I have some ideas of game improvement.

I`m not sure if they are proper nor I don`t know how to add them to the game. They might be either good or bad, I don`t know. Just wanted to make a brainstorm, because maybe some of them are worth considering or at least discussing of.
The assumption of these changes is to be of course non-mandatory (wchich means that you could either choose the game with changed mechanisms or leave it as it was and play with unchanged production routes).

Here is one of the concepts, The Brickyard.


Quick explanation: generally, bricks and brickyard are to impede the gameplay and to make it more entertaining. It`s only for a human vs. human gameplay (otherwise it would require a heavy computer AI changes!).

1. New building: Brickyard (Ziegelei).
http://www.shol.com/agita/thespiel.htm

The brickyard worker produces brick packs (Backstein Bündel) out of the clay (Torminerale) and coal (Kohle).

Here is the (simplified, for the game purposes) production route: first of all, the clay must be mined elsewhere by a miner and delivered to the brickyard. Then the brick is baked (Ziegelei brennen) by using clay and coal (because it is baked in a coal-burning kiln, it needs coal to work).

There are two options here:

a) as the bricks are baked in a kiln (Brennofen), the person operating it needs no special tools,

b) the brickyard worker needs a special tool (like "mould & stockboard"), which can be made in Metalworks.

Reasuming: the miner extracts the clay; the porter delivers the clay from the clay mine to the brickyard; the brickyard worker changes clay and coal into the pack of bricks.

2. The raw material.

As I already mentioned, the brickyard needs its basic raw material to work, which is a clay.

There are several options of possible obtaining the clay in the game - one of them should be eventually chosen:

a) by building a clay mine (that would require adding another resource, apart from coal, iron, gold and stone to the game mechanisms). This seems to be the best option for the player, but it would require:
- quite a lot of work on the code (I suppose),
- designing new maps with this material added,
- and/or changing the already existing maps.

b) second option is slightly easier to do; it is just changing the stones mines onto the clay mines, as well as changing the underground stone resources into the underground clay resources. This operation wouldn`t require no changes in the already existing, designed maps and a lot less changes in the code than an "a" option (it would mean simply renaming the stone mine/resource ingame coded formulas, plus some work on the adding production lines).
The big minus of this solution is that obtaining the stone from the ground would be no more possible. And you`d only be relaying on the quarries. But hey, personaly I use stone mines very rarely, if ever, plus it would spice up the game a bit ;)
Also some designed maps would be unaprioprate (those with less stone on the ground), but well, the same problem occures when you enter some especially designed maps with charburner=ON option, which can disturb the desired ways of the gameplay on some maps, too (which were especially designed to have a "coal trouble").

c) leave the minery and let worker get the clay "out of the thin air". This means the brickyard worker deals with it himself if you only supply him with:
- only by a coal to burn in a kiln/stove,
- coal and (eventually) a water (for moulding & clay preparation),
- coal and (eventually) a food (if he would somehow supply clay himself).

3. What are bricks for?

The brick appears in the packs (just like the packs of boards).
I was thinking of adding the bricks as the extention of whole production chain. They would be neccesary as the third element (apart form the of boards and stone) of producing buildings (of course, the initial HQ should supply at least some minimum amount - or better more - of this resource on the start). There are several options of adding bricks to the game:

a) all medium and huge buildings (small ones stays with no changes) requires the same amount of boards and bricks to be built. For example: samwill requires 2 boards, 2 bricks and 2 stones; shipyard requires 2 boards, 2 bricks and 3 stones and catapult - 4 boards, 4 bricks and 2 stones.
Bricks should not be used for small buildings, because they are basic ones.

b) only the military buildings (including barracks) requires some amount of bricks to be built,

c) only the military buildings (not including barracks) requires some amount of bricks to be built.
This option is better than "b", because you could always build a basic military building, which is a barracks, even with minimum resource supply (here: boards). In that special case, even when not having this resource (bricks) at all, you could theoretically develop your economy and expand your kingdom (by using barracks only - just as it is now, when you don`t have any stone in the stock).

4. Graphics and animation sequences.

I realise it would require both designing five brickyards (each for one race), as well as another animation sequence (building stage). Let`s see, what can be done at this point.

To solve a problem with building another animation sequences (apart from "board animation" and "stone animation"), the brick sequence would have to be placed between those two:

a) Right after there is a basic wooden fundament built (first, "board" stage, already existing in the game),

b) it starts getting filled with brick blocks from a bottom to the top (second, "brick" stage, not existing yet).

c) Then it`s filled with the "regular" graphics (third, "stone" stage, already existing in the game).

Not to complicate things too much, the second stage animation sequence should be done as easily, as it can be done. I was thinking as of filling the building with uniform (homogenous) texture, that resembles a regular brick wall. The filling is from the beginning to the top, as usual. A one, identical brick-like texture for all the buildings, that requires them to be built.

Why boards-bricks-stone order? It is forced by an eventual simplicity of adding as simple animation sequence as we can get. Of course, order of building leads to order of getting such materials by a worker (house founder) - with boards and stone only he couldn`t finish the building; he`d finish the first stage, stop working and wait for the bricks delivery.

As for the brickyard building graphic: brickyards were common everywhere in the world in all ages, so there shouldn`t be a problem with designing the graphics for the game. There are several ways of how (older) brickyards might look like on the net. For example here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Grosstreben_Ringofen.jpg
or here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fotothek_df_tg_0007580_Bauwesen_%5E_Baustoff_%5E_Ziegel.jpg
Here`s a typical brickyard in Afghanistan:
http://english.people.com.cn/200508/10/eng20050810_201358.html
From all of these, there should be enough stuff of making five different looking buildings for five different civilizations.


OK, those are my thoughts. I don`t know if adding such thing to the code is possible, but - as an option - it would definitely improve the gameplay. Some things might be wrong, some - inaprioprate. What is good, what is wrong - I don`t know. Feel free to comment what you think.

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Well, I always like the Idea to add more buildings and ways to do things, I only got the problem, that I don't really see what this would change. I think adding a new good for buildings isn't a good idea, because it would change a lot of the feeling. But don't mind, we already got the idea to add something like clay, just that it makes more sense to use the geologists on building ground. This means there needs an other type of mine to be added.
Now using bricks now to change buildings, what would that change? This just means, that you may need more goods to build a building and that it may needs less to destroy an enemy economy. I just don't know what it would be good for, so, just see this as some thoughts about your idea, not a pro not a con :p

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"there needs an other type of mine to be added"

always nice to hear it :)

"I think adding a new good for buildings isn't a good idea, because it would change a lot of the feeling"

Unless it`s an option, I think it would be OK; I used to play with a charburner.


As I wrote in 3c, I think the bricks would be good for founding the military buildings (apart from barracks). Alternatively, as of the military buildings, they might just replace the stone, that is used for building them now (so the fortress would cost 4 boards + 7 bricks instead of 4 boards + 7 stones). The great advantage of this solution is that we would totally get rid of new animation sequence problem.

So:
- for a civilian buildings you would still need boards + stone (like it is now),
- for a military buildings you would need boards + bricks (instead of the stone); plus the animation stays the same!

In practice, it would split "regular" building production line into three parts: common (woodcutter + forester + samwill = boards), civilian (quarry = stone) and military one (brickyard = bricks or clay mine + brickyard = bricks). Note that brickyard would have to be supported at least with a coal (plus maybe food, water...)!

For example, if there are shortages of these two resources on the very beginning of the game, it would give the player two possibilities of developing - he might build more civilian, more military economy, or mixed type of these two:
- let`s say the player got a clay resources on the south of his border; if he goes south, it means more military type of economy, so he could build hard to conquer stronghold, but with the cost of civilian economy (so he would develop more slowly and safe).
- let`s say the player got a lot of stones in the north of his border; if he goes north, it means more civilian type of economy, so he would have a stronger economy (civilian buildings), but he would be more exposed to military attacks instead (so he would develop faster, but with a higher risk of being beated).

Mixed economy would be of course the best, but the whole point in Settlers is that sometimes you need to make a choises :)

Reasuming:
- it would NOT need to add another underground resource (just to replace stone with clay) and it would NOT need to add another mine type (just to replace stone ones with clay ones); minor tweaks in the code,
- it would need to improve the internal game code (possible bugs),
- it would need to add some interface stuff (hard work),
- it would NOT need to add new animation sequences etc.,
- it would need to paint another building from the scratch: brickyard,

Apart from that, you could add another underground resource for the foundations of the building(?). The more mine types, the better. I just don`t like the stone mines, so would gladly replace them with a clay mines.

PS. Have you thought of the jewel (gem) mine? The underground gems should be extremally rare and would work more or less like the gold, but without need to build mint and the whole gold production line (alternatively: jewels could accelerate/speed up work of other mines or other buildings). It wouldn`t be hard to add it and would improve the gameplay.

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