be turned into a whole side game for Daggerfall. What I mean is cities could be turned into living, expanding, shrinking, changing cities, where a player could become some high level government representative/City planner/Thane. Once the player achieved this through possibly skill increases, roll checks for diplomacy, and maybe even quests, he would gain access to a planner tool that would give the player the ability to enter a top-down view (like in my minimap mod). From here, the player could see all the city stats and get access to differing options to dynamically alter the city.

This is where I need ideas from the community. What things should the player possibly have access to and what draw backs and benefits can the player get from managing a city well or not?

Specific City Planning Features/Mechanics
  • Top-down city developer view (Would use what I learned making the minimap mod to create a unique top down view with a city planner GUI and controls)
  • City resource system: start very basic with no resources being connected to the DFU terrain, but instead would be created by dropping some form of resource creation points or buildings. Would be amazing to get it tied to terrain tiles/generation so certain tiles and flats provide resources, but this would be an end goal feature.

    Possible Resource Types:
    • Wood (Mill building and possibly counts and considers number of tree billboards in the cell)
    • All the metal ores in game (Mining building and possibly requires rock terrain tiles too)
    • Stone (Query building and possibly rock terrain tiles)
    • Clay (Query building and possibly certain sand type tiles)
    • Food (Farms and animal flats and possibly certain types of edible billboard plants)
    • Fresh Water (Some form of wells or possibly look for water tiles).
  • Can change city population limits using the built in npc generation lists and streaming world object, which will affect the city functioning and resources. Need enough food and resources to support your citizens, and you need enough working citizens to keep those resources coming in.
  • Building manipulation: Using what I learned in the minimap, I would like to see if I could allow players to select and delete buildings and place new ones then be able to save that back to the block for future block creation. This of course would need allot of checks for things like quest buildings or essential npc locations (can't have players removing needed stuff for quest lines).

    Possible Building Types:
    • All the basic buildings that are already in the game
    • Resource buildings: Add a building for harvesting differing resources using the existing building meshes available and then assigning a unique identifier to them.
    • Offense buildings: Guard barracks/towers to increase the guard/army presence in the city at a resource cost.
    • Defense buildings: Some form of defense type buildings. Maybe walls, towers with archers on the roof, ect.
  • Plan City Defenses and Offenses: As a later feature, it would be amazing if the city system could them hook into a dynamic war system. Once a city is claimed by the player for building, it gets added to a war list, and it can be attacked. if the player loses, he loses control of the city and must retake it in some form.
These are my basic thoughts as of now.
My Daggerfall Mod Github: l3lessed DFU Mod Github

My Beth Mods: l3lessed Nexus Page

Daggerfall Unity mods: Combat Overhaul Mod

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ps3king1336
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by ps3king1336 »

Love this concept.

andromacus
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by andromacus »

Hello there,

I really like the idea here, generally speaking I think would be great to see some mods which can introduce some "managerial" aspects into the game in parallel to the adventuring side, like managing a tavern, a shop or a whole city like you are proposing.

Just a curiosity: have you considered starting with something smaller than a city, like a farm or a village? I also remember a thread in which someone suggested to implement a "Mansion" mod, meaning the possibility to purchase a large house in the wilderness and gradually enrich it by adding side buildings, services etc. Maybe this could be a first step for the development of your mod, since the project here seems to be very ambitious :)

If you are looking for ideas for new buildings to add in towns, happy to help with it. Unfortunately I'm not able to support with the actual development, but I have a list with some ideas for buildings. I will publish this on the proper section of the forum somewhat soon.

Thank you!

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Ninelan
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by Ninelan »

This is very ambitious, though as stated above, perhaps something like managing smaller places like farms and homesteads would be a smoother springboard to the big meat of the project. As something like soldier/deserter/bandit raids on small villages/farms could be applied to city sieges/wars and the like later down the line.

But back to it, any consideration for also managing barracks and the training of soldiers/guards, recruitment and allocation to various tasks like defence, crime-fighting, oppression, investigation? That would come in handy with the city wars, though it would perhaps make more sense for the wars to be centred around neighbouring kingdoms(so cities within the heart of a region are safer than those at borders), lets not forget towards the end of Daggerfall, we were at the brink of full-scale war within the iliac bay.

But also with guards;
Busting crime/the thieves guild/the dark brotherhood would be an interesting addition along with politician corruption and bribery (you bribing others and getting bribed and consequences of such activities). Let's not forget relations between cities within the regions themselves, relations with other governors of cities that is, and towards the rulers of the local region.
There is also the option of managing the various knightly orders if they are present that is, as well as general relations with local temples or any other such factions outlined in the game but are horribly underused.
This sort of large scale political intrigue is quite in the alley for Daggerfall.
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l3lessed
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by l3lessed »

Heard the same thing when I started my ambidexterity mod almost three years ago now. Trust me, I know long haul projects like this. And agreed, just like that mod, I will start with the base main features needed, start small, and then begin building up from there.

Thanks for the input. I didn't consider crime and other daily life things like that, but I like that idea. Either have crime cost a certain random amount of resources every cycle, so if you don't protect you city it costs you. Or, even more immersive, the higher the crime, the more likely you will randomly be pick pocketed while in that city.

Keep the ideas coming.
My Daggerfall Mod Github: l3lessed DFU Mod Github

My Beth Mods: l3lessed Nexus Page

Daggerfall Unity mods: Combat Overhaul Mod

Enjoy the free work I'm doing? Consider lending your support.

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Ninelan
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by Ninelan »

Hehe, well the big projects it is then!

There are some other things to think about like perhaps trade, do you think there might be a possibility to influence shop quality this way?
+ on that topic of trade. Different regions have houses built from different resources, and access to different materials. Ie. how to get wood and stone in deserts. So you might not have everything available to you.
Port towns also tend to grow faster due to easier trade than inland towns. But they also get raided more often/attacked first.

Any considerations for assassination attempts too if you happen to run your city a bit too poorly?
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l3lessed
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by l3lessed »

I have to start from a structural point of view. This means before I can work on more complicated social interactions and mechanics, like assinations and war and possible npc interactions, I need to figure out and construct the base npc management and resource system.

Some places I'm drawing ideas and inspiration from are:
  • Dwarf Fortress: I love how intricate the npc mechanics and interactions are with each other, the world, their society, and how it shapes everything. I wouldn't go nearly as in-depth, but things like basic npc happiness, which is affected by basic needs that are tied to resources. As an example, Low food count, and your npcs will start going hungry and be unhappy. Don't have enough houses, and unsheltered citizens make for unhappy citizens.
  • Dungeon Keeper: I loved the concept of this dungeon builder. It was interesting how you didn't buy or build any NPC's to command in this game, instead you built a dungeon and based on what you built, it naturally would attract certain types of npcs and help keep them happy so they wouldn't abandon their post. I liked how the way you developed you dungeon directly impacted the types of creatures coming to your dungeon, so it rewarded thinking about how your developing instead of just spamming 5 barracks and factories in a way like traditional RTS games. I would like things like taverns, armories, libraries, and guilds to affect the type of npcs you have access to/want to live in your area and their general happiness level.
  • Supreme Commander: I really loved this games resource system. It was very realistic and responsive. It removed the traditional npc harvesting method and instead used buildings that created a continual flow of resource income, and you had to instead manage the storage and expenditure of the resources. You can't produce too much, or you would overload your resources and cause a drain and production slow down as it bottlenecked. You also couldn't sit on it forever, as you had to continue to build more and more storage or use it. I could possibly use something like this for npc/population management; the better you manage income as it generates, happier and more productive citizens you have and the more citizens want to come.
  • Age of Empires II: One of the top RTS of all time in my opinion. I loved the size of the battles, the detail, and most of all, how the tech trees worked in that game. It really allowed such diverse play styles and tactics. I also, even though not new, liked the age system for tech and unit progression. This could be replicated in some form to allow towns to evolve/upgrade/age over time. As you bring in more diverse and skilled citizens, the more tech and more advanced things you can access because of it.
The base of the whole system I'm thinking of now would be NPC happiness and town resources.

NPC happiness/contentment is directly affected by how well you manage and develop your towns resources, including things like farms for food, guard posts for protection, taverns for entertainment, guilds of social life, and libraries for education. Setup a solid base town that is managed well, and your citizens will be happy and give you gifts and contribute too the progression of your town. Do the opposite, and deal with the negatives.

From here, I can start looking into more advanced things like assassination's, trade and political intrigue between towns, region/town specific mechanics/resources. These things would be largely tied to and affected by the cities base resource and npc management system. So yes, I would like unhappy citizens to begin to revolt in small ways; Some people leave town and abandon their shops/homes because its too dangerous/some start planning your overthrow, which you are warned of through court spies. This would escalate as they become more unhappy from a lack of basic resource needs until what is left of the town comes for your head if you don't give up your position.
My Daggerfall Mod Github: l3lessed DFU Mod Github

My Beth Mods: l3lessed Nexus Page

Daggerfall Unity mods: Combat Overhaul Mod

Enjoy the free work I'm doing? Consider lending your support.

daggerdude
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by daggerdude »

I sort of would envision a mod like this being like a 4x strategy game, where a player can replace tiles around their settlement. I imagine something like this:
Through finishing the knightly order questline, you would be made a Lord/Baron and given a single village with plenty of space around itself - a single block village. The blocks around it can be added in terms of resource production from a building block menu. - you could elect to add different village block elements to expand your village too, assuming you have enough resources: again, from the pool of currently available blocks: a town center (shop circle), a palace/castle, more inns, pawnshops, jewelers, libraries, bookstores, alchemists, temples, ect.
A simple counter that renews daily would show your village resources, population, and unemployed workers, and placing blocks without a labor force would result in unmanned buildings, making it necessary to invest in housing and food production.
There are currently some preexisting buildings that can be utilized as resource production: castles can be used as barracks, mines can be represented by the trap door in the ground, maybe add a rock structure around it with textures to show stone, gold, and other metal?, the old shacks and farms can be wood and food production, small villages can be added too.

So as the town and resources grow, attacks can occur by neighboring dungeons, opposing lords, ect. on your settlement, resources plundered, ect. and vice versa through an event script (John Doom just released an interesting one, warm ashes comes to mind too)

As you build and attack other factions, you gain prestige, and you also would have to give a percentage of all your earnings from the village and troops to the kings army since you are a vassal. that would also mean rank and doing faction quests and fighting nobles would be more noticeable, and you would get to the point where you yourself have vassels to send on quests in your stead.

I think the biggest thing here would be to make blocks that would make sense, and can be upgraded - a town may just be a few houses, but you could upgrade it to a more populated block, both in terms of general prosperity (requiring more stores, resources, ect in exchange for higher taxes) or population (high density blocks of hovels, town homes, or mansions). same with shops.
And i think as well shops placed around expensive housing would cater to those people, being high quality, and vice versa: same with housing and resource development: high volume hovels adjacent to a resource causes it to be more productive, in addition to requiring labor.
The type of buildings would affect the demands of the populace that must be met before people become unhappy (1602 AD type gameplay) to simplify things, or something maybe like Stronghold involving punishment/reward blocks to coerce your populace to your viewpoint.
Finally, as a population expands in terms of core village blocks, if you have a palace you can build city walls that will update around your village, and move existing blocks out.

I think a basic block building economy with simple,mostly vanilla assets can be achieved, but how that actually would be implemented in blocks and how to check resources, faction standing and quest, is another story. I would recommend dialogue boxes available once you've build a palace through NPC flats to check your resources/money, send an army, write the king or your lord under the king for a faction update/quest, and access a building GUI.

I think that betony would be a good place to start since theres a lot of room and it could use repopulating. Anyhow, however you do this, good luck, seems like a cool mod in the making, looking forward to playing it in whatever form comes to us.

Superior Donut
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by Superior Donut »

Kenshi may also be a place for you to look into for inspiration. It uses “regionally based resources” for the efficiency of resource production structures. Like, building in the swamp there’s lots of water, but it’s “weaker” for stone and wind. Conversely the desert is great for stone and wind, but water is lacking. See (https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Environment) for details.

I think this may be particularly of use if you don’t want to stick to a “grid based” interface, since kenshi is “granular” in base building. Obviously there’s substantial differences between daggerfall and kenshi, but I think this aspect (along with its “prospecting” feature) in particular might be useful to you.

daggerdude
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Re: City Building Mod

Post by daggerdude »

YES PLEASE!

I've always loved a little game called Birthright:The Gorgon's Alliance...

It was really cool because strategically it had battles, buildings, fantasy enemies, ect...
But you could also dungeon crawl for artifacts.

I would literally shit myself if daggerfall was like this, so by all means, please keep doing awesome stuff.

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