Age of Mythology

NOTE: This mod is still in a "beta" stage. All of the game systems are functional, although there are still many placeholders and the balance is very tentative. Feedback would be very appreciated.

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Inspired by the real-time strategy game of the same name, and by mythology in general, the first (chronologically) content mod in the Ages of Man triad is the Age of Mythology mod. This mod is designed to make the first few eras of the game more interesting, by adding a wide variety of content to the Ancient, Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance eras, with very little that persists into later eras. Unlike the Empires and Ascension content mods, the Mythology mod's content is very different from the vanilla game and is intended to significantly alter the eras it modifies without entirely overwhelming the previous content; knowing the intricacies of the Focus and Favor systems can make a large difference in your chances of success. In the vanilla game these early eras are generally a period of building up an empire, existing only to set the stage for the pivotal period of the game, while this mod attempts to turn these eras into an important experience in their own right.

Overview
The Age of Mythology mod centers around assembling a personal pantheon of deities, each of whom gives you a number of bonuses. You begin the game with a single central deity, and as time goes on you can add an assortment of minor gods to follow; each god provides a variety of bonuses related to its specialty, bonuses that increase over time as you gain favor with the gods. Various religious events can also help shape the development of your pantheon, and through them boost your empire. These bonuses come at a cost, however; simply being in the Mythological Age adds penalties to nearly every aspect of your society (food, production, gold, science, culture...), and as time goes on the penalties will become more and more severe to offset your growing religious bonuses. Eventually, the drawbacks of the divinely inspired lifestyle will easily outweigh its benefits, and each player will choose to undertake an Enlightenment, a period in which their empire will sever its relationships with the old gods to enter a more productive phase.

The primary component of this system is Favor, a new Culture-like pseudo-yield produced through a variety of mechanisms. Favor is used locally to automatically upgrade religious buildings within each city, as well as providing a global effect of unlocking new minor deities for your entire empire. Nearly all content in this mod is dependent on the amount of Favor you have generated, with much less importance placed on individual technologies. Every Pantheon has its own inherent biases towards or against the various methods of Favor generation; taking actions related to your Pantheon's Favor biases can allow you to unlock extremely powerful units and effects earlier than would be possible through normal research, while playing against those biases could cripple you in the long term.

Compatibility
As with all other Content mods in the series, the Age of Mythology mod requires the Base mod for mechanical reasons. While some parts of its balance will assume the presence of the Age of Empires mod as well, this is not strictly necessary; the Mythology mod can be paired with many other balance mods if the user prefers. The only noticeable problem will be in the year numbering scheme, the mechanism for which assumes the presence of the Empire mod. This will be fixed eventually, but as it's purely an aesthetic change it is a low priority.
As there are no alterations to map resources, there are no compatibility issues with any existing map scripts or scenarios. However, unlike the Ascension mod (which added techs at the end of the tree), the Mythology mod adds technologies to the early eras, forcing a recalculation of the X-values for technologies on the entire tech tree grid as well as alteration of many contemporary techs' placement. While most of this change is handled through a simple SQL addition designed not to interfere with other mods' technology changes, any mod that adds or moves technologies within the first four eras has some potential for incompatibility.

The Mythology mod will be technically compatible with the Ascension mod in the long term, although the two will be mutually exclusive in practice; an Ascension game requires a competitive environment during and after the space race, which often requires beginning a game in the Renaissance, Industrial, or Nuclear Eras. Conversely, a Mythology game provides many additional avenues to early dominance, and it should not be uncommon for the game to be effectively won by the time the Mythological Age draws to a close in the late Medieval. In practice, therefore, there is little reason to use both mods in the same game. However, note that the Mythology mod does not alter many of the barriers in the existing game, such as the lack of worldwide travel before Astronomy; on most map types, it will simply be impossible to win a game outright during this period, and so depending on difficulty level, the dominant civilizations on other continents might remain competitive beyond the mythological period.

Known Issues
* Do not start a Mythology game later than the Ancient Era. While the game will let you do so, you will not have accumulated any of the Favor that you would have earned in the bypassed eras, which could cripple your game's balance as those bonuses are needed to offset the growing inherent Mythology penalties.
* No units have custom 3D artwork. The Hero units use slightly larger single-model versions of existing units.
* The "High" Events (very rare Events limited to one appearance per game) are still being fleshed out. The number and rarities of these will be a big part of how Pantheons are balanced against each other.
* Currently, the game does not force you to pick a new minor god once you have the correct amount of Favor. Keep an eye on the total at the top of the screen; it'll replace the numbers with "MINOR GOD AVAILABLE" if you have enough Favor.
* The Mythology and Ascension mods are unfortunately not compatible at present. The game has a "soft" cap on unit promotions, only allowing 200 types. Vanilla Civ5, the Base mod, and using either Mythology or Ascension will put you just below this number, and using both would go ~20 over the limit. You'll know this has happened if you see new units (like a Warrior) begin with a bunch of free promotions. Note that many DLCs also add promotions, which could make this problem even worse. I'm working on improving this, but it'll be a while before the issue is resolved.

FOCI

A Focus is a specialty of a deity. A divine being might be the God of Thunder, or the Goddess of the Hunt, but the abilities bestowed to that deity's followers will depend on translating his or her portfolio to 21 pre-made Foci such as "Air" or "Animals". Major Gods all have two Foci apiece, with one taking precedence over the other, while Minor Gods each possess a single Focus. No two deities within a single pantheon can share the same Focus. While in mythology there were often multiple gods of War, Death, Fertility, or various elements within a single pantheon, this mod does not allow that. Each pantheon lacks four Foci, although no single Focus appears in fewer than five out of the seven Pantheons.

Foci are limited to regions on the Mandala, an alignment grid with two axes: Lawful versus Chaotic, and Material versus Ephemeral. (The Mandala is described in more detail in a later post.) Two of the groups of 4 are "diagonal" Foci affiliated with nonzero values on both axes, and the Balance Focus has no affiliation, but the remaining 12 Foci are explicitly aligned with individual axes.

The Foci are sorted into six groups. Within each focus, the effects listed are cumulative; that is, a city with a Cathedral will generally get the effects labeled 1, 2, and 3, although in a few cases it should be obvious that an effect replaces the one before it (mainly with new unit promotion effects, or the ones that explicitly say "increase to +2").

Group 1: the Elemental Foci
Water (Chaotic, Material)
Level 1: +1G per Lake, +1F per Oasis, Naval units trained here get +10% to combat and +1 movement
Level 2: +1G per Whale or Pearls, +1F per Fish, city can have trade routes over water
Level 3: +1P per Flood Plain, +0.1 Influence per turn with Maritime CSs, Myth: Scylla
Level 4: +1P per River tile (replaces the Flood Plain boost at 3), +0.5 Influence per turn with Maritime CSs, Myth: Water Elemental
Fire (Chaotic, Ephemeral)
Level 1: Units trained here get +10% when attacking, doubled against cities, and all hurried production costs 1% less
Level 2: The above bonus increases to +20%, and all hurried production costs another 1% less
Level 3: The above bonus increases to +25% and the unit has a 10% chance of a Critical Hit dealing +5 damage, and all hurried production costs another 1% less
Level 4: Your units deal +1 damage in all combats, Myth: Fire Elemental, and all hurried production costs another 2% less
Earth (Lawful, Material)
Level 1: +2 City Defense, +1P per Stone, Myth: Gargoyle
Level 2: another +1 City Defense, +1G per Stone, +1C per Marble, Myth: Medusa
Level 3: Units trained here get +10% to defense, doubled vs ranged attacks, +1P per Marble, +1G per Gems, Myth: Basilisk
Level 4: another +2 City Defense, All cities get +25% Defense from buildings, +1C per Gems, Myth: Earth Elemental
Air (Lawful, Ephemeral)
Level 1: Ranged units trained here get +20% when attacking (archers, siege, or naval only), +10% Great People production, Myth: Pegasus
Level 2: The cost of gaining a plot through culture or buying it through gold decrease by 25%, Myth: Thunderbird
Level 3: Ranged units trained here also get +1 Range, another +10% Great People production, Myth: Lightning Bolt
Level 4: All units you own gain Cover I, another +10% Great People production in all cities, Myth: Air Elemental
All very combat-oriented. With the sole exception of the Norse gods' lack of Air deities, every pantheon has these four, and they're fairly commonly used for Major gods. Note that all of the promotions listed in these Foci do NOT apply to Myth units, so they're best used to boost mundane units. The Water Focus' appeal really depends on your proximity to water; the Scylla, for instance, is a naval unit and so can only be built in coastal cities, and the yields of water resources can only be boosted if/when you place a Fishing Boat.

Group 2: the Yield Foci
Fertility (Material)
Level 1: +1 Food, +1 per Wheat, Banana
Level 2: another +2 Food, +1 per Fish, Cow
Level 3: +1 Happiness, +1 Food per Deer, Sheep
Level 4: another +2 Food, +5% to Food in all cities, Myth: Ao Ao
Beauty (Ephemeral)
Level 1: +1 Happiness, +5% to Wonder production
Level 2: another +1 Happiness, another +10% to Wonder production
Level 3: another +1 Happiness, another +10% to Wonder production
Level 4: another +1 Happiness, another +15% to Wonder production, Myth: Unicorn
Crafts (Lawful)
Level 1: +1 to Production, +1 per Iron, Stone
Level 2: another +2 Production, +1 per Marble, Gold
Level 3: +1 Happiness, +1 Production per Silver, Ivory
Level 4: another +2 Production, +1 Production per Engineer, Myth: Colossus
Wealth (Chaotic)
Level 1: +1 to Gold, +1 per Gold, Gems
Level 2: another +2 Gold, +1 per Silver, Pearls
Level 3: +1 Happiness, +1 Gold per Spices, Silk
Level 4: another +2 Gold, +1 Gold per Merchant, Myth: Kitsune
These four Foci all build up your cities' critical yields, so they're very powerful in combination with other Foci and are nearly always useful. However, their positions on the Mandala makes it very difficult to unlock more than one of these in a single game, and they don't unlock any low-level Myth units.

Group 3: the Important Stuff Foci
Death (Ephemeral)
Level 1: Non-Myth melee units trained here heal 1 damage when attacking, and when units die nearby a Skeleton might spawn in this city. Myth: Zombie Horde
Level 2: The above units can now occasionally spawn as Zombies instead, and the chance increases. Myth: Mummy
Level 3: The above units can now occasionally spawn as Shades instead, and the chance increases. 5% Food Storage, Myth: Vampire Master
Level 4: The above units will now never spawn as Skeletons (only Zombies and Shades), and the chance of spawning as undead increases by ~10% in all cities you own. 10% Food Storage, Myth: Phoenix
Note that the game will find the city of yours nearest to the battle site; only the level of the building in that city determines which unit (if any) you spawn, except for the small Basilica global bonus. If the city has no Death buildings at all (i.e. a newly founded border city), you will still have a small chance of getting a free Skeleton. Note that of the spawned units, only Skeletons are maintenance-free.
Healing (Material)
Level 1: Units in this city heal +1 when resting, 5% Food Storage
Level 2: Units trained here gain Faster Healing (the Immortal ability), 10% Food Storage
Level 3: Units trained here gain Medic, units adjacent to this city heal one point per turn, 15% Food Storage
Level 4: All of your units gain March, units adjacent to this city heal 2 points per turn, units resting inside this city heal fully, 20% Food Storage
Knowledge (Lawful)
Level 1: +1 Research, Units trained here get Sentry (+1 visibility)
Level 2: another +1 Research, Units trained here get Knowledge Focus (+2 visibility, +10% in friendly territory)
Level 3: another +1 Research, warns if any other civ is within 5 turns of completing a Wonder
Level 4: another +1 Research, Tech stealing (max chance: 5%), warns if any other civ is within 10 turns of completing a Wonder, Myth: Oracle
War (Chaotic)
Level 1: +1 City Defense, +10% Military Production, +5 XP for land and sea units
Level 2: another +1 City Defense, another +10% Military Production, units trained here start with Teamwork
Level 3: another +1 City Defense, another +10% Military Production, +0.1 Influence per turn with Militaristic CSs
Level 4: another +2 City Defense, +0.5 Influence per turn with Militaristic CSs, all units gain the ability to move after attacking and generate +25% XP
A lot of combat utility, other than Knowledge, and in general these are all good things to have. These are very common; outside of the elemental Foci in Group 1, War and Death are the only Foci to appear in all seven Pantheons, and the other two are each in six.

Group 4: the Somewhat More Unusual Stuff Foci
Animals (Chaotic, Material):
Level 1: Myth: Nemean Lion, Fenris Wolf, +1 Food per Cow or Fish
Level 2: Myth: Manticore, Scarab, +1 Production per Deer or Sheep
Level 3: Myth: Hydra, Griffon, +1 Gold per Ivory or Whales
Level 4: Myth: Dragon, Chimaera
Plants (Lawful, Material):
Level 1: +1P per Forest, +1F per Wheat, +1G per Wine, +1 Culture per Spices
Level 2: +1F per Flood Plain, +1F per Banana, +1P per Cotton, +1 Culture per Incense, Myth: Dryad
Level 3: +1G per Jungle, Units trained here start with Woodsman (double movement in forests or jungle), Myth: Treant
Level 4: +1G per Forest, +1F per Jungle, +1P per Flood Plain, Myth: Nature Elemental.
Travel (Chaotic, Ephemeral):
Level 1: +1% to all trade route income, Units that start the turn in this city get 1 extra movement point for this turn.
Level 2: another +1% to all trade route income, Units that start the turn in this city get the Airlift promotion (temporary paradrop)
Level 3: another +1% to all trade route income, Units trained here gain Paradrop
Level 4: another +2% to all trade route income, Friendly units within your territory gain +1 movement, Myth: Cadejo
Art (Lawful, Ephemeral)
Level 1: +1 Culture, +1 per Dye or Silk
Level 2: another +2 Culture, +1 per Ivory or Stone
Level 3: +1 Happiness, +1 Culture per Gold or Marble, +0.1 Influence per turn with Cultural CSs
Level 4: another +2 Culture, +0.5 Influence per turn with Cultural CSs, all cities within your empire generate +25% Culture
Now we're getting into less obvious territory. Each of these are still very useful effects, but the appeal of each depends heavily on your other Foci, your military style, and your choice of civilizations. While Art might seem strange to have so low, Culture is just not as high a priority in these early eras as most Policy effects are far less powerful than these religious bonuses. Like the elemental Foci, these Foci favor diagonal orientations.

Group 5: the "What the heck does THAT do?" Foci
Justice (Lawful)
Level 1: +1% Golden Age length, Enemies that attack units trained here take 1 extra damage at the start of each combat, and if a unit with this promotion is killed within its own territory in combat by a non-Barbarian unit, the killer pays the unit's owner gold, with amount depending on the value of the unit.
Level 2: +1 Happiness, Hero units near this city gain +1 XP per turn for having a Church of Justice.
Level 3: another +1% Golden Age length, All Hero units you own gain +1 XP per turn (replacing the level 2 effect, and stacking with itself) for having a Cathedral of Justice.
Level 4: another +1 Happiness, all Heroes get an additional +1 XP per turn, the minimum number of Minor Heroes within your empire increases by 1, Myth: Nemesis
Seasons (Material)
Level 1: +1% Golden Age length, and gain two +1 yield bonuses based on season: Production (Spring, Summer), Food (Summer, Fall), Gold (Fall, Winter), or Research (Winter, Spring). The "season" advances by one each turn.
Level 2: another +1% Golden Age length, increase seasonal yields to +2
Level 3: another +1% Golden Age length, increase seasonal yields to +3
Level 4: another +1% Golden Age length, increase seasonal yields to +5, and the two out-of-season yields gain +1 in all cities as well (+2 in your capital)
Darkness (Ephemeral)
Level 1: +10% Production when constructing Myth units, enemy units near this city get -1 to visibility (does not stack with any other vision reduction)
Level 2: Myth units trained here get +25% to combat, Myth: Shade
Level 3: another +10% Production when constructing Myth units, and enemy units near this city get -1 to Range as well. Myth: Rakshasa
Level 4: Enemy units anywhere within your territory get -3 to visibility as well, Myth: Balrog
Storms (Chaotic)
Level 1: +1 City Defense, Enemy units take 0-1 damage each turn they're within 2 hexes of one of your cities
Level 2: another +1 City Defense, Damage increases to 0-2, with adjacent units being more likely to take higher amounts..
Level 3: another +1 City Defense, Damage increases to 0-3 over a 3-hex area, with adjacent units being more likely to take higher amounts.
Level 4: another +2 City Defense, Damage increases to 0-3 over a 4-hex area, and all cities' Storms damage gets a slight increase. Myth: Tiamat
Note: when multiple cities' radii overlap, only the highest applicable damage (AFTER the randomization) will apply. A unit can't take damage from two Storms cities at once.
These are the "finesse" Foci. Each has significant effects and can be immensely powerful if used correctly, but they're all very unpredictable. They also are unusual in several other ways; the Myth units from the Darkness focus, as well as Nemesis, have anti-Myth bonuses designed to reduce your dependence on Heroes, and Justice boosts Heroes directly, so these are an excellent countermeasure against foes who depend heavily on their own Myth units.

Group 6: the Neutral Focus
Balance (N/A)
Level 1: Units trained here adjust their strength by up to +/-10% based on the opposing unit. This city gains +1 Food or Production, whichever is lower.
Level 2: Units trained here adjust their strength by up to +/-20% based on the opposing unit. This city sorts Food, Production, and Gold, adding 2 to the lowest and 1 to the middle.
Level 3: Units trained here adjust their strength by up to +/-30% based on the opposing unit. This city sorts Food, Production, Gold, and Culture, adding 3 to the lowest, 2 to the second-lowest, and 1 to the second-highest.
Level 4: Units with any of the above three promotions will no longer adjust their strength downward when fighting weaker enemies. The yield amounts increase to 4/3/2/1.
Balance is just strange. It's great for a civ that starts off a bit behind the rest (often meaning the player, on high difficulties), and has the potential to be the most powerful Focus in the right hands, but it's a lot harder to plan around. Since the promotion is only given to mundane units, it also acts as a de facto anti-Myth ability, as the powerful Myth units will far exceed the strength of the countering mundane units with this promotion.

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The idea is that the first two groups of four are the universally useful brute force stuff, and these reward you for going far from (0,0) on the grid (i.e., picking all Chaos gods and Chaos choices in events, that sort of thing, which really limits the kinds of gods you can add down the road). But the Greeks are REALLY heavily invested into this group of foci, which is why they're the perfect starter pantheon, and the Norse and Aztec aren't too far behind.

The second two groups of four are all pretty useful stuff, even if a couple of them are a bit specialized. These reward you for staying a bit closer to the center, but even far away you'll be able to get a few of these. Egyptian and Shinto pantheons really focus on these ones.

The last two groups (4+1) are the really weird stuff, although Storms and Justice are among the most common Foci for major gods. These really reward you for staying close to (0,0), by mixing lawful choices with chaotic ones and so on. The more "finesse"-style Pantheons emphasize these, with the Hindu and Sumerian pantheons having several major gods emphasizing Foci in the last two groups, while the more straightforward Greeks only have access to two of the five.

PANTHEONS

This mod contains seven Pantheons, each containing 13 deities (4 Major gods and 9 Minor gods). Each Pantheon has several aspects that make it unique: the combinations of Foci in the major gods, the four missing Foci (because with 4 Majors and 9 Minors you'll only have 17 out of the 21 Foci), and most importantly, the Favor generation methods each Pantheon favors. The combination of these factors is designed to provide a somewhat unique experience for each of the 28 choices of central deity.

Regardless of their names, Pantheons are not restricted to any specific Civilizations. While certain aspects of each Pantheon are designed to mesh well with the related civilizations, most combinations are fully viable. The AI defaults to "historical biases", where most civilizations have a 50% chance of selecting the pantheon most closely linked to them historically, but this bias does not apply to the player, and can be disabled in the Advanced Setup menu if you choose.

DISCLAIMER: Several of these pantheons are components of modern religions. If anyone is a follower of one of these religions and is offended by my choices of foci, my selection of "major" deities, or the inherent oversimplification involved in adapting a complex set of religious beliefs to a crude game system, then this might not be the right mod for you. I accept criticism and suggestions, but many aspects of these (especially the Major gods and which Pantheons were used) were chosen more for balance reasons than for any attempt at historical accuracy.

GREEK
Major gods: Zeus (Air/Justice), Poseidon (Water/Earth), Hades (Death/Wealth), Hephaestus (Crafts/Fire)
Minor gods: Hera (Fertility), Aphrodite (Beauty), Athena (Knowledge), Ares (War), Artemis (Animals), Dionysus (Plants), Hermes (Travel), Apollo (Art), Demeter (Seasons)
Missing: Healing, Darkness, Storms, Balance
Favor: Balanced (Gain x2 Favor from Priests, Buildings, and Battles)
Other: Greek followers have eight High Events that add Major Heroes, far more than any other Pantheon.
Difficulty: EASY. The Olympian gods form the baseline against which all others are balanced. They have plenty of raw power, thanks to a full complement of elemental and yield-based Foci, and only miss out on a few of the more unusual Foci. As the only Pantheon with the Balanced Favor generation, they have the most consistent progression and support any playstyle reasonably well.
The Greek Pantheon is a safe choice for beginners, as all of the Major gods have easy-to-understand abilities and most players will already be familiar with the gods involved. However, the missing Foci are the ones near the center of the Mandala, which means that Greek gods tend to maintain their alignment and have fewer minor god choices at each opportunity.

EGYPTIAN
Major gods: Ra (Animals/Plants), Isis (Healing/Fertility), Osiris (Justice/Water), and Set (Travel/Storms)
Minor gods: Bast (Fire), Geb (Earth), Horus (Air), Ptah (Crafts), Anubis (Death), Thoth (Knowledge), Sekhmet (War), Hathor (Art), Nephthys (Darkness)
Missing: Beauty, Wealth, Seasons, Balance
Primary Favor method: Buildings generate x3 Favor
Secondary Favor method: Battles generate x2 Favor
Other: Egyptian followers have four High Events that add Major Heroes, and gain a fourth Pantheon unit (the Pharaoh).
Difficulty: MODERATE. The Egyptians are a bit more specialized than most Pantheons, with each Major god having a different playstyle. The Pantheon is biased towards the use of Myth units, especially for followers of Ra. Its main weakness is typically Happiness; with no Beauty god, and with low Priest favor, you won't be gaining nearly as much Happiness as other players.
The Egyptian Pantheon is often an excellent choice for players who prefer a "Builder" gameplay style, as it favors vertical growth and development over expansion or battle.

NORSE
Major gods: Odin (Knowledge/Travel), Thor (Storms/Healing), Loki (Fire/Darkness), Frigg (Earth/Balance)
Minor gods: Njord (Water), Freyja (Fertility), Baldr (Beauty), Heimdall (Wealth), Hel (Death), Tyr (War), Skadi (Animals), Bragi (Art), Forseti (Justice)
Missing: Air, Crafts, Plants, Seasons
Primary Favor method: Battles generate x3 Favor
Secondary Favor method: Priests generate x2 Favor
Other: Norse non-Myth units deal +1 damage to enemy Myth units, and the Norse gain a fourth Pantheon unit, the Hersir.
Difficulty: MODERATE. The Norse gods are all excellent choices for early warfare, both offensively and defensively, but they lack many of the empire-building Foci common to other Pantheons.
The Norse Pantheon is best for an aggressive military playstyle, especially one focusing on powerful mundane units instead of Myth forces. Thor and Loki are biased towards offensive warfare, while Frigg is for defensive players and Odin's a more balanced choice.

SUMERIAN
Major gods: Anu (Darkness/Justice), Enki (Crafts/Water), Enlil (Storms/Air), Inanna (Beauty/War)
Minor gods: Shamash (Fire), Kishar (Earth), Ninhursag (Fertility), Utu (Death), Ninurta (Healing), Nanna (Knowledge), Ningal (Plants), Ninlil (Travel), Erishkagal (Seasons)
Missing: Wealth, Animals, Art, Balance
Primary Favor method: Priests generate x3 Favor
Secondary Favor method: Buildings generate x2 Favor
Other: Sumerian followers have four High Events that add Major Heroes, with their heroes being stronger than those of most other Pantheons.
Difficulty: MODERATE. Many of the Sumerian major deities' foci are mirror images of gods in other Pantheons, but there are some interesting combinations and the missing Foci are in the less harmful areas. While it is a slow starter thanks to the low Battle Favor rating, it will have the highest Favor generation of any Pantheon once your empire is fully developed. While lacking many of the most useful Myth units, the Sumerians are exceptionally strong on defense and rely heavily on Heroes. One other interesting aspect is that most major Sumerian gods are "inverted" with the more powerful Foci as the secondary ability, which means many of those will be off-limits during a game; while this hurts raw power, a Sumerian player will have many choices when adding a minor god and are not as limited by alignment choices as the other Pantheons.
The Sumerian Pantheon is designed to be good for (relatively) peaceful expansive empires, but can adjust to a wide variety of playstyles depending on god choices.

HINDU
Major gods: Shakti (Fertility/Justice), Brahma (Balance/Crafts), Vishnu (Seasons/Travel), Shiva (Death/Healing)
Minor gods: Varuna (Water), Agni (Fire), Prithvi (Earth), Vayu (Air), Parvati (Beauty), Lakshmi (Wealth), Saraswati (Knowledge), Kali (War), Ganesha (Art)
Missing: Animals, Plants, Darkness, Storms
Primary Favor method: Priests generate x3 Favor
Secondary Favor Method: Battles generate x2 Favor
Other: Hindu followers have a single Major Hero, the Avatar. This unit is stronger than any other Major Hero, cannot be permanently killed, and gains additional abilities through a number of High Events.
Difficulty: HARD. The Hindu gods are very limited in their choices of Myth units and emphasize the powerful yield-based Foci over the combat-related elemental Foci. This makes the Hindu Pantheon a poor choice for expansion or warmongers initially, but in the long term can be excellent for these roles with the right selection of minor gods.
The Hindu Pantheon has excellent potential for vertical development in a small number of cities, but requires skill in micromanagement.

AZTEC
Major gods: Huitzolopochtli (War/Fire), Tlaloc (Fertility/Storms), Tezcatlipoca (Darkness/Death), Quetzalcoatl (Art/Air)
Minor gods: Chalchiuhtlicue (Water), Coatlicue (Earth), Xochiquetzal (Beauty), Yacatecutli (Wealth), Tlazolteotl (Healing), Camaxtli (Animals), Xochipilli (Plants), Xipe Totec (Seasons), Ometeotl (Balance)
Missing: Crafts, Knowledge, Travel, Justice
Primary Favor method: Battles generate x3 Favor
Secondary Favor method: Buildings generate x2 Favor
Other: Aztec non-Myth units that kill Myth units can gain a series of anti-Myth bonuses, ranging from a weak +10% bonus to the full Hero status (+50%).
Difficulty: HARD. While the Aztec gods are unmatched for military power, many of the combinations are unorthodox and the missing Foci include some of the more generally useful choices for infrastructure. Like the Sumerians, many Aztec major gods are "inverted" with the more generally useful Focus as the secondary, which makes things a bit harder for new players.
The Aztec Pantheon is designed for aggressive military players, with a small bias towards Myth units, but is not easy to play. This pantheon can, however, adapt to a wide variety of alternate strategies depending on your major god choice.

SHINTO
Major gods: Amaterasu (Fire/Balance), Sarutahiko (Earth/Travel), Inari (Wealth/Animals), Hachiman (Plants/War)
Minor gods: Ryujin (Water), Raijin (Air), Izanami (Death), Izanagi (Healing), Omoikane (Knowledge), Uzume (Art), Kotoamatzukami (Seasons), Tsukuyomi (Darkness), Susano'o (Storms)
Missing: Fertility, Beauty, Crafts, Justice
Primary Favor method: Buildings generate x3 Favor
Secondary favor method: Priests generate x2 Favor
Other: Shinto non-Myth units take 1 less damage from enemy Myth units, and the three Shinto Pantheon units all possess anti-Myth bonuses.
Difficulty: HARD. The banned Foci include most of the yield boosters, the Secondaries include some of the most generally useful ones, and the Major gods' Primaries are in some of the more exotic Foci. Like the Sumerians, the Shinto are a slow starter due to the low Battle Favor rating, but have plenty of strong, consistent Favor generation in the long term.
The Shinto Pantheon is capable of supporting most playstyles, depending on your choice of deity, but this pantheon is very difficult to make the most of and is best suited for a defensive "builder" style.

Note: when a pantheon is listed as x3 for its Primary Favor method and x2 for its Secondary method, the third, unlisted method still generates Favor at x1. Additionally, there are several additional types of Favor generation, like the Favor from Great Improvements, that do not vary with Pantheon.

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Obviously, a lot of the above will depend on exactly which primary deity you select. If you want all-out offensive war, the best choice is clearly Huitzilopochtli (War/Fire) in the Aztec pantheon (x3 Battle Favor), although Loki and Thor do pretty well in that area as well depending on your personal style. But within that same Aztec set is Quetzalcoatl (Art/Air), who because of his focus in Art and the Aztecs' x2 in Building Favor makes an excellent choice for players aiming towards a Cultural victory.

Generally speaking, each Pantheon was designed to have at least one obvious choice for warmongers (usually including Fire or War as a focus), one "peaceful" (or at least defense-oriented) choice for builders, and so on. The exact manner in which these gods can fill these roles will vary significantly, and the minor gods you add can support a wide variety of additional strategies.

Each Pantheon also unlocks several unique Myth units, available to all gods within that Pantheon once you reach certain technologies. Power-wise these fall between the tiers of the Focus-bestowed Myth units, and are similarly limited in number. These units greatly reduce the necessity to take Myth-heavy Foci to field powerful units; no matter what Foci you select or how much Favor you generate, you'll have access to several Myth unit types to reinforce your army before reaching the final level 4 Myth units most Foci provide. Additionally, some pantheons will depend on these extra units to fill the gaps left by their missing Foci, whether it's scout units for those lacking Air, Knowledge, or Travel, anti-Myth units for people lacking Darkness, Justice, or Balance.

FAVOR

The new Yield in this mod is Favor. Favor measures your basic relationship with your deity, and is generated in four distinct ways which depend heavily on your choice of Pantheon. Favor is similar to Culture, in that it has two distinct effects: a local effect of upgrading the religious buildings in your individual cities, and an empire-wide effect of unlocking new minor deities for your pantheons.

There are four tiers of religious building: the Shrine, Church, Cathedral, and Basilica. It requires 100 Favor to gain a Shrine, an additional 200 (for a total of 300) to upgrade a Shrine to a Church, an additional 300 (total 600) to upgrade a Church to a Cathedral, and an additional 400 (total 1000) to upgrade a Cathedral to a Basilica. These numbers are adjusted for game speed, with slower speeds requiring larger Favor thresholds.
Your capital will always start with a Shrine in both of your main god's foci, and a corresponding amount of Favor invested in each (100 on standard speed); at later techs new cities will begin to automatically start with Shrines as well. When you add a new Minor God, you will receive a free Shrine of the appropriate Focus in one of your cities, with the city chosen being the one with the fewest religious buildings (with older cities favored over newer ones in case of a tie).

The four methods of Favor generation are:

Base Favor: All religious buildings gain a small amount of local Favor every turn, regardless of what else you do.
This value is dependent only on your technology level, starts at +1, and increases are given as the "Growth" values in the Technologies table below. At Mysticism, the buildings of your central deity's Primary focus will improve to +2 Favor every turn (+3 in the Capital), in addition to all other forms of Favor generation. These values will change at a number of later technologies, peaking during the late Medieval period before tapering off somewhat at later technologies; several existing non-religious technologies can alter these growth rates.
This form of Favor adds nothing to your empire-wide unlocking of new minor dieties; it ONLY boosts the religious building growth rates within cities. While the amounts added are significant, you'll still need to use the other methods of Favor generation as much as possible.

Battle Favor: All combats generate an amount of Favor for both combatants, in addition to any standard effects. Battle Favor comes in bursts, and is the best choice for "jump-starting" a new city's temples, but is very inconsistent in practice; a single fight will generally give you 10-20 Favor, which can quickly upgrade buildings or unlock new gods, but you gain nothing during peacetime.
The amount of favor generated is defined as follows:
> 2 points of favor are generated per point of damage dealt by your unit/city
> 1 point of favor is gained per damage TAKEN by your unit/city
In other words, the bloodier the battle is, the more BOTH sides benefit. Obviously, a bit less favor is gained from ranged combat as the attacker won't take any damage, but ranged units won't waste as many turns resting so it generally balances.
> If your unit kills the opponent, you gains 4 additional Favor; if the killed entity is a city, this increases to +10.
> If your unit dies, you lose 2 Favor; if the "killed" entity is a city, this increases to -5.
Note that units inside a city that are auto-destroyed when it's captured do NOT count towards favor.
> All of the above are added together. If one of the two units involved was a Myth unit or a Hero, multiply the above by 1.5; if BOTH are Myth units or Heroes, multiply by 2.0 instead.
> If your opponent is a Barbarian or City-State, you only gain half the usual Favor.
> This number is then multiplied by x1, x2, or x3 depending on your Pantheon. The Aztec and Norse pantheons generate the most Favor from battles, while the Shinto and Sumerian pantheons generate the least.
> Battle Favor is divided amongst your cities based on the inverse of the distance the fight occurred from each (plus 1, to prevent division-by-zero errors). If you have two cities, one 4 hexes away from the battle site and one at a distance of 9, then 2/3rds of the Favor will apply to the nearer city and 1/3rd to the farther. As a result, your small border cities generally acquire Battle Favor the fastest.
> Within each city, every focus you've unlocked gets an equal share of the resulting Favor, regardless of whether it's a Primary, Secondary, or Minor focus. A Focus is considered to be unlocked even if you have not yet acquired a Shrine in that city.
> Nuclear weapons generate no Favor.
> Other than Hero or Myth status, no promotions or abilities increase or decrease the amount of Favor generated.
> Combat damage dealt or prevented through Unit special abilities (such as Damage Reduction, Trample, Critical Strike, or the Fire 4 effect) do not affect the amount of generated Favor.
> Damage dealt or healed at the start of a turn through Building abilities (Storms or Healing temples) or persistent Unit abilities (Poisoned, Diseased) generate no Favor.

Building Favor: Many buildings generate a constant flow of Favor each turn. The amount might not be large compared to other methods, but it is consistent and requires no ongoing labor disruption, making it a valuable source of Favor for all players.
> As long as the mythological period is still in effect, the following changes to existing Buildings and Improvements are made:
Monument: instead of 2 Culture, it generates 1 Culture and 1 Favor. As these are the only altered building in the Ancient Era, monuments will be critical to your early Favor generation.
Temple: adds 1 less Culture and adds 2 Favor. If you're not using my other mods to rebalance buildings, then the Temple will go from +3 Culture to +2 Culture and +2 Favor. If you ARE using the Empire mod, then it will generate +1 Happiness and 2 Favor.
Monastery: adds 2 less Culture and adds 2 Favor. If you're using the Empire mod, then this will be a bit awkward, since it'll now subtract 2 Culture, as the base rate was dropped to zero to balance the +1 Happiness. However, since you can't build this without a Wine or Incense present, each of which adds +2, you'll never actually lose Culture.
Colosseum: adds 1 less Happiness and adds 2 Favor. Note that if you're not using the Empire mod, the Colosseum goes from 2 Happiness to 1 Happiness and 2 Favor. The Empire mod increases the base Colosseum happiness to 3, and the Theocracy policy adds another +1 as well.
Palace: adds 1 less Culture and adds 1 Favor. (Plus the usual other stuff.) If you're not using my other content mods, the Palace would go from 1 Culture to 0 Culture and 1 Favor. This might be a problem, so a +1 Culture bonus for the Palace is included in the Base mod for now, along with the general policy cost curve change.
> Several early World Wonders and National Wonders now also produce Building Favor at the cost of up to half their Culture. This list includes the Heroic Epic, Circus Maximus, National Epic, Stonehenge, Great Lighthouse, Pyramids, Colossus, Angkor Wat, Hagia Sophia, Taj Mahal, Sistine Chapel , Oracle, and Notre Dame.
> All of the above Favor modifiers are multiplied by x1, x2, or x3 depending on Pantheon. The Egyptian and Shinto pantheons generate the most Favor from buildings, while the Hindu and Norse generate the least.
> Favor generated this way improves all religious buildings within that city. The fraction allocated to each Focus will depend on its current Growth rate from technologies, so the Primary will get the largest share, followed by the Secondary, with each Minor focus unlocked getting the smallest shares.

Priest Favor: All religious buildings have a slot for a Priest specialist. The amount of Favor generated is larger than the other methods, but requires allocating a tile worker to the Priest slot, giving it a high ongoing opportunity cost.
> Each Priest adds +1 to Happiness, and generates 3 Favor, 1 Food, and 1 Culture. Because I've reduced the base Happiness you get and increased the rate at which population adds Unhappiness, you'll need to use these often, which will invariably slow down your cities' production. That's why they add a bit of Food; I wanted them to be a bit more growth-neutral than the more tangibly useful specialists.
> Except for Basilicae and the new National Wonders, every new religious building has a single Priest slot. Note that higher-rank buildings replace lower-rank ones, so you won't have both a Shrine and a Church within the same Focus providing multiple Priest slots. It'll still mean your cities will have far more Priest slots than any other specialist type.
> The amount of Favor generated is multiplied by x1, x2, or x3 depending on Pantheon. The Hindu and Sumerian pantheons generate the most Favor from Priests, while the Egyptian and Aztec pantheons generate the least.
> The Favor generated is purely used for the growth of that particular Focus' buildings, in that city. This means that Priest favor is the slowest to get started, because you can't generate it until you have at least a Shrine in that particular focus, but once you get past that hurdle it's the fastest to generate. Since it's not shared with other Foci, it's very tunable.
> To make Priests more desirable, their yields improve through several National Wonders; the National Epic, for instance, makes all Priests generate +1 Gold, in addition to its other effects. By the end of the Mythological Age, then, Priests would be your most desirable specialists even if they didn't add Happiness.

Other:
Great Person Improvements: the Academy, Manufactory, Customs House, Landmark, and Citadel each generate 1 less of their primary Yield (except for the Citadel) and add 2 Favor (again, except the Citadel, which only adds 1). This Favor is not multiplied by any Pantheon-specific multipliers, and is the same for all players. The Favor generated this way is split evenly between all Foci within all cities, does not depend on which city works the tile in question, and does not even depend on whether the tile is worked at all. Although you will never NOT work one of these, other than the Citadel; their yields, even with the -1, will never be lower than normal tiles. While I could figure out which city, if any, is actually working the tile, I didn't want to penalize the AI, as a Great Improvement could easily be swapped back and forth between two or more cities by a smart player.

It is impossible to naturally lose Favor, either Player or City, although each has caps and some Event options cost Favor. Player Favor is explicitly capped at 200 per population in your empire; you won't be able to unlock minor goods far too early, no matter how many ancient-era battles you get into. City Favor (the Favor applied to a specific Focus within a specific city) is also capped at the amount needed to progress one level beyond the current maximum; if your cities are currently limited to Churches (level 2, 300 Favor) in a Focus, then you can acquire up to 600 Favor in that Focus, as that would be the amount necessary to upgrade to a Cathedral. This extra stored favor will often be enough to immediately trigger an upgrade upon unlocking the next tier of buildings. Between the free Shrines you start with (or gain when a new god is added), the free Shrines in new cities, the Base Growth method, and the downgrades at the end of the Mythological Age, your Player Favor will almost never equal the sum of your City Favors. Note that the distribution of new Favor does not depend on which Foci are capped within a city; any Favor allocated to a Focus at its cap is lost.

EXAMPLE: I follow Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of Beauty and War. When someone says "make love, not war", my answer is "why not both?" The Sumerian Pantheon generates x3 Favor from Priests (meaning 9 per Priest), x2 from Buildings (2 per Monument, and Palace, 4 per Temple and Colosseum, and so on), and only x1 from Battles. I'm in the Medieval Era, which is pretty much the peak of the Mythological content; I've taken Monotheism and Theology, but nothing beyond that yet.
That means my Primary Focus, Beauty, caps at level 3 (3 in the capital) with a Growth rate of +6 (+8 in the capital).
My Secondary Focus, War, caps at level 2 (3 in the capital) with a Growth rate of +4 (+6 in the capital).
All Minor Foci cap at level 2 (2 in the capital) with a Growth rate of +3 (+5 in the capital). I currently follow three minor gods and am working towards unlocking a fourth.

In my capital, my Cathedral of Beauty earns 8 Favor each turn towards upgrading to a Basilica (even though it can't actually upgrade to one until I take the Conversion tech), my Church of War earns 6 Favor towards upgrading to a Cathedral (and it CAN upgrade once it gets enough Favor), and my other religions have one Church, one Shrine, and one with nothing; each of these three gain 5 Favor towards upgrading every turn, although the Church won't be able to upgrade until I take Heresy. Since you only need 100 Favor to create a Shrine, that last Focus won't take long to upgrade at all, especially if I'm in a war.
Next we go to Priest Favor. My Cathedral has a Priest slot, which I've filled, so that's another 9 Favor towards upgrading that Cathedral to a Basilica, but none of that helps the other Foci. The Church of War has a slot that I've filled, so it gets 9 as well; it'll upgrade faster than the Cathedral as a result. Of the remaining three Foci, I can't put priests into the one without a Shrine, but the other two each have a Priest slot that I haven't filled at the moment; once my Cathedral upgrades it'll free up one Priest (as Basilicae have no Priest slots) who can then be used in another Shrine. (In other words, you can shift which buildings upgrade quickly by changing which Priest slots are used, especially if you follow a Priest-heavy Pantheon. Basilicae have no Priest slots because they have no use for more Favor.)
Then we have Building Favor. In my capital, I might have 17 Favor per turn being generated by all of my buildings and Great Improvements, but this will be split between the Foci. 4.5 will go to my Primary, 3.5 to my Secondary, and 3.0 to each of the three Minors. This is noticeably less than the base growth rate, but remember that Base Favor doesn't count towards unlocking new gods and such, while the other three varieties of favor DO count on that global scheme and so are inherently more valuable.
Finally, consider Battle Favor. In a typical melee-on-melee fight, I'll generate ~20 Favor as each unit takes ~4-8 damage and I might kill the opposing unit in the process. This will be split between my various cities based on distance, so only 2 of it might go to my capital, with more going to my fringe cities. Those 2 points would be split evenly between the five Foci I've unlocked, for 0.4 per focus per fight in the capital. Obviously, this is not a large amount, but if I'm in a late-game war then there might be five or ten fights happening in a single turn, and I DID pick a Pantheon with the lowest Battle Favor generation; a Norse or Aztec god would get three times that amount per fight, to where even small skirmishes generate significant bursts of Favor. Also, note the geographic part; while Priest and Building Favor are usually largest in your core, developed cities that have population to spare, Battle Favor mostly generates near your smaller border towns, so this is a quick way to build up the Shrines in newly-founded cities; if 10 out of the 20 Favor points are going to a new town, and I have three Minor gods, then that's 2 City Favor per Focus per fight; again, the Norse or Aztec would get three times that much, so the amounts add up quickly.

TECHNOLOGIES

This mod adds 15 new technologies to the early eras. Each generally modifies two statistics: level caps and growth rates. The level cap is simply the maximum level, from 1 to 4, that you can have for a religious building; if a city is at the cap it will continue to accrue a limited amount of Favor, but will not upgrade into a higher form of building unless the cap is raised. The level cap is often 1 higher in your capital, depending on which technologies you've gained; if a tech says Capital then it only boosts the level by 1 within the capital, and if it says Non-Capital then everything other than the capital increases by 1.
The growth rate is simply a constant amount of Favor that each religious building gets each turn; each Focus' buildings evolve separately from the others. Like the maximum level, this Base Favor rate will almost always be higher in the capital.

Agriculture: Primary, Secondary, and Minor maximum level equal 1, and all three Growth values start at 1.*
* - While normal cities start at level 0 (no bonus) and have to grow to level 1 (Shrine), your capital begins the game with Shrines in both your Primary and Secondary Foci. Similarly, whenever you add a Minor God, one city gains a free Shrine; the city chosen will be the one with the fewest total religious buildings. Note that religious buildings can continue to accumulate Favor once they reach a new level, up to the amount needed for the next building in the chain, so adding a technology that increases maximum levels will often result in an immediate upgrade of your buildings, at least within your capital.

ANCIENT ERA:
Mysticism: Primary Growth +1, and all three Growth rates increase by 1 in your capital.
Spirituality: Primary Capital +1, Primary Growth +1, the Pyramids were moved here, and the level 1.5 Pantheon units unlock..
Mythology: Secondary Capital +1, Secondary Growth +1. I've also moved the Heroic Epic here (which now gives you at least 1 Minor Hero unit at all times, in addition to its old effect).
Shamanism: Minor Capital +1, Minor Growth +1, and unlocks the Oral Tradition national wonder (adds up to 1% tech steal chance, all non-Myth units trained in this city get +10% vs. Myth units, destroyed at Enlightenment)

CLASSICAL ERA:
Polytheism: Secondary Non-Capital +1, Secondary Growth +1, the Oracle was moved here.
Priesthood: Primary Non-Capital +1, Primary Growth +1, the Temple was moved here, and the minimum Primary level is now 1.
Hierarchy: Primary Capital +1, Primary Growth +1, the Hanging Gardens was moved here, and the level 2.5 Pantheon units unlock.
Rituals: Minor Non-Capital +1, Minor Growth +1, and the National Epic was moved here.
Philosophy: All three Growth rates increase by 1 in your capital.

MEDIEVAL ERA:
Monotheism: Primary Non-Capital +1, Primary Growth +1. I've also moved the Hagia Sophia here.
Theology: Secondary Capital +1, Secondary Growth +1, and the minimum Secondary level is now 1.
Conversion: Primary Capital +1, Primary Growth +1, the Garden was moved here, and unlocks the State Religion national wonder (+1 Happiness per 2 Policies, this city generates +25% Great People while all other cities get -25%, destroyed at Enlightenment).
Chivalry: Secondary Non-Capital +1, Secondary Growth +1.
Machinery: Secondary Growth -1.
Physics: Primary Growth -1.
Heresy: Minor Capital +1, Minor Growth +1, the level 3.5 Pantheon units unlock, and this unlocks the Crusade national wonder (makes your units better against Myth units and adds a combat bonus in foreign lands; destroyed at Enlightenment)
Apostasy: Secondary Capital +1, Secondary Growth +1, and this tech adds the Inquisition national wonder (gives normal units an extra bonus against enemy Myth units; unlike the others, this is NOT removed at the Enlightenment).
Education: All three Growth rates decrease by 1 in your capital.

RENAISSANCE ERA:
Iconoclasm: All three Growth rates increase by 1, Minor minimum level is now 1, Notre Dame was moved here
Steel: Minor Growth -1.
Reformation: Minor Capital -1, and the Enlightenment Project unlocks; this project is what ends the Mythological Era, removing all of the inherent penalties but destroying all of your religious buildings and mythological units.
Deism: Minor Non-Capital -1. I've also moved the Sistine Chapel here.
Chemistry: Primary Growth -1.
Metallurgy: Secondary Growth -1.
Archaeology: Minor Growth -1.
Scientific Theory: All three Growth rates decrease by 1 in your capital.

Screenshots are below.
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The goal of this layout is to make a natural progression, with religion becoming more and more important as time goes on. By the time you get to the Medieval, a major part of your empire's bonuses and powerful units will come from the god you worship. But then things start to get difficult; the push to go monotheistic adds a little bit of power through your major god, but once you enter the Renaissance, even religious techs reduce the minor gods to the point that they're far less useful. Favor rates start to slow down, penalties against your religion start to build up, and Myth units begin to be overshadowed by gunpowder weapons. Eventually, you'll hit a point where there's no real choice but to end the Mythological age, sever your connection with your god, and move on to eras dominated by a more mundane industrial lifestyle.
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UNITS

Unlike the Ascension mod, most Units in the Mythology mod do not unlock at specific technologies. Instead, most unlock through specific Focus-related buildings, or are awarded through Events. The list of unlocked units is far too large to be posted here, but the new characteristics not found in the core game are listed below. This mod adds two basic categories of Unit: Myth units and Hero units.

Myth Units are an entirely new combat class, containing mythological equivalents of every other combat class. Myth units are very strong, with high Strength ratings or movement abilities and an array of powerful, often unique special attacks and defenses. To make up for this, Myth units gain no XP from military buildings, do not benefit from promotions awarded by Buildings, Wonders, or Policies (with a few notable exceptions, such as the temples of the Darkness Focus), and will disappear at the end of the Mythological Age. Every Myth unit has at least one ability unavailable to their mundane counterparts, whether it's flight, regeneration, or something more exotic. All Myth units are limited in number; the most powerful Myth units are limited to 1 per empire, but even their weaker counterparts cannot be built more than a half-dozen or so times.
Myth units are built normally in cities, except that they can never be purchased or rushed. Some can be awarded through specific Events as well, which can exceed the per-empire cap.

These units unlock through three distinct methods.
> Most Myth units unlock through specific Focus buildings, so a Shrine of Animals will unlock the ability to produce Nemean Lions and Fenris Wolves, while the Church of Animals upgrades this to produce Manticores and Scarabs, a Cathedral of Animals unlocks Hydras and Griffons, and so on. Each of these levels is exclusive; as your religious buildings upgrade, each city will lose the ability to produce the weaker, cheaper Myth units as it unlocks the more powerful units. Note that the units too weak to be produced in your capital city will usually be available in at least one of your smaller towns, and any Focus that provides Myth units at a given level will also provide even better Myth units at all higher levels.
> Each Pantheon also unlocks three to four distinct Myth units at certain technologies. These Myth units are available to all gods within a Pantheon and do not depend on the level of the religious buildings in each city. Power-wise, they fall between the four Focus tiers (and so, their tiers are referred to as 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5), making them generally worse than the units you gain from your Primary and Secondary Foci but better than the ones gained from any minor gods.
Note that while most Pantheons have three unique Pantheon Myth units, the Norse and Egyptian pantheons add a fourth Pantheon unit primarily designed to kill Myth units (the Hersir and Pharaoh, respectively), to make up for their lack of other powerful anti-Myth bonuses. While unlocked in similar ways, these extra units are not treated as Myth units.
> Finally, Myth units can occasionally be awarded through Events, depending on your choice of action. While some events will depend on your pantheon, deity, or alignment choices, many creatures will be available through these events that would otherwise be unavailable to you. Most Events cannot award the top tiers of Myth units, but many Events provide multiple weaker units or allow you to purchase a strong Myth unit by sacrificing something of comparable value.

Myth units possess a variety of abilities not selectable by mundane units. These include:
Regeneration: The unit heals some or all of its damage each turn, regardless of its actions.
Trample: When attacking, each enemy unit adjacent to the defending unit takes 1 damage, but for each unit hurt this way the trampling unit's strength is reduced by 10%. Note that this could cause the unit to die in a fight that pre-combat estimates said was survivable.
Healing Aura:: When attacking, each friendly unit adjacent to the attacking unit heals 1 damage, but for each unit healed this way the attacking unit's strength is reduced by 10%.
Teamwork: This unit gains +20% when adjacent to friendly units.
Loner: This unit gains +20% when NOT adjacent to friendly units.
Damage Reduction: This unit takes 1 less damage in every combat. Technically, it heals 1 damage at the end of any combat where it took damage. So a unit at 1 HP that takes a 1-point attack will still die, even though this would normally be offset by the healing.
Stun: When a unit is damaged by this unit, it gains the "Stunned" effect. At the start of its next turn, the stunned unit loses all movement points and the effect is removed.
Venom: When a unit is damaged by this unit, it gains the "Poisoned" effect. At the start of each turn, a poisoned unit takes 1 damage, and has a 50% chance of curing the poison. Note that the chance to cure comes AFTER the damage is dealt; all Poisoned units will take at least 1 damage from the effect.
Disease: When a unit is damaged by this unit, it gains the "Diseased" effect. At the start of each turn, a diseased unit has a 1 in 3 chance of taking 1 damage, and a 1 in 6 chance of curing the disease. These outcomes are exclusive. As long as the disease persists, the unit's self-healing is reduced by 1 point.
Spawn: When this unit kills a non-Myth unit, the owner has a chance (based on the relative strengths of the units) of gaining a new unit of a certain type, weaker than the original. As in, when a Zombie Horde kills a Swordsman, the Zombie Horde's owner has a good chance of getting a free Zombie; the Zombie is somewhat weaker than the original Horde and lacks the Spawn ability. A Vampire Master fighting the same Swordsman would have a considerably lower chance of spawning a new Vampire.
Note that many of these are also given to various mundane units in the Ascension mod, which takes place long after the Mythological Age ends.

Some Myth units will also begin with promotions available to mundane units through other religious buildings, most of which normally do not affect Myth units. There are dozens of custom abilities given to Myth units, making them invaluable parts of your army. Several Myth units (such as the Unicorn, Nemesis, and all of the Darkness units) gain additional bonuses when fighting other Myth units; this allows them to fill the same "counter-Myth" role as Hero units, as well as being much harder to kill when attacked by an opponent's Myth forces. Finally, a small number of units (such as the Phoenix) have unique abilities not indicated by promotions. See the units' help text for more information. If Firaxis ever removes the limitation on number of promotions, I'll create custom promotions to control these abilities.

Hero Units are the counterpart to Myth units. Unlike the Myth units, all Heroes are part of one of the existing combat classes (Melee, Archer, Naval, etc.) except that they are stronger than their mundane counterparts, require no maintenance, and require no strategic resources. More importantly, every Hero also gets a significant bonus against all Myth units; they're effectively the counter to the enemy's heavier Myth forces. Heroes cannot be trained, and do not generate Great General points. Only the Justice Focus explicitly improves Hero units, but they gain most abilities granted to mundane units of their types as well. That is, if you have a Wonder or Policy that gives all Archer units an attack bonus, then this bonus will apply to any archer Heroes as well.
Hero units are divided into two groups: Minor and Major Heroes.

Minor Heroes are generic, unnamed units designed to counteract your enemies' early Myth units. There are four types, corresponding to the four mundane unit chains of the early eras (swords, spears, archers, horsemen), and it is possible to have multiple Minor Heroes of each type. Once you build the Heroic Epic you will always have at least one Minor Hero, with a randomly selected one appearing in your capital if your existing Minor Heroes all die, and one moderately common (and repeatable) Event awards you your choice of Minor Hero. Minor Heroes begin at level 2 (with 10 XP, regardless of whether your cities have Barracks or not), have the same base strength as comparable mundane units, but begin with three promotions: either Drill I or Shock I, a single randomly selected mundane promotion requiring either of those two, and the Hero promotion to fight Myth units.
The Egyptian and Sumerian Pantheons also give extra bonuses to newly-created Minor Heroes, making them a more important part of those Pantheons' warfare.

There are 4 Minor Heroes, not Pantheon-specific or alignment-dependent: a Swordsman, a Horseman, an archery-type unit that falls between the Archer and Crossbowman in power, and a spear-type unit that falls between the Spearman and Pikeman in power. While they cannot upgrade like their normal counterparts would, their extra abilities will keep them useful well into the Medieval Era.

Major Heroes are one-of-a-kind named units, unique to a Pantheon; only four Pantheons have any of these. With the sole exception of the Hindu Avatar unit, they are ONLY obtainable through the rare "High" Events (the rarity of which depends on your Alignment, and each of which can only occur once per game). You can not have more than one Major Hero of each type, ever.
These units are noticeably stronger than their mundane counterparts, with base strengths substantially above the baseline for their unit types. They start at level 3 (with 30 XP), and begin with Drill 1 or Shock 1, two other predetermined promotions, and the Hero promotion.

Hero units cannot upgrade to more technologically advanced units, so eventually they won't be worth keeping around. In the later eras, you will unlock promotions, Projects, and Wonders that will allow your mundane units to fight Myth units more effectively, greatly reducing the need for Heroes. By the time you start the Enlightenment, most Myth units will be noticeably weaker than their mundane counterparts, and once you reach the technology for rifles even the strongest Myth units become obsolete. But in the early eras, they can completely dominate the military game.

The number of Major Heroes you get, and their exact power levels, will depend on your choice of Pantheon. The Greek Pantheon gets eight Major Heroes, each of which is somewhat stronger than a mundane unit, while Sumerians have four Major Heroes, each of which is significantly more powerful than its Greek counterparts but which have other drawbacks. The Norse Heroes are similar to the Greeks in power, while the Hindu Avatar is by far the most powerful Major Hero in the game, not only in terms of raw strength but in its special abilities (respawns in your capital when killed, starts with extra promotions depending on your choice of deity). The Aztec, Shinto, and Egyptian Pantheons have no Major Heroes, making up for this lack in other ways.

Once the player completes the Enlightenment, all Myth units and Heroes will begin to spontaneously disband, awarding the player Gold and Research based on the value (including experience) of the unit. When the Enlightenment process completes, any remaining units of these types will disband; additionally, any promotions awarded through religious buildings will also be removed from units, and certain religious National Wonders will be destroyed. Note that a promotion will be removed even if those promotions were selected through mundane means. That is, if you worshiped a God of Healing (whose Church effect includes giving newly-trained units the Medic promotion), any units with Medic will lose that promotion even if they selected it through Experience.
In the long term the solution is to create custom promotions that give the same effects, so that it'd be easier to strip the religious promotions without harming the ones gained normally. But until the developers raise the promotion limit, that's not possible. I'll try to make the logic that strips the promotions more intelligent, but there's not a lot to work with.
Most persistent Event effects also disappear at the Enlightenment, although not all. A player who has come to depend on these religious bonuses might have a hard time during the transition period, but overall it should be a relief to return to a more mundane game environment.

MECHANICS

Beyond the specifics mentioned above, this mod has a few notable mechanisms to discuss.

The Start:
At the start of each game, you select the central deity of your personal pantheon. No other civilizations will be allowed to follow your primary deity, although those that pick another Major god within the same Pantheon will still be able to add your deity as a Minor god (and vice versa); a major god added this way gains only that god's primary Focus. Note that the player always picks first, and so will have all 28 choices. Unless you disable the Historical Bias flag in the setup screen, the AIs have a 50% chance of choosing a random major god within the pantheon historically linked to their civilization. This choice of central deity has a number of effects; each Pantheon has a different set of Favor multipliers, different High Events, unique Pantheon-specific Myth units and anti-Myth bonuses, and your particular choice of central god not only determines your two strongest Foci (with no two gods using the same two Foci), it also determines which seven Foci you can never gain (four banned Foci per Pantheon, plus the three Secondary Foci for the major gods you didn't select.) This results in a wide variety of play experiences, with multiple deity options that fit any player's personality.

Additionally, civilizations in the Mythological Age suffer significant penalties to Production, Gold, and Research, and Food production. The penalties increase with Era, and these all combine to make cities develop more slowly. Culture also suffers indirectly as most of the early Culture-generating Buildings have been altered to generate Favor instead (mentioned earlier). Happiness is similarly reduced; in the Ancient Era each population adds 6% more unhappiness, and later Eras either increase this by an additional 6% (Classical and Renaissance) or reduce the Happiness generated by each luxury good by 1 (Medieval and post-Renaissance). While this Happiness reduction sounds crippling, remember that Priest specialists (one of the best ways to generate Favor) also add +1 Happiness to your empire; using a Priest means one less worked tile, which compounds the yield penalties mentioned above, although they generate a small amount of Food and Culture to help offset this. I'm still trying to get the AI to use Priests, but the goal is to have about half of your Priest slots be filled at all times.

Events:
Periodically throughout the Mythological Age, Events will occur. Unlike the non-interactive Events in the Empire mod, these will always allow you to choose one of four resolutions, each with its own effects. Each choice is tied to one of the four directions on the Mandala; in addition to any tangible effects of these Events, you will move one space on the Mandala in the appropriate direction.

For example, an Event might tell you that a group of wild Manticores is rampaging through your countryside, terrorizing the villagers. Your options would consist of:
1> Kill the creatures, to protect your peasantry. (Get a free Hero unit, and +1 Lawful)
2> Encourage the creatures, to keep your soldiers on their toes. (All soldiers gain 5 XP, and +1 Chaotic)
3> Capture them and attempt to breed them for your own use. (Get two free Manticores, and +1 Material)
4> Ignore them, because you have more important universal truths to ponder. (Research boost, and +1 Ephemeral)

Events like this might trigger brief Golden Ages, provide Gold, add custom promotions to units, provide free units, and so on. The intent is that these should come up randomly, averaging about once every ~10 turns or so, but never within less than 5 turns of each other, on Standard speed. Exact numbers are subject to playtesting. Many of the more valuable options will have a cost, like losing 100 Favor to gain a very powerful Myth unit, having a grassland turn to desert to gain a free tech, or sacrificing a randomly selected military unit to gain a permanent +2 Happiness in your empire.

Most Events are tied inherently to a specific alignment; players in the appropriate area of the Mandala will see those Events more often than someone who is on the opposite side, and vice versa for Events with the opposite alignment. An Event will explicitly say which alignments, if any, it is tied to, which will help the player decide whether it's time to move to a new area of the grid. Events are also divided into three categories based on rarity and power: Low, Medium, and High.
Low Events are fairly common, with an average of a 2% chance of triggering each turn and no event can trigger more than once every 20 turns. There are 5 of these; their effects are fairly small and simple, and provide instantaneous rewards such as food, gold, or free low-level units. Low Events will be the main source of Alignment changes, as each choice will adjust your position on the Mandala.
Medium Events are less common, averaging a 1% chance per turn, and no one event can trigger more than once every 40 turns. There are 8 of these, with significantly stronger effects than the Low Events. Many of the effects are persistent until the Enlightenment, and can include more powerful units such as Minor Heroes or mid-tier Myth units.
High Events are rare; while these average the same 1% chance per turn as the Medium Events, these can never repeat within a single game and will not trigger until you reach the Classical Era. Two High Events are common to all pantheons and provide powerful bonuses; each Pantheon then adds 4-8 custom Events, generally providing Major Heroes and high-end Myth units.

The Enlightenment:
Upon researching the Reformation Technology, a player can begin the Enlightenment (a Project). Upon its completion, several effects occur:
> Religious buildings begin to downgrade, at the rate of 100 local Favor lost per Focus per turn. It is remotely possible that you could gain more than 100 Favor in a turn and hold off this downgrade indefinitely, but it's extremely unlikely, especially as non-Priest Favor will be split between many Foci. Generally speaking, it'll take about a dozen or so turns to completely degrade to zero on Standard speed.
As each building downgrades you will lose some of the effects you've been depending on, but to compensate you will be awarded a small amount of Culture and Golden Age progress per building lost.
> Mythological units and Hero units will also begin to disappear, spontaneously removing themselves from your control. As each disbands you will gain some Gold and Research per unit lost, depending on its value and experience. Once all religious buildings are gone, any remaining Myth and Hero units will disappear, the Mythology penalties mentioned above will vanish, and many Favor-generating Buildings (such as the Temple) will return to their original effects.

Between the culture, research etc., you should find yourself advancing quickly as the Mythological Age ends, possibly gaining a tech or two, a couple policies, and a Golden Age within just a few short turns. Because of the penalties inherent to remaining in the Mythological Age, it's really in your best interests to do this once you get to the point where you have Musketmen and such. While you can choose to delay this process indefinitely, there's little benefit in doing so as mundane yields will quickly outpace those provided by the gods, and rifles will easily destroy the strongest Dragons.

The Mandala:
The Mandala is the "alignment" game board on which the entire Mythology system is based. All Deities, Events, and Foci are measured along two axes: Lawful-vs-Chaotic, and Material-vs-Ephemeral. There is no Good-vs-Evil axis. No one Focus is inherently good or evil across all pantheons; a god of Death might be a tormentor in one pantheon but a honorable judge in another, and while Fire gods were often malicious, the Sun gods that shared the same specialty were often benevolent creators or protectors.
Lawful beliefs represent both the laws of man and the laws of nature; predictable, orderly foci follow this axis.
Chaotic beliefs do not inherently imply destruction; chaos also means freedom from the rigid laws of man, and the flexibility for nature to find new paths.
Material beliefs focus on the power of the mundane world, whether it's the raw strength of nature or the fertility of your citizens.
Ephemeral beliefs concentrate on the hidden world of thought and magic, including the afterlife, as well as the less visible natural forces.

The Mandala is available through a new popup; this window can be in triggered multiple ways, including clicking on the Favor meter on the top of the screen or through a pulldown in the upper-right corner menu. Besides showing your deity, the available minor deities, and so on, this screen also shows you the current Favor values in each of your cities, as well as a comparison of the Favor generated by each major empire. This is the primary interface for the Mythology mod, so you should check this window periodically.
NOTE: The values displayed in the Mandala update often, but it's possible that the values seen when you enter the screen will be slightly outdated if you've avoided any of the update triggers. Clicking any of the buttons in this window or on any Foci will refresh the display.

Your initial position on this grid will depend on your Major god's particular Foci, with his Primary Focus counting more than his Secondary. This Alignment can shift in several ways during the game; every time you add a new Minor god, your position on the grid will shift slightly, and your choices during the random Events will each move you one space on the grid as well.
Your current position on the Alignment grid defines which Minor gods are available to be added to your Pantheon at the present time; add too many Chaotic gods and make mostly Chaotic choices, and your only options will be Chaos-oriented gods. The powerful Foci with the most straightforward effects (the first two groups) require traveling well away from the center of the Mandala, while staying near the center tends to give a wider variety of interesting choices. There is really no wrong choice; nearly any path will result in a viable pool of half a dozen minor gods over a typical game, with varying benefits. It's often simply a question of personal taste or the needs of the moment.
A player who accumulates enough empire-wide Favor to add a new god may choose to do so at any time; you are not required to pick a minor god at the earliest possible moment, and it is possible that due to your choices on various events that your current position would allow no new gods at that moment. The AI will add a new minor god at the earliest possible opportunity, however; if there are no valid choices at its current position, it will attempt to move towards the nearest location that does allow for a new minor god.

Attached are two screenshots of the Mandala. (These were made using a simple plotting program, the final versions will be much more interesting to look at.) A more resolved version of the second plot (the one with the names of Foci available at each point) is included in the Player Pack, to help players get an idea of the best directions to go, but it should give a rough idea of where the best areas are.

Generally speaking, there are nine "optimal" regions on the grid, places where the highest number of choices are generally available. These fall into three groups: the origin ([0,0] and the 12 points within 2 spaces of it), the four distant axes ([0,5] to [0,8] and the similar analogues on the other axes), and four small diagonal clusters ([3,4], [4,4], [4,3] and their mirrors). The number of choices at each location will heavily depend on your particular Pantheon and the choices you've made so far; eventually, the mod will give recommendations at each Event and Minor god choice designating which options take you towards the nearest concentration of Foci, as these are the choices the AI prefers to make.

To read this plot, the important thing to note is that the first two groups are Foci that are OUTSIDE certain red and blue lines (the thickest ones), while the remaining groups are all unlocked INSIDE the appropriate lines. So if you go to the intersection of points at (0,+4.5), the blue lines heading slightly downwards to either side are the boundary of the Fertility focus; anywhere above those two lines is a point where you can add a Fertility god. Similarly, if you go to the intersection at (+1.5,+1.5) and look at the two thick reddish-orange lines heading away from that point, the Water focus will be available anywhere outward of those two lines. In-game, clicking on a Focus highlights the part of the mandala that allows that particular choice, so it'll be easier to see once you get into the game.

How hard would it be to mod in additional Pantheons, if one wanted to? Theoretically, and not looking at balance, atm.

Glad you asked. The answer is "almost no work, as long as you don't care about the balance." As long as you didn't intend to add any entirely new Foci to the existing 21, there's really not much to it:

1> Pick your 13 deities and assign them 17 Foci. This was actually the hardest part; I'd examined several other pantheons and tried to see how they'd allocate, and invariably the biggest problem was in just finding 13 deities that didn't overlap too much. I went through half a dozen Native American pantheons; Inuit, Navajo, and Sioux came closest to working for the North American tribes, and while I could have added the Maya, they felt too similar to some of the others. I also examined a few others like Yoruba (Nigeria), and few had nearly enough material to work with. I was really tempted to just make up a generic Native American-inspired pantheon with purely animal totems, but the Shinto okami ended up working well at that sort of thing anyway.

2A> Add one entry in the Pantheons table. This one only has the Favor generation multipliers, the text keys, and the icon definition.
2B> Add 13 entries in the Deities table. It's pretty short, mainly just a few text keys, an icon definition, a boolean flag for whether this is a major god or not, and one or two Focus names.

3> Fill out a bunch of text keys; I think it's 4 for the Pantheon, and 3 for each deity, but I might be off on that one. Most of those are really optional; you don't HAVE to write out a long civilopedia entry for each god if you don't feel like it.

4> Add the appropriate 14 icons, one per deity and one for the pantheon (preferably a group picture of some kind if you can manage it, or something distinctly related to them, like a picture of Mount Olympus for the Greeks); I'm still working out how many sizes of icon you'd need, but figure 256, 64, and 45 at the absolute minimum. I might also need an 80 for the four major gods, but I haven't finalized the interface yet.

That's it.

There MIGHT be something in the Lua code I've written for picking deities that hard-codes the total number to 7, but I can fix that easily enough. Beyond that though, it's all automatic; all the data structures store is which Foci are available to you and which you've unlocked already, and that's all set at the start of the game. There are currently no god-specific abilities of any kind; everything's filtered through the 21 Foci, with the level 4 building (which is only buildable in your capital and only if the god in question is your central deity) generally being something thematically linked to that god. After all, if Odin is the only god who can ever reach level 4 in the Knowledge domain (he is), then there's really no reason not to make the Basilica of Knowledge have an effect related to him.

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Now, that's all if you want to ignore balance. So here's the balance parts you're ignoring.

The reason I made seven pantheons is that there are only ten combinations of three whole numbers (integers greater than 0) that add to 6. (4,1,1) has three permutations, (3,2,1) has six, and (2,2,2) has one. Those numbers are the Favor multipliers (3/2/1 for six pantheons, and 2/2/2 for the Greeks). I felt the 4/1/1 combinations would be too crippling to the AIs, so that left seven unique combinations, meaning any new pantheon would necessarily duplicate the balance of an existing pantheon, unless I wanted to get into fractions. (Note: Originally there was no 2/2/2, which is why the original concept in the other thread listed six pantheons; when I moved the Greeks there, that left a gap, and after a bit of shuffling the Shinto fit into the open slot nicely.)

Second, there's the question of overlap on Foci. There are 21 Foci, and their distribution has a few rules I followed when setting this up:
1> Every pantheon has gods for the four elements. It's hard not to do this anyway, but trust me, the math works better if you guarantee it.
2> No pantheon can include two gods with the same Focus. Not debateable, it just won't work if you do this.
3> Every pantheon has four Foci that none of its gods can ever reach. (That's just a simple consequence of the math, 21-17 = 4.) This combination of four should not be the same as for any other pantheon, and no more than three pantheons drop any one Focus. (It's generally 1-2 missing each one.)
4> The Secondary foci for your pantheon's major gods will be off-limits unless you select that god, so in effect there are seven off-limits foci in every game, but which seven they are will be different for every god.
5> No two major gods have the exact same combination of Primary and Secondary, although a few are inverses of each other (where one god is Death/Darkness and another is Darkness/Death). It's better if you can come up with really unique combinations, like Beauty/War for Inanna; most of the obvious common combos are already taken by the first few pantheons on my list.
6> Every focus has at least one god with it as a Primary, but no more than two, with the sole exception of Death, which has three. (Seriously, nearly every pantheon has its god of death as a major entity. It was hard to avoid; some pantheons had up to a dozen distinct gods for the afterlife.)
7> Every pantheon should have at least one god that favors a warmongering playstyle (meaning foci like War and Fire) and one that favors a more peaceful builder philosophy (like Fertility and Crafts).
8> Unless you can't avoid it, you shouldn't give a major god two Foci from the same group. I've violated this a few times (Poseidon is Water/Earth, Ra is Animals/Plants) but it's a good rule because it prevents certain categories from being locked out too easily.
9> Unless you can't avoid it, you shouldn't give a major god two Foci that are oriented along the same axis. (This causes them to start so far from 0,0 that there's really only one optima they can move towards.) So if your Primary is a Chaotic focus, then the Secondary shouldn't also be chaotic. This is part of why the four elements are so important: they're diagonal movers and place you about halfway between the axial optima and the diagonal ones, but it's best to use perpendicular ones, like a Chaotic primary and a Material secondary.

Beyond that, I try to balance things, keeping roughly comparable numbers within each group of 4 for which foci get banned and which are primaries or secondaries. That is, there aren't substantially more or less pantheons with Plants gods than with Animals gods; for every one that drops one, there's a pantheon that drops the other. I managed this all in Excel, of course.

Awesome, thanks for the info.

Sounds interesting, i've always loved playing AoM!

This is one area I could really use some suggestions in. I've got a large list of possible Myth units from Greek, Egyptian, and Norse lore, but not nearly as much for the others. Each Myth unit should involve one ability that normal units can't match; Medusae causing the attacked unit to miss a turn, a Hydra gaining a free promotion every time it fights instead of accruing XP, a Phoenix that respawns in your capital whenever it dies, a flying Dragon unit that can move across all terrain freely, and so on.

For the hindu pantheon, i'd suggest the erawan elephant (It was indra's mount, had lots of heads. Erawan is the thai name though, not sure if it's the same in hindu), nagas (giant sepents), garudas, and maybe vetalas.

heroes shouldn't be difficult though, there's a huge range to choose from in the Ramayana: Hanuman, Rama, Thotsakan (again, Thai name), etc.

So let me say something before the first version of this mod comes out (aiming for Friday): there are a few areas I REALLY need feedback in, and it'd be better if I could get some of these answered BEFORE I give you the mod.

1> How many combats do you have in an average turn in the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Eras? I don't mean how many combats per turn you're in a war, I mean how many PERIOD over the course of the first ~200 game turns. Any barbarian fights, any fights against other empires, and so on.
See, my big concern about Battle Favor is the balance; if I make the numbers too large then it really, really encourages Aztec or Norse followers to stay in a perma-war environment and just rack up the points. On the other hand, if I make them too small then it's too hard to "jump-start" the system and get to Shrines in your fringe cities.

2> How many cities do you generally have at the end of each of the first three Eras?
Again, Battle Favor. If you have too many, then the Favor is split too many ways. Obviously this balance will change because of what I'm going to do to Happiness, Production, etc., but I'd like to get this ballparked.

3> How many minor gods would you WANT to add to a pantheon in a typical game?
And no, "as many as possible" is not an acceptable answer. If the number's too high, then there's really no distinctiveness any more, no real difference between one game and the next, but if the number's too low then you'll feel too constrained. Initially I'm aiming for ~4, but that can be tweaked.

4> Should any of the major Civ5 balance points be removed for this mod?
Realize that Civil Service, the tech that adds +1 to freshwater farms, doesn't come until you're more than halfway through this mod, and Astronomy is entirely after the end of this process. Some types of Improvement (like Lumbermills) don't unlock until you're well into the religious techs. In a typical game you go through the Ancient and Classical techs very quickly, but this mod will double the amount of time spent in those eras.
So all of your mythological gameplay will occur during a period where you're limited to your own continent and where non-resource tile yields are very weak. I'm actually using that as a reason to make Priests attractive; like the Empaths, Priests add to food as well as Happiness, so they aren't a huge resource drain. But it'd have a significant impact on the game.
I can very easily shift things around, such that some of these Improvement effects are moved to much earlier techs. But these sorts of changes would have far-reaching implications, so it's not something I'd consider lightly. For instance, if you can reach other continents well before the Renaissance, then it makes a BIG difference in your ability to trade for luxuries, make Research Agreements, and so on.

I live in a city called: Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit.

I live in a city called: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, but everyone just uses two of the words in the middle of that name and calls it L.A.

1. Not really sure, I sometimes wipe out the rest of my continent (if non-tsl or pangea) in the classical/medieval era. I don't really think that's a normal strategy, though. Of course, on the other hand, sometimes I play peaceful until the industrial.
2. A lot. I cram most of my cities in the earlier eras, so that they're well-built in later ones, unless I need a new resource.
3. I think that'd require actually playing to decide.
4. Not yet, see how that turns out.

1. Not really sure, I sometimes wipe out the rest of my continent (if non-tsl or pangea) in the classical/medieval era. I don't really think that's a normal strategy, though. Of course, on the other hand, sometimes I play peaceful until the industrial.

That does seem to be part of the problem. If you play on, say, Small Continents, then it's far tougher to have an early war, and you could easily get to the Industrial without having a single fight after a few early Barbarian skirmishes. That sort of thing could be crippling if you rely on battle-generated Favor to advance.

I'm trying to get an estimate of specific numbers, though, so the next time you play, just keep a running tally. Also try to keep track of how many points of damage each unit took during a typical fight.

2. A lot. I cram most of my cities in the earlier eras, so that they're well-built in later ones, unless I need a new resource.

I'm hoping that the changes I'll make to the Happiness system will mitigate that; I'm trying to make it VERY difficult to expand that quickly. If this causes you to only have 2 cities instead of 3 at the end of the Ancient, then there's less need for me to also add on a large penalty to research or growth; the Happiness would have done most of the work of slowing the game down for me. My goal is to make it take about twice as long to get through the first few Eras, and adding 14 techs will already have a big impact on that, but I also need to slow down how quickly your cities can grow or expand. On a Standard speed and a Small map, I generally take ~50 turns to get through the Ancient, ~50 to get through the Classical, and ~100 to get through the Medieval; I'm trying to bump those up to more like 100/150/150.

3. I think that'd require actually playing to decide.

Probably, but what I'm really getting at is this: if the Mythology mod has you being penalized in half a dozen ways compared to vanilla (Happiness penalties, research penalties, production penalties, gold penalties, growth penalties, culture penalties, and even military penalties), and you won't be able to quickly reach the techs and Wonders that would normally allow you to offset these, then how many of them should you be able to neutralize through your choices of gods? All of them, most of them, or only a small number of them?

Take happiness as an example. Everyone's starting off in a pretty deep hole, happiness-wise; you'll have less overall happiness, population will make you unhappy faster than before, and luxuries won't help very much. Sure, you can use Priest specialists to make up part of the difference, but every Citizen used as a Priest is one that's not working a tile. But then you add Aphrodite to your pantheon, and every city gets an extra point of Happiness or two. Suddenly, you're no longer fighting uphill against that penalty; there are still a half-dozen other penalties to deal with, but it's one fewer thing to worry about.

Same for other areas. If I give everyone a -25% research penalty, then this really cripples your technology gain unless/until you add a god of Knowledge. Do that, and now you're back at the baseline for research, or even ahead of the curve. If I give everyone a -25% production penalty, and a god of War gives you +25% military production with a level 2 building, then the penalty is effectively removed when building units. And so on.

So I guess the question is, should you ever be able to add so many minor gods to your pantheon that all of the penalties of being a religious civ are offset by god-given bonuses? To where the Enlightenment is something you just don't want to ever do? And how unique should a single game really be; should it be like the vanilla game, where you can follow the same basic playstyle regardless of which civ you play, or should it be more restrictive to where your choices of gods make two games very different?

And yes, I know that you can't definitively answer this until you actually play the mod. But I want people to be aware of the issue BEFORE they start playing, to have an idea in mind about what the pace should be, and to have an opinion about how pervasive the god bonuses should really be. Nearly everything in this mod is being build blindly; it's not like the AC mod where I had existing benchmarks for costs and strengths to go by. This mod is full of entirely new systems and I'm having to guess at balance; while I think I can do that fairly well by now, it's still likely to have major balance issues once I'm done.

1. between none and 20, i'm guessing, i don't go to war unless i'm DoWed on.
2. between 3 and 4
3. 9 sounds good (Why is Hephaestus a major god though?)
4. Nope

I live in a city called: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, but everyone just uses two of the words in the middle of that name and calls it L.A.

Everyone just calls my city krung thep, but the official name is krung thep mahanakhon, foreigners call it bangkok.

1. between none and 20, i'm guessing, i don't go to war unless i'm DoWed on.

Just to be clear, I need exact numbers for as many games as possible. If the answer is "none, I didn't have any early wars and didn't see a single Barbarian in this game" then that's fine, but I need the actual numbers for exactly how many fights you had and how many turns it took to get out of those three eras. And yes, it'll depend on which civ you picked, what map type, and so on, but I'm trying to get the standard deviation of the range of values.

3. 9 sounds good (Why is Hephaestus a major god though?)

Not "how many should be in the full Pantheon", I'm asking "how many should you unlock the bonuses from in a single game by adding them to your PERSONAL pantheon". You will NOT get the bonuses from every god in the Pantheon, you'll only get bonuses from the small pool of gods you specifically unlock, and that'll be less than half of them. It's really not mathematically feasible to unlock more than 6ish, so the question is whether I should aim for 3, 4, 5, or 6.
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As for Hephaestus, it's not a simple answer. In this specific case, you have to look at the rules I specified a few posts up for how pantheons are arranged. Specifically:
> Each Pantheon needed to have the same number of options for Major gods (I went with 4, although if it hadn't worked out I could have lowered this to 3)
> Each Pantheon needed to have at least one major god whose foci are combat-oriented and one whose foci are aimed towards "builder" playstyles. If I can cover other niches, even better, but those two are pretty essential.
> Each Major God had to be one that could be assigned two distinct Foci
> Each Pantheon needed to include gods, major or minor, for the four elemental Foci.

So look at the Greeks. Obviously, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon are the major gods, there's really no question. But none of those are particularly combat-heavy combinations. And the pantheon has to have a god of Fire; while I COULD have given that to Apollo as a sun god and had Heph be Crafts only, that wouldn't really leave anyone with the Art focus. And what other god in the Greek pantheon can be given two distinct specialties? The only ones even remotely close to that would be Apollo, Athena, and Hera. So I could make Apollo be Art/Fire, but that's an awkward choice and isn't really combat-oriented enough, or I could try to work something out with Athena, but beyond wisdom/knowledge, what would her other focus be? Her other specialty was war, which'd fit a niche I need, but I can't take that from Ares. So I'd either have to rework the system to add a second War-type Focus (which'd require removing something like Darkness or Storms, which wouldn't work well with the other pantheons), or screw the arrangement up even further. And Hera could mix Fertility with something else, but what other focus could she have that wouldn't cause even worse problems?
What really decided it was my desire to make the Greeks the "beginner" pantheon, which meant giving their major gods most of the foci from the first two groups, all the straightforward elemental and yield stuff. So I wanted Crafts or Fertility to be represented in the major gods, as well as Fire, and that really narrowed it to Heph.
On the "second War-type Focus" part, I'd actually originally had Honor as a focus instead of Darkness, to act as a second War-type option. But most pantheons had more Death gods than War gods, so I really had no choice in the end.

This sort of thing came up a lot; a lot of gods who ended up in the "major" category did so because of the fact that they'd mix several distinct specialties, instead of focusing on a single area like War. Look at the others:

Egypt was fine, since there's really no question that Ra, Isis, Osiris, and Set are the main four, and they're all multidimensional enough to be good choices. It required a little rearrangement; Osiris really should be Justice/Death, but I couldn't do that because Anubis needed to be Death. And Ra is a sun god, which'd normally imply something like Fire, but I needed that one for Bast and so I focused on Ra's "creator of all life" bit and made him Animals/Plants.

Norse had Odin, Loki, and Thor as clear choices. Frigg was the top among the female gods, but her inclusion was more because I needed a more defense-oriented choice, someone with enough range that I could justify a good 2-focus combination in the right areas. None of the other possibilities in Norse mythology really had that.

It's the same issue with the Sumerians. Anu, Enki, and Enlil were clearly the biggest gods, but it got fuzzy after that with another 4-5 possible major gods. I wanted a war-oriented god who had some other distinct specialty as well; Inanna fit perfectly, especially since it was hard to find any other major gods that would justify a Beauty focus in any way. The only other possibility for a major god was Utu, but he mixed all of the most common specialties (Sun god, justice, and death), so no matter what I did with him he'd overlap with the other pantheons.

The Aztecs were about the same; Quetzalcoatl probably wouldn't justify being a major god, except that everyone's heard of him because of the whole bit with the Spaniards, and it allowed me to add an Art-focused major god (and in a combat-oriented pantheon, to boot). I'll admit, I had a bit of fun picking from the minor Aztec choices; seriously, how can you NOT include a pantheon that has:
> A goddess of beauty/sexuality who is also explicitly the patron of female prostitutes
> A god of agriculture and feasting who's also the patron of homosexuals and male prostitutes
> A "healing" goddess of purification from filth, disease, or excess. (Think about that combination for a minute, in the context of the previous two entries. Yep, STDs, and she was the patron of adulterers.)
The Aztecs sounded like a fun bunch, other than that whole sacrifice thing. In the seven pantheons I wanted a range of philosophies, really, ranging from the aloof, eternal types to the more "worldly" gods, and the Aztecs really anchor one end of that spectrum.

The Shinto were just tough to work out. You could have made a lot of arguments for who was "major", but a few of the choices gave combinations I really wanted. Inari, for instance, is the kami of fertility, rice, agriculture, foxes, industry, and worldly success. That would justify a HUGE range of possible combinations, but the kicker is that many modern corporations in Japan focus on that "industry and worldly success" part and have shrines to her as their patron. So I made her Wealth/Animals.
A similar issue led to Hachiman's status; he was the kami of archery and war, which'd be pretty straightforward, but he was also worshipped by peasants as a god of agriculture and fishing. Since he's so widely worshipped, there was really no question of adding him. So I made him Plants/War; I really needed at least one major god with Plants as his primary focus, and the only other option for that was to flip Ra.
I'd also considered Uzume, but there were just too many overlapping foci.

Then there's the Hindu. If you're measuring "major" by number of followers, then you shouldn't have Brahma (and maybe Shakti?) on the list, but I wasn't going to split up the trimurti and it'd be hard to figure out who else to elevate. Again, I had to take some liberties with everyone's specialties and exactly which minor gods were included, but this was more about making a balanced game design than adhering to the actual mythologies.

Point is, it took a lot of shuffling around to get a 7-pantheon set that filled all of the niches I needed and didn't overlap or conflict too much. So if you see a god whose listed foci don't really match what you'd expect, or whose major/minor status seems odd, understand that it's not because I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not saying that these can't be adjusted, but there are a LOT of intricacies to changing the balance.

Just to be clear, I need exact numbers for as many games as possible.
I can't give you details unfortunately. I don't remember any, sorry..

Not "how many should be in the full Pantheon", I'm asking "how many should you unlock the bonuses from in a single game by adding them to your PERSONAL pantheon". You will NOT get the bonuses from every god in the Pantheon

Oh, in that case 4 is a good number, that'll give you 5 foci to choose from, and that's probably plenty.

Point is, it took a lot of shuffling around to get a 7-pantheon set that filled all of the niches I needed and didn't overlap or conflict too much. So if you see a god whose listed foci don't really match what you'd expect, or whose major/minor status seems odd, understand that it's not because I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not saying that these can't be adjusted, but there are a LOT of intricacies to changing the balance.
I'm not criticizing the decision to make Hephaestus a major god, I was simply wondering why did you chose him, which you've answered fully in your last post. I do understand that you need four major gods and of course for the Greeks the last would be a rather difficult pick.

Thoughts so far:

I really like the Foci system in general, but I worry about the math involved for the player. For example, the event system could be a lot of fun, but if I need to calculate the Material vs. Chaos vs. Ephemeral to play the focus I want to, the cool options matter less, and the resultant directional yield is all that I care about. If this turns into a scenario where having for option boxes listing "+1 Chaos, +1 Justice, +1 Material, +1 Ephemeral" gives the same results, then it could be more frustrating than fun.

Perhaps a system where if you fall out of the Mandala range for a certain god, favor accrues 50% slower?

I can't give you details unfortunately. I don't remember any, sorry..

I didn't mean that you should try to remember from old games. I'm asking that in your NEXT game, you write this stuff down, so that I can get some actual numbers to balance with.

Oh, in that case 4 is a good number, that'll give you 5 foci to choose from, and that's probably plenty.

Remember, your central deity adds two Foci. So four minors mean you'll have six types of bonus stacking together. Now, some of those might be things like Animals, which unlock lots of Myth units, or Storms, which damage anyone who attacks your empire, but most Foci are either yield-boosting or unit-boosting, so there's a practical limit to how many of them I want you to have.

I'm not criticizing the decision to make Hephaestus a major god, I was simply wondering why did you chose him, which you've answered fully in your last post.

I know, I just figured I should explain the logic I used. Now that it's posted, new folks will be able to understand why things are arranged the way they are.

Like I said, I COULD have used Apollo as the fourth god, or tried to shoehorn Athena or Hera into a workable combination. Heph just worked the best as the fourth god, in terms of playstyles, and based on comments in the last thread he seemed like he'd be a popular choice.

I'd actually expect more criticism about the choices in things like the Aztec pantheon, but everyone's just more familiar with the Greeks I suppose.

I really like the Foci system in general, but I worry about the math involved for the player

Generally speaking, the player shouldn't need to worry about the math. It's intended to be organic; if you started with a more Chaotic god, like say, Loki, then most of the minor gods you'll be offered will be Chaos-oriented gods. If you pick Chaotic choices for events, then this'll get even more pronounced, until the ONLY gods you're offered are Chaos gods; while these will include some very powerful options, you'll run out of choices a bit faster. Whereas, if you go against type and pick Lawful choices, then you can get to the point where you're offered a wider variety of choices, but have fewer of the brute-force Chaos foci available. And maybe you pick Material or Ephemeral choices instead, and get into an area where you're being offered most of the Chaos and most of the Ephemeral choices; it really just depends on what playstyle you want to use.

If this turns into a scenario where having for option boxes listing "+1 Chaos, +1 Justice, +1 Material, +1 Ephemeral" gives the same results, then it could be more frustrating than fun.

Funny you say that; I haven't coded in any actual events so far. Right now, there's only one event, and that's ALL it does: four options, where one option gives +1 Law, one option gives +1 Chaos, and so on. I'm trying to test the mechanism before I write up a bunch of events with additional effects. I've also got it triggering every turn at the moment, but that'll obviously change.

Perhaps a system where if you fall out of the Mandala range for a certain god, favor accrues 50% slower?

Maybe I wasn't clear on how this works. Once you choose to add a god, it's done; your position on the grid has no impact on his effects, or how fast Favor accrues for his temples. All it does is control which gods you'll be able to pick from the NEXT time you add a god, or possibly control which heroes you get when you gain a new hero (still working on that one). So you could pick a Chaos god at the start, and spend the next few hundred turns picking Lawful choices, and it wouldn't change the effectiveness of the chaotic gods' shrines or how fast they accrue Favor. Now, at one point I was looking at having promotions that made units stronger or weaker based on how far you are away from the civ you're fighting, but that will probably never happen. (Too hard to teach the AI.)

The point of the Mandala is just supposed to be that your choices of minor gods are always going to be somewhat limited, but exactly HOW they're limited can change over the course of a game based on your actions. I didn't want all twelve gods to be selectable at any one time, because that'd just be hopelessly confusing for players, as well as making things less fun (since you'd just always take whatever you thought the best combo would be). So let's say on turn 126 you gained enough Favor to add a second Minor god (having added a first one on turn 53); the game offers you a choice of Crafts, Plants, Art, Justice, and Balance. You pick Art. Then, 70 turns later you build up enough Favor to take another one, after taking some Ephemeral choices on events. But this time Crafts and Plants are no longer on the list, while Darkness and Beauty are now available. Still plenty of choices, but your options have shifted a bit based on your actions.

In the original AoM game, each time you wanted to add a minor god you were offered two choices, but there were actually three choices at each level, with one of the three banned based on your primary god. So Zeus might be offered Athena and Apollo as options for his first minor god, while Hades would pick between Athena and Hephaestus and Poseidon would pick between Apollo and Hephaestus. (Those weren't the actual choices, I just don't feel like looking it up.) To me, this was too absolute; Heph should never be COMPLETELY off-limits to Zeus followers, but it shouldn't be possible to have all three be available at any one time. And then, the AoM game did this three times, with the sets of three being separate. So if your Zeus-following empire picked Athena over Apollo, you could never go back and add Apollo as well; your next choice would always be between Hera and Dionysus. I wanted to change that as well.

I'm not saying that it might not be too complex a mechanism. Just that I don't want something nearly as absolute as the game I'm basing this on, and that means I need some other way of driving the selection process.

Question:

How are you planning on graphically representing all this? God headshots?

Also, thanks for the clear up on the Mandala thing! What it sounded like was that I could accidentally cripple myself by moving out of the mandala zone of my current gods. Sounds much better with that explanation.

By the way, I would love if after the Enlightenment, new religions became available like Christianity, Islam, etc. and a second system took hold. Obviously this would all be part of your Age of Man mod and not this sucker. Looking forward to this!

How are you planning on graphically representing all this? God headshots?

Generally, yes, although that's not really an option for certain pantheons (like the Sumerians). The Greek, Norse, and Egyptian gods had nice artwork from the AoM game, and there are plenty of illustrations available for the Hindu and maybe Shinto. The Aztecs are a bit tougher but there are plenty of statues for these guys.

I'm more concerned about the 21 Foci themselves. I need simple, recognizable icons for each, sort of like unit flags. I'm looking to cannibalize other graphics from AoM for this, but I'm not sure I can get all of them that way.

I can give you a hand with some of that, if you'd like.

Heres an image you can use for Quetzelcoatl I found

Heres an image you can use for Quetzelcoatl I found

Very nice. Can you find images in a similar quality and style for the other Aztec gods? At least for the three other Major gods? (I'm trying to make the icons for major gods be 80 pixels and minors be 64, but that might have to drop to 64 and 45 if I run out of room.)

For the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse, I'm just taking the images directly from AoM, but there's one minor quirk: AoM used 12 gods per pantheon, and I'm using 13. That means one god in each pantheon that I can't keep in the same artistic style as the others. The missing ones are Hermes, Geb, and Frigg, if I remember right; Hermes is definitely not hard to find artwork for, but Frigg is one of the major gods in that pantheon.

But that still leaves the Sumerian, Shinto, Hindu, and Aztec pantheons that I have to find full sets of images for, so if anyone has a source for one of these that has nice artwork for all 13 gods, then that'd be great. And remember, whatever you find has to be readable down to a 64-pixel scale. (Maybe even 45.)

In the meantime, I'm using placeholders for everyone. I'm really trying to get a working base version done by this weekend; it's not looking good for a Friday release (although I should be able to get the older mods updated a bit by then), but I'll spend all of Saturday on it if need be.

For the Foci, I'm trying to model it on the Policy icons or unit flags: greyscale images that may or may not get tinted based on other variables. Actually, that's something I'd like feedback on; if I were to tint the Focus symbols during your game, would you prefer it to be:
1> Colored by your choice of Pantheon (so Egyptian get tinted yellow, Norse blue, Aztec orange, Sumerian green, etc.). I want to have a UI showing which gods the other players follow, and this'd make it easier to identify at a glance which players follow the same pantheon as you (important if this has some future diplomacy bias). Of course, I can just put the Pantheon icon on that UI instead...
2> Colored by the axial bias of the Focus (Chaotic ones are colored red, Material green, Ephemeral blue, Lawful yellow, with the elemental foci being a mix of two colors). Since this wouldn't change during a game, it'd be much easier to implement and it'd be easier to see which Foci are more appropriate for the direction you're going.
3> Colored by availability. Like Policies, which are dark gray if you can't take it, light gray if you can, yellow if you have them already, except with more interesting colors (say, red if you can't ever take them, blue if you could take them but aren't in the right position to, green if they're available now, and yellow if you have them already).

It's possible to mix these approaches. If you prefer options 1 or 2, the availability can just be handled through a box around the Focus icon, like how the tech tree colors tech boxes. Or I can make a colored "ring" around each focus' picture and tint THAT based on different factors than I use for the focus picture itself.

And there's a conceptual issue there, too. Think of the Unit Panel; you see the picture of the unit, and there's a small circle in the lower-left corner that shows the civ symbol and colors for the unit's owner (generally you, of course). So I'm still trying to decide: should the Mandala show the actual gods, and have their foci be some small symbol in the corner of the icon? Or should the Mandala show the Foci themselves, and have the god's picture just pop up when you mouse over a focus?

For the Mandala, I am putting together a very quick mock up.

The idea I am working with is that each Foci will be sans god pictures, and will require several overalys: Base image, Mouseover highlight, Available Foci, Selected Foci, and Unavailable Foci.

Clicking on a Foci might bring up a popup saying which god is associated with said foci and the list of bonuses.

Heres an image you can use for Quetzelcoatl I found

I don't think he's supposed to have wings. At leas,t I've never heard of him represented as such (and, he's normally red and either green or black, at least in the pictures of the codices I've seen).

For possible myth units from the Aztecs:
Ahuizotl
Cipactli
Cihuateteo
Nahual (sort of)
Tlaltecuhtli

Admittedly, the ahuizotl is the best on that list, but still.

For heroes, maybe Popcatepetl could work?
Admittedly, most of those are a stretch, but, its a start...

For possible myth units from the Aztecs:

One of the questions I've been pondering is related to this: should the events you're offered, and the Heroes you're given, depend on the specific mythology of the Pantheon you've chosen?

This goes back to an earlier discussion of Myth units in the old thread. Besides the fact that it'd just be hard to come up with enough Myth units for certain pantheons, there are major balance headaches with trying to come up with seven equivalent-but-not-identical choices for everything. So the solution I'm intending to go with, for now, is just to make Myth units universal; if you reach Animals 2 then you can build a Manticore or a Basilisk, regardless of whether those creatures fit into your Pantheon. I'll shift the themes a bit; since the only god with Animals as a primary is Ra, I'll make Animals be a bit heavy on Egyptian-themed units. Since the only god with Water as a primary is Poseidon, the few UUs in the Water focus would have a Greek theme. And so on.
It's not really a problem coming up with about a dozen pantheon-themed myth units each for the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse; Age of Mythology already did that for me. And there are some creatures (Sphinx, Chimaera, Dragon) that appear in many myths. But it'd be quite a bit of work to do the same level of detail for the others.

So now back to the events. I could, in theory, make seven sets of events and have them tie explicitly to your choice of Pantheons; it'd take a lot more work, but it wouldn't be difficult to implement mechanically. The question is whether this is a good idea; if I pool the events together, it allows a larger variety to choose from in a specific game.

I'll give an example of what I mean.

Event: a ship carrying a foreign noble arrives in one of your ports. He's on his way home from a distant war, but his ship has been blown completely off course by a hostile sea god. Do you:
A> Give him good directions, supplies, and additional crew in hopes of establishing trade relations with his nation (+1 Gold per turn in each coastal city, +1 Law)
B> Give him bad directions, because he's a follower of heathen gods (gain 100 Favor, +1 Ephemeral)
C> Offer he and his crew luxurious residences in your capital and use their expertise to your advantage (Gain a Hero, +1 Material)
D> Capture them, to be sacrificed in gladiatorial games for the amusement of your population (+1 Happiness, +1 Chaos)

Now, you can guess that this was inspired by the Odyssey, but it's a generic enough situation that you could justify something like this happening for pretty much any pantheon. So should I limit this purely to the Greeks, and make the Hero gained in C be explicitly Odysseus, or should all civs get this scenario and maybe just have the exact Hero gained depend on your pantheon? The latter option would allow me to put more effort into adding new events, without having to worry about things like whether the Aztec pantheon is getting shortchanged in its event rewards.

It should be largely universal, but every pantheon should get *some* representation, too.

Mandala Concept

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=302475&stc=1&d=1316729585

Obviously a very rough draft at this point. Also, let me know if you like the Foci

Really eye catching, unify the visual language on the icons though.

Yeah, there are a few that are a bit clip-arty, which is not surprising as that is what a lot of them are.

Mandala Concept

VERY nice, although you're missing the Balance focus (right in the middle). But ideally I'd want the 21 foci to be handled as an overlay, so that I can potentially remove the seven that are banned through your choice of pantheon and major god. It'd be okay to still have them imprinted on the background as well, but I need to be able to use the 21 Focus symbols in other windows so I've got to put them into a standard icon atlas somehow, preferably with lines thick enough to handle rescaling well.

Also, I'll need a version of the backdrop that includes the lines I'd shown on the previous image, or at least I'll have to create a transparent overlay that adds them. The mathematical equations for the six region groups, for anyone who cares:

Group 1: 3*(x+y) - ABS(x-y) > 9 for the +x,+y case. (So the positive-x, negative-y one is 3*(x-y) - ABS(x+y) > 9, and so on.)
Red lines, starting at (1.5,1.5) and radiating outward.

Group 2: 2*y + ABS(x) > 9. (That's the +y axial case. Rotates like you'd expect.)
Blue lines, starting at (0,4.5) and going slightly downward to either side.

Group 3: y + 2*ABS(x) < 4.5.
The orange lines in the old plot, basically four narrow V-shapes that bracket the origin. They'll overlap with the red lines for part of their length, which is why the coloring's a bit off in the plots I provided.

Group 4: x > 0 and y > 0. (And the four rotations, obviously)
Green lines on the axes.
This was previously an axial set, with an X-shape defining it, but I've changed it for balance reasons.

Group 5: ABS(x)+ABS(y) < 9, and also y>=0. (Only that last part rotates.)
Purple diamond from (9,0) to (0,9) and so on, but also with lines along the X and Y axes.

Group 6: ABS(x) < 4.5, and ABS(y) < 4.5.
This one's simple, a box with corners at +/- 4.5, +/- 4.5.

The missing ones are Hermes, Geb, and Frigg

Hermes is in Aom, the missing god is Demeter

Well, my initial thought was that each icon will not be part of the actual image, but added as a button on top. That will allow for you to add per tree. The overlays I figure could be done fully through Lua, and appear on mouseover. or with some manner of control box in a corner.

I put them all on the background as a flat jpg just for ease of display, but I have separate psd layers for each element. In fact, the circle size for each Foci is identical to that of a 256 icon atlas.

I just need you to decide exactly how large you want this sucker. 64x64 icons seem to be the best bet for fitting everything, but any resolution smaller than 1900x1280 would need vertical scrolling most likely. I'll see what I can do.

Hermes is in Aom, the missing god is Demeter

Okay, it's been a little while since I played it through. Same basic point: one god missing artwork within the style used for the other twelve within the pantheon. It shouldn't be too hard to find something useful for Demeter.

Well, my initial thought was that each icon will not be part of the actual image, but added as a button on top. That will allow for you to add per tree. The overlays I figure could be done fully through Lua, and appear on mouseover. or with some manner of control box in a corner.

That's basically what I've got now (my version's about half-coded). It won't actually RUN yet, but it's been getting closer.

I just need you to decide exactly how large you want this sucker. 64x64 icons seem to be the best bet for fitting everything, but any resolution smaller than 1900x1280 would need vertical scrolling most likely. I'll see what I can do.

I'd prefer not to bring scroll bars into it if it can be avoided, because I really want the player to see at a glance where everything is. I was originally aiming for the Mandala's playable area to be 600x600, to fit into a 1024x768 window with most of the right-hand side being filled with numbers and buttons. There'd be no need for scrollbars, then; 1024x768 is the size of the Policy window in vanilla, and the game assumes that you can't play on anything below that. But that really wasn't enough, so I was looking to up that by 20% to 720x720, especially since I want the x and y values to range to +/-9 if possible and it'd make the math smoother. That'd still leave me with a nice 300x720ish area on the side for buttons and such.

64-pixel icons would be a bit cramped on that, as you can probably guess, but it's barely workable since there'd be 9 icons along each axis. 45s would work better, if the icons are legible at that size, or else I'd need to go to 900x900 and require a minimum resolution of 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 (which also happens to be my screen's size). But I'd prefer not to alienate the people who'd play this on lower settings, say on a laptop, so I'm trying to see if 1024x768 is possible to work with.

Another possibility, simply put, would be to change my design a bit. If I picked one of the lower sets of four and changed it from an axial arrangement to a diagonal one (like the four elemental foci use), it'd reduce the congestion quite a bit since you'd only need 7 icons along each axis instead of 9. So if, say, the Plant-Animal-Travel-Art set were rotated 45 degrees, to where Plants are LM, Animals are CM, Travel is CE, and Art is LE, it'd be much easier to fit all the icons in. I'd have to go back and make sure everything else still balances, though, and it'd change several other things, but it could work. It's actually something I'd already been considering for gameplay reasons; it was just a little too powerful to stay on one axis.

Another possibility, simply put, would be to change my design a bit.

Okay, after a bit of number-crunching, it looks like this is in fact the best way to do it. I'm going to double-check a bit with my spreadsheets when I get home tonight, but for now assume that Plants will be LM, Animals will be CM, Travel CE, and Art LE. This'll make these sort of like the elements, although the equation for them is simple: x>0 and y>0, and so on. So they're a bit "inward" of the elemental ones. If the spreadsheets agree I'll update the earlier posts, including pictures.

So now there'll only be three sets of four on the axes: group 2 as the outermost, group 3 a bit inward of that, and group 5 as the innermost set. (Plus Balance at 0,0.)

One aspect of this is that the axial optima get a bit fuzzier; the area around 0,0 is a bit smoother, and for the outer axes you're encouraged to deviate a little more.

Ok, heres the pictures I could find for the Aztec pantheon, Theres a few I really like (the 4 major gods), and then theres a few that I really couldent find better and are sort of meh (several minor gods)

last 2

IMO, Tezcatlipoca looks awesome.
Not that the others don't, but still...

Updated page at 1040x720

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=302504&stc=1&d=1316744023

Tomorrow, i'll start looking for some other pictures of gods, also for some better pictures of some of the gods I already found

This looks like it will be a great mod. If you want, at some point I can provide what I hope will be a full pantheon & Myth units for a Maori civilization if you want, which could be interesing if you want an Oceanic Pantheon represented.

Other than that, if you want any wonders included, you know where to find me.

Though I'm pressed for time currently, I can offer my humble hand if you guys need it, you know, graphically.

Your expertise is far beyond mine own, if you want to get your hands into this. I can shoot you all my PSDs

ugh, sumarian gods are almost impossible to get decent pictures of

ugh, sumarian gods are almost impossible to get decent pictures of

I know. If it wasn't for the fact that they fit perfectly into the design, and I haven't found another pantheon that fits nearly as well, I'd consider replacing them.

--------------------------------

On another note, I'm attaching some images to explain how the six groups are placed on the Mandala. The shaded area is the valid area for one of the members of the group; they all rotate, so I only needed to show one.

In almost every case, you have to be WITHIN the designated area; being right on the line isn't enough. The "almost" is that for group 5, you CAN be on the X or Y axes and still be in the triangle. (This was necessary for balance reasons.)

I'm not going to keep the images attached forever, since they suck up a pretty nice chunk of my attachment limit, but it should give a better idea than the equations I listed before.

How do you feel about the new layout size? Work for your needs? Icons are a bit small but with a mouseover showing the larger version on the right, it feels reasonable.

I know. If it wasn't for the fact that they fit perfectly into the design, and I haven't found another pantheon that fits nearly as well, I'd consider replacing them.


This looks like it will be a great mod. If you want, at some point I can provide what I hope will be a full pantheon & Myth units for a Maori civilization if you want, which could be interesing if you want an Oceanic Pantheon represented.


I might be able to help, the Maori essentially have an almost Greek-style Pantheon (Less of the more modern gods - No messenger for example)

How do you feel about the new layout size? Work for your needs? Icons are a bit small but with a mouseover showing the larger version on the right, it feels reasonable.

If it can be shaved a bit horizontally to fit into a 1024x768 box with the usual borders, then it'd be fine. I'm still trying to figure out the mechanics of what needs to actually go INTO the window; that upper-right box will need to be less about which gods are available at your current position and more about the status of the Favor generation within your empire. If you've got good icons, then it might just be easiest to have a narrow separator between that upper and lower box, that just shows the icons of the Foci available at your current position; that'd save a little room. As you can see from the six images I attached in my previous post, it's not quite a question of which you're closest to; each one has a distinct area. (I updated the Mandala plots in the first page with slightly better-looking ones.)

The only other question I'm running into is what else I need to be DOING in that window. At the moment, all Favor is "passive"; you generate it, it allocates to the various buildings, the end. The thing I keep going back and forth on is this: should you be able to SPEND Favor? Take Heroes, for instance; I want the Heroic Epic to guarantee one Hero in your empire, and there are a couple Foci (like Justice) that improve that minimum, and many events will have "gain a Hero" as one of the options, but should the player be able to BUY a Hero if he wants to? (The AI for this would be rough, which is why my initial answer was No.)

If there's no need for any active control beyond adding a new minor god once you've gained enough Empire-wide Favor, then that upper area would only be a sort of scoreboard for which cities in your empire are generating Favor (although I COULD just move that to the City window instead, or the Top Panel). One thought was to add a second popup inside this one that shows the exact pantheons of the other players, sort of like how the Victory Progress window has subwindows for the space race progress.

----------------------------------
I've nearly got the start-of-game popup done, and the databases seem to be working correctly for Favor generation and tracking. I haven't quite got the "Add a god" mechanism in place, but that's not hard. Unfortunately, tonight is a SMAC night; I'm trying to solve the gamebreaking bug with water resources. So I'll be doing the Mythology stuff tomorrow, most likely.

You could even do a Christian pantheon with an interesting spin, using Patron Saints instead of Gods.

Another easy option: The Celtic pantheon.

Also, Orson is an excellent graphic artist, that might be willing to make portraits for the Sumerian gods.

Would it be ok with you if I found pictures that wern't nessisarially of the god, but are close enough to be a resonable representation? Such as pictures from RPG books

Personally I would like it if you could spend favor to add extra gods into the Pantheon at the cost of going less deep into the current Gods powers. A wide vs tall decision.

Anyhow, there is definitely room to add some very small borders on the edges.

As for favor levels, I think they go on a separate page.

I envision the religion screens being the one presented, then a second one that displays your current Pantheon selections, and the favor levels and unlocked powers of each god. I was thinking of makign that screen have a unique background based on religious type.

Examples:
Greek religion would have a marble background so the head icons looked like they were carved into the wall of a temple. Egyptian ones would look like hieroglyphs on a sandstone wall. Norse could be painted headshots on a wood wall, etc.

The idea is that when you visit the screen, it looks like you are visiting the religious building. There could be a scroll icon in the corner to bring you to the mandala screen (i.e. opening the scroll).

You could even do a Christian pantheon with an interesting spin, using Patron Saints instead of Gods.

Not going to happen. Besides the fact that I'd way up the chance that someone gets offended, the patron saints aren't even close to being major enough to justify making four Major choices and nine minor ones. And it really goes against the whole polytheism-becoming-monotheism mechanism I depend on, because it was pretty much the other way around.

Another easy option: The Celtic pantheon.

The Celtic gods were basically the Roman gods with a facelift. Or more specifically, they were so quickly subsumed with "equivalent" gods assigned among the Greek/Roman pantheon that there isn't nearly enough distinctiveness in the lore. This sort of thing happened in a lot of other pantheons, especially the Egyptians, but I need something that's DISTINCT from the beginning.


But really, I was mostly joking about dumping the Sumerians. Artwork is the LEAST important part of the mod; if I had to make the Sumerians distinguished by thirteen smiley faces of slightly different colors, I'd do that as long as the balance was good. And I looked into all of these other pantheons (yes, including several Polynesian ones, a few druidic-type things, half a dozen native american groups, and so on) and none of them fit well for one reason or another. A lot were too focused on one specific area, or overlapped too much with one of the existing ones, or didn't have major gods who covered the Foci that I really NEEDED to be covered.

The Sumerians are essential because of this; if I had to dump one Pantheon for not being balanced well enough, or not adding anything unique, it'd be the Norse or Aztec. And that isn't happening either; I need two battle-oriented pantheons, and who else is even close to their level of popularity?

Also, Orson is an excellent graphic artist, that might be willing to make portraits for the Sumerian gods.

If we can find source material to work with, then great. I'm trying to read up on the Gilgamesh epic for event inspiration, but it's not easy finding images.

Would it be ok with you if I found pictures that wern't nessisarially of the god, but are close enough to be a resonable representation? Such as pictures from RPG books

That's fine. I figured at some point I'd have to go to the D&D deities book, but as long as the images are somewhat consistent in style, level of detail, etc. then I'm fine with pretty much anything.

Personally I would like it if you could spend favor to add extra gods into the Pantheon at the cost of going less deep into the current Gods powers. A wide vs tall decision.

Well, that's part of the problem. Favor allocation is automatic, and it'd be good for AI reasons to keep it that way; adding more gods into your pantheon AUTOMATICALLY slows the growth by forcing the Battle and Building favor to be split one extra way, but there's no built-in way to make that tall-vs-wide decision.

But in terms of adding extra gods, I see it like Culture: you accumulate it, and when you hit a threshold, POOF, extra policy/god. No actual "spending" involved, just a decision to be made every once in a while. I was looking at aiming the balance to where you'd get minor god #1 on turn ~50, #2 on turn ~125, #3 on ~200, and #4 on ~300. (Obviously there's plenty of wiggle room there.) So the question is whether I should speed that up a bit, but give the player (and AI) ways to slow it down by buying Myth units or Heroes. Originally, I was going to have all myth units and heroes work this way, but between the religious buildings and the Events, I don't think I need to; as long as you can get Heroes fairly often through Events, it's better for AI reasons to make that be the only way.

By making it automatic, the only thing the AI has to worry about is which god to add or which answer to pick on the Events. And for that, even a simple random choice would work pretty well.

As for favor levels, I think they go on a separate page.

The issue I'm having here is a mechanical one: I need to put TopPanel.lua in the Base mod, because the Ascension mod needs access to it as well for a Neutronium issue. So while I can put Mythology-specific stuff in that panel (and I have) by sticking it inside an IF that only triggers if the Mythology mod is active, I've got only limited access to the Mythology-related game databases (including the Favor total). Which means I'm looking at having information be spread around three or four pages, and that starts to get awkward if I pile on even more windows.

I envision the religion screens being the one presented, then a second one that displays your current Pantheon selections, and the favor levels and unlocked powers of each god.

Slight issue: you don't unlock powers per god. You unlock powers per Focus, and it's handled per city (so when you unlock the level 3 buildings, it doesn't immediately move every city to level 3). The fact that the level 4 building can only be reached in your capital makes it a good benchmark, but it's not quite the same thing. Hence the comments about a detailed Favor status page. Sort of like the Great Person page, something that shows how close each city is to upgrading each Focus. (Actually, VERY similar to that Great Person page.) Clicking on a focus should show you what the level 1, 2, 3, and 4 buildings can do, but I can handle that through a simple tooltip easily enough. Or more specifically, through the four info tooltips for the four buildings. Like how mousing over a building icon in the Tech Tree shows you the building's Help page.

I was thinking of makign that screen have a unique background based on religious type.

I had the same idea, but I was putting most of the artistic flourishes on the back burner until I got more of the mechanics in place.

Well I'll answer more fully in the morning, but one thing you should know is if all you need is to add to the top panel, this can be done with a contextptr with zero need to touch the actual lua

Well I'll answer more fully in the morning, but one thing you should know is if all you need is to add to the top panel, this can be done with a contextptr with zero need to touch the actual lua

For the Mythology mod I'm adding something new, but the overlap with the Ascension mod is a bug fix in the base Lua code. Specifically, the two parts where it decides which resources to list on the strategic indicators need to be fixed to actually check the resource class instead of only seeing if it has Happiness or not. So I'm not sure how well pointers can resolve that, but I'll look into it.

I was interested to help out with the god images, one because it I feel all mods should have original images and two because it sounds like an awesome work to do. So I don't know, it seems like you guys choose a lot of images for artist Genzoman, I could try to shoot for similar images (maybe less manga though).


And I like Sneaks art, the mandala piece is good, I could help you a bit if you'd like, I'll send you a PM with my email.

I've updated the Foci post at the start of the thread to include the latest building effects. Nearly all of these are in and tested, but they're not finalized. So read them to get an idea of what sort of role I intend each Focus to play, and feel free to suggest alterations.

For instance, one of the things I was looking to do was replace a lot of the level 3 effects, mainly the flat yield bonuses in Crafts, Fertility, etc. with "creates one unit of X" where X is a resource. So a Crafts one would generate a unit of Iron, Fertility might generate Horses, Beauty might generate Silk, Wealth generate Gold, Plants generate Cotton, Animals generate Ivory, etc. The problem is that if I put luxuries on that list, then it penalizes folks who start with that luxury already in their territory, although they can trade those extras away I suppose. And you'll only have two strategics for most of this period, since Coal doesn't unlock until the end of the Renaissance, well after this era ends, so I could double up on the existing ones (providing Horses at both Fertility and Animals, maybe?).

I didn't list the special abilities of each Myth unit, that'll be added to the Units section of a first-page post in the future. Every Myth unit needs one, so if you've got any ideas it'd be nice. Remember: every Myth unit should have ONE ability that "mundane" units can't have (except the level 4s, which can have two); they can be very powerful abilities, because Myth units do not get most of the free promotions given by other Foci, and never start with any XP even if you have Barracks and such.

Will Myth units have their own specific set of promotions?

Will Myth units have their own specific set of promotions?

They'll have access to the usual open/rough terrain promotions, but that's not really the point of them. They're very strong units that start with powerful abilities, but the idea is that human troops are a better long-term investment since they'll stick with you after the mythological age is over and can start with extra XP from Barracks and such. So other than the Darkness Focus' single Myth-boosting ability, the Myth units are basically "what you see is what you get".

Now, that's still an awful lot that you get. If a normal melee unit is strength 10 or 11 at these tech levels, then these might range from 15 to 25 for their base values. And it's not just about raw strength; you might have a Lightning Bolt unit that's basically an untouchable orbital weapon from the SMAC mod (able to hit anywhere on the planet), a Phoenix that respawns from the dead back at your capital whenever it dies, a Hydra that gains a free promotion every time it kills a unit, a Medusa that causes the enemy it attacks to miss its next turn, and so on.

So if you don't build a few of these when you have the chance, you might easily get crushed by your neighbor... at least until you start stacking the benefits of the War, Fire, Earth, etc. foci together on your mundane units. (But notice, most of those benefits are for new units created in a city, so the early units you build will get obsolete quickly. Only the level 4 abilities, which you'll only have at most two of, apply to all units across your empire.)

Besides obviously acting as counters to each other, though, you can also get Hero units, which DO benefit from all the usual promotions, start with some good (but more normal) promotions of their own, and have a large bonus against Myth units. And every empire will have at least one Hero (once you build a Heroic Epic), so you should be able to defend yourself pretty well.

Also, at the moment I'm looking to "clean up" when the Mythological Age ends. As in, all of those Fire and War promotions are all removed from units once you finish the Enlightenment. But even so, the mundane units are still better in the long term since you can upgrade them to rifles and such.

Will there be barbarian Myth units? Roaming monsters, perhaps the odd stationary dragons lair or similar?

Will there be barbarian Myth units? Roaming monsters, perhaps the odd stationary dragons lair or similar?

I haven't decided. The problem is the same as in the AC mod: Barbarian camps' behavior is very rigidly defined, so I can't really create a workable "dragon lair" entity without doing the full Spore Tower bit and creating entirely new algorithms for it. It's very annoying.

It's not hard to add Myth units to the barbarian spawn tables, and in fact I'm going to have to go out of my way NOT to have them use those units. But the balance could be a real problem if I'm not careful.
Also, I'm not sure how probabilistic the Barbarian spawn method is. I think it picks the most advanced unit within each Combat Class, and spawns that unit (with some sort of point cap limitation), which'd be very problematic for the barbs since they'd pick only a single myth unit at a time.

Conceptually, there's a different problem. Mythological creatures wouldn't randomly show up all over the place, they were very specific: one monster of type X would terrorize one city, a Hero would show up and kill it, the end. So I'd be inclined to cap it, where at least the powerful Myth units (levels 3 and 4) never spawn randomly.

I know it's quiet in here, and that you're waiting for me to release an alpha version of the mod, but besides the graphical stuff we've discussed in the last week, there's more to do before I'm ready to hand the files out. Top priority is to fix the water resources in the Ascension mod, but after that I'm going to try finishing the crude first-pass interface for picking a god at the start of the game. Once that's working, I'll upload v.0.01.

So in the meantime, I need a few things. I need ideas for Myth units, Heroes, and Events for the pantheons OTHER than the Greek, Egyptian, and Norse; I've given more detail on this over in the General Discussion thread. None of these will be included in the first alpha version of the mod, so there's no rush, but other than artwork these wouldn't take long to implement.

But I also need something else: I need people to go to the first page, read through the list of Focus building effects, and just see whether any of them seem horribly out of whack, balancewise. Many of these effects are still up in the air, and can easily be replaced with something more distinctive, but I want people to get a rough idea of what the balance will be like. It'd also be useful for people to go through the pantheons and see if they think the effects for any one major god are just horribly unbalanced compared to the other three majors in the same pantheon. (The one I'm most worried about is Water, since it's so coastal-skewed, but there are several others that I'm not sure on.)

And one further note: the initial design, and the first alpha version, will be far less tunable than the final product. That is, there are a lot of things that right now are hard-coded internally (event thresholds, how much Favor to gain a new god, how Heroes are gained, and so on), but that could be made much more flexible in the long run. So if you're not happy with the inability to tune the system towards a specific playstyle (warmonger, wide empire, tall empire) mid-game, understand that I can add the flexibility to do that later on, once I program the AI to understand how to make those sorts of decisions for itself. It'd be a good idea to suggest exactly WHERE you think a player decision should occur, but don't be upset if I don't immediately implement your idea.

Spatzimaus, can you just clarify that at this stage you're not interested in a Maori pantheon, as I can give a lot of details for one.

Anyway, as for help, I suggest you check out these links from the AoM fan boards:

http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=9,21648,,10 - from AoE3, but scroll down, list of suggested AoM civs
http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=1,11142,,all - Aztec
http://aom.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=3573 - Massive overview of Japanese (Shinto)
http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=9,23451,,10 - Another Shinto

Ok, so heres an idea I have for an aztec myth unit, how about a jaguar (actual animal, but mythified) myth unit tied to the darkness foci (for obvious reasons) that has woodsman, a combat bonus in jungle, and heres the kicker, is invisable when in forest or jungle

Another idea is a zombie unit which heals all the damage it does and when healed past full health spawns another zombie unit with the leftover health, like in the zombie apocolypse mod

Heres another Aztec myth unit, Cihuateteo, women who died during childbirth, Gives a combat bonus to all units within 2 tiles and a combat penalty to all enemy units in 2 tiles. Also can use enemy roads and has the incan slingers ability to retreat to a nearby tile when an enemy tries to melee it

Spatzimaus, can you just clarify that at this stage you're not interested in a Maori pantheon, as I can give a lot of details for one.

Basically, yes. I know you've done a lot trying to add a lot of content in that theme, but there's just no need to add more pantheons at this point. I'm trying to make it easy for people to add their own content to this later on, but I'm building the initial mod around a stable baseline of seven; the only way I'd add another pantheon at this point would be if I had to remove one of the existing options, because otherwise I'd have duplicate combinations of Favor biases. It's not that you CAN'T have duplication, but I'm working under some time limits here; I'm not going to bloat this thing up and give myself more balance headaches down the road (the balance issues I have now are bad enough). So I'm sticking with seven, one per combination, and building the mechanisms (and the AI decision processes) around that number, at least for now.

The Favor generation is not the only defining characteristic of a pantheon; there's also the combination of which Foci are missing and which are assigned to major gods. So if I were to remove any of the existing pantheons, it'd create gaps, and if the replacement didn't fill those, it wouldn't help. It took a lot of creative bookkeeping to get a workable set of seven that covered all of the necessary bits. Again, this wouldn't stop you from adding an eighth pantheon of your own, but you risk creating even worse imbalances that way.

For instance, if you added an eighth pantheon, then it should really have a Healing god, a Crafts god, and the major gods' foci should include Beauty, Healing, Knowledge, and Seasons (or as many of those as possible) and NOT include Fire, Air, Death or Storms. It'd also be good if the pantheon didn't have any gods of War or Fertility, but I'll admit that's pretty unlikely to ever happen. And then there are the guidelines I put in a previous post, about how certain focus combinations shouldn't be used, how minor gods need to cover certain bases, and so on. Throw those all together, and you can see why it's not an easy process to fit more in.

This is actually why I am NOT adding a Titans civ, despite that being the theme of AoM's actual expansion; they just didn't fit well. They had the same gaps as other civs, they overlapped with too many other pantheons, and so on. So I tossed them.

Anyway, as for help, I suggest you check out these links from the AoM fan boards:

Some very interesting bits there, although quite a bit of it mixes the religious aspects with the nation's social/historical characteristics. That's how AoM worked, so it makes sense, but I'm not forcing any congruity here; the Shinto religion won't be restricted to only the Japanese civ or anything, so all the Emperor/Samurai stuff has to be removed. But the myth unit lists will definitely come in handy.

It IS kind of funny, though, how that Shinto mod picked a VERY different set of "major" kami than I did, while the Aztec one was extremely close to my deity choices.

Ok, so heres an idea I have for an aztec myth unit, how about a jaguar (actual animal, but mythified) myth unit tied to the darkness foci (for obvious reasons) that has woodsman, a combat bonus in jungle, and heres the kicker, is invisable when in forest or jungle

If I can figure out how to make that sort of selective invisibility work, then that's the kind of thing I'm looking for. Unfortunately, the 2kgames wiki has been dead for almost a week, so I have no idea what Lua functions I'll have access to. Now, I CAN easily tie it to movement and an existing promotion, where if the hex you move into has a forest or jungle you gain the promotion and if not you lose it. But the question then becomes, what units can see invisible?

Also, this has the usual AI issues. It wouldn't be easy to teach the AI that moving into forests is a good thing, but then again, if it already has Woodsman then that's not a problem since it'll already want to. So that one works.

Now, it might just be better to drop the "invisibility" idea and just go for something closer to invincibility instead. I've already got a bunch of defensive promotions in the game, and I can just give one of those instead based on the terrain.

Another idea is a zombie unit which heals all the damage it does and when healed past full health spawns another zombie unit with the leftover health, like in the zombie apocolypse mod

I'd want to be REALLY careful with that. A well-managed zombie army would be capable of growing indefinitely, but the AI'd likely lose his zombies long before they spawned any more. But it'd work just fine for the level 2 Death effect if you had a strong zombie "horde" unit that spawned weaker copies (ones that can't spawn more), since the potential for exponential growth would be greatly reduced.

Heres another Aztec myth unit, Cihuateteo, women who died during childbirth, Gives a combat bonus to all units within 2 tiles and a combat penalty to all enemy units in 2 tiles. Also can use enemy roads and has the incan slingers ability to retreat to a nearby tile when an enemy tries to melee it

That's really pushing the limits on how many unique abilities I can give it. The problem is that what you've describe would require me to create three new promotions (one to be given to friendly units nearby, one to be given to enemy units nearby, and one to add that withdrawing ability), and the game only allows you to make ~60 custom promotions. Given that I'm already adding 37 promotions in the Ascension mod (some of which are generic enough to be shared across mods) and 15 Focus-specific promotions in the Mythology mod, I just don't have a whole lot of room to work with. If the ones it gives duplicate some other promotion I've already added, then sure, that'd work.

I have some reccomendations for you: switch plants level 1 with 2 and balance the level 4 foci (in group 3, art and water foci the effects are really strong in relation to seasons for example, where level 4 is like any other level),

switch plants level 1 with 2

Doing that would be... problematic. The level 1 effect needs to be something that's generally useful, with the level 2 being the more specialized effect, because in the late game your non-capital cities will only have level 1 buildings for minor gods. That's why all of the resource-specific effects are at level 2 in other foci; even with six resources getting boosted, there's a good chance that your cities won't benefit, but the level 1 effect should nearly always be useful.

I can make that change, but I think it'd make the Plants focus VERY weak in the later eras, so it's something that'll need to be tested. An alternative is to split the effects up; Forest, Wheat, and Jungle at 1, Flood Plain, Bananas, and the luxuries at 2. Would that sort of shifting make it seem more balanced to you?

and balance the level 4 foci (in group 3, art and water foci the effects are really strong in relation to seasons for example, where level 4 is like any other level),

Seasons 4 adds a powerful Myth unit, I just haven't decided which one yet. If I can't find a good one, I'll put some other comparable effect there. Also I was going to bump the yield bonus to +5, but that's still a minor boost. So if I were to ditch the yield increase and keep the Myth unit, what other effect would make it an appropriate level 4 building?

As for Art and Water, why do you thnk they're really strong? It'd be useful to know why you feel they're not balanced. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the reason I'm asking the questions is that I'm trying to get perspectives other than my own, so knowing your train of thought would help quite a bit.

Personally I was feeling like the Water 4 effect was too weak, since unlocking a naval Myth unit doesn't help if your capital isn't coastal. Likewise, Art's +25% culture sounds great, until you realize that very few early buildings actually generate Culture. (Remember, in this mod the Temple is +1 happiness and +1 culture normally, and to make it worse I lowered the culture on the Temple and Monument to produce mostly Favor instead. And while Artists generate culture, you'll only have a single Artist slot in each city.) The Opera House is the first real large-scale culture producer, and it doesn't unlock until the Renaissance.

A lot of level 4s are like that, where the effect sounds strong (often being the same as an existing Wonder) but are inherently limited by the early era. Earth 4 is the Kremlin effect, which sounds nice until you realize that the list of Defense-producing buildings in these early eras is basically the Walls, Earth 1, and Palace, with the Castle coming right at the end. Likewise, for every specialist other than Priest, you're going to have at MOST one slot per city because of how early it is. So when a focus's effect says "+1 Gold per Merchant", that's at BEST +1 gold per city, because the second Merchant slot is at the Bank, in the early Renaissance. (Priests, on the other hand, will be plentiful, so boosting them by 1 food is more than enough for a level 4 effect.)

As to the city-state effects, the mythological content is all pre-Astronomy, so you won't have made contact with most of the empires and city-states in the world. That's why I asked in a previous post about whether I should change the underlying balance of the core game by making it easier to get to Astronomy and such.
So the +0.5 Influence bit only helps if you've made contact already, and that often means only the ones on your starting continent; with the effect only boosting a single type of city-state, you can see how few it'll actually affect. (Obviously it's better on a Pangaea, but that hurts Water even worse.) Also, the +0.5 isn't enough to offset the base -1.0 per turn, even with all of the +0.1s from the other cities' level 3s, so you still need to gain Influence through other means (bribes, missions, etc.) and those are hard to do in early eras.

Anyway, keep the feedback coming, but if you can, explain WHY you think something is too strong or too weak, like you did with the Seasons part.

So let's talk about the Seasons 4 effect for a moment. After the previous conversation, I thought about it some more, and here's what I'm thinking now:

1> Ditch the Myth unit.
2> Keep the base increase at +4.
3> Have Seasons 4 also add +1 to whichever two yields are NOT in season... in all cities you own that have at least a Shrine. (Since I'm setting this all through Lua anyway, it's easy to make this sort of change.)

That is, if it's Summer (Food/Production in all cities), then it'd add +1 Gold and +1 Research in every city you own (except the ones with no Seasons buildings at all). A city with a Shrine of Seasons, then, would get +1 to all four yields regardless of season, a Church would have two +2s and two +1, and so on with your capital having two +4s and two +1s.
At first I'd thought of having it further boost the two seasonal yields in all cities, but that'd make it even more skewed, and even harder for the AI to deal with. Boosting the off-season yields would really help the AI, since it's incapable of adjusting easily to shifting yields like that, and it'd make Seasons one of the strongest all-around yield-boosting foci (albeit the least predictable).

Thoughts?

Ok, so, I'm not out of the early eras yet, but, so far, 8 damage to my scout from a barb warrior. Using the Ascension and balance mods, so whatever comes out of that.

I feel like spamming scouts would be a good strategy for battle favor...

I feel like spamming scouts would be a good strategy for battle favor...

Yeah, the math needs a bit of a tweak. Probably give more of a penalty for your unit dying, or cap the amount of Favor gained for damage taken.

The strength ratio (A/D) is a big part of the problem; even though it caps at x2/x0.5, it's still a big advantage. Right now, the player with the weaker unit always gets more Favor; when attacking, it divides by the ratio, and when defending it multiplies.
So let's examine the concept: right now you get more Favor for charging in against hopeless odds, and more Favor for defending against overwhelming force. Do either of those seem backward, where it should be giving more of a bonus when you're the stronger force?

But really, I'd prefer not to invert it. I'd prefer to keep the ratio the way it is, and cap the Favor some other way; even if you CAN get more favor with Scouts, you'll still be losing fights and therefore risk losing your cities, workers, etc. So as long as I make the math to where you can't afford to do this too often, it's not too bad.

I spent this morning rearranging the tech tree a little; I'm shrinking the Classical back to 2 columns (vanilla is 1) instead of the previous 3, because with three columns it just felt too "stretched", with too many techs being direct prerequisites for techs two or three columns away. So it'll be two columns of 6, instead of the previous 5/4/3.
I also moved a few techs around, to move the Optics-Compass-Astronomy line down closer to the Physics/Engineering type techs, so the religious techs now occupy the top of the screen. So a few dependencies had to change. I'll upload new pictures of the tech tree when I have time.

Now, today's topic is Myth Units.

The basic idea of a Mythological unit, as mentioned before, is that they're front-loaded with some powerful abilities (at least one of which is unavailable to players) and don't require any resources, but they also don't benefit from any XP-boosting buildings, or any Wonders, Policies, or religious buildings that provide your units a custom promotion. Also, since they don't upgrade to anything, you'll eventually reach a point (say, Rifleman-ish) where they're generally just not worth the costs, except maybe for the powerful level 4 Myth units.

There's one other little catch I came across today. I should say that I CONFIRMED it today, since I'd always kinda known. That is, unit building class prerequisites are an AND, not an OR. This means that, in the current design, when I say a Myth unit unlocks at Animals 2, that means it ONLY unlocks at Animals 2. So a Church (2) of Animals and a Cathedral (3) of Animals will have completely different lists of units; I'm not sure what'll happen if you're in the middle of producing a unit when the city upgrades, though. Since some of your cities will be below others, this isn't much of a problem if you REALLY like one type of unit and your capital outgrows it; somewhere in your empire, there'll be a city that has that level.

As a result, I'm trying to generally make units follow a clear progression, to where you'd nearly always prefer the level 3 units to the level 2 ones. I'm also going to shift things around a bit, so that a level that has two Myth units in a unit-light focus (like Air 2) splits them up to, say, Air 2 for one and Air 3 for the other.

Level 1 Myth units will generally have two abilities, one "Normal" one (meaning a promotion that normal units can take, like Cover I, or that's given by a Wonder) and one "Special" one (an ability that normal units can't take but that many Myth units can have, like the ability to fly/hover, or an inherent boost to movement or strength). Their base strength will be basically the same as mundane units in the Classical/early Medieval eras (10ish), so once you get to the Crossbow/Longsword techs, these'll be obsolete.
Level 2 Myth units will have two Specials, or one Normal and one Unique (pretty much what it sounds like, an ability that ONLY myth units in this Focus have). Their strength will be more like the 13-14 range, so they'll generally be comparable to the Crossbow/Longsword units.
Level 3 Myth units will typically have one Unique, one Special, and one Normal, or three Specials. Base strength is more like 16-17.
Level 4 Myth units are more like 1/3/1 or 2/1/2, usually with strengths of 20+, but you can only ever have one of each type in your empire. (Like the Gravship, they're basically National Wonders.)

So let's look at the Death Focus, for instance. At the moment I have:

Zombie (Death 2): Spawn, Teamwork
Spawn: if it kills a foe, there's a 50% chance of spawning a new copy of the unit. The copy will be the same as a newly-created Zombie, except that it'll lack the Spawn promotion so there won't be as good as one you create yourself.
Teamwork: it's the "+20% when adjacent to an ally" ability I use for Laser Infantry and the Three Gorges Dam.

Mummy (Death 2): Critical Strike, Disease
Critical Strike is the Ranger's "10% chance of dealing 5 damage" ability.
Disease: a unit that survives the Mummy's attack gains the Diseased negative promotion. At the start of each turn, there's a 1 in 3 chance of taking 1 damage, a 1 in 6 chance of being cured, and a 1 in 2 chance of nothing happening. As long as a unit is diseased, its healing rate is also reduced by 1.

Vampire (Death 3): Drain, Spawn, Stun
Drain: Whenever he attacks, a Vampire deals 1 extra damage and heals 1 damage at the start of combat. There is no effect if the Vampire is the defender.
Spawn: same as Zombie
Stun: A unit attacked by a Vampire loses its next turn.

Phoenix (Death 4): Rebirth, Regeneration I, Flight, Loner, Fire I
Rebirth: Whenever a Phoenix takes lethal damage, it is reborn in your capital automatically, keeping all promotions earned.
Regeneration I: same as the Mind Worms
Flight: Hovering unit and 1 MP per hex
Loner: +20% strength when NOT adjacent to an ally, but doesn't benefit from defensive terrain bonuses (nearly all of the level 4 units have this one)
Fire 1: +10% when attacking, doubled vs cities (as the Shrine of Fire effect)

Note that there's no level 1 Death unit; a Shrine of Death provides a promotion to normal units trained there, nothing more. The only Focus with units at every level is Animals, because that's pretty much ALL it does (2-3 units per level, topping out at Sphinx and Dragon at level 4). Quite a few foci have at least one unit, but the only other Myth-heavy foci are Air and Darkness.
So what'd typically happen, if you were a follower of Hades for instance, would be that in the early eras your capital would be able to make Zombies and Mummies, then your capital would get Vampires while your other cities move up to Zombies and Mummies, and finally your capital could create a Phoenix while your other cities have the lower options.

So if you look at the four units I mentioned, you'd notice that they don't really follow any particular source material or match strongly to any one pantheon thematically. Eventually, what I'd like to do is create a UU for each major god, something that'd replace one or two Myth units in his primary focus to shift things a bit more towards his particular style. But for now, I'll stick with mostly generic creatures.

At the moment it looks like I'm going to have about two dozen Myth unit types tied to specific Foci. The question, then, is whether that's enough; most players might only have a couple of Myth units available to them, unless they add an Animals minor god. So survey time: should I
A> Add a more generic set of Myth units that anyone within a Pantheon can build, regardless of which foci they take, so that everyone can make at least one type of Myth unit?
B> Add more Myth units to the existing Foci, to where every focus has at least one unit it can unlock at some point?
C> Leave things as they are, to where certain Focus combinations (like Fire/War) don't provide any Myth units at all, to make up for how much they boost your non-Myth units?
Obviously you can't really answer this without actually playing, and my goal is still to upload v.0.01 this weekend, but I'm a bit busy with Real Life stuff. What I'm trying to get at is, should combat in the ancient eras be all about these sorts of units, or should they be a minority of your armies, with swordsmen and archers still providing the bulk of your military?

Well, A&B. I definitely want some pantheon-specific units, and more myth units in general (fire should definitely get a few, in my opinion).

Well, A&B. I definitely want some pantheon-specific units, and more myth units in general (fire should definitely get a few, in my opinion).

Right now, Fire gets no Myth units, it just REALLY strengthens your mundane army, especially against cities. I can easily throw in a Fire Elemental unit at level 2 (Retribution, Fire II), but I'd want to tone down the promotion given to mundane units slightly to compensate.

At the moment, Earth has a couple units, Air has three, Death has four, Darkness has three (and a Myth-boosting promotion), and Animals has about ten. The only other Myth units I've designed are single level 4 units for Crafts, Plants, Wealth, Storms, and Water. So if the goal was B, where I'd add a token level 2 Myth unit to every focus, then that's a pretty hefty number of new units. And while I can just add Elementals for fire, water, earth, and air, finding a conceptual match for some of the others might be tough. (Unicorn for Beauty? A Myth worker unit for Fertility? How about Art or Seasons?)

Also, slight issue: the current city view UI shows all units you've unlocked the tech for, just greyed out with a "need building X" label. I'm going to have to change that, so that you won't see every single myth unit listed in every city. But I was going to have to override the city UI anyway, to show Favor totals, so it's no big loss.

Well, I think I'm more interested in a few pantheon-specific units, because it would make say, the Greek pantheon feel more unique than the Norse one. Sure, the gods and foci are different, but units are something that actually seems more tangible (not that anything about this is tangible, but still).
Not a ton, generic units would still be more prevalent, but still.

I can do that. The question then becomes, what units SHOULD be tied to pantheon? I can easily create seven projects, one per pantheon, and just have the units require that, and I'd need to stick them at a technology then. (Probably Shamanism for the first one, and maybe a later one as well.) But for this to work I need to find seven (or fourteen) units easily identifiable with these mythologies.

Well, lets see:
Greece: Erinyes (Furies) | Talos
Shinto: Qilin | Mizuchi
Aztec: Ahuizotl (monster, not the man) | Xelhua, (Teo)Cipactli
Hindu: Makara | Sarabha
Norse: Valkyries | Fenrir, Nidhogg(r) (sorry, not sure if the actual letters would dislplay)
Egyptian: Axex (if Griffin unused), Serpopard | Ammit, Apophis
Sumerian: Mushussu | Alu, Akhkazu

Ok, so, creatures on the left of the bar are generic, they were plural in myth, and would correspond to a level 1-2 myth unit. Ones on the right of the bar were one-of-a-kind, they'd be equivalent to level 4 myth units. IMO, each pantheon should have one of each.
BTW, I kind of stretched it with Shinto and Sumerian pantheons - Some of the Sumerian ones are actually Akkadian, some of the Shinto are more or less culturally east asian.
I can post a list of suggested abilities later.

Well, lets see:
Greece: Erinyes (Furies) | Talos
Shinto: Qilin | Mizuchi
Aztec: Ahuizotl (monster, not the man) | Xelhua, (Teo)Cipactli
Hindu: Makara | Sarabha
Norse: Valkyries | Fenrir, Nidhogg(r) (sorry, not sure if the actual letters would dislplay)
Egyptian: Axex (if Griffin unused), Serpopard | Ammit, Apophis
Sumerian: Mushussu | Alu, Akhkazu

It's a good list, but I should rephrase. What creatures, that aren't already represented among the creatures I'm already including in a generic form, should be available to followers of all four major gods within a pantheon?

For instance, the Nidhogg (or Niohoggr or however you want to pronounce it) is a dragon. It might not be the stereotypical fire-breathing type we've all come to know and love, but I'm not sure it's distinctive enough to justify a separate unit when Dragons will already exist (at Animals 4, which is only available to Ra and, later, Inari). Likewise, the Crafts 4 creature, which is only available to Hephaestus, Enki, and later Brahma, is the Colossus (obviously inspired by Talos). But even if it weren't, the problem is that the creature has to be available to followers of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and Heph equally, and Talos really doesn't fit that very well. Too distinctively linked to one god.

So the generic myth units would need to be something like the Minotaur, Centaur, or the Cyclops for the Greeks, all of which were just a bit too specific to put as normal myth units. The earlier one should really be comparable to a level 1-2 unit, while the later one should be a 3ish (to where you'd still prefer the level 4 unit from your Foci, given the choice), and I think two of those can be fit for that. (In AoM, the Pegasus was a unit all gods had access to, but I'm already using it for the Air focus, probably level 1.)
If I just use units from AoM, the Egyptian could be the Wadjet (snake spitting poison) or Petsuchos (crocodile with a laser beam) as the early unit and the giant Scarab as the later one, but you have to diverge quite a bit from actual mythology for those. Given how many other bits of this I'm cribbing from the video game instead of actual mythology, it's not really a problem.

But the Norse gave me a different idea, in light of your suggestion; nearly every mythical unit in Norse lore was on the bad guys' side (which really meant Loki), so they don't make as much sense for this.
But instead of an actual Myth unit, though, at least one of these pantheon-wide units could be myth-ish. As in, a mundane unit with a supernatural ability, something that makes sense as a universal unit. The Centaur would do well for the Greeks for this, but what gave me the idea was the Valkyrie (specifically AoM's take on them), a cavalry healer unit.

So for now let's assume a pattern.
> One weak mythological unit (comparable to a level 1) at Shamanism (start of the Classical). At that point, your Primary and Secondary Focus are just unlocking level 2, so a level 1 Myth unit would fit right in.
> A not-quite-mythical unit at Conversion (late Classical), comparable to a level 2.
> A heavy myth unit at Heresy (early Medieval), comparable to a level 3.

So the Greeks could go Minotaur, Centaur, and Cyclops, respectively. I'll look into the others later.

Some of the Sumerian ones are actually Akkadian, some of the Shinto are more or less culturally east asian.

Not a problem. I've already mixed the Akkadian with the Sumerians a bit in that I'm calling one of the major gods "Anu" instead of Ea. (With Enki and Enlil, I didn't want three E-names.) And the Shinto really aren't a problem, because I'm trying NOT to make these nation-specific, and the Shinto religion got mixed in enough with Buddhism at various points that I think I could justify multiple nations following it. (While this wasn't an explicit factor in my pantheon choices, it did turn out nicely for that, in that each pantheon is a good match for two or three of the vanilla civs.)

Well, I thought Nidhogg was a bit more distinct, but some of the others might be pushing it. The left-side Egyptian ones, definitely.
Part of my hesitation is in not knowing what myth units came up since the last update of the list on page one (IMO, the myth units should get their own list, just to see).

When I started, I was looking first at the Norse and Aztec myths, saw Nodhogg, and thought "I wan that thing in my army". From there, I tried to get at least one "normal" and one "unique" unit for each pantheon. Some of the "special" ones were minor deities in their own right, but I tried to stay away from that.
The only ones I'd worry about are:
Xelhua and Talos are both giants.
Mizuchi, Nidhogg, and the Mushussu are technically all dragons, but none of them is remotely close to the standard European one (Mizuchi's Japanese, Mushussu is.. something. Mesopotamia didn't have the same idea of a dragon. Nidhogg's basically an overgrown lizard.)
The axex is basically a griffin, so I'd only use it if a griffin isn't in the standard units.
Most of the others are pretty distinct (the ahuizotl, for instance, is a three-handed monkey that steals your fingernails and eyeballs. Doesn't get more out there than that.)
As for the Norse, isn't Loki a major in the pantheon, anyways?

Part of my hesitation is in not knowing what myth units came up since the last update of the list on page one (IMO, the myth units should get their own list, just to see).

They will get their own list. I just haven't done so yet because it's still in flux; I keep going back and forth on abilities, levels, and so on.

When I started, I was looking first at the Norse and Aztec myths, saw Nodhogg, and thought "I wan that thing in my army".

That's fine, but I'm not sure it should be a one-of-a-kind unit. The level 4s are capped at 1 per player, and it's very unlikely that more than one player will have one (since no Focus has more than 5 out of 28 major gods with it, and few have more than 3), so they're supposed to be unique creatures.
So the question is whether the power myth unit for each pantheon should also be 1-per-player. Since 4 out of 28 major gods share a pantheon, then it'd be a bit more likely to overlap, but there's one big difference: level 4s can only ever be built in your capital (since non-capital cities can't get above level 3), but these Myth units will be available to every city unless I specifically say otherwise.

Actually, that's not a bad idea; make the powerful unit capital-only by requiring the Palace, and limit it to one per player, like the level 4s, but make it fall between the 3s and 4s in strength. Basically, I want the player to prefer Focus-specific 3s and 4s if he has them; these pantheon-linked units should be a fallback. Otherwise, what's the point of taking a Myth-heavy Focus?

Xelhua and Talos are both giants.

True, but one's a giant bronze machine, and the other's a giant who was good at construction. That one's not really a problem. I was planning to give the Colossus unit Damage Reduction (take 1 less damage from each combat), Trample (all enemies adjacent to the target take 1 damage), Loner, a strength boost, and a bonus in Open terrain.

Xelhua wouldn't get most of those, although I'm not sure what he WOULD get. But the being a giant thing is definitely a plus, as it's not hard to find a Giant-like unit model. (Heck, I can just scale up a normal human and call it done.) The fact that Xelhua was explicitly linked to Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl is a small problem, but it's not THAT strong of a link.
The question, though, is whether Xelhua is more appropriate as a mythological monster or as a myth-killing Hero unit that Aztec followers can gain.

Mizuchi, Nidhogg, and the Mushussu are technically all dragons, but none of them is remotely close to the standard European one (Mizuchi's Japanese, Mushussu is.. something. Mesopotamia didn't have the same idea of a dragon. Nidhogg's basically an overgrown lizard.)

Well, Nidhogg flies, so you're halfway to the stereotypical dragon already, albeit without the fire-breathing bit being mentioned.

Mushussu is a bit better; it might technocally be a dragon, but it's probably closer to a griffon or chimaera (bird talons on the back legs, feline paws on the front ones, no wings, and a serpent head with horns?), so it'd clearly have a different set of bonuses. The problem there would be finding a good 3D model, but given the relative lack of powerful mythological creatures in the Sumerian mythology, I'd be inclined to go with it even if I had to just take a standard dragon and paint it orange or something.

Mizuchi is a tough one. More of a "river god" than a dragon, he might overlap a bit too much with Ryujin (minor god of Water), and I'm just not sure what sort of abilities you could give one of these. But that probably works in his favor, as I could just use an altered Dragon model and give it a completely different set of abilities.

From a balance point of view, I'm okay with the high-end generic myth units all being dragons or dragon-like creatures, because everybody loves dragons. The biggest problem I have with my current Focus design is that many of the level 4 units will just never be seen in a game; if you've got 8 players, and only 2 out of 28 gods can reach Animals 4, then there's almost a 50% chance that no one will take either of those two gods in a single game. I can increase those odds a bit by awarding Myth units from Events, but I wouldn't want to do that with Level 4s unless there was a HUGE downside. So having each pantheon's generic unit be something like that is fine, especially if it's statistically distinct (but weaker) than the standard Dragon.

For reference, the Dragon's abilities are currently:
Flight
Fire IV (the one that gives +1 damage in all combats)
Damage Reduction
Loner
Acts as a Great General (really should be more of a negative aura for enemies, but I haven't coded that up yet)

The axex is basically a griffin, so I'd only use it if a griffin isn't in the standard units.

Actually, what I'd prefer to do in that case is move the Sphinx to being the Egyptian trademark unit, and put the Griffon at Animals 4 instead. Since Ra and Inari are the only ones who can reach Animals 4, and Ra gets there first, it's about the same functionally. But I think more people can instantly associate the Sphinx with the Egyptian gods than they would a griffon, so it makes more sense for Isis, Osiris, and Set to have access to a Sphinx.

Most of the others are pretty distinct (the ahuizotl, for instance, is a three-handed monkey that steals your fingernails and eyeballs. Doesn't get more out there than that.)

Definitely good as a concept. Of course, the question then becomes finding a good 3D model of those. That's one of the reasons I was using things like Dragons and such; it's a lot more likely I'll be able to find something workable. But a monkey shouldn't be TOO hard to find; AoM did have golden monkeys created through an artifact, so if I can figure out how to convert AoM units directly then I'd be fine. And if not, a monkey shouldn't be THAT hard to find.

As for the Norse, isn't Loki a major in the pantheon, anyways?

Yes, and that's the problem. If most of the Norse monsters are clearly identified with his side of the final battle, then it doesn't make as much sense for those creatures to be summonable by priests of Odin, Thor, or Frigg instead of being explicitly linked to his particular Foci. Granted, Hel was on his side as well, and I'm not putting limits on who can take her, but still.

I'm willing to ignore this a bit, especially since AoM was pretty loose with their interpretations of some units, but it'd be best if the units weren't explicitly tied to one of the majors (like Talos to Heph).

That's fine, but I'm not sure it should be a one-of-a-kind unit. The level 4s are capped at 1 per player, and it's very unlikely that more than one player will have one (since no Focus has more than 5 out of 28 major gods with it, and few have more than 3), so they're supposed to be unique creatures.
So the question is whether the power myth unit for each pantheon should also be 1-per-player. Since 4 out of 28 major gods share a pantheon, then it'd be a bit more likely to overlap, but there's one big difference: level 4s can only ever be built in your capital (since non-capital cities can't get above level 3), but these Myth units will be available to every city unless I specifically say otherwise.

Actually, that's not a bad idea; make the powerful unit capital-only by requiring the Palace, and limit it to one per player, like the level 4s, but make it fall between the 3s and 4s in strength. Basically, I want the player to prefer Focus-specific 3s and 4s if he has them; these pantheon-linked units should be a fallback. Otherwise, what's the point of taking a Myth-heavy Focus?
I was thinking one "generic" unit, and one that was the one-of-a-kind bit, though, it does make sense to have it weaker than a level four unit.




True, but one's a giant bronze machine, and the other's a giant who was good at construction. That one's not really a problem. I was planning to give the Colossus unit Damage Reduction (take 1 less damage from each combat), Trample (all enemies adjacent to the target take 1 damage), Loner, a strength boost, and a bonus in Open terrain.

Xelhua wouldn't get most of those, although I'm not sure what he WOULD get. But the being a giant thing is definitely a plus, as it's not hard to find a Giant-like unit model. (Heck, I can just scale up a normal human and call it done.) The fact that Xelhua was explicitly linked to Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl is a small problem, but it's not THAT strong of a link.
The question, though, is whether Xelhua is more appropriate as a mythological monster or as a myth-killing Hero unit that Aztec followers can gain.
Well, I can only find one good human hero, and Cipactli could make another good myth-4 unit, but it would be kind of strange to have a giant as a hero. Plus, (correct me if I'm wrong), but you couldn't make his graphics unique then, could you?


Well, Nidhogg flies, so you're halfway to the stereotypical dragon already, albeit without the fire-breathing bit being mentioned.
Didn't realize he could fly.

Mushussu is a bit better; it might technocally be a dragon, but it's probably closer to a griffon or chimaera (bird talons on the back legs, feline paws on the front ones, no wings, and a serpent head with horns?), so it'd clearly have a different set of bonuses. The problem there would be finding a good 3D model, but given the relative lack of powerful mythological creatures in the Sumerian mythology, I'd be inclined to go with it even if I had to just take a standard dragon and paint it orange or something.

Mizuchi is a tough one. More of a "river god" than a dragon, he might overlap a bit too much with Ryujin (minor god of Water), and I'm just not sure what sort of abilities you could give one of these. But that probably works in his favor, as I could just use an altered Dragon model and give it a completely different set of abilities.

From a balance point of view, I'm okay with the high-end generic myth units all being dragons or dragon-like creatures, because everybody loves dragons. The biggest problem I have with my current Focus design is that many of the level 4 units will just never be seen in a game; if you've got 8 players, and only 2 out of 28 gods can reach Animals 4, then there's almost a 50% chance that no one will take either of those two gods in a single game. I can increase those odds a bit by awarding Myth units from Events, but I wouldn't want to do that with Level 4s unless there was a HUGE downside. So having each pantheon's generic unit be something like that is fine, especially if it's statistically distinct (but weaker) than the standard Dragon.

That could be where the Pantheon units come in- at a certain point, you'd be guaranteed to have one powerful Myth unit, and adopting certain gods as majors would give you more.


For reference, the Dragon's abilities are currently:
Flight
Fire IV (the one that gives +1 damage in all combats)
Damage Reduction
Loner
Acts as a Great General (really should be more of a negative aura for enemies, but I haven't coded that up yet)



Actually, what I'd prefer to do in that case is move the Sphinx to being the Egyptian trademark unit, and put the Griffon at Animals 4 instead. Since Ra and Inari are the only ones who can reach Animals 4, and Ra gets there first, it's about the same functionally. But I think more people can instantly associate the Sphinx with the Egyptian gods than they would a griffon, so it makes more sense for Isis, Osiris, and Set to have access to a Sphinx.

That would probably be better, a lot of the Egyptian creatures were similar to Greek ones.

Definitely good as a concept. Of course, the question then becomes finding a good 3D model of those. That's one of the reasons I was using things like Dragons and such; it's a lot more likely I'll be able to find something workable. But a monkey shouldn't be TOO hard to find; AoM did have golden monkeys created through an artifact, so if I can figure out how to convert AoM units directly then I'd be fine. And if not, a monkey shouldn't be THAT hard to find.

Well, it's a little stranger looking than a monkey, but, that would work. Plus, they don't need graphics for early versions, so that'd buy time to come up with solutions. If I had to guess, this might be harder than Ascension for graphics... (though, I seem to recall a Dragon unit floating around somewhere on the forums).

Yes, and that's the problem. If most of the Norse monsters are clearly identified with his side of the final battle, then it doesn't make as much sense for those creatures to be summonable by priests of Odin, Thor, or Frigg instead of being explicitly linked to his particular Foci. Granted, Hel was on his side as well, and I'm not putting limits on who can take her, but still.

I'm willing to ignore this a bit, especially since AoM was pretty loose with their interpretations of some units, but it'd be best if the units weren't explicitly tied to one of the majors (like Talos to Heph).
I think part of that might be the pantheon, one of the myths I suggested for the Hindu one is tied to a god over there, too (not sure if its one that is used, but still). Greek ones, in particular, might e a pain.
The benefit to that is that people are more likely to recognize them. Don't know if that has any impact to you, though.

I was thinking one "generic" unit, and one that was the one-of-a-kind bit, though, it does make sense to have it weaker than a level four unit.

Yeah, the balance on this is going to be tough. My first thought is that they can't be as strong as a Focus-specific unit, or else there's no point in taking those Foci, clearly. And that's easy enough to manage with the major gods that have these foci. But what about minor gods? As in, you take Zeus as your major god, and when the time comes to pick a minor god, you consider Artemis (who has the Animals focus). Because she's a minor god, you'll never get her temples to level 4; you're barely even going to get them to level 3 in your capital, and level 2 in your other cities. So if the Greeks have access to a generic mass-production unit that's better than the Animals 2 options, why would you take her as a minor god at all?
Actually, to get around that, I'm going to reduce the number of Myth units from Animals to 2 per tier and add some small other bonuses (+food for cows, deer, sheep, fish; +production for Horses, produces one unit of Horses). That should free up a few units for pantheon-specific use.

Basically, though, the early common myth units should be between a 1 and 2, so that taking someone like Artemis is still desirable as her 2s will still be an upgrade. The late myth unit can be a 3, stronger than the units you'd get from taking Artemis, but you'd need to have it follow a 1-per-player limit like the 4s have. If you didn't, then there'd be little reason to upgrade her shrines.

Well, I can only find one good human hero, and Cipactli could make another good myth-4 unit, but it would be kind of strange to have a giant as a hero. Plus, (correct me if I'm wrong), but you couldn't make his graphics unique then, could you?

Sure you could. Heroes will be like UUs: same unit class as an existing unit, but a distinct Units block, which allows for unique graphics. Since you don't BUILD heroes (they're awarded through various other methods, like events or Favor), there's no conflict. So Achilles would be a Swordsman UU, with a slightly higher strength and some extra promotions thrown on; your cities would still make Swordsmen the old-fashioned way, but if you had Achilles, he'd benefit from any Wonders or Focus promotions that boost Swordsmen, just like he was a civ-specific UU.

As to the discongruity of having a giant as a hero, it's not really a problem. While certain pantheons (Greeks, Hindu, Shinto, etc.) will probably be all-Human with their heroes, some of the others weren't so anti-monster. The Hindu lore, for instance, had one good-aligned Rakshasa as a "hero" at one point. And since I'm trying to add 8 heroes per Pantheon, I'm going to run out if I'm too picky.
Greek Heroes, at the moment: the Argos (i.e., Jason), Achilles, Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus, Bellerophon, Ajax, Hercules. My idea is that one of these maps to each axis, and one to each diagonal, sort of like how the Foci work. That way, I can make some of these a little more exclusive; a Poseidon follower might never see the events that award Odysseus or the Argos, while Zeus might never see Hercules.

Didn't realize he could fly.

Depends on which source you're drawing from. To quote from one translation of the Voluspa,
" There comes the shadowy
dragon flying,
glittering serpent, up
from Dark of the Moon Hills."
Yes, I admit, I got that off Wikipedia; I'm at work at the moment. More specifically, though, the Nidhogg appeared twice in the Age of Mythology game (once in the original, once in the expansion), and there he was a flying dragon with antlers. He's even hovering there in the backdrop when you're at the main menu of the original AoM. So if I'm going to be able to steal unit models from that game, that's what he'd be.

That could be where the Pantheon units come in- at a certain point, you'd be guaranteed to have one powerful Myth unit, and adopting certain gods as majors would give you more.

That's the part I keep going back and forth on. If all the L4s are one-per-player, then it might be okay to have the pantheon-specific high unit be an L4 as well, because a player with those foci could then have TWO unstoppable killing machines, or even three if they took the right combination of foci. But that might just be too much raw power for everyone, since it'd completely overshadow your mundane units, which is why I was aiming for L3 as the baseline; it'll already be expected that L3s would be major parts of many armies, so adding one more isn't a big deal.

That would probably be better, a lot of the Egyptian creatures were similar to Greek ones.

There's a surprising amount of similarity between a LOT of mythologies, but my rule of thumb on this is that if all else fails, use a D&D creature for the Foci unlocks. I mean, some of the creatures in various mythologies are really off the wall, but most mythologies have analogues of the dragon, vampire, ghost, really nasty versions of common predators (lions, tigers, bears), or winged versions of land animals (snakes, horses, etc.), so putting those in the myth-heavy Foci works well. There are also a couple quirky creatures that overlap quite a few as well, like the Hydra, Griffon, and so on, so I wanted those in the Animals Focus as well.

though, I seem to recall a Dragon unit floating around somewhere on the forums.

There are several. Finding a dragon model really isn't a problem, and most of the D&D-ish mythological creatures were done for various Civ4 mods at one point or another. It's the less common stuff that might be a problem.

The benefit to that is that people are more likely to recognize them. Don't know if that has any impact to you, though.

Not as much as you might think. I'm sure there will be quite a few cases where people playing the mod encounter a creature they'd never heard of before, but as long as its abilities are things they can understand it shouldn't be too bad.

Take the Rakshasa, for example. At the moment it's a Darkness 3 creature, but I could easily make that be one of the Hindu-specific units. Currently, it has three abilities:
> The promotion-stealing ability of the Doppelganger unit from the SMAC mod
> Venom (mentioned earlier, and used by quite a few other units)
> The existing "+25% vs Wounded" promotion
So even if you've never heard of them (or if you HAVE heard of them but think they're tiger men with backwards hands after playing too much D&D), as long as you can understand what those three abilities do, it shouldn't matter. Since Hindu lore was pretty inconsistent on their abilities and appearances in the first place, it's not a problem.

I'm trying to limit the pool of new promotions to 12-15 if possible. So there shouldn't be THAT much of a learning curve; once you learn what Venom, Disease, Stun, etc. do, it shouldn't be too hard to adjust to new units.

Ok, so, a few things:
I mean I think theres a dragon unit for Civ V. I think it was made as an example, back when the unit creation tools actually worked (or even back when they were beta).

I actually think more unique units are more interesting - part of why I keep bringing up the ahuizotl is that nothing else is like it, and it's way out there. Everyone's heard of some of the generic European stuff, and that's often got some favorites, but I'd like to see the weird stuff, from unrepresented mythologies, end up as the generic units.

As for the Pantheon L4's, perhaps give them a bigger penalty vs. heroes? I know that uses up another promotion, but it would make the Foci L4s- which don't have to worry about extra penalties- more desirable.

I mean I think theres a dragon unit for Civ V. I think it was made as an example, back when the unit creation tools actually worked (or even back when they were beta).

Yep. It was used as an example in one of the tutorial threads, but I think it was a Civ4 conversion. Anyway, yes, dragon models are plentiful.

I actually think more unique units are more interesting - part of why I keep bringing up the ahuizotl is that nothing else is like it, and it's way out there.

As a pantheon-specific creature, sure. As a Focus-affiliated creature, no. The issue, as always, is content balance; if the first pantheon-specific Myth unit unlocks at the same time as a Swordsman, then why would you bother making swords? Why would you care about the presence of Iron? So whatever the lower Pantheon-specific unit is, it has to be WEAK, and that rules out a lot of the more exotic abilities. The higher unit(s), no problem.

Take the Minotaur. Obviously tied to the Greek mythology, even though pretty much every pantheon had "body of a man, head of an X" creatures. Heck, the Egyptians practically trademarked the concept. But still, identifiably Greek. And yet, what exactly does a Minotaur DO? Okay, it's strong, and is probably carrying a big axe or something... and that's about it. So if you want something equivalent to a Swordsman, it'd work just fine. It could still require Iron, for exactly the same reasons (needing actual weapons to be a threat), so it wouldn't even have a significant advantage over its mundane counterparts; it might be slightly stronger, but this'd be counteracted by its greatly increased vulnerability to Heroes and its inability to later upgrade to longswords.

The same goes for quite a few others. Take Pegasus; yes, he can fly. But at his core, he's a horse with wings; even if you assume that the unit corresponds to men riding on pegasi, it's still not going to be more powerful than a mundane unit. (More mobile, sure. But weaker.) So it fits just fine as the Air 1 unit.

As for the Pantheon L4's, perhaps give them a bigger penalty vs. heroes? I know that uses up another promotion, but it would make the Foci L4s- which don't have to worry about extra penalties- more desirable.

That'd be hard to do. Promotions can either be against a Domain, a Combat Class, or a specific unit type. Domain is obviously out of the question. Combat Class is "Myth", so the only way to get the variation you describe would be to create a second combat class for them ("Semi-Myth"?). This'd at least let me do this without adding a new promotion (since the current Anti-Myth would just have two effects instead of one), but it has other problems. Specific unit types would be FAR too much work.

There are a few other ways I can handle this without needing an extra promotion:
1> Pantheon units are more expensive to build, and/or have extra maintenance costs (like my Titan units do in SMAC), while Focus myth units are cheaper to build. I generally don't like this sort of balance, because the AI doesn't work this way; it'll build units until it runs out of cash and/or resources and then stop. But you can tweak Flavor values to make them less desirable.

2> Add a new strategic resource to be used only for Myth units. That's how AoM managed them; the myth units there would drain your Favor, which was pretty much ONLY used for Myth units. Again, the AI wouldn't be too good at this one; it'd create whatever unit unlocked first until it ran out of the resource, at which point it'd stop. I'd been considering this one for a while, but it just didn't look feasible. The biggest issue would be how to generate the new resource; it'd pretty much HAVE to be building-generated, and that's a pretty big advantage to the human player.

3> Hard limits. X per player, no more. And I don't just mean the 1-per-player of a national wonder, you can do 10 per player (like the Orbital Defense Pods) just as easily. I don't like this sort of thing either, but it's at least possible. So maybe you can only have 5 of the low pantheon unit, 3 of a middle one, and 1 of the top one; if your empire is too large for these 9 units to form your entire army, then you need to create some regular units.

4> Make them weaker, with lower Flavor values than the Focus-specific units. Four abilities instead of five for the top unit, that sort of thing. But instead of raw power, they get some other benefit that makes them equally as desirable (meaning the AI would have no problems).
Maybe, unlike normal Myth units, they DO get XP from a Barracks. A Hydra can't be taught to fight better, but a Minotaur or Centaur can.
Maybe, unlike normal Myth units, they DO generate points towards getting a Great General. (Normal myth units don't.)
Maybe normal Myth units only gain half the normal XP from a combat, but these ones gain the full amount.
Maybe, unlike normal Myth units, they CAN be purchased with gold. (Currently all myth units have this disabled.) This makes a big difference in terms of defending from an unexpected attack, but beyond that it's not a huge gain.
Maybe, unlike normal Myth units, they're not actually Myth units. As in, not a part of that new combat class; a Centauri might just be categorized as Mounted, meaning it'd benefit from all promotions that a mounted unit can use. (Including the promotions given by Foci like Fire or War, but NOT the ones in Darkness.)
Or maybe it's something else. For instance, take Justice, which is going to mostly be a Hero-oriented focus. The level 2 building is going to give all Heroes in your empire +1 XP per turn. (And yes, it stacks.) It sounds like a lot, but realize that you'll have very few Heroes, probably only one or two, and you're not going to have a lot of cities. Now, what if this ability also added to this other category of Myth unit (albeit at a lower level, or maybe capped like Barbarian XP to 30)?

Lots of options, and I'm still trying to decide.

How’s this for a start?

New unit type: Pantheon (Not really necessary)

Three new unit classes (as simple as tier 1, 2, 3)

Tier 1 (13) Capped at 10 per empire. No other real change.
Tier 2 (18) Capped at 3 per empire. Higher maintenance cost.
Tier 3 (22) Capped at 1 per empire. Higher maintenance cost, happiness penalty.

Greeks:
Tier 1: Stymphalian birds, ranged helicopter-style unit, 13 strength, no movement cost for pillaging tiles
Tier 2: Erinyes (Furies), strength 15, range 7, air unit.
Tier 3: Charybdis, naval unit, 28 strength, shallow water only, 4 movement. Not a lot going on here, just a really strong naval unit.
Shinto
Tier 1: Oni, strength 12, rough terrain bonus.
Tier 2: Qilin, strength 14, all-terrain and medic promotions
Tier 3: Mizuchi, strength 24, bonus near water.
Aztec
Tier 1: Ahuizotl, strength 13, bonus when adjacent to water tiles.
Tier 2: Cipactli or Teocipactli, strength 18, can defend while embarked, can be used as settler (borrowing off of the myth for that one)
Tier 2: Xelhua, strength 24, also has the ability to make any GP tile improvement (will sacrifice Xelhua to do so) (giant worker graphic)
Hindu
Tier 1: Nivatakavacha, naval unit, 4 movement, 14 strength (makes up for the weaknesses of naval units in general)
Tier 2: Makara, strength 16, 3 movement, all terrain promotion from the Ascension mod
Tier 3: Sarabha, strength 24, scout terrain promotion, anti-unit bonus
Norse
Tier 1: Valkyries, strength 12, medic
Tier 2: Huginn and Munnin (not sure how you want to dice that up), strength 14, range 12, air units
Tier 3: Fenrir, strength 26, invisibility, 4 movement
Egyptian
Tier 1: Sphinx (I think you already have this one figured out)
Tier 2: Ammit (don’t ask why there can be 3), strength 17, anti-unit bonus
Tier 3: Apophis, movement 4, strength 22, invisibility
Sumerian
Tier 1: Mushussu, 12 strength, but I don’t know for ability. Kind of lost here, just seems like something should be given.
Tier 2: Alu, 16 strength, invisibility, 3 movement
Tier 3: Akhkhazu, 22 strength, invisibility, disease, 4 movement

Unless otherwise noted, all movement points are 2.

I didn’t remove biases for the Norse, but I did try to balance them. Stymphalian birds might be a bit biased, too.

Some abilities repeat, but usually not within a pantheon (exception being the Sumerian tier 2 & 3 units). The abilities might not be well-balanced, though. I tried to give stronger units fewer abilities, weaker ones more, but not all abilities are equal. Plus, not sure when these’ll come in, or how they compare to Myth Units.

Greek and Sumerian pantheons turned out a bit specialized.

The AI has no real understanding of how to deal with a lot of the bits you described: happiness penalties, bonuses when near water, and so on. If I have to implement it through Lua, then that's a real drawback.
Now, on to specifics. Don't take these as absolute refusals, but quite a few of the things you described either can't easily be done or have big problems.

> Naval units are a HUGE problem, because what happens if your empire has no coastal cities? I'm already running into that with the Water focus; if your capital isn't on the coast, then having the powerful level 4 won't help since you'll never be able to build it. Okay, on nearly all maps you'll have at least one coastal city by the time you get to the last tier of myth units, but if it's not the capital then there are problems.

> The "shallow water only" thing isn't notable, because all of this happens pre-Astronomy. NO naval units can cross oceans. This is why I asked earlier about whether I should change the underlying dynamics to things like this; without Astronomy you won't be in contact with most of the world, depending on map type.
For this reason, I'm also leery of giving units the All-Terrain effect, because I'm not sure what happens with it pre-Astronomy, but that'd be easy enough to fix if it lets you cross oceans. Side note: units with that promotion are technically naval units, meaning they can only be built in coastal cities; see previous point for why that's bad.

> Air units: these are a real problem. There are no counters to air units in the early eras, so balance becomes a major headache when you can't shoot down the unit bombarding you. In my current plan, the only actual Air unit I was going to add would be the Lightning Bolt (Air 4) for Zeus; every other "Flying" unit is a Helicopter-style setup (hovering + all terrain 1 MP). If their bombardment rating is low enough then I suppose it'd be okay, since they'd often die in the attack, but that has other problems.

> The "bonus near water" won't be easy to implement. Well, it WOULD be easy to implement through Lua, but the AI wouldn't understand it. Now, I could mimic this somewhat with the existing XML, like giving a combat boost for Flood Plains or Oases (they ARE features, like Forests or Jungles), but I don't think there's a way to do this for coasts. I'll look into it.

> Having Xelhua it make a GP improvement is fine in theory (although I'd limit it to a new one, like the Monolith, that boosts a little of everything), but what's to stop you from just repeating the process over and over to make tons of them? It sort of defeats the whole point of having these be one per empire. There'd have to be some sort of check, where you can only ever make one of those improvement, and I'm not sure I CAN do that.
Also, one of the core concepts of this mod is that when the Enlightenment starts, all of your myth units start to despawn, refunding you gold and research for each (while your religious buildings refund culture and Golden Age points). So whatever improvement Xelhua makes will have to ALSO be destroyed at that time, because otherwise Aztec followers will have a HUGE advantage. I can do that, but it's one more thing to clean up and it's a bit tougher because it'd require me to scan the entire map for them and check the owner of each one I find.

> I honestly don't know what it'd do to add the ability to settle cities to a combat unit. Well, I DO know, because I have the Colony Pod, but I mean to a resourceless unit. It might decide to start the game with you getting these instead of the normal Settlers if you start in a later era, and that'd be bad. Since the unit would have a Project prerequisite (one per pantheon, assigned automatically) it can easily be disabled in later eras, I suppose; that's one MORE cleanup job.

> Land-based units can't have invisibility, unless I add some new way for units to DETECT invisibility, and that'd be a lot of work to implement and balance (besides eating up two more promotion slots). So I'd prefer not to do this one if I can avoid it; the Norse #3 could just be the Nidhogg like we talked about before. Especially since I'm currently using AoM's Fenris Wolves as an Animals 1 unit, a wolfpack that has the Teamwork and bonus-vs-Wounded abilities; this can be changed, of course, but it's a useful niche unit, sort of like the Laser Infantry (cheap to build, good in packs).

> Apophis was technically a god, despite being a demon. I left out him and Ma'at from the pantheon for balance reasons, since I only wanted 13 gods, but I think he's not really appropriate for a myth unit. I was thinking of putting the Sphinx as the Egyptian 3, actually, with the level 1 being a Wadjet or Petsuchos. Not because the Egyptian sphinxes were all-powerful or anything, but because they're different enough to justify giving a mix of abilities that none of the other top-tier Myth units have. Okay, and they're pretty big and/or powerful; at worst, I'd put them as the 2.

I tried to give stronger units fewer abilities, weaker ones more, but not all abilities are equal. Plus, not sure when these’ll come in, or how they compare to Myth Units.

I'll be tweaking the number of abilities each unit has as I go, but for now my guideline is still what I posted before: weak myth units have 1-2 abilities, generally adding one "mundane" promotion to that, moderate units would have ~3 abilities, and the big stuff would be 4-5, generally with one of them being basically unique.

The #1s would basically be the start of the Classical, contemporary with the Swordsmen (STR 11), with Catapults and Archers providing support and Spearmen getting a bit obsolete. That's the tier where your Primary and Secondary foci unlock level 2.

The 2s would be at the start of the Medieval. Your capital will already be at a 3 in both your Primary and Secondary, and minor foci will be at a 2 in all cities; I'd probably put it at the Heresy tech, which bumps your capital's minors up by 1 as well, so 3s in the capital and 2s everywhere else. (Or if you take monotheism first, add 1 to the Primaries, which gets your capital up to a 4, although the growth isn't immediate.)
In terms of mundane units, that's the dead spot between Swordsmen/Archers/Catapults and Longswords/Crossbows/Trebuchets.

The 3s would be in the late Medieval, probably at Iconoclasm. At that point, your capital will have 4s in both primary and secondary, meaning you'll have the level 4 myth units if your foci include them, but your minor foci will have just downgraded from 2(3 in capital) to 1(2), so it's sort of the beginning of the end; Apostasy, the tech that lets you start the Enlightenment, is basically parallel to this point.
In terms of mundane units, you're at longswords and crossbows.

Ok, so, thoughts:

Naval units could be balanced by flavors, perhaps, and I wouldn't restrict the Pantheon units through favor and cities, just tech (buildable everywhere it'd function).

The all-terrain as naval throws a wrench in, though, perhaps switch those over to embarked with defense. Although, if all cities are allowed, that's less of an issue. And I was thinking they could cross oceans, since Poly can do it, it didn't seem like a nightmare scenario.

I think low-strength and distance between empires might make fighter-style air units ok, but perhaps the range should be toned down a bit.

For the "bonus by water", I'd say change it to marsh, oasis, and floodplains (rivers, if possible?).

For Egypt, I'd move Ammit up, and put the Sphinx at level 2.

Regarding Xelhua, could it be only one unit of that class ever (or, at least, ever per player?)
That would remove the balance issues, and make the Myth units from foci more desirable, too.

I'm not sure what to suggest to replace invisibility... Why doesn't that work, anyways? Seems like it wouldn't be a problem, because of the adjacent-unit thing.

Last, for Nidhogg, I'd go for a very high-strength unit, with bonuses against ranged units.

Naval units could be balanced by flavors, perhaps, and I wouldn't restrict the Pantheon units through favor and cities, just tech (buildable everywhere it'd function).

The thing to remember is that we're still talking about the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Eras. It's not uncommon that NONE of your cities are coastal at that point. Now, I'm definitiely shifting the balance of this a bit, so I'd expect you to have a bit larger of an empire by the end of the mythological stuff than you would normally at that point in the tech tree, but it might still be an issue, especially for folks who like Pangaeas, non-round maps like Highlands/Great Plains/Lakes, scenario maps, or even a straight Continents with an unlucky draw.

Not a complete idea killer, just something to watch out for.

And I was thinking they could cross oceans, since Poly can do it, it didn't seem like a nightmare scenario.

There's one balance point you're not accounting for, which isn't surprising since I haven't brought it up much. In a normal game, it takes you ~200 turns (on standard speeds and sizes) to reach Astronomy; ~50 turns for the Ancient, ~50 for the Classical, and ~100 for the Medieval. With the changes I'm making, though it's going to be more like 350. (100, 100, 150 or something similar; I'm just shooting for somewhere between 300 and 400 at the moment.)

So if the Polynesians have the ability to cross oceans pre-Astronomy (which I didn't know since I don't have the DLCs), the problem is that it gives you almost twice as long of a period where you have that advantage. I'm not sure that makes a huge difference, but it's something I'd want to watch out for.

I think low-strength and distance between empires might make fighter-style air units ok, but perhaps the range should be toned down a bit.

It's less about the range, and more about just a simple lack of counters. No anti-air units, no area interceptors, and so on. For the Lightning Bolt it wasn't a problem, because it's not SUPPOSED to ever be killable, but for these others I'd worry about the inherent balance.

For the "bonus by water", I'd say change it to marsh, oasis, and floodplains (rivers, if possible?).

Marsh, Oasis, and Floodplain are doable. Lakes, rivers, and coasts are not, from what I can tell. There are a couple things they can get instead (like the Amphibious ability, which also includes the ability to attack across rivers), but most of the stubs involving rivers are in the Buildings tables, not anything usable by units.

For Egypt, I'd move Ammit up, and put the Sphinx at level 2.

Easily workable. I'm still getting some of the normal myth units sorted out, so I haven't even tried putting these other ones in yet. It's just a question of whether we can get abilities that work for the units.

Regarding Xelhua, could it be only one unit of that class ever (or, at least, ever per player?)

No way to do that. There MIGHT be a way to prevent building a second one through Lua, but I'm not sure how well that interacts with the AI.

The simpler solution, that I thought of today, is to not have Xelhua create the improvement himself. Instead, at the Enlightenment, a despawning Xelhua could cause an improvement to be created through the Lua trigger. There are some issues with this (What if he's in a city? What if he's on the ocean? What if he's in enemy territory?), but there are workable solutions to that.

The bigger issue is just balance; I really don't want any effects to be persistent beyond the end of the mythological age. Once it's over, it's over. Having any Myth units create an improvement that would last beyond the mythological age violates that, so if he DOES make an improvement, it'd have to be something unique that I could destroy at the Enlightenment.

For instance, what if, instead of a GP-level improvement, Xelhua could just make a simple, new improvement without sacrificing? For instance, a non-hill improvement that adds +1 Production and +1 Culture. (Or just +1 Culture at first, upgrading with +1 Production at a later tech.) I could add a few of these, with various units that can build each one, and then at the Enlightenment they'd all get zapped. Very easy to do.

And it's not unprecedented. I'm adding two units to the Plants domain; the Plants 3 unit will be the Dryad, which'll gain the Plant Forest and Plant Jungle option, while the Plants 4 unit will be (name to be decided later) able to do certain terraforming actions (probably just non-floodplain desert into tundra or something weak like that, just enough to boost its food by 1). Yes, these violate the end-of-Age rule I just mentioned, in a way, but a big part of WHY forests and jungles are so useful in later eras involves how resources get distributed. (Tundra cities, even with Forests, still kinda suck. But Tundra is where a lot of the Oil and Aluminum gets placed, so you won't really WANT to settle those areas until later anyway. Similar logic for deserts, barring the flood plains.)

I'm not sure what to suggest to replace invisibility... Why doesn't that work, anyways? Seems like it wouldn't be a problem, because of the adjacent-unit thing.

Other than the adjacency, the only way to see an invisible unit is to have a "see invisible" ability sharing the same Invisibility tag. I'd been tempted to give Mind Worms an invisibility, so that you'd only see them when you were right next to them (which is basically how they were in SMAC, since Fungus had some interesting reductions to visibility), and I still might if I can't figure out how to enable the Hidden Nationality code. But when I tried to actually use this, it ended up being very lopsided; the AI was just horrible at dealing with invisible attackers, while a human player would handle it much better. (Also, a human player can move, see the massive invisible unit, and reload the game to the previous turn to shift the units needed to kill it into place.)

It's just a balance headache. If I were to give a top-tier unit like Fenrir any kind of invisibility, I'd REALLY reduce his strength to compensate. It's a huge defensive bonus to be invisible, since against the AI it often completely rules out any kind of ranged attacks.

Last, for Nidhogg, I'd go for a very high-strength unit, with bonuses against ranged units.

Check to see if any of the unit-based promotions I've added through Foci would seem appropriate for him. For instance, besides flying and cover, he could have the Death I ability (heal when you attack someone), the Justice ability (anyone who attacks you takes damage), or something else along those lines.

Question, will there only be the aforementioned pantheons to choose as civs? Either way there will be pros and cons:
- All civ have pantheons and myth units
- Limited variety

- Some civs have advantages
- Regular variety


Also, what of a pantheon that isn't mythological, but scientific, and the Myth units are advanced (By comparison) weaponry?

Question, will there only be the aforementioned pantheons to choose as civs?

Let's be clear. There is no relationship between pantheons and civs. Just because we call them "Greek" or "Egyptian" in no way means that only the Greek and Egyptian civs can take them. This is not a one-pantheon-per-civ fixed thing; each pantheon is tyed to a specific "style", so some might fit better with some civs than others, but they all have their own strengths and weaknesses and don't necessarily share those with the civ that was historically linked to them.

I might, MIGHT, make the AI predisposed towards taking appropriate pantheons if the right one is available, to where the Romans and Greeks would prefer to take the Olympian gods, the Arabs, Ottomans, and Persians would take the Sumerian set, and so on. But even if I do this, it wouldn't be an absolute thing, and most likely wouldn't include any DLC civs except the Mongols.

There will be seven pantheons in the mod, with 28 major god choices for civs to pick from. Given that the game limits you to 22 major civs, and the player gets to pick first, it's not really a problem to use whatever one you want. So if you want to limit yourself to always using the pantheon historically linked with your choice of civ, feel free, but that won't be coded into the mod.

Also, what of a pantheon that isn't mythological, but scientific, and the Myth units are advanced (By comparison) weaponry?

Never, ever, ever going to happen. If you want to play a science fiction mod, well, I just made one a while back; you might have heard of it at some point.

Point B was related to Point A, so it was voided by your answer. So, how will a Pantheon be adopted, or has this been answered already?

So, how will a Pantheon be adopted, or has this been answered already?

I've mentioned it briefly, but not in the initial "official" posts. What'll happen is, on the first turn, a popup will appear that looks a lot like the tech selection bar on the left-hand side. Except instead of picking a tech, it'll show seven Pantheon boxes, each with four symbols in it for the major deities in that pantheon. Mousing over the Pantheon's box will give its general biases (Favor production, custom Myth units, lists of minor gods), and mousing over each major god shows its two Foci and what they do. You click on the deity you want, then the AIs make their choices, and the game starts. You need to do this BEFORE founding your capital, or else it won't work right, but I'm working on ways around that.

At least, that's the idea. It doesn't quite work right at the moment, so until I get it fixed I'm just randomly assigning each player a god for testing purposes. I'd hoped to have the UI fixed over the weekend, but I ended up having to spend most of the weekend at work (big conference this week, so I'll be very busy until Wednesday). So the Mythology mod got pushed back a little bit.

I read all the "initial" posts and either me or the posts are missing something. How and when do you choose minor gods? Can the minor god be worshiped by multiple civs? Do all cities get all the god's buildings when enough favor points are accumulated? Are religious buildings automatically build or do you need to build them with hammers? How are heroes unlocked? What myth units can be bought with what favor?
And apart from all these it seems mean to me that the ability to train myth units of a tier is lost when advancing to the next, especially in foci that are not animals

I read all the "initial" posts and either me or the posts are missing something.

A lot of the initial posts are still incomplete. It's a work in progress.

How and when do you choose minor gods?

WHEN: When you accumulate enough total empire-wide Favor to cross a threshold, you gain the option.
HOW: In the Mandala screen, it'll show you which gods are available at the moment, and you click one.

Can the minor god be worshiped by multiple civs?

Every god can be worshipped by multiple civs. If I pick Zeus as my central god, then someone who picks Poseidon as theirs can also take Zeus as a minor god, and both of us can take Hermes or Apollo. However, it's likely that Zeus and Poseidon will have different sets of minor gods in practice, because of how the Mandala is laid out.

Do all cities get all the god's buildings when enough favor points are accumulated?

Each city has its own pool of Favor. You get a god's building in a city if/when that city has 100 Favor in that particular Focus; the focus generated in other cities has no effect on this.

Are religious buildings automatically build or do you need to build them with hammers?

All automatically. Building Monuments, Temples, etc. will make the process go faster as they generate Favor for their city, but you do not build these with hammers.

How are heroes unlocked? What myth units can be bought with what favor?

Both of these are still being decided. At the moment, Heroes spawn automatically or are awarded through Events, and it's looking like I'll remove the ability to buy Myth units with Favor.

And apart from all these it seems mean to me that the ability to train myth units of a tier is lost when advancing to the next, especially in foci that are not animals

There's no choice. The Unit_BuildingClassRequireds table just works that way. I'm rearranging the table a bit, to where there won't be nearly as many Foci with a myth unit at a lower level and not one above it, to reduce the issue, but it's still going to happen occasionally.

When is the first version expected to be released?

When is the first version expected to be released?

When it's ready?

No, seriously, I've been working on it all weekend and it's getting much closer, but a couple of the key UI elements still don't work. Like, you know, the part where you pick a Pantheon/major god and the part where you pick minor gods. Without those working, there's not much point in releasing the mod for the rest of you to play with. I also haven't created the icon atlases yet, but that's not quite as important. I was going to try adding the icons tonight, once I get a few mechanical bits working better.

I'd worked on it a little in the past week, but I've been REALLY busy with Real Life issues (job, medical stuff, family stuff...) so it's progressing a bit slower than I'd have liked.

But most of the myth units are in (although they still need a major balance pass, especially since some of the special attacks haven't been coded in yet), all of the buildings are in (except for a couple specific National Wonders I'll add later), and a lot of the other UI elements are working now. My goal is to have it working by Tuesday, because I'm going on a short vacation starting Wednesday (I'll be back Sunday or Monday).

I'm still running into a couple technical issues, though. Specifically, if you declare a new XML table in mod A, then you can't seem to access that table in mod B. This forces me to duplicate a lot of code, since several mods share the same functionality. (That's the whole POINT of having a Base mod.) So for now, a lot of things are disabled; this might be something that resolves automatically once we get Dependencies, but regardless it's a problem right now.

And for reference, here's how I've laid the units out.

Tier 1 (low Focus units, usable on turn 1 if you have that Focus already): Strength 7, Cost 50, limit 9 per player. Marginally better than a Warrior, although slightly more expensive and they don't upgrade. There are only a few of these: Pegasus, Gargoyle, Zombie, Nemean Lion, and Fenris Wolf.
Tier 1.5 (low Pantheon units): Strength 9, Cost 75, limit 7 per player. You'll be getting these about the same time as a Swordsman, at the same cost, but swords have strength 11. But these'll have special abilities that make them worth having a few of.
Tier 2 (mid Focus units, generally unlocking in the early Classical): Strength 11, Cost 100, limit 5 per player. Same base strength as the Swordsman but with MUCH better abilities to make up for the higher cost.
Tier 2.5 (mid Pantheon units): Strength 13, Cost 125, limit 4 per player. You'll reach these as you're getting close to unlocking Longswords, which cost 120 and have strength 16. But the extra abilities, again, balance it out.
Tier 3 (late Focus units, generally unlocking in the late Classical to early Medieval): Strength 16, Cost 150, limit 3 per player. Same strength as a longsword, but lots of good specials.
Tier 3.5 (late Pantheon unit): Strength 19, Cost 175, limit 1 per player. Mid-Medieval, right when you get longswords.
Tier 4 (final Focus units, unlocking in the mid-Medieval or later): Strength 22, Cost 200, limit 1 per player. Note: I've now added a bunch more of these. Now, every Focus except War has a level 4 unit, and Animals of course has two.

So what'll normally happen is that by the end, you'll have three one-of-a-kind units (one for your Primary, one for your Secondary that unlocked later, and a slightly weaker Pantheon unit) and a handfull of good mythological units to back them up. But chances are, you'll still want quite a few mundane units; by the time you reach the 3s and 4s, the 1s and 1.5s will be much too weak to continue using as anything other than scouts.

Now, the unit lists. Anywhere you see XXX means I haven't decided what unit it should be, but that I HAVE created a placeholder.

At the moment, the Pantheon units are: (1.5/2.5/3.5)
Greek: Centaur, Minotaur, Cyclops
Egyptian: Wadjet, Sphinx, Ammit
Norse: Ravens, Valkyrie, Nidhogg
Hindu: Naga, Makara, Sarabha
Aztec: Ahuizotl, Cipactli, Xelhua
Sumerian: Utukku, Mushussu, Pazuzu
Shinto: Oni, Qilin, Mizuchi
Some of these were picked because of a certain niche that I felt was under-represented for each pantheon, so if you don't like certain choices, just be aware of that fact.

And the Focus-specific units have been reorganized. There are now no buildings providing units where the upgrades above them don't also provide units, and nearly every Focus has a level 4 unit. The ONLY Focus that ever provides more than one Myth type at each level is Animals, which gives two.
In some cases I might shift stuff around. But here's the plan.

Water: Scylla (3), Water Elemental (4)
Fire: Fire Elemental (4)
Earth: Gargoyle (1), Medusa (2), Basilisk (3), Earth Elemental (4)
Air: Pegasus (1), Thunderbird (2), Lightning Bolt (3), Air Elemental (4)

Fertility: XXX (4)
Beauty: Unicorn (4) Pretty fast and weaker than other 4s, but it has the Anti-Myth promotion.
Crafts: Colossus (4)
Wealth: XXX (4) Almost guaranteed to be a "kitsune" type of thing to go with Inari, the only major god with Wealth as a primary.

Death: Zombie (1), Mummy (2), Vampire (3), Phoenix (4)
Healing: XXX (4) Even if I haven't decided on a name, the abilities are already decided. Lots of healing stuff, obviously.
Knowledge: Oracle (4)
War: none

Animals: Nemean Lion (1), Fenris Wolf (1), Manticore (2), Scarab (2), Hydra (3), Griffon (3), Chimaera (4), Dragon (4)
Plants: Dryad (3), Treant (4) These are weak as units, but can plant forests and jungles.
Travel: XXX (4)
Art: XXX (4) I was thinking of something involving the Muses, or maybe the Sirens, but I couldn't come up with anything powerful enough to be a 4. So I'm looking into other mythologies for ideas.

Justice: Nemesis (4) As in, a Myth unit specialized in killing other Myth units.
Seasons: XXX (4)
Darkness: Shade (2), Rakshasa (3), Balrog (4). Like Nemesis, all Darkness units get an Anti-Myth promotion.
Storms: Tiamat (4)

Balance: Avatar (4) Question my ability? Then thou hast lost an eighth!

---------------------
What I'm hoping is that with these changes, everyone will have quite a few Myth units to choose from, with two or three big ones acting as the centers of your armies, but you won't be able to make a giant army full of them so you'll still want normal units.

The XXX units will be decided on in the future; since all of the missing creatures are level 4s, they're supposed to be one-of-a-kind creatures, so demigod-type beings are okay. And it's better if they don't come from the Greek or Egyptian mythologies, since those are already heavily over-represented.
If need be I can shuffle pantheon units into those slots and put something else in the pantheons, but I'd prefer not to.

So, ideas:

Fertility:

Ao Ao (Guarani). It's either a pig or sheep that eats people. Good news, though, it actually is the Guarani spirit of fertility. Somehow.

Encantado (Brazilian folklore, semi-current). Dolphin-people (shapeshifters) that seduce humans. Alternately good for seasons, they are said to control the weather.

Healing:

Kushtaka (Tlingit). Otter-men (shapeshifters), who will turn people dying in the cold into kushtaka for their survival. Obviously, that's a mixed blessing, and some variations have them tricking people and tearing poor victims to shreds.

Nightmarchers (Hawai'ian). Spirits of dead warriors, occasionally guide dying relatives to the spirit world.

Mapinguari (Indigenous Brazilian). Predatory giant ground sloth, impervious to all weapons, but afraid of water.

Travel:

Adlet (Inuit). Dog-human predators, noted for speed. Very tall, eat humans.

Bunyip (Australian Aboriginal). Water-creature (kind of like an otter or muskrat, in behavior). Descriptions vary, but very large. Honestly, I'd think this is the most well-known creature in their mythology.

Pouakai (Maori). Giant eagle, more or less. No, you are not mistaken, there is a forum-goer with that username.

Art:

Byangoma (Bengali). Fortune-telling birds.

Dirawong (Australian Aboriginal). Monitor lizard that, according to a certain group of tribes, taught the indigenous Australians most crafts, astronomy, etc.

Seasons:

Cadejo (Central American folklore). Honestly, this one'd be better for Justice, but, black-and-white dogs (black is evil, white is good), who either attack or save travelers (and/or drunks).

Chindi (Navajo). More or less, the ghost of everything bad about a person. Relates to seasons, though, in that it was the explanation for dust devils.

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I had more trouble than I expected with healing and travel. Travel might be a place where you just stretch it, but I'd move the Phoenix to healing, there are plenty of good substitutes for death.
One question: Are the elementals (and other "generic" myth units) going to get more specific versions? IMO, it would be cool if some of the unused myhtologies' equivalents of vampires, zombies, etc., get used there (or some of the existing pantheons, even - a vetala would be a nice replacement for "vampire").

Will we be able to select an 'end era'? So that we might just play a Myth game or test without ever going beyond the Myth content?

Will we be able to select an 'end era'? So that we might just play a Myth game or test without ever going beyond the Myth content?

No more so than in the regular game. There are quite a few mods out there that add that sort of thing, and I'll might look into creating a scenario that does that for this mod, but it's not how the content is designed. Now, the timing's going to take quite a bit of work to balance, since I want to make sure that there's a decently-sized window in which you'll use all those units I've added (60 Myth units, at last count, plus the Heroes are going to add another 56), so I WILL be stretching out the tech tree a bit.

I'm aiming for a ~400-turn window, on standard speeds, where you have Mythological content, with about 200 turns of heavy emphasis. It's built to follow more of a story structure; in the Ancient you'll only have a few minor bonuses, nothing too significant, so by turn 100ish you'll just be unlocking your first Pantheon units, selecting your first minor god, and approaching the level 2 buildings in your primary focus. By turn ~200 you'll be reaching the best part of the content, near the end of the Classical; you'll be unlocking the 2.5 Pantheon units and the 3s in certain regular Foci, and you'll have a couple minor gods. By turn ~250ish you'll start to reach level 4 in your primary, where the effects start to get REALLY powerful, and you'll be reaching your third minor god.

But at that point, things'll start to cause problems. The last truly big religious boosts are at Monotheism and Heresy (early Medieval techs), which are at the same tech level as Civil Service, Theology, Engineering, and Metal Casting, all full of useful things.
Then around turn 300 you'll hit Apostasy, the sole mid-Medieval religious tech, which is the first tech with a negative religious bonus (slowing down the growth of your Minor Foci slightly), and it's at the same tech level as Currency, Compass, Machinery, and Physics so the mundane parts of your empire will begin to dominate. (What's the point of adding a Wealth god when you can just build Markets in every city?) Apostasy is also the tech at which you unlock the Enlightenment, which allows you to end the Mythological content, removing the inherent penalties. You don't HAVE to build it right away, but it's not too much longer before you'll want to.
Near turn 350 you'll reach the last tier of the Medieval techs, which have Iconoclasm (which has a LARGE downside, in that it lowers the Minor Focus level cap by 1 in all cities, but it boosts your Secondary up to level 3/4), Education (Universities), Chivalry and Steel. Knights and Longswords are strong enough to make most of the Myth units obsolete, other than the very few level 4s you'll have. And Iconoclasm adds the Inquisition national wonder, which effectively turns all of your mundane units into Heroes by giving them a bonus against Myth units, so there's no longer a massive advantage for heavy Myth units.
And by turn 400ish, you'll be in the Renaissance, which has only one religious tech (Deism), a tech that reduces religious growth rates. And it's at the same tier as Astronomy, Banking, Printing Press, and Gunpowder, so you'll REALLY want to be removing the Mythology penalty by that point, since you'll be going on an expansion spree. (Remember, as long as the Mythology content exists, your Unhappiness-per-population is 1.5 instead of 1.2, which prevents you from going on the traditional Astronomy-based Settler binge.)

So that's the idea. A gradual buildup, a "golden age" (in the original sense) where mythological content dominates, a brief period where the religious content starts to become less desirable, a "dark age" where religion causes more problems than it solves, and then the Enlightenment that snaps you back to the standard Civ5 gameplay. The turn numbers I gave above are my targets, and I'm just starting to balance the mod to meet those goals, but it should give you a good idea for how long it's expected to last.

Now, 400 turns is a long time. In vanilla Civ5, that's how long it's expected to take you to reach the end of the tech tree, and even with my Balance mod changes (most of which are now in the Empires mod) that'd normally be enough to get you well into the Industrial. My big worry, here, is that the mythological content will be TOO dominant, to where the game's effectively over by the time you enter the Renaissance. Doing that sort of thing is pretty much guaranteed to make my other two Content mods useless.

Looking at my posts from last night, I'd say the Cadejo might actually be a decent option for travel.

That's cool, I ask my questions with my usual ignorance of how difficult these things are to implement :)
I thought , though, that the ability to select both the start and end era would be particularly useful for the Ages mod as one might wish to restrict a specific game to a single content mod, given how the three are quite clearly separated into specific eras. All sounds great, anyway. Look forward to trying it out.

On another point, will a hero be able to stack with standard units in the same way as a great person or are they each their own combat unit... or both depending on the hero?

Looking at my posts from last night, I'd say the Cadejo might actually be a decent option for travel.

Reading up on it on Wikipedia, yes, it'd work well for Travel. Traveler-oriented, adds a bit of flavor I like with the whole drunk aspect, and according to the stories is really tough (if not impossible) to kill. The major concern is that it's not really "mythology", it's just regular folklore. As in, more of a Paul Bunyan thing than a Cerberus thing, and from what I can tell it's only a recent legend (which'd make it strange to see them alongside swordsmen and such).
I'm already using some non-mythology creatures like the Vampire, but stories about those have been around far longer (almost a thousand years now); I'm okay with having the occasional recent myths represented, but I don't want to add TOO many recent legends, especially if they're ones most people have heard of. (No chupacabras, please.) The Cadejo is right on the borderline, so I'll probably use it unless I can find something better.

Yeah, I generally tried to stay away from folklore (the only other exception was the Encantando, which I really didn't care for, but I only had one other myth listed for that category).
I tried to choose more exotic options, so I didn't even bother looking at European or Asian legends, but I had trouble with travel and (surprisingly) healing.
Or so I thought at the time, I'm really not sure what possessed me to list the Cadejo under seasons...
Basically, from the list I posted earlier, the best options (IMO) are:
Fertility: Ao Ao
Healing: Mapinguari. Although, personally, I think putting the Phoenix here would be good, with something new at death.
Travel: Cadejo
Art: Dirawong
Seasons: Chindi

Basically, I just went through wikipedia's list, and chose whatever seemed to work...

That's cool, I ask my questions with my usual ignorance of how difficult these things are to implement

Implementing it would be pretty easy; it's the balancing of it all that's hard. The easiest way to ensure that mythological content doesn't completely dominate the game is to have its effects taper off at some point. What I'm trying to do, in terms of balance, is make it so that you're specialized-but-weak early on, then less specialized in the middle but with a nice, wide variety of bonuses adding up to a large total, and as you approach the end you're powerful-but-specialized.

Every player is going to suffer in a number of ways from remaining in the Myth Age (food, production, research, gold, culture, happiness, militarily...) and I want it to reach a point where your massive level 4 bonuses barely offset two or three of those issues. Early on you can live with that, but as cities begin to specialize it'll start to really add up; no matter how much production you gain from having Hephaestus as your major god, it won't be enough to make up for the inability to grow your cities and expand your empire.

I thought , though, that the ability to select both the start and end era would be particularly useful for the Ages mod as one might wish to restrict a specific game to a single content mod, given how the three are quite clearly separated into specific eras.

Believe me, it's something I'm worrying about. By their very natures, the Mythology and Ascension mods are going to be almost mutually exclusive; it's going to be extremely unlikely that a game starting with mythological content will remain competitive long enough to reach the future content. While the Empires mod mostly falls between them chronologically, its changes will spill over in both directions a bit, so it's less of an issue there.

On another point, will a hero be able to stack with standard units in the same way as a great person or are they each their own combat unit... or both depending on the hero?

They're their own combat units. They have to be, since their primary purpose is to counter the powerful Myth units.
Take Achilles, for example (as he's the only Hero I've fully added at the moment): he's a Swordsman, which normally have strength 11 and require an Iron. Achilles is strength 13, requires no resource (since you can't TRAIN heroes) and starts with four promotions: Charge (+25% vs. Wounded units), Volley (+25% vs. Fortified units), Siege (+25% vs. cities), and Hero (+50% vs. Myth units but generates no Great General points). Also, since you don't train heroes they don't get the starting XP from the Barracks and such, but they'll gain XP as if they were a level 0 start, meaning you only need 10 XP to get his fifth promotion and another 20 for the sixth. I might change that last part by artificially setting the Heroes' starting level to 2 or 3, which'd make it extremely unlikely that you'd ever gain more than one promotion for each Hero.

Now, that still sounds powerful. And for the Classical era, he really is, especially since his +50% means that he'll be able to counter all but the strongest Myth units without help. But is he better than a strength 16 Longswordman, especially one that starts with 20-30 XP (or that was upgraded from a Swordsman that had acquired plenty of XP)? Especially once you build the Crusade and Inquisition national wonders (which add +10% and +25% against Myth units, respectively, along with their other benefits)?

That's why I won't make any Great General-type Heroes; they wouldn't have that automatic obsolescence. When you get your first Hero they'll be the strongest thing you have, and will be the only thing that keeps you from being overrun by cheap Myth units. During the Classical Era they'll be going toe-to-toe with the moderate Myth units. But once you hit the Medieval and start fielding Dragons and such, it gets dicey for them, and when you get to the point where Knights and Longswords are the popular weapons then they'll take over the Myth-killing role. (A few Foci specialize in Myth-killing or Myth-boosting effects, so this isn't going to be a universal thing, but that's the general idea.)

but I had trouble with travel and (surprisingly) healing.

It's not surprising to me, any more. Very few mythologies emphasized healing, knowledge, arts, or crafting; it was generally all about war, death, storms, the sun, and agriculture. Most pantheons had multiple death gods, which was why I added Darkness as a second pseudo-Death focus. Similarly, Storms is sort of a double for Air, while Seasons, Plants, and Animals all overlap thematically with Fertility.

That's why the ones like Healing are the least-represented Foci, with only 3 out of the 7 pantheons even HAVING a God of Healing. Well, if you want to count really minor gods the number is higher; the Greeks had Asclepius as a healing god, but he's not one of the 13 Olympians, so he wasn't included in the mod. Most others were that way; while a mythology might include a healing-type god, they'd often be so minor that I couldn't justify putting them on the same level as the others.

Healing: Mapinguari. Although, personally, I think putting the Phoenix here would be good, with something new at death.

The Phoenix was a tough call. In a lot of ways it WOULD fit better as a Healing-related creature, but a few things made me put it in Death:
1> I didn't want to make Death be too doom-and-gloom. Zombies, Mummies, Vampires. In many mythologies the "death" god was actually a good guy, the caretaker of the peaceful afterlife or at least the impartial judge. Although, the exact seven Death gods I've picked are basically all negative (with Hades being the nicest of the bunch). Take the Egyptians; Osiris really should have been the Death god, but I needed to fit Anubis in somewhere, and I couldn't shift either to Darkness because Nephthys was already there.
Regardless, the Phoenix represented the "good" side of death, the rebirth aspect.
2> I wanted the Healing 4 creature, if any, to be something with a healing aura (heals all adjacent friendly units by 1 each turn); I was already adding rules for that effect, because every level 3 Healing temple does that for cities. The Phoenix really didn't fit that ability.
3> Level 4 creatures only unlock if you have that Focus as one of the two given by your central deity. Four major gods have Death as a Focus (Hades, Shiva, and Anu as their primary, Tezcatlipoca as his secondary), but only one major god, Isis, has Healing at all. The other two Healing gods are minor gods, who'll never reach level 4.
Now, given that the Phoenix was mostly an Egyptian myth, that's a pretty strong argument that it SHOULD link to Isis. But it'd mean that you'd only rarely see a Phoenix in-game, while whatever I replace it with would be four times as common.
(Similarly, the Seasons, Art, Beauty, and Knowledge Foci will only ever reach level 4 for one god out of the 28, which explains why I left these ones until last.)

Well, in that case, I really didn't find anything remotely along the lines of a "healing aura". Quite a few that were impervious to conventional assault, and some that had the complete opposite of a healing aura. Basically, of the three I suggested:
Mapinguari - it's an old indigenous legend, that survived until relatively recently (maybe still modern, don't recall at the moment). Basically, it's a bullet-proof Megatherium, so, not healing, but somewhat along the lines.
Nightmarchers - Hawai'ian warrior ghosts, occasionally guide people to the afterlife. Honestly, more of a death thing than a healing one.
Kushtaka - Native American otter-men (shapeshifters). There are two very different versions of the legend. In one, they save people from dying of the cold, by turning them into another Kushtaka. Obviously, not always a good thing, but still. Alternately, though, they lure people into the cold, rip them to shreds, then turn them into a Kushtaka. Not remotely a good thing.

As another note - I'm currently fighting a full-out war (my second one) in the ancient/classical era. That would be a lot of favor, honestly.

Well, in that case, I really didn't find anything remotely along the lines of a "healing aura". Quite a few that were impervious to conventional assault, and some that had the complete opposite of a healing aura.

I'm not saying that it's 100% definite that it MUST have that effect. Just that it's an effect I'd like to add, and that the Healing 4 creature would be the obvious candidate. If need be, I'll add a unit at Healing 3 as well and give IT the ability, but I'd prefer not to add even more Myth units. (Seriously, I'm at 61 now, with most players being able to build MAYBE a dozen types in the course of a game, with most never getting past six or seven.)

A creature with Regeneration 2 (that's the "heal everything each turn" version) could be appropriate for Healing 4, but I have to say, regeneration is already VERY common in this mod's Myth creatures. A creature with this wouldn't really stand out.

Nightmarchers - Hawai'ian warrior ghosts, occasionally guide people to the afterlife. Honestly, more of a death thing than a healing one.

Shade (Darkness 2). A few of the creatures I've added to the Foci are ones that are meant to be generic enough to represent similar units from other mythologies; nearly every society had a ghost-equivalent of some kind. Granted, "Nightmarcher" is a great name, but it's like our earlier Nidhogg/Mizuchi/Mushussu/Dragon discussion; while I'm willing to add those specialized variants as Pantheon Units, I wouldn't want to add them to the Focus units unless they were truly distinct from what I already have.

Now, you'll notice that Darkness has units at 2, 3, and 4 but no level 1s. I COULD add one more Darkness unit, as long as its stats were different than the Shade and Rakshasa. But there's one additional limit: all Darkness creatures get the Anti-Myth promotion (+25% vs. Myth units). In the AoM campaign, the Shade units were your scouts in the underworld (the only units whose visibility wasn't greatly reduced), and could instakill a target Myth unit by sacrificing itself. While I toned that last part down a bit, the anti-Myth ability is sort of Darkness' specialty.

Kushtaka - Native American otter-men (shapeshifters). There are two very different versions of the legend.

Pretty similar to the Rakshasa (Darkness 3), although maybe mixed with the Vampire (Death 3), depending on which version of the story you use. Rakshasas are the "shapeshifter" unit, with the Doppelganger's ability to steal promotions, and they also have a poisonous attack. Now, the "Venom" promotion, despite its name, does not automatically mean poison. I basically added a "slow" Damage-over-Time effect called "Disease" (average: 2 damage over 6 turns, plus your normal healing is reduced), and a "fast" DoT called "Venom" (average: 2 damage over 3 turns). So that cold bit could be very similar to the fast DoT. Ergo, it's just the Rakshasa by another name, although if someone were to add an Inuit pantheon it wouldn't be the worst choice for a Pantheon unit.

As another note - I'm currently fighting a full-out war (my second one) in the ancient/classical era. That would be a lot of favor, honestly.

This is why, a while back, I asked people for exact numbers for how many combats they got into in these eras. Obviously, the numbers will change as I stretch out the first three eras, but I need a ballpark value to balance around.

The thing to remember, though, is your choice of Pantheon. If you take a combat-heavy group like the Norse or Aztecs, then you'll generate three times as much Battle Favor as someone who takes one of the two combat-light ones (Shinto or Sumerian). And yes, that'll allow you to unlock new Minor gods very quickly during early wars, and upgrade your religious buildings as soon as you unlock the new levels.
But that's not really a good thing; if you depend on Battle Favor, then it's very easy to get trapped, where you're not in a war and so can't generate enough Favor to keep your buildings upgrading or add new minor gods. And if you're not upgrading these, then you're not getting the powerful unit promotions and Myth units. Building Favor, while the slowest, is the most consistent; a Pantheon that focuses on that method might not generate as much as a warlike group on a good day, but it'll never have a BAD game.

You actually saw this in the Age of Mythology game. The Greeks could generate Favor pretty quickly, by having one or two workers pray at the temple, and the Egyptians just generated it automatically at a slow rate by building five different monuments, but since you weren't constantly spending Favor, it wouldn't take long before you were gaining more than you'd ever need. The Atlanteans (expansion disk) were like the Egyptians, but with Town Centers generating the Favor automatically. And then there were the Norse, who'd ONLY gain Favor through battle. So what'd happen often in the campaign was, you'd be Norse, playing defensively (since in campaign missions you always started at a huge disadvantage), and your Favor wouldn't really budge. Without Favor, you couldn't make Myth units or buy certain upgrades. And then you'd have one big battle, generate more Favor than you could store, you'd buy all the stuff you needed, and you'd be back at zero again. But without that battle, you were hosed.

I'm trying not to have it be quite so absolute, hence the 3/2/1 splits, but that's the general idea. There's a second wrinkle as well: Building Favor, from Temples and such, is split across all Foci within a city. So the more minor gods you follow, the less Favor each gets; post-Monotheism, minor gods become less important despite you having even more of them, so reducing the growth of the Primary and Secondary isn't a good thing.

That is, let's say we're in the Classical, at a point where Primary growth is 4, Secondary growth is 3, and Minor growth is 2.
If I only follow one minor god, then 4/9ths of my Building Favor goes to my primary focus, 3/9ths to the secondary, and 2/9ths to the minor. So a Temple that generates 4 Favor per turn is adding ~2 to my primary. (Assuming a x2 for buildings, which the Aztecs have. Norse are only x1.)
But if I follow four minor gods, because I unlocked them earlier through a glut of Battle Favor, then only 4/15ths go to my primary (just over 1 point per turn for a Temple), 3/15ths to the secondary, and 2/15th to each minor. The total's the same, but it still slows down the growth of the shrines that matter most to me, my Primary and Secondary.

Battle Favor splits as well, although it's an even split there. So if you follow one minor god, then 1/3rd of the points go to your primary, 1/3rd to secondary, and 1/3rd to the minor. But with four minors, everyone gets one-sixth instead. Priest Favor doesn't split; it ALL goes to whatever focus' building the priest was working in, so it doesn't enter into this as much, but even there, number of minor gods matters (since you'll never have cities large enough to support six priest specialists). So again, a glut of early Favor from battles isn't necessarily a good thing.

Ah, ok.
Can't say I'm a fan of the "generic" units, I'd rather use units from unrepresented mythologies, but, since that's a flavor thing, doesn't really matter.
Interesting balance from the favor, too.

Can't say I'm a fan of the "generic" units, I'd rather use units from unrepresented mythologies, but, since that's a flavor thing, doesn't really matter.

In a perfect world, every pantheon would have its own suite of units, and the mod is already structured in a way that'd make that an easy thing to do, at least in terms of the XML. But there's a basic limitation in terms of artwork; as it is I'm not going to find workable unit models for even half of my non-Pantheon units. That's why so many of the units are "generic"; if they're units drawn from traditional fantasy, it's far more likely that I can find 3D models from Civ4. Now, I still have quite a few unusual choices in the Focus myth units, like the Rakshasa or Tiamat, so it's not all completely generic, but I don't want to pile too many unusual ones in.

Besides, beyond a certain point it doesn't matter what the unit looks like or what name it has; it all comes down to the abilities I give them in the code. There's a practical limit to just how many unusual abilities I can do, at least for now, so the number of combinations is finite. For instance, if I have one level 2 myth unit that has the Stun ability and a ranged attack, I really don't need a second one. If I could make seven of those, and have each one tie to a specific pantheon, then sure, it'd work, but what if I can only come up with 6?

Now, one possibility is to basically copy the UU system. Make it so that the Egyptians get better Animals units than the other six pantheons. But that has some serious balance issues in terms of which gods you pick, so I'd have to be very careful with this one. I'd rather just use the Pantheon Unit setup I've got in there now, where each pantheon has three extra tech-limited units instead.

Interesting balance from the favor, too.

I still have to find out how well it plays out in practice. There's a fourth Favor mechanism, the Base growth value (which depends only on which technologies you've taken and is never split across gods), so even if you make the absolute worst choice for pantheon, it still shouldn't hurt you too badly. You'll still get your Shrines and Churches in a reasonable amount of time, or at least that's the hope.

What I still need to find out, from actual play with the mod, are:
> Whether people (and by "people" I include the AI) use Priest specialists, and if so, how many they can generally afford to pull away from more productive purposes
> The best case and worst case for Favor generation on any given turn. Best case probably being a combat-heavy Norse game, worst case being an Aztec game with no early wars.
> Whether the reductions in culture, production, etc. are too crippling. For instance, right now I cripple Happiness in three ways:
1: Reduce the base Happiness value from 9 to 6.
2: Increase population unhappiness by 25% (1.2 -> 1.5 per)
3: Reduce luxury Happiness by 1 (from 4 per down to 3)
I really don't need all three, and even two might be a bit excessive; you can take the Beauty focus, or the Piety brach of the policies, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds. But I need to see, in practice, how hard it is to expand well. And, more specifically, how well the AI deals with these issues.

Well, if these penalties are the ones in the existing mods (and I'm using 1.08), then they're pretty strict, I'm getting pounded by unhappiness in the classical era.

Well, if these penalties are the ones in the existing mods (and I'm using 1.08), then they're pretty strict, I'm getting pounded by unhappiness in the classical era.

These'd be on TOP of the existing 1.08 penalties (base city unhappiness increased from 3 to 4, population from 1.0 to 1.2). Just remember that those unhappiness increases are basically offset by a number of additional +1 Happiness buildings (Temple, Aqueduct, Sewer System, Recycling Center, Monastery, Mint), so it's not as severe as it looks, as long as you're developing your cities. Similarly, you'll offset THESE unhappiness increases primarily through Priest specialists, who add 1 Happiness apiece (plus 1 point of Food, and 3/6/9 Favor) just like the Empaths do in the future eras.

As your cities grow, they'll need even more Priests to offset the quickly growing unhappiness, which'll generate Favor even faster, which'll unlock even more gods and upgrade your existing ones faster. Many of those gods will boost tile yields (especially those with certain resources) or provide gold/food/etc. directly, which'll mean you'll be capable of diverting even more citizens to be Priests instead of working tiles. Lather, rinse, repeat; this tradeoff is the core of the Mythology mod's design. If I didn't increase the unhappiness, then the AI would never bother using Priests and would get stuck at low Favor.

And yes, it's supposed to be strict, at least at first. The point is that with these changes, you just won't be able to expand like you could before. You'll be forced to slow down and not just churn out Settlers as fast as possible to grab all of the best sites, which was something the AI never handled well. This, in turn, means that the Barbarians are not as much of a pushover in the vanilla game, where they quickly become irrelevant as the continents fill up with cities; at the moment I'm not changing what kinds of units the Barbarians use (no Barb myth units for now), but that could be changed in the future to make them even harder to ignore.

Now, it's possible that the Priests just aren't enough to offset this unhappiness, that there's just no way to divert that many workers into Priest slots without utterly crippling yourself. So I've been looking into other ways to improve the process. For instance:
> Imagine an Ancient Era national wonder that gives +1 happiness per city, but that disappears once you end the Enlightenment.
> Or even simpler: if a Church gives +1 Happiness, Cathedral +2, and Basilica +3, then you'll see an automatic increase in happiness as your cities get more religious, and those are DESIGNED to go away at the Enlightenment. (One possibility is to make this Policy-based, such that you don't get these Happiness boosts until you complete a certain project.)

I don't know, I play on Marathon, and it's not too fun suffering through the ancient and early classical era when your neighbor is the most powerful military in the world, and you're pulling off -7-9 happiness.

For relevance, this is YNAEMP, and I'm Spain, stuck on the Iberian Peninsula, in a war against France.

I don't know, I play on Marathon, and it's not too fun suffering through the ancient and early classical era when your neighbor is the most powerful military in the world, and you're pulling off -7-9 happiness.

If you're negative on happiness, then something's wrong. Maybe you expanded too fast, maybe you just don't have enough unique luxuries (a problem on most Earth maps, in my experience, especially on huge maps), who knows. My mods do require a slightly different pacing for expansion; in vanilla, you can generate Happiness faster in a new city than its growth can counteract, but the way I've set things up, it's the other way around. Heeping up with per-city Unhappiness is harder, requiring more attention to things like luxury trades. But it really pays to take happiness-boosting policy branches, like Piety. (Or Tradition, or Order, or even Honor... it's not all about Piety, since a lot of branches have some happiness boosters.) Or, be like the AI and just don't settle new cities unless you've got at least 10-20 spare Happiness sitting around.

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Status update time.

I've been working on it, but I still can't get the UI elements to work right. There are five UI components that I need to fix before the mod's actually playable:
1> The initial pantheon+god choice. I'm basic this on the "choose a tech" popup, where you'll see seven boxes on the left side of the screen, each of which will have one Pantheon. Mousing over this gives the general help about each pantheon (its unique units, its Favor biases, and so on), while inside that box will be four buttons representing the major gods. Clicking on one of the 28 buttons selects your god. (This part's almost ready.)
2> The Mandala, showing your current Alignment and the locations of all gods in your pantheon. (Half done.)
3> The "time to pick a minor god!" popup. While the selection mechanism will be integrated with #2, I still need to get a trigger working that forces you to make a choice. (Haven't done yet.)
4> The top-of-screen indicator for how much Favor you've accumulated. The problem is that while Favor is a yield declared in the <Yields> XML table, the game won't insert an entry for it into the YieldTypes Lua table. So I just can't seem to find an easy way to query how much Favor a person has; instead, I'll have to store everything in the usual ModData structures. It's nearly working now, but I'm not sure how reliable it'll be.
5> The Events. Lower priority, but this should have been the easiest one to get functional since it's just copying an existing mod's code. Unfortunately it just crashes, and I still don't know why.

Now, why do I bring this all up? I go out of town tomorrow morning, and won't be home until Sunday or Monday. I'll have limited internet contact, so I WILL check up on this board, but I won't be able to mod.
So what I'm trying to do is get as much as possible working tonight, but chances are I won't be able to get more than one or two of those functional before I go. IF I release the 0.01 version before leaving, you'll have to understand that some aspects might be nonfunctional. For instance, if I can't fix the interface for selecting a starting god, then I'll just give everyone a random one. If I can't fix the interface for selecting a minor god, then I'll just assign you a random one from the pool of available minor gods. And if I can't get the Event logic working, then there just won't be any events. (Since Events are a major source of Heroes and Alignment changes, this isn't good.)

If I do release it, then, you probably won't be able to play an actual game. What I'll need is feedback on specific areas: how much Favor are you generating on turn X, do any Foci seem clearly inferior to others, do the unit abilities make sense, and so on. And yes, general feedback on whether Happiness is too hard to get, whether city growth is too low (I reduced food production slightly, but I don't want it to be going negative or anything), and so on would all be useful. The thing is, nearly all of the content is in the mod right now, so looking through the Civilopedia should allow you to get a rough idea about what the balance will be like.

On vacation, sort of, so I can't write much. I got a LOT done before I left, but it was not functional enough to post. For whatever reason, it would not remember how much favor you built up from turn to turn, which obviously does not leave much room for testing.

So, I won't post files until next Tuesday-ish. In the meantime, some questions.

1. Should the amount of favor needed for gaining a minor god increase with empire size, like Policy costs do?

2. How many units do you generally field in early(pre-Renaissance) wars? I want to lower the caps on the number of myth units of each type, to encourage you to supplement them with mundanes, but I don't want to take it too far.

I'll post a bit more over the weekend, but not much.

1. No, but perhaps population could have an effect? Although, it seems to me like having a larger population would make sense as a benefit.

2. Not certain, but my army is generally at its largest size by the mid-industrial, then tapers off into mostly an air force once bombers become available. Renaissance is probably the biggest growth period.

During the ancient and classical eras, I will often build up a very large army (20+ units, but not necessarily all at once) and attack everyone else on my continent (non-TSL or Pangea maps).

1. Only if you want to punish expansionists, I figured that the Policy cost scales like that to encourage a different style of gameplay if going for a cultural victory. Does the same logic apply to building up Favor?

2. In my current game on a (modified to work properly) huge TSL Earth map I'm just now about to hit renaissance era. I've fought only one major war so far but it was fairly long. AI (Iroquois) had about 3 - 5 cities with 8 - 10 military units (a mix of spearmen/warriors, archers and Mohawks) I (America) had 4 cities and about 10 - 12 units (half catapults, half swordsmen).

My standard tactics are the same as mentioned above to be honest. I'll always try to take over my starting continent early before the nukes start flying. The AI is too trigger happy once they get their hands on them. I think it's safe to assume the player will be involved in at least one or two major conflicts and probably a couple more "AI being a jerk" skirmishes, depending on the map of course.

1. I don't think the favor should change, however if it becomes a balance issue yes

2. I usually try to get as many swordsman out as quickly as I can (provided they are trained) If im Rome this is even more powerful as the Legion strong enough to take on most threats up until renaissance. Then I do a Longswordsman rush after I get steel. Usually backed up by seige. I almost never use Archers or Crossbowmen, or Hourseback units unless im Mongolia

Another idea and possibly a solution to the Major God problem. Have every empire generate 1 favor and 1 favor only, no matter what they are doing, then after say 20 turns (20 favor) they expend it on their Major God and favor generation returns to normal, this gives players the chance to see what god they want to worship depending on surroundings.

If this works ALL civs will get their major god on the 20th turn


Another idea I had was relics (like in AoM) that work like goodie huts but only heroes can get them if they move into the space, then it makes a building or wonder in the capital (or a policy) that gives said relic's bonus

1. Only if you want to punish expansionists, I figured that the Policy cost scales like that to encourage a different style of gameplay if going for a cultural victory. Does the same logic apply to building up Favor?

Sort of. It's not about "punishment", per se. The problem is this: if Favor generation is heavily dependent on the number of cities you have (which it is), then it becomes a serious advantage to get those second and third cities out ASAP. Culture doesn't suffer quite so badly from this, as a culture-heavy strategy requires that level of commitment to be sustained over the entire game and timing quirks tend to average out in the long run.

Now, I've deliberately set this up to bias things. Someone who takes Tradition will have the growth necessary to support more Priest specialists, and someone who takes Honor can build up much more battle Favor. So the Liberty bias isn't absolute, but it's definitely the strongest of the three in terms of Favor.

I don't want to make it to where Liberty is by far the best branch to take early on, simply for the extra Settler. But that can be managed through other avenues, like the Happiness reductions.

My standard tactics are the same as mentioned above to be honest. I'll always try to take over my starting continent early before the nukes start flying.

Well, the mythological age will be over LONG before the nukes arrive. But the trigger-happiness of the AI really depends on the difficulty you're playing at and the specific AI leaders chosen. That's something I've worried about; playing with the myth content should really involve every empire playing aggressively. I'm seeing what I can do about this one.

You could possibly add some Favor generation to the Tradition tree, extra Favor in the capital ('until' something if it would be imbalanced later) perhaps.

Did you give any more thought to giving the AI a tendency towards their 'historical' gods or will it be kept random?

Also, when the Mythological age is over, would it be possible for favour to become culture or something?

You could possibly add some Favor generation to the Tradition tree, extra Favor in the capital ('until' something if it would be imbalanced later) perhaps.

Unfortunately, that won't work at present. While you can add a new Yield type, like Favor, none of the Lua functions that involve reading how much Favor something provides work. The reason is that they all use the YieldTypes intrinsic Lua table, which isn't adjusted to account for new yield types.

As a result, I've been tallying Yield increases the hard way, since I KNOW that the only way buildings generate Favor is through my custom mythology policy. Now, I could easily change a few existing policies to generate Favor, but that runs into one other problem: help text. One of the things I want to do is have all Mythology-related things disappear once you exit that age, but that means I'd need to change the help text key mid-game to stop referring to Favor after it's ceased to exist. While you CAN edit game database information like that, I'd like to avoid that if possible.

Did you give any more thought to giving the AI a tendency towards their 'historical' gods or will it be kept random?

I keep going back and forth on this. I WILL add an option on the advanced setup screen to handle this; the only question is whether the default will be yes or no. It wouldn't be absolute; I'd probably have a 50% or 67% chance of picking the "historical" pantheon, just so that it wouldn't be possible for the player to get locked out of a pantheon he wanted (or conversely, since I want the player to pick first, to create a situation where an AI wants to take its historical match but can't because all four gods are already spoken for).

Also, it'll only be a bias towards a specific Pantheon, and NOT an individual major god; the Greeks and Romans might both prefer the Greek pantheon, but it'll still be a toss-up whether they pick Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, or Hephaestus as their patron. Not too far from reality, really; individual cities within each empire would often have their own patrons. In some cases, like Marduk, a god that didn't even EXIST in the other cities' pantheons would be your central god.

And finally, not every civ will have a historical match, like America for instance, or some of the DLC civs. It depends on exactly how I implement it, though.

Also, when the Mythological age is over, would it be possible for favour to become culture or something?

It basically already does. Nearly all Building Favor is given in lieu of Culture through a custom policy that everyone starts with; in the Mythological Age, Monuments generate one less Culture to add 1/2/3 Favor, Temples generate one less Culture (and cost 1 more gold per turn) to add 2/4/6 Favor, Colosseums add one less Happiness to add 2/4/6 Favor, the Palace generates one less Culture (remember, I'm boosting the base Palace Culture from 1 to 2 already, so this just sets it back to +1) to add 1/2/3, Monasteries give less Culture and more Favor, and so on. So the simple act of ending the mythological age WILL effectively add culture generation to quite a few buildings, since it removes that starting policy and replaces it with an entirely different non-magical policy (the one that handles the five negative-Happiness buildings in the future eras).

Now, this only applies to Building Favor. Battle Favor is just tossed out entirely, and Priests will disappear as the buildings containing Priest slots go away, but then again, you really won't need them as much once the Happiness penalties of the mythological age are removed.

Additionally, the end of the Mythological age isn't an instantaneous process. Once you complete the construction of the Enlightenment project, it starts a countdown. All of your religious buildings begin to downgrade to nothingness, but this provides you with culture and Golden Age progress, and your Myth units spontaneously disband for gold and research. So you'll be getting a quick infusion of culture, which should somewhat offset the loss of culture in the early eras. Basically, as the Enlightenment winds down, you'll be getting a quick burst of techs and policies, although for a few turns your empire will be fairly crippled (since you'll still be suffering from the inherent yield penalties of the mythological age, with steadily reducing bonuses from religious buildings to offset them, and your army will be losing its strongest units).

Bottom line, when the myth age is over, your culture generation will be right on track with where it would be if you weren't using this mod, but in these early eras, Policies will be considerably harder to get than in the vanilla game.

Quick note:
When I started this project, I'd worry that some folks would be offended by the choices I made (major gods, favor biases, focus assignments), especially for the actively followed religions (mainly Hindu and Shinto). After all, I AM boiling seven pantheistic religions down to a fairly simple set of rules and implying that once you get an educated society, gods stop making a significant difference.

Yesterday, I took my niece to Disneyland, and we went on the It's a Small World ride. It put all of this into perspective; the number of potentially offensive stereotypes they used goes WAY beyond anything I'm doing. And the song gets REALLY annoying after a hundred or so verses, but that's a separate issue.

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I'm going to try to fix the mechanical problems tonight or tomorrow; I'm aiming for a Friday release of the alpha v0.01. Obviously, it'll depend on whether the fixes actually WORK, but I'm hopeful; unlike most of the other bits, the broken part at least comes from a working template I can use as a baseline. 0.01 MIGHT just have randomly-assigned gods, if I can't get the UI working right, but it'd at least be playable.

One minor question:
As you may have noticed, I go through a lot of Promotions in the course of adding all of my special abilities. I COULD hard-code to unit types, but that's generally a bad idea since I'm trying to share abilities across mods. The game is very restrictive, with only ~60 custom promotions allowed, and I'm right up against that limit once you add the Mythology mod to the Ascension content.
In the vanilla game, there are four basic promotion lines: the Open terrain bonus, the Rough terrain bonus, the Open ranged bonus, and the Rough ranged bonus. This split has caused all sorts of problems, like the crossbow-to-rifles upgrade, the mounted archers, and now my Myth units and Titans.

So the idea I'm toying with, to address both of the above, is simple: merge the two Open promotions and merge the two Rough promotions. That is, Drill would boost melee combat in rough terrain AND ranged combat against units in rough terrain, while Shock would do the same for all Open terrains. This'd not only solve the upgrade issues and therefore help the AI, it'd also free up a bunch of promotion slots for the mods' use. (And, it'd free up a few icons that I can use for other things.)

The biggest problem would be one of compatibility. Every promotion that depends on Accuracy or Barrage would need to be altered to depend on Drill or Shock, for instance, and that'd limit your ability to add any outside mods that added promotions (although by doing the change through SQL, this seems to be far less of an issue).

Thoughts?

So the idea I'm toying with, to address both of the above, is simple: merge the two Open promotions and merge the two Rough promotions. That is, Drill would boost melee combat in rough terrain AND ranged combat against units in rough terrain, while Shock would do the same for all Open terrains. This'd not only solve the upgrade issues and therefore help the AI, it'd also free up a bunch of promotion slots for the mods' use. (And, it'd free up a few icons that I can use for other things.)


Please do, I'd be able to use archers and crossbowmen again without feeling like they're wasted units by the time I upgrade them to riflemen.

No objections, actually seems more sensible than the standard system. It's something that was bugging me a little on the Titans.

For this first release, should we be using it without the Ascension portion of the mod for now?

Also, will there be any new Wonders in the Mythology portion of the mod? (Not expecting them to be in the first release necessarily!).

Well, I'm not sure if anyone picked up on this, but, when I recently played an un-modded game, my post-ranged upgrade units could use the ranged attack promotion bonuses during combat, despite not having a ranged attack.

No objections, actually seems more sensible than the standard system. It's something that was bugging me a little on the Titans.

With the Titans, it was a problem, but not a huge one as nearly all Titans have both ranged and melee attacks. So there wasn't really a "wrong" choice, even if the AI made some poor decisions.
With Myth units, though, it's huge. I could split these into "Myth Melee" and "Myth Ranged" subtypes, but that really starts to cause headaches in other areas.

So, it really, really makes things much easier for me if I can remove that split. On the other hand, this merging would make Titans MUCH more dangerous as they'd be able to boost both ranged attacks AND their defense (melee) in a single promotion.

On the plus side, this makes the Open promotions a bit more desirable. In vanilla I'd nearly always take the Rough option, whether it was the melee or ranged bonus. But once you realize that your Artillery, usually emplaced in an open area for mobility reasons, can get a defensive bonus from the same promotion that gives it its attack boost...

For this first release, should we be using it without the Ascension portion of the mod for now?

It shouldn't matter. I'm coding the whole thing up to work either way, so adding Ascension into your Mythology test games shouldn't break anything. The basic idea is that you MUST use the Base mod, the Empire mod will be highly desirable as it will have most of what was previously the Balance mod (plus the early-game bits like the KGB, Magna Carta, Red Cross, etc.), and Ascension and Mythology will be pure era-specific content.

Now, for practical reasons there's not much point in using both Ascension and Mythology. The myth mod is designed to make the early game be the most interesting, so by the time it's done (early Renaissance), the game would be mostly over. Whereas, the Ascension mod really needs that NOT to be true. So realistically, I'd say that the two are mutually exclusive in effect, but the game won't stop you from using both (or break if you try). I expect most people to go Base+Empire+Myth or Base+Empire+Ascension for practical reasons, but there's no explicit exclusion.

Also, will there be any new Wonders in the Mythology portion of the mod? (Not expecting them to be in the first release necessarily!).

A couple. I've added a few special Projects or National Wonders in the later part of the Mythological Age (i.e., the Medieval Era). At the moment, for instance, there are two National Wonders: the Crusades (all units get a small bonus for fighting in foreign lands and against Myth units) and the Inquisition (all units get a large anti-Myth boost). These were mainly put in to force an end to the mythological age, not because I wanted to add more content. I may end up shifting the Magna Carta to this mod as well, as it's right on the borderline, but for now that'll stay in the Empires mod.

I know there's a lot of room for early-game Wonders, but the devs have already released an Ancient Wonders DLC that adds exactly that. So the only way I'll add earlier Wonders would be if they were very religion-based (i.e., the Parthenon) or if I repurposed an existing one (like Stonehenge) to be more religion-boosting. I can easily make Stonehenge give less Culture and add a large amount of extra Favor, for instance. And I'd prefer to use National Wonders, maybe modeled on the seven Great Prophet-generated buildings from Civ4, but I need to come up with some significant bonus to tie to them.

Really, the level 4 units and effects ARE your "wonders"; each level 4 building has a National Wonder-level effect and a unique, very powerful unit. The difference is that those buildings are always going to be in your capital, can't be captured by your enemies (like a National Wonder), and stop giving you a bonus once the mythological age ends. The main concern I have is whether the religion system is a bit too non-interactive to be "fun". If you're not building the wonder-level buildings directly, I'm concerned that the gameplay in these early eras might be a bit too monotonous. But the Events should help with that.

Okay. As of this morning, the accounting for Favor seems to be operating correctly, the Events are triggering correctly (although I've jacked up the probability to test it out), and the Hero generation seems to work (although I've only entered one Hero unit into the database at present, out of 57 that I intend to add in the long term). I'm running into two problems, though:

1> I'm trying to add a new XML table in the Base mod and have entries for it located in the three content mods. That way, I can have buildings in multiple mods having the same basic effect (like how the KGB mimics the Planetary Datalinks). It doesn't work; the game'll give an error at the beginning, saying that I'm trying to set a table that doesn't exist. I've tried switching the table definition to an SQL file, and it still doesn't help. I suppose I could try using SQL for the table entries as well, if it's an order-of-operations thing, but that seems like a longshot.
One temporary solution would just be to have very similar tables in all three files, and have everything check for entries in three places before executing (or at least duplicate the code in a separate Lua file for each game). This is horribly inefficient, but playable.

2> You know how people talk about the Promotion limit, where you can only add ~60 custom promotions before the game starts screwing up? Yeah, I just found out the hard way that the limit's actually closer to 50ish. So at the moment, the Mythology mod and Ascension mod are not compatible, because using both (with the Base mod) totals something like 54 new promotions, and causes all of your units to start with a dozen or so free promotions (some of which are negatives and will cause it to die).
I'm going to go back and try to rework bits of the Ascension mod, so that it won't use quite so many custom promotions. For instance, the "Titan" promotion is basically just the Damage Reduction custom promotion (needed for the Myth units) paired with the existing Logistics promotion and an extra nuke immunity (which I need for other units as well); so, all I need to do is give every Titan three abilities instead of one, and it'd allow me to trim one promotion off the list. It clutters up the UI a bit, but I've already increased the number of visible promotions you can have.
NOTE: I haven't yet done the merging of ranged and melee promotions yet. These'd allow me to trim another half-dozen off the list as well, so maybe the problem will go away by itself. But it does mean that if you want to use anyone else's mods with mine, or you use a lot of DLCs, then you'll probably want to disable either the Mythology or Ascension mods.

If anyone knows ways to fix either of those, please speak up.

The plan is still to release v.0.01 of Mythology and Empires tonight, or tomorrow at the latest, along with v.2.00 of the Base and v.2.00 of Ascension. For those of you trying to recreate the experience of the previous versions, Base+Empires+Ascension should be nearly indistinguishable from the old Balance+Content setup, barring a few changes I've made to the interface.
As long as it doesn't crash horribly I'll post the Mythology mod, even if it doesn't do all I want, just so that people can start to get a better idea of the balance. Because even the Ascension mod is not likely to work correctly right away (too much stuff has moved around to be sure of stability, especially in light of issue #1 above), I'm not going to remove the v.1.09 posted in the FILES thread, as I KNOW that version is fully playable. I'll try a quick test game tonight, but it's possible something will slip past me.

Now, I'm looking into ways to automatically log things like Favor generation, so that I can get better feedback on the rates of minor god acquisition without needing the playtesters to take notes. I know what turn numbers I want them to unlock on, it's just a question of how much Favor the average player has gained by those turns. If I can get that working tonight as well, then it'll go into the first version; otherwise, I'll have to ask everyone to write down how much total Favor they had on various turns (10-turn increments would be nice, but I'm specifically looking for turns 50, 125, 200, and 300 on standard speeds).

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And that brings me back to a few ongoing issues. Specifically, I need ideas for Heroes. Each pantheon needs 8 unique heroes, and there'll also be one Generic Hero that I'll put in as a placeholder. The way it'll work is that each Hero will be biased towards one alignment (Lawful, Chaotic, Material, Ephemeral) or one diagonal (LM, LE, CM, CE); your current alignment will determine the likelihood of each event Hero-creating triggering (if you're in the +L, +M quadrant, then no CE events will trigger, and straight C or E events are much less likely). So when suggesting heroes, try not to make them all too similar in theme.
These events will come every ~20 turns, and maybe one third of them will offer Heroes, so you should be able to gain a few naturally (although the Hero events will disable if you already have that Hero). Also, every player will always have 1 Hero once you have the Heroic Epic (which now loses its Barracks requirement), and +1 if you've reached level 4 in Justice, which can only happen for Zeus, Osiris, Shakti, or Sarutahiko. If you drop below the minimum, then a random Hero (random for your Pantheon, that is) will spawn in your capital at the start of the turn.

Now, if you do the math, you'll realize that with 56 Heroes, each needing an Event, and I only want one-third of the events to award Heroes... even if I want the non-Hero events to be shared by all players, it's a huge amount of content I still need to add. So v0.01 will only have a single generic Event for now.

On the subject of events, other than the Hero events, what kind of thing will we see (in later versions)? Natural disasters, culture/food/science +/-, barbarian spawning, random city state related events etc.?

On the subject of events, other than the Hero events, what kind of thing will we see (in later versions)? Natural disasters, culture/food/science +/-, barbarian spawning, random city state related events etc.?

There are two separate event sets here, depending on which mod.

The Mythology mod's Events will all be things that give short one-time boosts of some kind: a Hero, a free Myth unit or two, a few Gold, a research boost, that sort of thing. For all of these, you'll have four choices of action to take; in addition to the "mundane" effects, one choice moves you +1 in the Lawful direction (this'll usually be the Hero one for events that award Heroes), one moves you +1 in the Material direction, one moves +1 Chaotic, and the last is +1 Ephemeral. These events will never be negative (although some options might have a cost, like "spend 100 Favor to get a really awesome Myth unit" or "spend 100 Gold to get +10 Influence with every city-state", where the effect's just too strong not to have some kind of cost). These events are a key part of the Mythology progress, and are intended to help make up for the weakened production, research, etc. you'll have, so I won't make them negative events.
For these, I wanted each player to get their own events separately, but that might not be feasible. So I might have to simplify, and just have every player in the game get each event at the same time; they're randomly timed, but the idea would be that when it triggers for you, a similar event is triggering for all the AI players as well. I'm still working on that part.

The Empire mod's Events will be more of the persistent types, where you have no say in the matter. Some of those will have bigger negatives, although usually in the "+25% to Gold but -25% to Research" manner where it's balanced out by something else, and it'll apply to all players equally.

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I'm VERY close to getting the Mythology mod ready for release. There's one minor crash bug to deal with first.

Well, its probably not the pantheon you need them for, but may I suggest Perseus (lawful), Hercules (chaotic), Bellerophon (ephemeral), and Daedalus (material) as Greek heroes?

Well, its probably not the pantheon you need them for, but may I suggest Perseus (lawful), Hercules (chaotic), and Daedalus (material) as Greek heroes?

Heh, Greek are the one I really DON'T need. The eight I've got for the Greeks are Achilles, the Argos (i.e., Jason, but as a naval unit), Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus, Bellerophon, Ajax, and Hercules. I left out Daedalus since he really wasn't a soldier/hero, the kind of person who'd fight monsters or go to a war over in Troy. Hero units are supposed to be a key element of your early military and the primary counter to Myth units, and I couldn't really justify giving Daedalus a high enough strength rating to do this.

The way I figure it:
the Argos is CM (since that's Water's direction)
Theseus is E (given that after slaying the Minotaur he founded Athens and established a cult of Aphrodite, and Beauty is an E focus)
Odysseus is CE (Travel's direction)
Hercules is CM (the Animals focus direction; really, all he DID was fight Myth units.)
Ajax is M (strength at all costs)
Achilles is C (War's direction)
Perseus is LM (Earth's direction, where the Medusa is...)
Bellerophon is LE (Air's direction; he IS riding Pegasus, after all)
There are a few others, like Cadmus, that I could fit in if I wanted to drop one of those, but I don't really want to. And the reasons for each aren't ONLY because of the various Focus alignments; the way I see it, Chaos units have "unusual" skills (like +25% vs. Wounded, +25% vs. Fortified, etc. or straight attack penalties), Material represents raw strength, Ephemeral units are lighter but more mobile, and Lawful units will have fairly straightforward promotions (+ vs Open, + on defense, etc.)

Small update:

I've fixed the crash bugs, but there's still a couple really minor things I have to fix before releasing the Mythology mod. (The Mandala screen's "close" button doesn't work. Once you open it, you're stuck unless you close Civ5. And something in its execution is breaking, where it's not creating the things it's supposed to on that screen.)

I haven't got a working "pick a god" system yet; right now, you're randomly assigned a Greek god at the start of the game, and when you gain enough Favor to gain a god it picks one for you. No, this is not acceptable to me, but I'm still working out the mechanisms I need.

So what'll happen is this: tonight, barring any catastrophic bugs, I'll release the first version. Chances are, v.0.02 will come out early next week, so it's not a big deal that a lot of stuff haven't been finished yet; this is really an alpha in every sense of the word.

And as for the graphics, it's all placeholders at the moment.

Update, for those few of you who still come into this forum:

It's almost time. I've got the Mandala screen working perfectly; it shows the gods, it shows your current pantheon, everything's color-coded, the "Add Minor God" button works perfectly, and I even got the Pantheon biases working (where most AI civs have a 50% chance of choosing the "historical" pantheon closest to them). The Favor accounting works correctly, the UI top panel is integrated pretty well (although I have some long-term plans for that one)... there's just one remaining problem.

Right now, you can't pick your starting god.

Yep, it's one of the single most important bits, and it doesn't work yet; I've got it giving you a random Greek major god instead. I think I know how to make that work correctly, but it'll take a little time and I'm busy at work this afternoon so it'll be a few hours until I can get back to modding. Since the rest of the mod is working, and the weekend's almost over, I'll just wait until that's done to post the files, instead of giving you something that'll be obsolete within a day.

Now, that isn't to say that it's "done", by any stretch. There's only a single Hero unit (out of 57), all 61 Myth units look like a Swordsman (even if their stats are distinct), the balance on Foci is way off, there's only one Event, and none of the Help text or Civilopedia text are programmed in. (Lots of "XXX" entries.) And those six or seven Myth units I mentioned earlier, that still hadn't been finalized? Yeah, those are still placeholders. ("UNIT_XXX_HEALING", and so on. I didn't have time to run the suggestions through the usual balance checks, so I held off finalizing those.)

There are also a few conceptual bits I'm working on:
1> What happens if you get enough favor to add a Minor god, before reaching the tech that allows level 1 religious buildings for minor gods?
This is a real problem, because adding that Minor god starts splitting the Favor three ways instead of two, but it can't gain a Shrine with that Favor yet, which means no actual benefits yet. (And if you somehow gained enough Favor to reach a Shrine, it wouldn't be able to create one unless I deliberately override this.) This leads to a related issue:

2> When you start the game, your capital gets two Shrines (one for your main god's Primary focus, and one for his Secondary). So a follower of Hades gets a Shrine of Death and a Shrine of Wealth, each of which gives some small bonus. Later on in the game, new cities will get free Primary Shrines, and even later will get free Secondary Shrines.
But right now, when you add a Minor god, you get... nothing. It takes some of the fun out of your decision to add a new god if you know that it'll probably still be a dozen or more turns before you gain enough Favor to add a Shrine in any city, and without that Shrine you can't get any tangible benefits.

This leads to a fun possible solution I thought of this afternoon: treat it like Civ4's religions. That is, you get one free Shrine whenever you add a Minor God, but which city that free Shrine gets placed in will depend on the number of religious buildings in other cities. So if you follow Hades, have two cities, and add Ares, then the free Shrine of War will be placed in your second city instead of your capital. Suddenly, the choice of single-city or expansionist makes a real difference, as an OCC person will have all Shrines appear in his capital, while the expander will have each city getting a different specialty early on. That Shrine of War would make your second city a better choice for cranking out new military units, at least until your capital generates the ~100 Favor needed to gain its own Shrine.

A different possible solution would be to allow the player to build Shrines with normal production, instead of having them only be awarded through Favor generation. But I don't really like this idea that much, as one of the ideas of this mod is that those religion boosts don't interfere with your normal production queues.

Now, to #1, here's the deal. There are three religious techs in the Ancient Era:
Mysticism: sets Primary maximum level to 1 (Shrine), sets Primary Growth to +2.
Spirituality: sets Secondary maximum level to 1, sets Secondary Growth to +1.
Mythology: sets Minor maximum level to 1, sets Minor Growth to +1.
(Mythology and Spirituality both depend on Mysticism, although Mythology also has other requirements.)
What I think I need to do is this: have the three maximum level bits moved to the start of the game, so that level 1 buildings will always be possible with enough Favor even if you haven't taken any religious techs yet, and give other bonuses to those three techs to make up for the difference. (Mythology, for instance, already has the Heroic Epic, and I can boost the Growth numbers to +2 for the two +1s.)
The question, then, is SHOULD it be possible to develop religious infrastructure in all of your cities despite not having taken any religious techs? (Your capital will still start with its two shrines, either way.)

Been a lurker here for a long time playing your AC mod and I have to say I am REALLY looking forward to playing this mod!

Thanks for the hard work!

MXX

No harm waiting until it's fully functional before releasing, we'll get much better testing out of it this way. Looking forward to it anyway!

I have to say I am REALLY looking forward to playing this mod!

Well, so am I. Seriously, I've been working on this thing pretty much non-stop for the last two months (well, I do stop to go to work, eat, sleep, etc.), and I have yet to play more than 2 turns of any game of it. I'm completely guessing on things like Favor generation rates, and it's going to take a serious number of playthroughs to get all of the religious buildings balanced correctly, but I haven't actually PLAYED any of it yet. Obviously, I enjoy the coding and design bits, so it's not a total waste of time. (I mean, I do play Minecraft for pretty much the same reasons.) But I'd like to actually play one game though; normally I'd do that before posting any mod files, but in this case even a nonfunctional mod would still be useful to get feedback on, since you can look through the XML files and Civilopedia to see what the various Foci, Buildings, and Units do. (Granted, the Foci and Buildings have been posted in this thread for a while now. But there's a big difference between seeing a quick summary and being able to look through the actual stats.)

What's probably going to happen is this:
v0.01 will come out tonight; it'll be very crude, but playable enough to get feedback. Some of you will download it, and in a day or two a few of you might even tell me what you thought, but it's not even close to being ready for general release. While you're doing that, I'll be making even more changes, filling in a lot of the missing bits mentioned above, and so on.

v0.02 will come out in a few days. Even if any of you give feedback before then, it probably won't be integrated into this version, because I'm still kind of on autopilot. This'll be sort of a minimum-level playability pass, fixing a couple of the most obvious problems and then just fleshing out a whole lot of the rest (adding Help text to every unit, adding information to the Mandala screen, adding a few more types of Events to provide some variety, and so on.)

v0.03 will most likely be next weekend, or early in the following week. This'll include fixing any major imbalances people have found or incorporating easy design changes people have suggested, so it'll probably be the first version that can really be called "fun".
Over the next month, I'll probably go through a half-dozen versions or so; I went through 25 official versions of the AC mod (and a couple emergency half-versions) before calling it 1.0, with five of them posting in one 14-day period, but there I was adding content as I went. In this case the content is pretty much all there at the start and just needs tweaking, and I'm not guessing blindly on balance as much as I was back then. (Also, the fact that I'm shamelessly copying quite a bit of the Lua internals from my previous work means that there won't be nearly as many game-breaking "learning experiences" this time around.)
By the end of November, it should be playable and balanced enough that I'll bump it up to v.1.00 and call it a Beta instead of an Alpha. I'm not going to do any custom unit models (unless someone wants to do them for me...) until this point, but aesthetics aren't nearly as important as playability. There might be a few more versions before Christmas, but nothing major.

Once v.1.00 is ready, I'm planning to post all four mods to the in-game browser and hope for the best. I've avoided the browser for various reasons, but there's no question it'd have more people playing. When my thread was over in Modpacks I'd average ~100 downloads per week. Here, in this side forum, I've had less than 100 in over three weeks. That's just not enough to get good feedback, so I don't really have much choice.

In the new year, I'll switch over to unit graphics, trying to add the remaining custom models to the Ascension mod as well as importing as many fantasy unit models as I can for the various Myth units. Now, this doesn't mean I'll be completely ignoring the other content mods for the next two months; in the process of creating the Myth mod I've found quite a few ways to improve the other mods. For instance, take the tech stealing mechanism in my previous mod; one of the things I can easily add is a timer, to where the chance of stealing a tech depends on how many turns it's been since the last one you stole. Likewise, I've created a bunch of unit abilities that could be added to future-era units; the "Trample" ability, for instance, damages any enemy units adjacent to your target for 1 point, but reduces your attack strength by 10% for each unit harmed this way. That sort of thing would be good for the Nessus Worm, so I plan to go back and tweak a lot of the old units.
So don't be surprised to see new versions of the Ascension and Empires mods in the next couple months; nothing major will be changed, but lots of little bits will be altered.

Is the major god / pantheon selection going to be fixed for v1 or v2?

Is the major god / pantheon selection going to be fixed for v1 or v2?

It's the only real holdup to v0.01. Like I said, if I was willing to ignore it and go with the current randomly-assigned Greek major god, then you could have the mod right now. It runs without crashing (at least within the first couple of turns), you can select your own Minor gods when you gain enough Favor, and so on, but I haven't finished writing/debugging the start-of-game popup that forces you to pick a Pantheon. So assuming I can get that interface working tonight, you'll get 0.01 with full god/pantheon selection in the first version. If I can't get it working tonight, then I might post 0.01 without it and wait until 0.02 to put it in. (Besides, the Greek gods are best for general balance playtesting, as they're the 2/2/2 Favor generators.)

One minor quirk: to make some of the Pantheon stuff work right, I give each player 1 instance of a custom Project (so PROJECT_PANTHEON_GREEK if you pick the Greek pantheon). It has no actual effects, I just use it as a prerequisite for other things. That way, I can give Pantheon-specific units without having to muck about in the Lua controls, and it's also handy in that it's a more permanent way of storing which pantheon you've selected (so it can't be corrupted if I screw up the save/load functionality or you have a cache conflict, and is easily readable across mods). Sounds good, right?

Well, it had one unintended side effect: on turn 1, you'll see one message per civ that says "Elizabeth has completed enty into the Norse Pantheon!", because Project popups are handled automatically and I haven't figured out how to shut those off. (Remember the 10 Orbital Defense Pod messages you'd get in the AC mod?) So you'll know which civs are in the game, and which pantheon each picked, at the end of your first turn. This seems harmless enough that I'm not worried, especially as you can see what other civs are in the game through FireTuner as it is, but it's something to keep in mind.

--------------------------

Oh, one other thing: right now, there's no mechanism forcing you to pick a Minor god. The AI, when it gets enough Favor, will attempt to add a Minor god as soon as possible. (If there's no unlockable minor god at its current position on the Mandala, it'll wait until it moves to a spot where there ARE ones it doesn't have.) The player, however, has to go into the Mandala screen and pick one. The top panel will say "137/100", which'll tell you that you have enough Favor stored up to gain a minor god, but you don't HAVE to do it right away.

The problem is that the popup types are fairly hard-coded, so I can't see an easy way to add a new blocking event (like how you can't end a turn until you pick techs or choose production), although it's probably something trivial that I'm missing. The Mandala is current accessed through a DiploCorner addin (meaning that same small menu that has the Tech Tree and Victory Progress UIs will now have "Mandala" at the bottom of the list), so it's easy to get to, but you need to keep an eye on your Favor to know when you need to go into it. (Favor will continue to accrue if you don't select a god, it's just that you'd be missing out on some good effects if you wait.)
Note: the DiploCorner addin required to access the Mandala is designed to be fully compatible with InfoAddict. While both mods alter DiploCorner.lua and DiploCorner.xml, we both do it in the same way, a very open-ended table read that works for both mods' other files, so it won't matter which mod loads first. Yes, I completely copied alpaca's code, although I did tweak a couple bits since I was basing my work on a slightly out-of-date version of IA.
Second note: the AI only checks if it has enough Favor at the start of its turn. So if it generates enough Battle Favor during the turn to reach the threshold, it won't pick a new god until the start of the following turn, while a human could do it immediately. To me, this balances the timing issue above; the AI might have to wait a turn, but it'll never accidentally forget to check for several turns.

The question for people to think about is whether this flexibility is a good thing or not. In the vanilla game, you can use a game option to decide whether you can hold off adding Promotions or picking a Policy, but the default for these is that waiting is not possible. Should there be a similar option for Favor? And if so, how would an AI decide whether to add a minor god or not? If I want to keep this flexibility in, then I can add a popup notification that tells you "You have enough Favor to add a new god...", so that you don't accidentally forget, but if this shouldn't be possible then I won't waste the time.

Update:

I have the Pantheon/Major God selection interface in place. It's ugly, but it almost works. I had to break a few related bits to make it work, which I won't be able to fix until this evening. And I can't quite publish it now, since you can't click on the god buttons correctly, but I can easily get that working tonight. It WILL get published tonight, after work, even if I have to pull another all-nighter.

I don't think the favor-selection thing's an issue, honestly.

I don't think the favor-selection thing's an issue, honestly.

It's not a game-breaker, it's just that I'm REALLY close to getting it to work. So the question became, should I post the mod knowing that within a day I'd figure out the part that was holding everything up? Or should I hold off a day to get that working, knowing that it'd slow down testers even further? My natural tendency to want things to work right biased me towards that later option.

I obviously wasn't modding during the day today, but now that I'm home for the night (mostly), I'm going to try finishing it up. Right now, the only problem is simple: the beginning pantheon selection UI is a single-stage design. (As in, click one of 28 god icons, conveniently grouped into seven pantheons, instead of having a two-stage setup where you select the pantheon and then select the god you want.) Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it's not actually placing the 28 god icons in the correct spots; it's placing the seven Pantheon boxes, but no icons within them. It says it's doing it, but I don't know WHERE it's placing them; presumably off the edge of the screen somewhere. As soon as I figure out where the buttons went, I'll be able to get it working because all of the other essentials were tested before I overhauled the selection mechanism. I might have to spend an hour or two double-checking mechanical bits and removing some of my debugging statements, but I can't see it NOT being posted tonight.

Now, it's definitely not pretty. Right now, the selection mechanism doesn't look like a normal window; the buttons just kind of hover in space on top of a simple gray background. There are a LOT of things I can do to make it better in the long term, to look more like a Civ-style window and give you better information, but for now I'm just trying to get something workable. (All the tooltips that'll tell you what each Pantheon does, etc. are all "XXX" placeholders at the moment. The only tooltips I've completed are the ones that say what each building does. So make sure the first page of this thread is on hand when you play.)
The bigger problem, though, is that I can't get this pantheon selection to pop up automatically as the game starts. If I tie it to a start-of-game event, then the game freezes on startup (although that might have been because of an infinite loop bug I put in accidentally), so right now on turn 1 the player has to go into the Mandala screen. Entering the screen pulls up the pantheon selector, and you can't get to the normal mandala until you make a selection. After you select your god from the 28, the AI civs all pick their gods, so if you wait a turn before starting the mythology content, the AIs will also wait.
Also, it's a double-confirm setup, which I don't really like. As in, you click a god to highlight it (and provide more info), then click "Select this god", then it pops up the usual yes/no confirmation box. I could ditch the confirmation box, I suppose, but that's something to think about later.

But yes, it's very close.

Could you tie the selection into the founding of the first city somehow? Just to make it mandatory... or would there be no benefit to this? I'm thinking along the lines of the existing tech/build choices, but iirc you've mentioned that you can't use the same logic as these do?

Could you tie the selection into the founding of the first city somehow?

I actually have. There's a redundancy bit in there, where if it somehow fails to initialize things at startup, then it'll shift it to when you found your first city. The problem, though, remains the inability to actually force a popup. I'm sure there's some way to do it, but I haven't found it yet, so it still falls to the user to click the right menu on turn 1. If I can't figure out how to force a popup then I'll add a notification that says "you should do this now!".

I'd have posted the files last night, but I needed to run back into work for an hour or two, and by the time I got home I was just too exhausted to write more code. So I'm working on it right now, before work; not sure if I'll get it done this morning.
One of the bits I'm trying to get in is a "Random" button. Not totally random god, but random within a pantheon.

I was trying to get it done this morning before work, but I couldn't quite get it. The god picking process now works just fine; for some reason, though, the game is assigning you two already-unlocked minor gods as well. I think I know what's causing it, but I don't have time to fix it before work. So tonight I'll fix that, add in a few important text keys, and post it.

The problem, though, remains the inability to actually force a popup.

Surely one of the other mods does this. I have "popups" of a sort in my code. Just a new window with an image and text. I have not taken the time yet to understand the core popup system and integrate it properly (too much else to do) but I didn't think this would be particularly harder than a dozen other things.

Surely one of the other mods does this.

Almost definitely. But I have yet to figure out how to do it, so in the meantime I'm trying to code this up in a way that doesn't really need it. I'll go through other mods for their code fragments, but since I don't PLAY most other mods, I don't really know which ones do something like this.

There's also a general aesthetics question. Should the player be confronted with yet another popup window right after the dawn of man window? Should he have a minute to look around, see what god he wants, and then choose? Or should this be something I have the game do in the process of the Advanced Setup screen, before the game even loads (with players getting a random god if they don't go through that screen)? Since this is still a bit undecided, I'm not going to spend a huge effort on details right yet.

-----------
Tonight I'll post the files, and this time, I mean it. The game WORKS, or at least it appears to, and it's only being held up for one minor bug that I didn't have time to fix this morning, so it's nearly ready for testing. I might spend an hour or so putting in some of the essential help texts for the rest of you, but it will be ready tonight.

Now, I've been thinking about what comes next. One thing I want to do, in the context of the other mods, is add a few more upgrade chains of units to both this mod and the Empires mod. For instance:
Skirmishers: cheap infantry units with a range-1 attack, upgrade through to Muskets (or in the Empire mod, through to Sharpshooters and Snipers). Relatively weak and cheap, but they won't take damage when they attack and you can cheaply rush them in border cities easily (like Laser Infantry). Penalty vs. cities, penalty on defense.
Light Cavalry: mounted skirmishers, all have the "can move after attacking" ability, same basic idea as a cheap unit designed for whittling down an invading force before you commit your Knights; upgrades through to the Lancer.
Explorer: Scout chain, through to Paratroopers.
Macemen: alternate early-era chain; swordsmen and longswords would be better vs. archers and such, and pikes are better against mounted units, but these'd be the anti-infantry unit.

Why bring this up? Heroes. I don't want a pantheon to have eight slightly different Swordsman heroes; I need a mix, and this'd be an easy way to differentiate them.

There's also a general aesthetics question. Should the player be confronted with yet another popup window right after the dawn of man window? Should he have a minute to look around, see what god he wants, and then choose? Or should this be something I have the game do in the process of the Advanced Setup screen, before the game even loads (with players getting a random god if they don't go through that screen)? Since this is still a bit undecided, I'm not going to spend a huge effort on details right yet.

Get it working first, of course. But I like the idea of specialization evolving over time (perhaps motivated by surrounding geography or some early condition), rather than a setup menu selection or a turn 0 choice.

Get it working first, of course. But I like the idea of specialization evolving over time (perhaps motivated by surrounding geography or some early condition), rather than a setup menu selection or a turn 0 choice.

That path is definitely more desirable for the player, but it gives them a substantial advantage over the AI. You see you're surrounded by forest, and so pick a Plants god. You're on the coast, so you take a Water god. Lots of stone around might bias you towards Crafts. That sort of thing would be a significant advantage, which is why I changed my original plan (which was to have you pick a god only after your first religious tech).

As it is, I'm already making it so that the player always picks first, but I wouldn't want to let the player figure out things like who their neighbors are before picking.

Well, here's your AI logic for you:

You see you're surrounded by forest, and so pick a Plants god. You're on the coast, so you take a Water god. Lots of stone around might bias you towards Crafts.

I'd add a check for AI personality (you don't want hippies worshiping your war gods). This will never be as good as human player, of course. But it doesn't need to be.

Well, here's your AI logic for you:

Yes, that's the long-term plan. I'm going to give each Pantheon and Focus some flavor ratings, and have the choice between gods weight the personalities of the leaders. The historical biases already do this a bit; the Aztecs have a 50% chance of taking the Aztec pantheon (which is obviously skewed towards an aggressive playstyle), while India has a 50% chance of picking Hindu. But I do intend to make it a bit less random.

All right, it's time. I've posted the Mythology mod files over in the Files thread; there are just a few things to note.

1> The save/load functionality doesn't seem to be working right. It works fine for a single play session, but not across multiple sessions. I'd originally used Whys' save/load setup, but switched it to a ModData structure since that seemed to work better across multiple mods. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to persist.
So, for now, I just need pretty basic feedback on the buildings, units, tech tree, etc. If anyone knows

2> While a lot of the Lua promotions and unit effects are in place, many aren't really tested yet. A LOT of stuff is fragile, easily breakable, so don't be surprised to see error messages in Lua. I'm going to spend the next few days trying to track as many of these down as possible, but I didn't want to wait any more on posting the files.

Great stuff, going to give it a whirl today and report back! I'm sure the answer is yes but just to clarify this should work fine on custom maps (TSL Earth etc.) without any changes, correct? No new resources etc.

Also, feedback here or post issues in the bug report thread?

I'm also going to try this today. Up til now i have been using Thal's Balance Mod so this will be quite a change. I'll let you know how I get on.

Also, feedback here or post issues in the bug report thread?

Either way works. I'd prefer conceptual bits ("Hey, there should really be a clearly-marked RANDOM option on that selection screen" or "why does tech X depend on Y instead of on Z"?) to be here, while crash bugs and such should go over there, ESPECIALLY if the bugs seem to relate to non-Mythological content.

The first couple versions are going to be very buggy, as befitting an Alpha mod. I'm not surprised if people generally can't get past the first few turns; what I'm trying to fix right now (and the reason I posted the files instead of keeping it internal) are the major mechanical failures, and gross balance issues. You're NOT going to be able to get a complete game played, it's just that one person can't find every possible failure by himself without taking months to do so. If I can get the first few turns' mechanics fixed before the next version, then by the third or fourth patch we should be at least partially playable.

1> The save/load functionality doesn't seem to be working right. It works fine for a single play session, but not across multiple sessions. I'd originally used Whys' save/load setup, but switched it to a ModData structure since that seemed to work better across multiple mods. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to persist.

I'd suggest you look at my TableSaverLoader as a possible alternative. Haven't seen any bugs yet. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=442249

I should point out that I changed quite a bit of stuff last night, before releasing the mod, so the first posts have just recently been updated.

For instance, take the Death focus. It's now more of a necromancy thing; having a Shrine or better gives mundane units trained in this city the Death promotion, as before, but it now does the following:
> When this unit attacks in melee, it heals 1 point. (Same as before, a fairly weak effect since it won't trigger on defense or on ranged attacks.)
> If this unit dies, the game finds your nearest city to the battle site. Depending on which Death building (if any) is in this city, the unit has a chance to return as an undead unit:
A Shrine (or nothing) gives a ~50% chance of returning as a Skeleton (a very weak unit, only STR 4, with the Teamwork promotion, but it costs no maintenance).
A Church increases the odds by 10%, and now there's a chance that it'll come back as a Zombie instead of a Skeleton. Zombies are more powerful, and you can build them yourself. So it's now a ~40% chance of a Skeleton and a 20% chance of a Zombie.
A Cathedral increases the odds by another 10%, and now there's a chance it'll come back as a Shade instead of a Zombie or Skeleon. As in, the total chance of getting something is 70%, and if that succeeds then you're more likely to get the better units than before.
A Basilica increases the odds yet again, AND increases them in all cities by ~10%, and the unit can't come back as a Skeleton (only Shade or Zombie).

I also smoothed out the progressions on several other Foci, but there are a few levels that still stand out as being unusually weak compared to their counterparts; Air 2 and Travel 1 are especially weak. But for the most part, the Foci should be balanced well enough against each other to not screw up the balance TOO badly.

As posted in bugs thread I did run into a bit of a showstopper but could work around it somewhat to get a look at other areas:

Favor appears purple on the top panel, very similar to Culture, doesn't stand out well. I'd suggest a distinct colour.

Most of the Empires content, Red Cross etc. have no icons. I could still build them but the art isn't there.

There is no science victory option in the advanced set-up. Without Ascension we probably still want this.

Social Engineering pane still appears in the Policy window, I'm sure you're aware of this one.

On the tech front, Conversion doesn't require Polytheism, likewise for Hierarchy and Priesthood, they look like they're meant to be linked. You can beeline very far indeed into the Myth techs if desired.

*All* Myth units show up in the production list in cities, they're just greyed out with a 'requires Egyptian etc.' red message. This might be just a side-effect of the main problem with selecting a pantheon on the first place however.

Favor appears purple on the top panel, very similar to Culture, doesn't stand out well. I'd suggest a distinct colour.

It actually is its own color, but I'd been shifting the RGB values for other windows and might have left it too reddish. I'll tweak that tonight.

Most of the Empires content, Red Cross etc. have no icons. I could still build them but the art isn't there.

Correct. What happened is that the icons for those are currently being stored inside an icon atlas used by the Ascension mod, which I had to disable for now (hence the broken icons). Same goes for the Plant Forest/Jungle options, the Sewer System and Recycling Center, the city ruins boost at Archaeology, and pretty much anything requiring some new artwork; in the olden days all of those icons were in the Content mod (to reduce the number of atlases needed), but I now need to split them out.

What's going to happen is that I'm going to create new icon atlases for each mod, and copy the necessary bits from the old ones into the new ones. That'll be in 0.02 or 0.03; the holdup is that I'm trying to collect deity artwork for the pantheons, to put into the Mythology mod's atlas, so that I can get this all done at once. I only have images for the Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Aztec pantheons at present, although Hindu and Shinto aren't too hard to find pictures for. Sumerian's been quite a bit tougher.

There is no science victory option in the advanced set-up. Without Ascension we probably still want this.

Yep, that's a mistake on my side, easy enough to fix.

Social Engineering pane still appears in the Policy window, I'm sure you're aware of this one.

That one's sort of deliberate; there's a little toggle in the upper-left corner of the Policy window that lets you hide that area (originally added so that folks on laptops playing at 1024x768 could still reach the Close button). You see, the SE branch isn't actually empty in non-Ascension games; it actually contains two or three hidden policies (Base, Never, and then adding Mythology in myth games). The Base policy is what enables things like the negative-happiness buildings, and the Never policy prevents the SE branch from counting towards a cultural victory, while the Mythology policy is what adds a whole slew of penalties to anyone playing mythological eras (penalties which are offset by the bonuses from religious buildings, hence the problems with going agnostic).

The reason you see the box is that I haven't decided between two paths:
1> Disable that box entirely (hide both the box and the button) if you're not using Ascension, or
2> Put visible icons for the "hidden" policies in it so that the player can see the inherent penalties he's fighting against, even if he can't select those policies.
I'd lean towards #1 for the long term, but I'd kept it the way it is so that I can use option 2 during my debugging.

On the tech front, Conversion doesn't require Polytheism, likewise for Hierarchy and Priesthood, they look like they're meant to be linked. You can beeline very far indeed into the Myth techs if desired.

I'll look into that tonight; the Myth techs should look a lot like my AC ones, with the sort of pyramidal pattern to prevent that exact kind of beelining. I suppose it could be conflicting with some other mod you've run recently (where some tech-modifying XML might still be in your cache). The tech tree pictures in the first posts are very out-of-date, but I'll upload clean ones tonight.

*All* Myth units show up in the production list in cities, they're just greyed out with a 'requires Egyptian etc.' red message. This might be just a side-effect of the main problem with selecting a pantheon on the first place however.

No, that shouldn't be happening. The Base mod alters CityView.lua to specifically NOT show any unit with a Project or Building prerequisite (unless you have that project/building, obviously), to avoid this exact issue. So the only way you'd be seeing that is if it wasn't loading my CityView.lua, and I think that means either that you're using another mod that alters this interface, or you didn't clear the cache.

But hey, on the bright side you can see all of my units without having to go through the Civilopedia. Now, let's check something: there are three types of units (Focus-linked Myth, Pantheon-linked Myth, and Heroes); do you see greyed-out units for all three types? Say, Dragon, Centaur, and Achilles?

OK, so:
Could the project be turned into NWs? (to remove the flash of civs)
As for the above city build problem, I did not encounter that.

Could the project be turned into NWs? (to remove the flash of civs)

Unfortunately, no. The problem is that units can depend on the presence of a specific building in that particular city (like the Focus myth units do, or the orbital units in my future mod), or on Projects (which are empire-wide), but they can't depend on a building just being anywhere within your empire. So to get similar behavior without Projects, I'd have to have the game place an invisible non-Wonder building in every new city you found, marking that city as tied to your given pantheon. This'd have to be adjusted if a city gets conquered, obviously, and some of the other times it'd need adjustment don't have good Lua triggers, so I'd most likely have to double-check these buildings at the start of every turn. Given all of these issues, it just made more sense to use a Project, which are never tied to an actual city and so have none of these problems. All I really need to do, then, is find a way to disable Project popup messages; this MIGHT be possible within Lua, but even if it's not I'd bet that this'd be trivial to do once we get the DLL.

As for the above city build problem, I did not encounter that.

Yeah, that just sounds more and more like a cache issue. This particular mod is just so sensitive to memory issues that I'd expect all sorts of things like this to pop up. I've tried to get around that by using physical items where possible; for instance, the pantheon-linked Projects are used for the unit issues above, but they also allow me to query a player's pantheon in a way that won't get corrupted if the ModData structure gets its pointers thrown off by a bug. Likewise, the religious buildings in each city (Shrine, Church, Cathedral, Basilica) are not only used to provide various effects, but they also provide a more robust way to store the current level of each city. I'm currently trying to see if I can find something similar to store the various Favor values.

I played Greece up to turn 136. I encountered NO BUGS! I did not have Scrambles' city build problem with unbuildable Myth units showing up.

Comments: started on an island alone with only two luxury types. I went LIBERTY but this turned out to be useless as I was in minus happiness with two cities despite my two luxuries and the +happiness liberty policy and three priest specialists. It seems to me that liberty is not a viable choice in this mod for the ancient era - is this correct?

I had very serious gold issues, which is why I abandoned the game. Both cities on max gold focus and only one military unit (deleted the others) and still in minus gold. Is this intentional?

Otherwise, it all seems to work. One minor bug was that one of my units had a flag promotion promising I could paradrop it anywhere in the world (but I couldn't, unfortunately) despite not taking this deity option.

I played Greece up to turn 136. I encountered NO BUGS! I did not have Scrambles' city build problem with unbuildable Myth units showing up.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that was a cache issue.

Comments: started on an island alone with only two luxury types. I went LIBERTY but this turned out to be useless as I was in minus happiness with two cities despite my two luxuries and the +happiness liberty policy and three priest specialists. It seems to me that liberty is not a viable choice in this mod for the ancient era - is this correct?

It's not that Liberty is not supposed to be a viable choice. It just means that my Happiness balance is off.

Here's the problem. In the Mythology mod right now, I reduce your Happiness in three ways:
> A flat -3 Happiness
> 1 less Happiness per luxury
> Population adds 1.5 unhappiness per pop instead of 1.2 (assuming you're also using the Empires mod).

This is overkill. I KNOW it's overkill; I'm just trying to figure out which of those three needs to be toned down first. If I remove the -3 then you'll be better in the short term but will have the same long-term issues. If I remove the -1 per luxury then it makes luxury resource tiles even more important than they are now (since many Foci boost yields for various resources). If I remove the x1.25 for population then you'll do much better in the long term but still have short-term issues.

So depending on your feedback, this'll tell me which one needs to be tweaked most. If you're fine for the first 50 turns or so but then start having massive unhappiness when you get to having two or three decent-sized cities, then the x1.25 is most to blame. If you're having the issues right away but they don't get much worse later on, then the -3 needs to be removed.

Now, the intention is that you'd use Priest specialists to make up the difference. Each Priest adds +1 Happiness (and 1 food, and 3/6/9 Favor), so if you find yourself just a little below 0 then you should be slotting these (which'd have the added bonus of more Favor). If you find that you just can't fill Priest slots without starvation or having your build queues stall to unreasonable times, then that tells me I need to tweak the yields of Priests, but you're supposed to want to use these fairly often to offset the unhappiness. (The logic here is that if Priests are a necessary thing to use, then the AI will use them. If that extra happiness wasn't necessary, then the AI would never bother, and that'd kill its Favor generation.)

Or, just pick the Beauty focus when you have a chance; it's sort of the Piety of foci, the happiness-booster you should be taking if you can't seem to stay above 0. At the moment, no other Focus adds Happiness, but the solution might be to change that. Maybe Travel buildings should add +1 happiness to cities that are connected to your capital, or maybe Art buildings should add a little happiness instead of being only about Culture, or maybe Justice should give a bonus when Heroes are nearby.

Now, I'd thought of other ways to deal with this. Have every Church or Basilica add +1 Happiness, regardless of Focus. (The Basilicae, especially, can get this; I removed their Priest slots, because it's kind of a waste to generate Favor in a building that's already maxed out, but I can easily pretend that they have a permanently slotted Priest and just give every one that +1.)
Or, have every Basilica act like a toned-down Forbidden Palace, reducing the population unhappiness slightly. Since you'll only ever have two, and they'll be spaced out (with one coming in the early Medieval and the other in the late Medieval), it wouldn't get out of control.

I had very serious gold issues, which is why I abandoned the game. Both cities on max gold focus and only one military unit (deleted the others) and still in minus gold. Is this intentional?

No, it's not, but I'd need some exact numbers to fix it. The Mythology policy (which you're given automatically) includes an inherent penalty to gold output, and that might just need to be removed or toned down, but I'd need some solid numbers to be sure. Right now it's a flat -25%, but I could either reduce that to -10%ish, or add some semi-offsetting bonus in the base policy (like an extra +5% for gold-producing buildings).

Shifting a city to gold-production focus is never supposed to be required. You're supposed to be able to maintain a decent standing army with all cities on Default without going negative; if that's not happening, then I need to tweak the penalties. (This is the exact sort of thing I needed outside feedback for.)

Simple question: what Foci did you have? Primary, Secondary, and any Minors you'd added? Things like Wealth are obviously going to help with gold output, but quite a few other Foci boost gold for certain resources. Basically, I added a half-dozen or so separate penalties, and your choice of gods are supposed to basically neutralize two or three of those penalties. So if you'd only taken War, Fire, Death, Darkness, etc. then your military would be doing just fine but you'd have problems in quite a few other areas, while someone who took Fertility, Water, Wealth, and Beauty might have none of the problems you'd described but would have a pretty weak military.

Otherwise, it all seems to work. One minor bug was that one of my units had a flag promotion promising I could paradrop it anywhere in the world (but I couldn't, unfortunately) despite not taking this deity option.

Hmm, that's the Orbital Drop thing mentioned previously, and it's definitely a bug. Was that the ONLY promotion the unit had? (If you're hitting the promotion cap, you'd see all of your units get extra promotions that they shouldn't.)

--------------------------

Also, one other question: were the Events popping up? (I've only got one event in there at the moment, but in the end there'll be a couple dozen.) These are supposed to be one of the main ways of offsetting the penalties of the Mythological Age; your cities might be short on gold, but an event might offer you a free 100 gold. Later events I'm planning to add might give you a free Gems deposit near your capital, or give you a free Hero, or add a permanent +1 Happiness to your empire. These sorts of things would go a long ways in offsetting the deficits you're seeing.

Spatz: - I selected Hephaestus (major) and Hera (minor).

The population in my capital was 6 and in my other city was 2 at its absolute height. I had two luxuries. There were no other luxury types on my landmass. My population was not growing since I was running max priests, but there is no way I would have been able to expand to a third city before colosseums, even if I did have a third luxury source.

Also, I found that social policies and technologies came faster than I had thought they would.

EDIT: If each priest specialist also gave 1 gold, and if I could have run a priest specialist from the go in my second city, I would have been able to make +4 gold and have +1 happiness, and this would also offset the awfulness of early liberty a little bit. I might have just been a bit stupid though (I never played your previous mod), so wait until you get more feedback from other people.

Spatz: - I selected Hephaestus (major) and Hera (minor).

Okay, so that's Crafts primary, Fire secondary, and Fertility minor. None of those help with gold or happiness, which explains some things, but you probably didn't notice any change from vanilla in terms of how fast your cities grew or how long they'd take to build things. The Fire bonus would also have nicely offset some of the defensive bonuses I give everyone.

For comparison, next time try picking Hades (Death/Wealth) and adding someone like Aphrodite (Beauty). I'd bet that you'd have fewer happiness and gold problems, but now you'd feel like your cities aren't growing or producing well.

Also, what levels did each of these reach? By the turn 130ish you described, had any of these upgraded from Shrines to Churches or Cathedrals in your cities? And what turn number was it when you added Hera?
Finally, what techs were you add? It should have taken ~100 turns to reach the Classical, so I need to know if the timing was thrown off by my other changes.

The solution might simply be to tweak the favor thresholds, so that your buildings upgrade more or you can add minor gods faster. The goal I'm aiming for is one minor god by turn 50ish, another on turn 125ish, another on 200ish, and one on 300ish, so if you'd been able to add Aphrodite on 125, that might have helped a bit with the Happiness issues you described.

The population in my capital was 6 and in my other city was 2 at its absolute height. I had two luxuries.

It does sound like you were unlucky on luxury distribution, but the priest situation shouldn't have been THAT bad, so I definitely need to look into the balance on those. I don't want this mod to ever cause your cities to stop growing. More on this below.

Also, I found that social policies and technologies came faster than I had thought they would.

The goal is that what should take 200 turns (reaching the Renaissance with my Empires balance changes) will now take ~350. The tech rate shouldn't be noticeably worse, but it'll still take longer because you have 14 more techs to gain. But the culture generation should be significantly lower than before, since so many +culture buildings were reduced to generate Favor; I might have to do something else there, like tweak the equation again.

Big question here: are you using the Empires mod at the same time? It acts as a balance mod, so if you aren't using it then that might explain some things. For instance, the Temple was changed in that mod from +3 culture to +1 happiness, +1 culture. (The Mythology mod then drops it by another culture to add 2/4/6 Favor.) If you're not using that mod, then it'd mean less happiness and more culture than I'm expecting.

EDIT: If each priest specialist also gave 1 gold, and if I could have run a priest specialist from the go in my second city

The yields on priests are definitely a bit too low. I've been trying to decide, on priests, whether to go:
> 2 Food
> 1 Food, 1 Production
> 1 Food, 1 Gold
or
> 1 Food, 1 Culture

What I'm leaning towards now are leaving Priests at 1 food and doing the following:
> National Epic: in addition to the old effect, all Priests generate +1 gold
> Add a new National Wonder in the Classical (at Conversion?) that has Priests generate +1 production along with some other effect

No matter which way I end up going, the hope is that with these, you won't be hurting yourself as much by slotting priests. I don't want it to be essential that you fill every priest slot, but I'm aiming for 50% usage on average.

As for your second city: when you unlocked Hera, did you get a free Shrine of Fertility? (You're supposed to get one free Shrine from each new minor god.) And if so, which city did it place it in? I tried mimicking the Civ4 religion logic, where it'd put the new shrine in whatever city didn't already have any buildings, so your fringe city should have been the one that got it, assuming you founded the city before unlocking Hera.

One thing I'd thought of was to add a City Hall building to every city, with "unaligned" 1 Priest slot in it that evenly splits its Favor between all foci in that city. It'd help with getting started on new cities; originally I was going to put a Priest slot on the Palace, but that'd be tougher to remove once the mythology age ends.

I might have just been a bit stupid though (I never played your previous mod), so wait until you get more feedback from other people.

Knowledge of the old mod shouldn't be a necessity to play this one; the Mythology mod is intended for a bit wider audience than the science-fiction content I'd added previously, so feedback from people who aren't going to say "oh, that's just like the X from the future mod" is still very valuable. Now, I do intend to make it a bit clearer to people that Priests are a necessity, and that you should be picking a god on turn 1, but until all that help text gets put in I'm not expecting you to master this mod. (And honestly, that's a big part of why I need feedback. I know how all this stuff works, so it never occurs to me to try not picking a god, or not using priests.)

Couldent make it past the 1st turn. Crashed.

One thing I noticed is that both my settler and warroir had all the new promotions; Venom, Stun, etc. Im pretty sure thats not intended

Also, what levels did each of these reach? By the turn 130ish you described, had any of these upgraded from Shrines to Churches or Cathedrals in your cities? And what turn number was it when you added Hera?
Finally, what techs were you add? It should have taken ~100 turns to reach the Classical, so I need to know if the timing was thrown off by my other changes.

I play on Epic so by turn 135 I think I was still in the ancient era. My shrines had not yet updated.

Big question here: are you using the Empires mod at the same time? It acts as a balance mod, so if you aren't using it then that might explain some things. For instance, the Temple was changed in that mod from +3 culture to +1 happiness, +1 culture. (The Mythology mod then drops it by another culture to add 2/4/6 Favor.) If you're not using that mod, then it'd mean less happiness and more culture than I'm expecting.

Yes of course - I am running the three mods as you said. Quick question: I think I read you advising us to load the base mod first then the Mythos & Empires ones. I just loaded them all at once; but I believe load order depends on the alphabetical order they are listed in the mod display. If that were true, you might consider renaming the three mods to load in the way you want them too; something like Age of Man - Era of Empires - Era of Mythology for example.

As for your second city: when you unlocked Hera, did you get a free Shrine of Fertility? (You're supposed to get one free Shrine from each new minor god.) And if so, which city did it place it in? I tried mimicking the Civ4 religion logic, where it'd put the new shrine in whatever city didn't already have any buildings, so your fringe city should have been the one that got it, assuming you founded the city before unlocking Hera.

Yes, in my first capital city (all three shrines).

One thing I'd thought of was to add a City Hall building to every city, with "unaligned" 1 Priest slot in it that evenly splits its Favor between all foci in that city. It'd help with getting started on new cities; originally I was going to put a Priest slot on the Palace, but that'd be tougher to remove once the mythology age ends.

Good idea - an extra priest per city would have helped with unhappiness and allowed my cities to grow an extra point each, assuming I found a way to deal with the gold issue.

Glad my feedback was helpful. I'll try again tomorrow with Hades - Aphrodite.

One thing I noticed is that both my settler and warroir had all the new promotions; Venom, Stun, etc. Im pretty sure thats not intended

That's generally a cache issue (or else you're running some other mods at the same time). It has enough other promotions still in memory that you're exceeding the cap, so anything beyond that will be given to every unit. Clear your cache and start the mythology mod again, and see if that still happens.

That issue is one of the things holding up the Ascension mod; if you try using Ascension and Mythology at the same time you exceed the limit, so I'm trying to restructure things such that this won't happen any more.

I play on Epic so by turn 135 I think I was still in the ancient era. My shrines had not yet updated.

That's a problem. I'd say that at least your Primary should have bumped up to a Church by then, even on Epic. Being on an island probably cut way down on Battle Favor, but you only need 200 favor in a focus to upgrade from Shrine to Church (600 on epic), and your palace alone should have given 1 per turn to your primary and secondary.

I think I just need to set the base growth rates (the free Favor per turn that cities get to upgrade shrines and such) higher. Or more specifically, right now they start at 0/0/0, with Primary getting +2 at Mysticism, Secondary getting +1 at Spirituality, and Minors getting +1 at Mythology. Since you haven't even left the Ancient era yet, you probably don't have all three of these. What I need to do, I think, is set the base rates to 1/1/1 instead.

I just loaded them all at once; but I believe load order depends on the alphabetical order they are listed in the mod display.

From what I've been able to tell, load order depends on which order you clicked the little green buttons to activate them. I'll look into that more, and yes, it might requiring renaming the mods (although I'd prefer to rename the Base mod instead to put it first).

At the moment there's not a whole lot that actually requires the mods to be in a given order; the thing that WOULD need that (the cross-mod XML tables) aren't currently enabled. So it shouldn't be causing the problems people have reported.

Good idea - an extra priest per city would have helped with unhappiness and allowed my cities to grow an extra point each, assuming I found a way to deal with the gold issue.

Of course, an extra Priest means one less tile being worked, which'll slow you down even further, which is why I have to be very careful with this. (For instance, this City Hall might add a Palace-like +1 food, +1 production, +1 gold, etc. to get a city started.)
This is why I mentioned the change in growth rates above; if, say, your Crafts shrine had upgraded to a Church already (increasing the production boost further), then it'd take some of the load off your tile workers, and allow you to use another Priest without hopelessly crippling your cities. And if I add some of the things I'd mentioned elsewhere, to boost Priest yields further, then it'd help even more.

For instance, hypothetically, let's say that the National Epic added +1 gold per Priest, the National College added +1 research per Priest, and the Crusades added +1 production per Priest (all in addition to their current effects). By the end of the mythological content, those'd be some pretty strong specialists, more desirable than any non-resource tile yield. That's the balance point I'm aiming for; you should still want to work any tile with a resource or feature on it, but an empty grassland tile shouldn't be as good as a Priest.

Status update:

I fixed the Diplomacy thing, so that it won't pop the mandala or pantheon selector up when you talk to another player. Also, clicking on the Favor display in the top panel will now open the Mandala as well, so it's much more convenient than before.

I've currently got it so that as soon as your game starts it'll ask you which god to take, before you've had a chance to see the area and resources around your starting position. I'm open to changing this, but for now I want to keep it this way to ensure people don't forget to select a god.

I've also made a bunch of balance tweaks. So it looks like I'm on track to having a new version out tomorrow or Saturday at the latest; I'm not going to try adding any new content, but I want to add some of the more important tooltips before releasing v0.02.

v.0.02 is now posted over in the Files thread. It should be much more playable and stable, and a lot easier to use in general. Since I haven't received much feedback yet beyond the show-stopping bugs (which should now be fixed), I'm going to spend most of the next week getting things like custom icons and such into place, and adding more events and Heroes.

At about turn 150 on a game with v0.02.

Going great so far, the management of priests etc. to balance growth and happiness makes for much more engaging gameplay than vanilla early eras. I haven't been to war yet in any meaningful way so I can't comment on unit balance just yet.

At the moment I'm starting to stumble a little bit though as none of my shrines are upgrading, do I have to do anything to force the upgrade or is automatic once enough Favor is generated? Is there any way to view the progress for each shrine?

Only bug I've seen is that the Ephemeral option on the generic event can't be selected, button does nothing.

Just found one more, when I researched Mythology a whole bunch of units from other Pantheons appeared in my production list (not ALL of them as in the previous version).

Update: I'm at turn 199, about 3200 Favor total, still only shrines (4 now) in the capital and nothing in my other two cities.

Conclusion: I played through to the end of the Myth content, so I'll add in my overall feedback here. Like I said above it plays really well in the early stages probably up to the point where you should be getting shrines in other cities and upgrading your capital shrines. Things started to fall apart a little later on, say just before the medieval era, as I was managing things with the expectation that I'd have lots of shrines and upgrades to work with. Other than that, my main feedback is on the economy; it might be a result of the shrine problem but both myself and the computer civs were having a hard time financially. Most AI civs had a pretty badly negative income (by most I mean all that I encountered). This was all on normal difficulty if that makes any difference. I was able to manage it, just about, but would not have been able to support a decent army. My suggestion would be to move some of the gold related tile upgrades (extra gold from camp/fishing boat etc.) to an earlier point in the tech tree. Being able to convert production to gold might have been enough but that ability is way down the line now. I was building units just to scrap them, not sure if the AI could figure that out. They had huge armies but were bankrupt. If *I'm* doing something wrong with the shrines let me know! :)

On another note, is there a maximum number of gods you can have selected? If I just never built the wonder to end Myth would I be able to eventually have all of the gods in my pantheon? I think I had 1 major and 4 minor or so.

If it's helpful at all, a couple of Favor values from my game are:
Turn - Favor
50 - 240
105 - 712
127 - 1156
150 - 1738

Finally, just from that one game I can tell that this part of the mod is going to be at least as much fun as the Ascension content, once it's at the same stage in terms of functionality of course! Great work so far.

Going great so far, the management of priests etc. to balance growth and happiness makes for much more engaging gameplay than vanilla early eras.

Good. The intention is that you should have to use Priests occasionally, but not every possible slot all of the time. The balance on those are pretty tough to get right.

At the moment I'm starting to stumble a little bit though as none of my shrines are upgrading, do I have to do anything to force the upgrade or is automatic once enough Favor is generated? Is there any way to view the progress for each shrine?

I'm working on a more detailed Favor window that shows exact progress numbers for every building; at the moment you can get the info from the FireTuner output (although I didn't format it in a very readable way, since it was meant for me). Similarly, I'm also working on a window that'll show the other players' pantheons, Favor totals, and so on. I'm not sure exactly how much I want to make visible to you, but for now I'll set it up like this. Basically, the part where Focus info comes up when you click on one in the mandala? That'll be changed to a general data readout area, so I'll add a couple extra buttons that'll place the different kinds of data in that area.

But you absolutely should have seen the two starting Shrines upgrade by now. Even if you picked a Building x1 pantheon, then even if you never generated any Favor at all or researched any religious techs, you'd still be getting 1.5 favor per turn for each of the two starting shrines (1 for the Palace, split 0.5/0.5, plus a base growth rate of 1 for each). Each started at 100 Favor and upgrades to a Church at 300, so they should have upgraded no later than turn 134 no matter what else you did. And probably much, much sooner due to Mysticism, a Monument, Priests, etc. adding to your totals.

Okay, found the problem. It's a combination of about a half-dozen small, stupid mistakes on my part. I hadn't sanitized the inputs on the Level database read, I hadn't initialized the Level variable for your capital, I had an unset structure due to commenting out a block of code (the Teams variable), and I had an error in the part where it decides which city to put the free Shrine in when you add a minor god. So, when your cities were ready to upgrade, it was pulling a null value and trying to do math on it, failing, and not doing the upgrade. If you had FireTuner, you'd see an arithmetic error on line 612 of MythStartTurn. I've fixed it, and tested it by hacking the growth rates; it definitely works now. I might try uploading a fixed version tonight, if I have time; I'm spending most of today at work because of a deadline, so it might have to wait a day or two.

And yes, I'd tested this way back when I first put the code in. The above errors were due to some restructuring I had to do right before v.0.01, when I switched from Whys' save/load functions to a direct MapModData structure access.

Only bug I've seen is that the Ephemeral option on the generic event can't be selected, button does nothing.

Found it. I'd used Teams.GetTeamTechs() instead of Teams:GetTeamTechs(). Lua is very finicky with these sorts of references.

The bigger problem I'm having with those events is ensuring that the AIs get them as well; the UserEvents mod I embedded to handle these wasn't really built for that, so at the moment it's a human-only thing (which obviously is a major problem for the AIs' balance).

Just found one more, when I researched Mythology a whole bunch of units from other Pantheons appeared in my production list (not ALL of them as in the previous version).

Fixed. Stupid mistake on my part; in the production popup, I was having it decide whether something was a pantheon or focus myth unit based on two bits of the red-text warning string that normally pops up when you don't have a building or project needed for a unit. If the tooltip ended with "in this City" then it must be a Focus myth unit (or some other unit that can only be built if you have a certain building), and if the tooltip starts with the string "entry into the" then it'd be a Pantheon unit. What I forgot is that this tooltip now starts with a "[NEWLINE]", meaning the Pantheon units need to check the 14 characters starting at position #10, not #1.

Update: I'm at turn 199, about 3200 Favor total, still only shrines (4 now) in the capital and nothing in my other two cities.

Definitely a bug, but with the fix I've mentioned above, it should work in 0.03. You get your third minor god at 3300, and I was intending that to occur on about turn 200, so it looks like the pacing's working better than I'd hoped. With the upgrade fix you might have grown a little faster (since your cities would have had better yields and such), but it's pretty close to what I'd wanted.

Most AI civs had a pretty badly negative income (by most I mean all that I encountered).

If you weren't getting any upgrades, then yes, I can see how the economy could quickly get out of control. Not that it's not possible to still be messed up either way, but a lot of Foci have some sort of small gold-boosting effects at various levels, besides just Wealth. That's actually one of the things I've worried about; lots of Foci boost Food, Production, and Gold, but only a couple boost Culture (mainly Art, but there are a couple minor bits in other areas) and only one boosts Happiness at all (Beauty). So I've been trying to figure out ways to justify adding small amounts of Happiness to other Foci, like Justice or Balance.

My suggestion would be to move some of the gold related tile upgrades (extra gold from camp/fishing boat etc.) to an earlier point in the tech tree.

Interesting idea. Normally you don't get your first yield increase until Civil Service, with the others coming a bit after that throughout the Medieval and early Renaissance. Normally it might only take you ~100 turns to reach this point, but I'm now aiming for 200 or more. So maybe some of the others SHOULD get moved earlier. The issue is going to be that those changes are being done in the Empires mod, so if I want to move them earlier to account for Mythology content, then there might be balance problems going the other way.

The other option I've got on my wishlist is this: add a few custom "religious" tile improvements that disappear once you have your Enlightenment. These could be more powerful than normal; for instance, a +2 Culture tile improvement that can only be placed by the level 4 Art creature, Xelhua, or some other specific high-end creatures. So I could do something similar for gold, but it wouldn't kick in until much later than the period you're talking about.

On another note, is there a maximum number of gods you can have selected? If I just never built the wonder to end Myth would I be able to eventually have all of the gods in my pantheon? I think I had 1 major and 4 minor or so.

There's no hard limit (beyond the obvious limit of 12 possible gods to add), but there are two soft limits that would make it very difficult to collect more than a half-dozen or so:
1> The Favor costs go up as a second-order polynomial. (5N + 1)*(N+1)*100 is the equation, so it's 100 for your first minor god (N=0), 1200 for the second, 3300 for the third, 6400 for the fourth, 10500 for the fifth... your Favor doesn't reset to 0 when you pick a god, so it's actually only the differential that matters (1100 after your first god to get the second, 2100 after your second god to get your third, 3100, 4100, etc. on up). This equation is subject to change, and was just my crude estimate for the curve, but that's the general idea.
Since Favor generation will plateau at a certain point (there are only a certain number of buildings that add Favor, and battle favor scales only with damage, not strength), it'd be very, very hard to keep adding more at any reasonable rate once you get past the first few.
2> Your Alignment on the mandala. You'll eventually hit a point where you've cleared out all of the gods available in one area, so unless you're deliberately picking every Event choice to shift you towards an area full of gods you haven't taken yet, then you won't be able to keep adding more.
This heavily depends on your god and pantheon. The Greeks have a big hole in the middle of the Mandala, for instance, where many of the banned foci are the ones near (0,0). This means that if you follow Zeus or Hades, for instance, then you have a LONG way to go to pick up things like Water (Poseidon), and not a lot of gods to pick up in between; it generally forces players to move around the edges. Conversely, the Sumerians mostly lack the ones around the edges, which encourages staying near the center; more choices, but many of the obviously powerful foci are off-limits.

If it's helpful at all, a couple of Favor values from my game are:
Turn - Favor
50 - 240
105 - 712
127 - 1156
150 - 1738

This is exactly the sort of thing I need, although a smaller interval would be even better. Say, every 10 turns or so. It looks like you're pretty much right on the curves I'd intended; I was aiming for you to have 1200 Favor on turn 125, so it matches almost perfectly. (The other benchmarks: 3300 by turn 200, which you also hit almost exactly, and 6400 by turn 300.) I'm assuming this was with a Greek god? (All pantheons should be roughly similar in the progression, but I'd expect the battle-heavy pantheons like the Norse or Aztec to be more erratic.)

Finally, just from that one game I can tell that this part of the mod is going to be at least as much fun as the Ascension content, once it's at the same stage in terms of functionality of course! Great work so far.

I'm trying hard to make it quite a bit less straightforward than the future content. The Ascension mod had the Breakout, the altered Space Race, and the Transcendence victory, but beyond that it was really just more of the same sort of content you'd already been playing. (Okay, there were also some new unit and building abilities, especially the ones that create strategics.) Generally speaking, you'd play that future content the same way each time, or at least as much so as in the vanilla content.

I was originally worried that the Myth content would be too similar to that, with the new units, techs, and such just being more of the same. My hope is that through the combination of Focus effects, the balancing act between Myth units, Heroes, and mundane units, the Events, and the whole Priest thing, it'd be enough to keep things different each time. In the long term I'd like to take it further, biasing diplomacy based on pantheon choices, but that'll have to wait until the DLL. The worry, now, is that it's too much "railroading", where you're hosed if you don't grab a Wealth god or a Beauty god or something; the game shouldn't be unplayable no matter who you pick.

This is really why I need playtesting feedback. You've seen the kinds of penalties you have to overcome (with the Gold issue you mentioned); the idea is that depending on which central god you picked and which minors you add, some of those penalties will become non-issues, while others will stay problems. What I need the feedback for is to know whether any of the 28 starting gods is unplayable due to the combination of all of these factors (since I can't possibly play enough test games to see this for myself), to where you're absolutely forced to do something you don't want to do (like shift to Gold Focus in cities). I want the game to FEEL different depending on your choices, to where you won't get a more-of-the-same feeling every time, but not to the point where you feel there's only one possible way to play a certain god.

Still early in my game, but I've stumbled across a small error I think.

I've been choosing the chaotic option whenever the event shows up but it's been boosting my ephemeral stat instead.

That and my current favor on top UI bar says I have 81/300 favor but in the Mandala screen it says I have 46/300 favor til my next minor deity.

That's all so far, gonna keep playing and see if I stumble across anything else.

Aztecs, Marathon speed, Norse Pantheon, Odin.

EDIT:

I've also noticed that I'm not generating battle favor when I fight barbarians, either when they attack or when I attack.

I've been choosing the chaotic option whenever the event shows up but it's been boosting my ephemeral stat instead.

I double-checked the effect functions and they look correct, but this might be related to the below issue. As in, it's not ACTUALLY boosting your E, but that you're not seeing the C boost until several turns later. Or, it could be related to the half-dozen errors I found this morning, who knows.

That and my current favor on top UI bar says I have 81/300 favor but in the Mandala screen it says I have 46/300 favor til my next minor deity.

The one on the top panel is correct. I'm pretty sure what's happening is this: the top panel updates continuously, because it's one of a small set of UI elements that the game automatically refreshes. The Mandala, however, only updates when I tell it to. And unfortunately, "when I tell it to" isn't working very well at the moment. In the version you have, I had it to where it updates whenever you found a new city (or possibly whenever ANYONE founds a new city), or when you add a new minor god, but my attempts to get it to refresh every turn didn't work.

And even that wouldn't really be enough; ideally, I'd need it to refresh whenever anyone tries to open the Mandala window at all, but I can't find the trap for that. So when you pick a choice on an event, it'll move you to a new position on the grid internally, but the Mandala window will still list your old position.

I'm trying to add more triggers for this, but it's complicated. I THINK I've now got it updating every turn by using the serial event (active player start turn) instead of the GameEvent one, so it should be a lot better in the next version. But I'm still trying to see if I can force an update from outside the routines handling the mandala; it's not easy.

If worst comes to worst I'll just throw the update into every Lua event I can find. Start of combat, end of combat, improvement created, unit created, you name it. It'd be so much easier if I could just refresh by opening the Mandala, but I just haven't found a way.

I've also noticed that I'm not generating battle favor when I fight barbarians, either when they attack or when I attack.

The only barbarian check in the battle favor algorithm is one that makes sure they don't gain favor themselves; it SHOULD be triggering for you otherwise. I'll look into that later; if anything in the combat events is crashing then it'd stop the favor accumulation, because that's pretty much the last thing to trigger.

Okay, my original plan was to post a new version tonight, but I didn't get any sleep last night so I'm probably not going to be too coherent by tonight. Not really the best sort of environment to be making last-minute changes. So plan for tomorrow (Tuesday); tonight I'll double-check the battle favor, and test out the update triggers I added yesterday, which means that v0.03 should be stable enough to really test all the way through. I've already confirmed that the shrine upgrading is now being handled correctly, and yes, there'll be a popup message when your buildings upgrade themselves, so you can't miss it. (I'd screwed it up to where it had previously give a separate message for each building, but I've fixed it to have one single popup for all building changes.)

But I'd like people to keep a close eye on exactly when the buildings upgrade, because there's one big elephant in the room, balance-wise, that I haven't addressed: Overflow. That is, should shrines and such keep accumulating local Favor behind-the-scenes, even if they can't upgrade yet because you haven't reached a tech that unlocks the upgrade? This is a concept that I could really use some feedback on. (Note that this wouldn't affect global Favor, which determines minor god unlocks. Only the local values used to determine shrine upgrades are involved here.)
For instance, at the start of the game, every focus caps its level at Shrine (1), worth 100 Favor. (I'm assuming standard speeds here.) To upgrade to a Church, that focus needs to reach 300 Favor in that city, meaning 200 beyond Shrine. If the shrine can keep accumulating Favor to where it might be way up at 500 or 600 when you unlock the Church, then it'd instantly upgrade as soon as you reached that tech and in fact could immediately upgrade again were you to get a couple free techs at the right time. (I'm not sure whether that's a good thing.)

So the question to you, dear readers is this: What should the focus-specific Favor within each city cap at? I'll give examples using the level 1->2 (shrine -> church) upgrade, but similar logic applies to all levels.
A> Cap at the amount needed for the previous building
As soon as you get that Shrine at 100, no more Favor can be acquired until you unlock Churches, at which point it'll progress as normal but with no actual upgrades for the dozen or more turns it takes to acquire 200 Favor.
B> The amount needed for the NEXT building
Once you get the Shrine, it can continue to accumulate until 300, at which point it'll freeze until you unlock Churches; when you do so, cities at the cap will instantly upgrade and then start accumulating up to 600.
C> Some amount in between A and B
Say, halfway? That'd act a lot like A, but you'd only need to get 100 to see the effects of the Church unlock in a capped city instead of 200, so it wouldn't take as long to see an effect.
D> No cap at all.
The current setup. A lot like B, but it'd practically be GUARANTEED that you'd upgrade everything as soon as you unlock the next level.

This issue also applies to the downward slide at the end. The way the Enlightenment works is that once you finish the Project, every focus in every city loses 100 Favor per turn; if that's enough to fall below the amount needed to gain that level on the way up, then the building downgrades (and you get a small amount of culture and golden age progress as compensation). A lot of other things are different about the turns needed to fall to zero, like how no more mythological events will trigger for you.
If you pick A above, then it'll probably take no more than 10 turns before the enlightenment finishes and the Mythology policy goes away (although that's a drop of 100 AFTER gains for Favor generation are added, so if you have enough priests or monuments then you can really slow that down); the turn after finishing the project, your capital's basilicae would downgrade. For a few turns, things'd be kind of tight as you no longer would have all the bonuses of religious buildings, but you'd still be suffering the penalties. (Sort of a "dark" age.)
If you pick B, it could take 5 extra turns beyond A, as your capital would have gone up to 1500 in the primary and secondary foci, but it could be 5 turns before the key buildings even start to downgrade (although fringe cities would likely drop sooner). But if I leave things uncapped (D), then who knows how many turns it'd take. You might have a dozen or more turns where nothing happens, before the actual 10-turn downward trend starts. Take that too far, and you might already be in the Industrial by the time the mythology stuff goes away, and that'd be bad.

Now, I know it'll be hard to answer this until you actually play through with upgrades, and that'll also depend on me giving you a more comprehensive UI that lets you actually see the Favor levels in each city. (Working on that tonight.) But any thoughts?

I'd suggest going with B for now. I've played another few quick games and I think that if I was getting the upgrades pretty much immediately as I researched the appropriate tech it would have been nicely balanced. There's also the fact that since the Myth content 'ends' eventually it's best to get it unlocked reasonably quickly, I think.

I think that if I was getting the upgrades pretty much immediately as I researched the appropriate tech it would have been nicely balanced.

The main problem comes down to the usual AI-vs-human stuff. If there's always an immediate payoff to taking those focus-boosting techs, then the human player will time it such that he'll take that tech right when it's accumulated enough to move up. I'm not sure that's avoidable, but it's one of the reasons I wanted to not allow unrestricted overflow.

So for now, I think I'll try going with B. Assuming I can get it to work right before I fall asleep at the keyboard, that is.

King Difficulty, contents map, Persia, Sumerian Pantheon (beauty/war)
Ages of myth V0.02, Ages of Man base, Ages of Empires

I had major happiness problems at the beginning of the game. This was due to my starting resources both requiring calander (sugar and dye) and mining/masonry to clear forest and marsh. Also my initial warrior was able to pop 2 goodie huts for additional population within the first 20-30 turns. Once i was able to devolpe the resources i was usually able to maintain positive happiness for the rest of the game.

I like the way the economy works in this mod. I was able to stay in the green for most of the game, but you really have to watch what you build. I kept my army small (one unit per city combined with oligarcy for free maintaince) and a couple of Immortals for barbarian controll. I limited buildings to things that were maintaince free (walls/circus) or that provided favor or happiness.

The AI does not seem to handle the changes in this mod very well. All AI civs that i met were operating at negitive income for most of the game. They initally made quite abit of money but around turn 50 or so they all seemed to drop into negative income. I think i found two explanations for this:
1) The AI builds lots of units. At one point the french had 20 units going to war with rome who had an equally lagre army of its own.
2) None of the AI connected trade routs to their capitals. They devoleped all the tiles around their cities but no one ever built a road.

Around turn 150 a message poped up displaying everones happienss. I was second with 4 happiness. Spain was first with 7 but they quickly built 2 cities. The other AI were between -4 and -15.

I also noticed that the AI science was not devolping at the same rate as mine. I was just finishing elighnment when my closest competitor was just entering the medievil era.

Because you asked for it Favor ratings at 10 turn intervals:

Turn Favor Turn Favor Turn Favor
20 40 100 1455 180 4578
30 71 110 1785 190 4992
40 201 120 2115 200 5448
50 331 130 2445 210 5937
60 459 140 2791 220 6507
70 609 150 3181 230 7077
80 849 160 3571 240 7647
90 1125 170 4042 250 8437

Enlightment was completed on turn 256

I used every one of the priest specialists available to me (and because of the extra population for goody huts started using them right away). I also used the legalism polocy to build monuments in my first four cities and manually built coloseums and temples in all four as well.

I dont know how many events you want the player to recieve in a game but i got 23 in total, 7 of which came within 15 turnes of each other. Because there wasn't alot of spare money i usually had my capitol building wonders (it seemed better than building a troop only to disband it right away or a building to sell right away). Consequently i only ever used the lawful (50 production in the capitol) event to rapidly build wonders.

One thing that i did notice was the temple adds -1 gold and has a maintaince of 1. Is this sposed to work this way?

Also what exactly is supposed to happen when you complete the enlightnment wonder. I built it expecting the myth content to end but i was still able to build myth units and collect favor after it was built.

Anyways I hope this feedback is helpful

I had major happiness problems at the beginning of the game. This was due to my starting resources both requiring calander (sugar and dye) and mining/masonry to clear forest and marsh.

If you're having happiness issues as Inanna, then I definitely need to fix some things. Beauty is supposed to be the Focus that makes Happiness problems go away. Of course, since you weren't getting Shrines of Beauty (or higher) in any other cities, you wouldn't be getting the full effect.

I kept my army small (one unit per city combined with oligarcy for free maintaince) and a couple of Immortals for barbarian controll. I limited buildings to things that were maintaince free (walls/circus) or that provided favor or happiness.

It's not supposed to be THAT harsh. I know the unit maintenance equation is getting thrown off, since it keys off turn number instead of era and so will inflate much faster than before. (Similarly, I haven't fixed the turn number-year correlations yet.) But you should be able to maintain a more powerful standing army than that.

The AI does not seem to handle the changes in this mod very well. All AI civs that i met were operating at negitive income for most of the game.

Yes, there's an obvious problem there. If I can't get the AI to adjust its behavior, and if the maintenance equations can't be adjusted to allow for more units in this era, then there's a very simple solution, one I've already done somewhat: right now, Hero units are maintenance-free... and I could just do the same to Myth units. (Or at least the level 1-2 Myth units, the more powerful stuff could still cost you.)

Another possible solution is to add gold to the Mythology policy itself. So if, during the Mythology Age, you saw Palaces give an extra 2 gold, Harbors and Markets give an extra 1 gold, and so on... that'd offset it. But if I was going to do that, then I might as well just toss the inherent gold penalty (-20%) in the first place.

Around turn 150 a message poped up displaying everones happienss. I was second with 4 happiness. Spain was first with 7 but they quickly built 2 cities. The other AI were between -4 and -15.

Worrisome, but if the AIs weren't using any Priests then that could explain some of it (although -15 isn't acceptable even with that).

I also noticed that the AI science was not devolping at the same rate as mine. I was just finishing elighnment when my closest competitor was just entering the medievil era.

If you go negative on gold, then it subtracts from your research. So if the AIs were all having money issues, then it'd be understandable that they'd fall far behind.

Given that in 0.02 none of your religious buildings were upgrading themselves, gold production was probably quite a bit lower than intended. But even so, I'll look into the costs of things, because it's never supposed to be THAT bad.


Because you asked for it Favor ratings at 10 turn intervals:
Turn Favor Turn Favor Turn Favor
20 40 100 1455 180 4578
30 71 110 1785 190 4992
40 201 120 2115 200 5448
50 331 130 2445 210 5937
60 459 140 2791 220 6507
70 609 150 3181 230 7077
80 849 160 3571 240 7647
90 1125 170 4042 250 8437


Okay, I'm assuming this is on Standard speed. That'd put your first minor god on turn 33ish, your second on turn ~92, third on turn 154, fourth in turn 218, and you'd have reached a fifth on turn 275ish if you had stayed religious. That's quite a bit faster than I'd intended, although if you were slotting every Priest possible, as a Sumerian, then it'd make sense. But using that many Priests should have seriously impeded your production and such.

Enlightment was completed on turn 256

That's quite a bit faster than I'd intended. Were you evenly researching techs across the whole tree, or did you specifically go for Apostasy?

I used every one of the priest specialists available to me (and because of the extra population for goody huts started using them right away).

I don't want that to be necessary. The goal I'm aiming for is that you (and the AI) should be filling about half of your Priest slots; priest-heavy pantheons, like the Sumerians, might want more just for the Favor, but that should be a choice that costs you in other areas.

Granted, you probably only had one Shrine per Focus, because the upgrade logic for buildings was broken. So you should have had far more slots available, which'd balance this out a bit. (If you had three minor gods, for instance, then you should have had up to 5 religious buildings in EACH CITY, each with a slot.) So you'll want to try this again once 0.03 is out, since it fixes the upgrade path.

I dont know how many events you want the player to recieve in a game but i got 23 in total, 7 of which came within 15 turnes of each other.

Right now the probability was just set to 10%, purely random, for the generic debug event. The eventual timing will go like this:
> No events for the first 10 turns of a game.
> Once you have an event, you won't be able to have any others at all for 5 turns. (Might increase this to 10.) This lockout currently doesn't work.
> Most events are one-time-only; once you have one, you can never have that same one again. (The generic events will be the exception to that.)
> Major Events are the 8 hero-generating ones will each have a 0.5% chance of triggering, and won't begin until you reach Polytheism. So you'll get a few of them at random times in the game, but because of the 5-turn lockout from other events you won't get all 8. The non-hero options will have powerful bonuses, but the strongest will have a cost. (Lose 100 food in your capital to gain 300 Favor, Lose 100 Favor to gain a Hydra, that sort of thing.)
> Moderate Events will have a 1% chance and won't start until you reach Mythology. I intend to have 6 of these, and you should expect to see all of them in a typical game. The benefits of these will be about what the current generic event gives, although it won't just be yields. One option, for instance, might just add a permanent +1 Happiness (well, "permanent" in that it won't go away until the Mythology Age ends).
> Then there'll be Minor Events, like the current generic one, which'll be available from the start and won't be limited to occuring only one time per game. I'm going to add three more of these, just for some variation, and they'll each have a 2% chance. The effects will be about half what the current generic gives (25 food, production, etc.).

The goal is that, putting all 18 of these together, you should see an event every ~10 turns, although mostly minor ones; the more powerful events might only come every 30-40 turns, with some of them not appearing at all in a typical game. (The total of all 18 will be an 18% chance, meaning one event every 5.5 turns, but the 5-turn lockout will mean you'll average one per 10.5 turns.)

Consequently i only ever used the lawful (50 production in the capitol) event to rapidly build wonders.

As I add more Events, that'll go away. Production won't always be an option; on the Minor events, you'll tend to care more about the alignment shift than the tangible bonuses.

One thing that i did notice was the temple adds -1 gold and has a maintaince of 1. Is this sposed to work this way?

Yes, although it's definitely awkward in the UI. What happened was that the base Temple is +1 Happiness, +1 Culture, 1gpt maintenance. (At least in the Empires mod it is.) The Mythology Policy then adds a second set of modifiers to it: -1 culture, -1 gold, +2 Favor. (With the Favor then getting multiplied by 1/2/3, as usual.) Now, I might toss the gold penalty, if everyone's having such big problems with economy, but the point is that it's an intentional balance thing; the change required in making things generate Favor is supposed to be balance-neutral, with 1 point of Favor coming at the expense of something else.

Given how central Temples are supposed to be, it's probably okay to have them be stronger than normal in this era, though.

Also what exactly is supposed to happen when you complete the enlightnment wonder. I built it expecting the myth content to end but i was still able to build myth units and collect favor after it was built.

It's fixed in 0.03, but was broken in 0.02. The same bug that was preventing your Shrines from upgrading were also preventing this process.

What happens is that every turn, each focus in each city will lose 100 points (although it'll still gain whatever Favor you're generating, so the drop won't be the full 100). If this drops a city below the threshold needed for the Shrine, Church, Cathedral, or Basilica it has, then the building will downgrade itself (but will award you some stuff to compensate). Once all religious buildings have disappeared in your empire, which'll generally take ~15 turns, the Mythology policy (the one with all of the penalties) will be removed and you'll play as if you'd never had the Myth content in the first place.

There are a few other bits; during the downgrade process, your Myth and Hero units will have a chance of despawning each turn, awarding you some gold and research in the process. At the end of the downgrade, any remaining ones despawn in the same way. Events won't happen during the downgrade (or after), and there are a couple miscellaneous other bits that get changed during this period, but you get the general idea.

One other thing: when I said your favor was accumulating faster than I'd expected, I hadn't mentioned that you weren't generating Battle Favor. It should have been accumulating even faster yet, although as a Sumerian deity you'd only get the low x1 multiplier for that one.

What I'm going to do, once I get a good amount of data on those 10-turn intervals, is readjust the equation needed for minor gods to match the curves. My original idea was that you'd get new gods on turns 50, 125, 200, and 300, although I'm really liking the idea of picking your first minor god much sooner than that. So maybe I should assume something more like 25, 100, 175, 250, 350.
Right now, the equation is
(5N+1)*(N+1)*100. That's 100, 1200, 3300, 6400, 10500 for your first five minor gods.
But I can easily change that. For instance, if you wanted to slow down the later ones:
(5N+0.5)*(N+2)*100. That's 100, 1650, 4200, 7750, 12300. Looking at your Favor curve, that'd mean you would get new gods on turns 33, 107, 174, and 242, which fits pretty close to the revised progression I gave above. (Although, again, Battle Favor wasn't included and you didn't have as many Priest slots as you were supposed to.)

It's very adjustable. Dropping the first term to (4N+0.5) but keeping the (N+2) would be 100, 1350, 3800, 7250, 11700, while raising it to (5N+1)(N+2) would be 200, 1800, 4400, 8000, 12600. (Subtracting a flat 100 off of that to keep it starting at 100 could also work.)
So as I get more data on favor generation, for a variety of god combinations, I'll be able to feed it into a polynomial fit routine to give me the best three parameters.

So the questions to ponder:
1> When should players get their first god? I'd like it to be late enough that it doesn't feel like just another part of the "pick your central god" process, but early enough that you don't get bored waiting for the first really adjustable part of the process.
2> How many minor gods is a good number? (Related question: was there ever a point where you were prompted to pick a minor god, but an unclaimed one just wasn't available at the alignment position you had at that moment?) I keep asking this one, but now that people are having a chance to see the actual mod, I'm hoping for some more detailed answers.
3> Right now, your first god is mainly acquired through building Favor from your palace (1/2/3 points) and your initial Priest slots. 100 points won't take long to get, and that first minor god is actually a pretty important thing to have early on.
Should that 100 be changed in either direction?
4> One idea I had was to eliminate the variance in Palace favor yields. As in, have it give 2 points a turn regardless of which Pantheon you pick. I already do this with the Favor generated by the Academy, Manufactory, etc.; those give 2 per turn, period. That'd make it far more consistent in which turn each player got their first minor god, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
(Despite the fact that Favor is handled as a new Yield in the XML tables, none of the Lua functions can evaluate it, so all Favor accumulation is being handled directly by me. I can tweak whatever I want, as a result.)
5> Right now, you're limited solely to Shrines until you reach the Classical Era. I don't want to move up the "all Primary max levels increase by 1" effect, but I CAN move up the "+1 in your capital" bit so that you can see the Shrine->Church upgrade happen much more quickly. Those level 2 effects would make things quite a bit easier; the problem is that level 2 Myth units are Swordsman-equivalent, and those guys don't unlock until the early Classical. The level 1.5 pantheon units are at Mythology (late Ancient), so I wouldn't want to make them worthless by putting the level 2s before that, but I COULD move one of the Classical religious techs down to the Ancient for this. Thoughts?

I'm almost definitely going to post a new version tonight, but I came across something last night that I thought was interesting.

Within the RunCombatSim and EndCombatSim events, it includes as arguments the amount of damage each unit took during that combat, the amount of damage each unit was left with at the end of the combat, and the unit's max HP. Given these, it's pretty easy to check to see if the unit was killed during the combat. (One quirk: the two "damage taken" arguments are flipped in the EndCombatSim event, presumably because it then becomes "damage dealt" in effect.)

What's interesting, though is that the arguments aren't capped. If I send a Dragon against a Warrior, the event will claim that the Dragon dealt 72 damage to the Warrior (although the first 10 would obviously be enough to kill it, or even less if the Warrior had already been wounded). I found this out because Battle Favor scales with damage and I was getting some huge amounts in a test fight. Now, I've fixed it since then to cap at (10 minus how many points of damage the unit had going into the fight), but there MUST be some use for this sort of thing, knowing how much overkill the unit had.

So, I'm going to go back and look at some abilities to see if they can be improved by this. Give an increased chance of a Zombie or Vampire spawning new creatures the further beyond "dead" you go, give the "Trample" promotion this effect, to where it'll deal any damage beyond the necessary 10-X to adjacent enemies, that sort of thing. Maybe give Spontaneous Healing and Critical Strike some extra bonus when you kill a foe, with the size of the bonus depending on how far you went beyond 10HP.

But this wouldn't be in tonight's version. Tonight's v0.03 will fix the shrine upgrade logic, the Battle Favor logic, and add some useful UI bits to the Mandala so that you can keep track of Favor levels in your cities. So once that's done, the mod should be fully playable (although still not very balanced).

Slight delay due to RL issues; I'll try to post 0.03 tomorrow morning. 0.04 will probably be on Saturday or Sunday, then.

EDIT:
Okay, big problem. What I'd thought was just a minor computer issue now appears to be the complete death of my machine, possibly requiring an entirely new motherboard. If I'd uploaded the files last night (like I'd intended) I'd have been able to sit on a stable version while I assembled a new machine, but I just can't get to the files any more. So this might have to be on hold for the few days it'll take to get new parts.

(Why didn't I upload last night? Sleeping pill kicked in at an awkward time. Long story.)

As a result, it might be a little bit before I can upload v.0.03; if I'm lucky, then I'll be able to recover the many, many changes I'd made since v0.02. But either way, I won't be uploading today.

So sorry to hear about the computer problems, I hope you'll be able to recover most of the changes.

The excess damage from the damage count sounds interesting, so much can be done with that, like maybe: devourer nano-swarm, excess damage = +production in nearest city? sorta like eating your enemies armies for parts.

So sorry to hear about the computer problems, I hope you'll be able to recover most of the changes.

From what I can tell, the problem is motherboard-related. Here, I'll explain so that others can check my logic:

Last night, while doing my usual twenty things at once (three ModBuddy instances, FireTuner, Word, Civ5, internet radio, Steam, Skype, etc.), my machine's video started screwing up. It added some random red pixels to the screen, blanked out, and then popped back in again with a message that my video card had recovered from a malfunction, and mentioned the kernel driver version number. A couple hours later, it did it again, but this time the red pixels were in a pattern covering the whole screen. At first I figured that the video card was having problems, so first I updated its drivers and then checked to see if its cooling fan had broken or something, causing it to overheat. Nothing obvious was wrong. Scanned for viruses, nothing found. An hour later, it did it again, but this time I got the Blue Screen of Death and had to reboot. So I called it a night.

This morning I woke up early (4am) and turned on my machine. It lasted maybe five minutes before doing this again, and again it Blue Screened me and forced a reboot. During the bootup cycle (BEFORE the Windows 7 start), I started seeing those same red pixels. That started to make me think it wasn't the video card, but I wasn't sure. A couple minutes later, it crashed again. This time, during the BIOS startup, many of the text characters were corrupted (using the wrong characters altogether), which wouldn't have anything to do with the video card, and now it can't even get through the Windows 7 start message before crashing, regardless of whether I try safe mode or not.

Now, it could be some sort of virus that somehow got through all of my protection, but I'm thinking that it's just the hardware failing. This machine's four years old, it was one I assembled myself (so no guarantees on quality), and I've run it pretty heavily for these past few years. It's made some questionable high-pitched noises recently (which I normally don't hear myself, as I wear headphones, but when I was the guest on the most recent ModCast the hosts could hear it through the microphone), so I was expecting something like this to happen eventually.

I've been scouring Newegg to check prices on parts, and it pretty much seems to be an all-or-nothing thing; keeping my old processor limits the motherboards I can use (since it's a Core 2 Duo, meaning an LGA 775 slot), and RAM's so cheap that there's no point in trying to find a motherboard that can use my old 4x1GB DDR2s when I can just spend $40 to get 2x4GB of DDR3. So if it's not some simple fix, I'm going to have to basically assemble a new computer, buying a new processor, motherboard, and RAM. (Possibly a new video card as well, depending on the problem.) Even my keyboard will have to get tossed, since it's a PS/2 plug; I'm looking at ~$600 in parts.
If it IS hardware-related, then it'll be at least a week or so before I can work on the mod again. On the bright side, as long as it didn't screw up the hard drives I'll be able to recover my previous work, which was ALMOST ready to be posted; besides a ton of bug fixes, I'd added deity graphics for four out of the seven pantheons, and was trying to add the last three (Aztec, Sumerian, and Shinto) when the problems started, so while I could remake those files if I needed to, it's a lot of random work to repeat if I need to rebuild the mod from scratch.

The excess damage from the damage count sounds interesting, so much can be done with that, like maybe: devourer nano-swarm, excess damage = +production in nearest city? sorta like eating your enemies armies for parts.

That'd definitely be more suitable for the Ascension mod than the Mythology one, and would be a nice effect to add to the Nano Factory. One thing I thought of for the Myth content would be to have some sort of extra factor for "cinematic" fights, like Hero-vs-Myth, Hero-vs-Hero, or Myth-vs-Myth. There's already something in there for that; a fight gets +50% Battle Favor (for BOTH players) if the attacker is a Hero or a Myth, and ANOTHER +50% if the defender is Hero or Myth. So those sorts of fights would already generate twice as much favor as a comparable Swordsman-on-Swordsman sort of battle.
But I could change it. For instance, a Hero killing a Myth unit (possibly only a level 3 or higher one) could get bonus XP for "overkill", while a Myth unit killing a Hero could heal itself with the excess.

The first thing that came to mind was Trample, because I used to play Magic: the Gathering. The Trample I've created for this mod is simple: deal 1 damage to every enemy unit adjacent to the target, but reduce your attack strength by 10% per enemy damaged this way. It seems fairly balanced; you'll do more damage overall, but your designated target takes less damage and you'll take more. Overall still probably a gain, but it's one the AI won't use ineffectively.
But what I thought of was, using MtG's example, a more direct approach; a fraction of the damage beyond what's needed to kill a unit is dealt to enemies adjacent to that unit. It's a pure increase in effectiveness, but it's something the AI probably wouldn't understand at all. And it's probably abuseable, like attacking the Scout so that you can damage the Longswordsman standing next to him without a counterattack.

One of the nice things about this discovery is how it applies to cities. When a unit attacks a city, or a city attacks a unit, the city's player ID, damage taken, max HP, etc. are all correct; the only thing missing is the city ID, and that can be found from the Last Mission functions. So I could modify the system to where "overkill" damage against a city results in more damage dealt to the buildings within the city; a human player tends to bombard a city down to 1 HP before sending in an attacker to capture it (minimizing the damage the unit takes), while an AI will attack as soon as it thinks the invading unit can capture the city and survive. To compensate for this, I could add a Thalassicus-style change to the conquering process (in his mod, a conquered city only loses one or two sizes, instead of the default of losing half).

That's quite a bit faster than I'd intended. Were you evenly researching techs across the whole tree, or did you specifically go for Apostasy?

In the ancient and classical eras i spread my research around. Once i reached the medievil i went straight for currency then for Apostasy. There was no iron in my empire and my military was already more advanced then my opponents so i didn't research to much of the bottom tree (but i believe that i had researched physics)


I don't want that to be necessary. The goal I'm aiming for is that you (and the AI) should be filling about half of your Priest slots; priest-heavy pantheons, like the Sumerians, might want more just for the Favor, but that should be a choice that costs you in other areas.

Granted, you probably only had one Shrine per Focus, because the upgrade logic for buildings was broken. So you should have had far more slots available, which'd balance this out a bit. (If you had three minor gods, for instance, then you should have had up to 5 religious buildings in EACH CITY, each with a slot.) So you'll want to try this again once 0.03 is out, since it fixes the upgrade path.

It wasn't necessary but i wanted as much happiness as possible to trigger a golden age to take advantage of persias UA.

I used my capitol as a religous centre. Built the hanging gardens, granery, watermill for food and switched all the people to preists for the favor and your right the capitol didn't produce very much but i used the myth events to boost that with production.

The shrines didn't appear in any other cities. If they did i would have probably would have spread my priests around a bit more.


Yes, although it's definitely awkward in the UI. What happened was that the base Temple is +1 Happiness, +1 Culture, 1gpt maintenance. (At least in the Empires mod it is.) The Mythology Policy then adds a second set of modifiers to it: -1 culture, -1 gold, +2 Favor. (With the Favor then getting multiplied by 1/2/3, as usual.) Now, I might toss the gold penalty, if everyone's having such big problems with economy, but the point is that it's an intentional balance thing; the change required in making things generate Favor is supposed to be balance-neutral, with 1 point of Favor coming at the expense of something else.

Given how central Temples are supposed to be, it's probably okay to have them be stronger than normal in this era, though.

OK just wanted to make sure that was entended. I wouldn't say i was having a problem with the economy it just forces you to think a little more about what you are building (I.E. should i build a barraks in city A or a library in city B, or do i want to field a large army or a small experiened one). Personally i like the changes in this mod, usually I get to the point in the vanillia game where your economy is so strong that it dosn't matter what you build or how may units you have .

So the questions to ponder:
1> When should players get their first god? I'd like it to be late enough that it doesn't feel like just another part of the "pick your central god" process, but early enough that you don't get bored waiting for the first really adjustable part of the process.
2> How many minor gods is a good number? (Related question: was there ever a point where you were prompted to pick a minor god, but an unclaimed one just wasn't available at the alignment position you had at that moment?) I keep asking this one, but now that people are having a chance to see the actual mod, I'm hoping for some more detailed answers.
3> Right now, your first god is mainly acquired through building Favor from your palace (1/2/3 points) and your initial Priest slots. 100 points won't take long to get, and that first minor god is actually a pretty important thing to have early on.
Should that 100 be changed in either direction?
4> One idea I had was to eliminate the variance in Palace favor yields. As in, have it give 2 points a turn regardless of which Pantheon you pick. I already do this with the Favor generated by the Academy, Manufactory, etc.; those give 2 per turn, period. That'd make it far more consistent in which turn each player got their first minor god, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
(Despite the fact that Favor is handled as a new Yield in the XML tables, none of the Lua functions can evaluate it, so all Favor accumulation is being handled directly by me. I can tweak whatever I want, as a result.)
5> Right now, you're limited solely to Shrines until you reach the Classical Era. I don't want to move up the "all Primary max levels increase by 1" effect, but I CAN move up the "+1 in your capital" bit so that you can see the Shrine->Church upgrade happen much more quickly. Those level 2 effects would make things quite a bit easier; the problem is that level 2 Myth units are Swordsman-equivalent, and those guys don't unlock until the early Classical. The level 1.5 pantheon units are at Mythology (late Ancient), so I wouldn't want to make them worthless by putting the level 2s before that, but I COULD move one of the Classical religious techs down to the Ancient for this. Thoughts?

1) I was happy with the rate at which i recieved new gods but i would wait to see what it feels like when the shrines expand and their abilities grow before i would make any hard choices here.
2) Again hard to say untill i see what the gods feel like when they upgrade. There was never a time when i was prompted to pick a god and none were available
3) The amount for the first god seems fiine to me.
4) I don't know about this one. I think it would hurt any pantheon that gets a large favor bonus from buildings. They could still slot priests and go to war but i think that other civs with promary bonuses to priests or battle favor would pull a head of the builders quickly in the god department. On the other hand those pantheons with building bonuses could pull ahead quickly if the others don't use specialists properly or if they is no early wars fought (or if no barbarians are chosen).
5) I like the idea of your capitols shrines upgradding sooner than the rest. Moving some of the myth units down to the ancient era sounds good to.

In the ancient and classical eras i spread my research around. Once i reached the medievil i went straight for currency then for Apostasy.

Okay, so if you'd researched evenly then you'd have reached it on what, turn 300ish? The goal is that you'd finish construction of the Enlightenment project on turn ~330-340, with the mythological effects ending on turn 350 or so.

It wasn't necessary but i wanted as much happiness as possible to trigger a golden age to take advantage of persias UA.

Fair enough. Persia's not really the best test case for this sort of mod, since you REALLY wanted to get to Banking. (Satrap's Courts are awesome, which is why I toned them down in the Empires mod.) Egypt is similarly skewed thanks to the Burial Tomb, so when I'm testing I nearly always take America.

I used my capitol as a religious centre. Built the hanging gardens, granary, watermill for food and switched all the people to priests for the favor and your right the capitol didn't produce very much but i used the myth events to boost that with production.

Understand that you won't be able to do that in the full version of the mod. There'll be 18 Myth events, at the current design, only a couple will offer production boosts, and they won't generally be capital-specific effects. The generic event that's there now is just a placeholder, intended to come up about as often as the 18 would when combined, and I'm going to base one of the Minor events on it, but you won't be able to depend on it for production/food/etc. like you did there. So when testing, you should try not to depend on it too heavily.

The shrines didn't appear in any other cities. If they did i would have probably would have spread my priests around a bit more.

The logic is supposed to be that when a new minor god appears, the game places the free Shrine in the city with the least number of religious buildings (with ties going to the older city). Your capital wouldn't take long to gain a Shrine of its own, but this helps expanding empires generate Favor in the outer cities.

This bit of logic, like all of the upgrade stuff, was broken in 0.02 and was fixed for 0.03.

OK just wanted to make sure that was entended. I wouldn't say i was having a problem with the economy it just forces you to think a little more about what you are building

The problem is that even if YOU could deal with it, it's untenable if the AI can't do the same. And if your only options for dealing with it were to stop military production, not build certain buildings, etc. then the AI has no hope of dealing with this correctly.

Personally i like the changes in this mod, usually I get to the point in the vanillia game where your economy is so strong that it dosn't matter what you build or how may units you have.

The Empires mod has quite a few balance changes in it, especially in regards to gold and science; you'd no longer have tons of excess gold, but it wouldn't be so crippling that the AI would stay negative and cripple itself. These were the balance changes in the previous Alpha Centauri 2-mod set, and so have been well-tested by now.

I'm trying to make the Mythology mod adhere to the same sort of balance, but it's not easy; the process of extending ~200 turns of content into 350ish has all sorts of implications for balance. If I can tie all of the balance changes to the Mythology policy itself, instead of directly altering the buildings and such, then it becomes easy to make the penalties go away and have players drop to the Empires balance curves.

1) I was happy with the rate at which i recieved new gods but i would wait to see what it feels like when the shrines expand and their abilities grow before i would make any hard choices here.

Yeah, that IS the problem with testing, and why I was hoping to get 0.03 out today. With the upgrading functional, there's so much more you could see in terms of the balance. The goal is to balance lacks against overflows, to where a Wealth god's followers would not only not have horrible money problems, he'd have a large excess which he could then use to offset his other issues (buy units or buildings to make up for low production, buy strategic resources to make up for low Happiness). Without the ability to reach those upper tiers, you're never seeing the sorts of excesses needed for that type of play.
(The only major Wealth gods are Inari's primary, in the Shinto set, and Hades' secondary. But it's a common minor god option.)

2) Again hard to say until i see what the gods feel like when they upgrade. There was never a time when i was prompted to pick a god and none were available

This one will heavily depend on your choice of starting god. Greeks and Sumerians, for instance, are VERY different on this one. I need to make sure that all 28 major gods are still viable; each god will have seven banned Foci, and start at a different position on the grid, so I'm trying to ensure that every god has two or three available Foci at or near their starting spot. (Since the two foci your god starts with are almost guaranteed to be near the starting point, you can very quickly run out of options.)

3) The amount for the first god seems fine to me.
4) I don't know about this one. I think it would hurt any pantheon that gets a large favor bonus from buildings.

Just to be clear, these two directly oppose each other.

The favor from the Palace is only a tiny part of the Building Favor you'll generate in the long term. Besides the Palace, Building Favor comes from Monuments, Temples, Monasteries, and Colosseums, and I was considering expanding that to include Libraries, Markets, Barracks, and Harbors if it proved insufficient. But, it's pretty much the ONLY Favor you'll see in the first twenty or thirty turns (except maybe the random Barbarian fight), since you won't have the spare population for a Priest, won't have enough of an army to fight a war, and won't have unlocked anything beyond a Monument yet.

So Building-heavy pantheons would get +3 per turn for those first 20-30 turns, and unlock their first minor god well ahead of the pantheons that only get +2 or +1 from the Palace. Your strategy of using Priests early and often, and using the Event for production, just won't work once I fix the events, so you can see the balance problem.
This is why I proposed the flat +2 for Palaces; it'd make all civs get their first minor god at about the same time, but in the long term it's not going to skew the balance that badly. (Building-heavy folks could still make a Monument, Priest-heavy folks could use a Priest once they reach size 2, and Battle-heavy folks can fight barbarians, but the baseline would be comparable.)

5) I like the idea of your capitols shrines upgradding sooner than the rest. Moving some of the myth units down to the ancient era sounds good to.

To be clear, there ARE myth units down in the ancient era already. The Pegasus, Zombie, Gargoyle, Nemean Lion, and Fenris Wolf are all level 1 Myth units, meaning they're available at the very start of the game if you have their Shrines. (Air, Death, Earth, Animals, and Animals respectively.) Power-wise, these are all comparable to Scouts or Warriors. (There's one more Level 1 unit, the Skeleton, which can be spawned through the promotion you get at Death 1 but which can't be built. It's weaker than the Zombie.) It's a trade-off; a Zombie, for instance, costs 50 hammers (instead of the 40 for a Warrior) and has the same strength (6) and movement (2) as the Warrior. Given that the Zombie starts with two special abilities (Spawn and Teamwork) you'd think it a no-brainer to build just those. But Myth units won't start with Barracks XP, have that major weakness to Hero units, and won't get things like the Death promotion that your mundane units benefit from, so balance is maintained, more or less.

The level 1.5 myth units (the first Pantheon-specific units, generally strength 8-9) are also at Mythology, which is in the last column of the Ancient Era as well. Mythology also unlocks the Heroic Epic, which makes sure you have at least one Hero in your empire. (All Heroes are Swordsman-level combat units, with a 12-14 strength and some promotions beyond the anti-myth one. Since they're severely number-limited, having them before you unlock Iron Working isn't a huge balance issue, because you can't make an army out of them.)

The question is whether level 2 Myth units, which also are in that 11-14 strength range and require no resources (like the Medusa, Thunderbird, Shade, Mummy, Scarab, and Manticore) should be possible to make in the Ancient Era, before you get to Iron Working. Do that, and no one would want to make swordsmen, which'd mean I'd have to lower their strengths down to a level where they wouldn't be unbalanced, like the same 8-9 range that the 1.5s use (which'd mean I'd want to move the 1.5s to an earlier tech, like Mysticism, and lower their stats a bit further as well). And that'll throw off the level 3 and 4 units' balance...

Also, your capital is already likely to upgrade sooner than the rest; the Palace's favor means that your capital will have a higher baseline favor, the capital will have earned all of the earliest Battle Favor in the first turns instead of splitting it with other cities, and your capital should have the highest population, at least early on, which means the most ability to run Priests (as you noted). If I want to make it such that the capital CAN upgrade before any other city gains that ability, then it'll require some major balance reworking. (Not that I'm unwilling, but it'd have a significant impact on a lot of areas.)

And obviously, this is all academic until I get a working computer again.

I played a short partial game this evening.

Aside from your known issues, the biggest visible thing that needs to be fixed is the gifting of units from the military minor civs. I think my first gifted unit was a water elemental, which occurred shortly after destroying a neighboring barbarian camp (~turn 50-75), which was extremely overpowered for this early in the game. Subsequent gifts from other minor civs were a host of myth units, which seemed out of place.

Sorry to hear about your computer troubles Spatz, that really sucks. It does sound from your description like it probably is hardware related. If you could at least get it to boot up I'd suggest a couple of utilities to run but that doesn't sound like it's the case. If you just want to get access to the files you could try sticking the harddrive from your machine into an enclosure. It's the kind of thing an IT department might have lying around, not sure if that's helpful for you specifically but it's one option.

On a game related note, one potential issue from my last game, zombies seem quite powerful, they seem weak on paper so it's probably a combination of promotions, they seem to self heal a lot and can take down cities with relative ease. I'm not sure if they have a maintenance cost as the AI player seemed to have tons of them (though, they also had ruined economies). I kind of like the idea of fighting an undead horde but if they're going to be present in huge numbers maybe they should be weak attacking cities or be unable to capture them?

Aside from your known issues, the biggest visible thing that needs to be fixed is the gifting of units from the military minor civs. I think my first gifted unit was a water elemental, which occurred shortly after destroying a neighboring barbarian camp (~turn 50-75), which was extremely overpowered for this early in the game. Subsequent gifts from other minor civs were a host of myth units, which seemed out of place.

It's definitely not supposed to work like that, but I'm not sure how I can fix it; the banned unit lists for each civ don't apply to gift units. I may have to override it the hard way, where when a unit is gifted by a C-S I check it, and if it's a Myth unit I kill it and replace it with a normal one.

If you just want to get access to the files you could try sticking the harddrive from your machine into an enclosure. It's the kind of thing an IT department might have lying around, not sure if that's helpful for you specifically but it's one option.

It's definitely one of the things I've considered, although recovering my mod is not high enough in priority to go to that sort of trouble when I can just replace the hardware within a couple weeks. Assuming the hard drives weren't damaged in the process, I should be able to just pick up right where I left off.

One of the things a guy at work thought is that it could just be the internal power supply failing, and so he's going to loan me a spare. If that doesn't work, then I'm just going to buy a bunch of replacement parts from Newegg (MB, CPU, RAM, maybe video card), since I'm about due for a machine upgrade anyway.

The thing that kills me was that if it had waited even one more day before crashing, I'd have 0.03 out to you. It was STABLE, pretty much everything that mattered worked, and people would be able to give real feedback. But instead, you're stuck with a mostly broken version.

On a game related note, one potential issue from my last game, zombies seem quite powerful, they seem weak on paper so it's probably a combination of promotions, they seem to self heal a lot and can take down cities with relative ease.

Zombies shouldn't be self-healing at ALL. That's not one of their abilities; they don't heal any faster than normal units. (In fact, they should heal more slowly, if you have a Healing god.) But I might know what's wrong; go into the game, and build a Zombie. (Unit plopper works fine for this, even if you aren't a Death god.) See which promotions it starts with. It should have only two: Spawn and Teamwork. It shouldn't even get the Home Field Advantage promotion that every other unit starts with; the ONLY way it'd ever have any other promotion at its creation would be if you'd reached level 2 in the Darkness focus in that city (which adds a Myth-boosting promotion) or reached level 4 in a few specific Foci. Well, okay, there are a couple other ways: a Shrine of Travel in the city it starts in would give it a temporary promotion, and there are a couple others like that. But realistically, you should only see two promotions.

If you see them have more than that, then it means you've exceeded the promotion cap and the game is awarding every unit a number of extra promotions (the last N promotions in the table, where N is the number you exceeded the cap by). Since the mods load last, it'll be a bunch of wonder promotions or myth unit special abilities depending on load order.
So they might be getting a number of powerful promotions they shouldn't have, things like Regeneration 2 or Fire III, which'd explain what you saw. The myth mod actually doesn't add many promotions, but my AC mod added a ton, so if you'd been playing that recently it could be interfering. Thing is, it should be doing this to EVERY unit, including your starting Settler and Warrior, so it should be easy enough to check. If every unit is getting extra promotions, then this is the problem; if it's only Myth units getting extras, then that's a different issue, and if it's only Zombies, that's something else entirely.

This mod, by itself, doesn't even come close to exceeding the limit; the limit's 50ish, and my Base+Mythology together only add ~20, but the Alpha Centauri mod added about 40, and if it's still in memory then you'd overrun the limit. Clear the cache and try again, it should go away if this is the problem.

I'm not sure if they have a maintenance cost as the AI player seemed to have tons of them (though, they also had ruined economies).

They do have a cost, although that's one of the things I was considering changing. The only units in the game that don't require maintenance, currently, are the Worker, the Skeleton, and the Hero units, but I was looking at having all level 1-2 myth units be maintenance-free to encourage more early armies of weak units (so that the strong units have something to kill). I'd raise their production times a bit to compensate.

I kind of like the idea of fighting an undead horde but if they're going to be present in huge numbers maybe they should be weak attacking cities or be unable to capture them?

Combat-wise, a Zombie should be nearly identical to a Warrior. Both are combat 6 and movement 2; the only two abilities a Zombie will have are:
Spawn: Whenever the Zombie kills a non-Myth unit, there's a chance that you will gain a new Zombie. The chance depends on the units' relative strengths. (Against another combat-6 unit, it's 50% I think, so if the unit killed is strength 12 or more, it'd be a 100% chance.)
Teamwork: +20% combat when adjacent to a friendly unit.

That's it. So if you're seeing Zombies capture cities with ease, then something is seriously wrong, because they're just not supposed to be like that. They're really just supposed to be an alternate Warrior, with a couple extra abilities. To balance those two promotions, the Warrior has no vulnerability to Heroes, can upgrade to a better unit (assuming you have iron), gains the XP from a barracks, and gains any free promotions from wonders, policies, or religious buildings (like the Death promotion given by the Shrine of Death that unlocked the Zombies), so you shouldn't even WANT an all-zombie force.

Now, if the cache issues mentioned above don't fix it, go into the CIV5Units.xml file in my mod's directory. Find the <Units_FreePromotions> table and scan for "Zombie". It's possible that my cut-and-pasting screwed up and the Zombie got an extra ability intended for some other unit.
If that's not broken, then go into the CIV5UnitPromotions.xml file and scroll down to the bottom. See which promotions are available for UNITCOMBAT_MYTH; there shouldn't be very many at all, but it's possible that I screwed up and left one for them that I shouldn't have. But this'd apply to all Myth units.

While my home machine is down, I've been looking at tweaking the technology benefits a bit. The idea is to make the progression a bit smoother, and here's what I've got so far.
> The first level 2 buildings (primary focus, capital only) will appear before the end of the Ancient Era. Level 3s will be in the mid-Classical, level 4s in the early Medieval.

> All Myth units will basically be moved up by one tech. Pantheon units explicitly unlock one technology earlier, and the Focus buildings will generally upgrade a little sooner, which'll move those myth units up as well.
This'll necessitate a full rebalancing of Myth units. Previously, tier 1 units were designed to be Warrior-equivalent (6), T2 were Swordsmen (11), T3 were Longswords (16), and T4 were Rifleman-equivalent (24) in terms of raw strength. These'll be lowered a little; T1 will be ~5, 1.5 will be ~7, 2 will be ~9, 2.5 will be ~11, 3 will be ~13, 3.5 ~16, 4 ~19.
Note: that's for melee units. Ranged units, scouts, or fast units are on a different progression.
What this'll mean is that even the strongest Dragons and Elementals will be weaker than rifles and cannons, especially since those units will have two free anti-Myth promotions, so you won't really want to put off the Enlightenment just to keep your flashy high-end Myth units around. You'll get your Primary level 4 at the start of the Medieval, and your Secondary 4 in the mid-Medieval, which gives you a 1.5-era window in which they'll dominate warfare.

> Previously, there were four types of bonuses a tech could give: Level +1, Growth +1, Minimum +1, or Capital +1 (which'd add +1 to level and growth, but only in the capital), with that set of four being duplicated for Primary, Secondary, and Minor. By far the most valuable of these was Level +1, even without the growth boost that capitals would get, since it'd apply to all cities. So, I'm changing it to where you have Growth +1, Minimum +1, Capital +1 (with no growth boost) and Non-capital +1 in each category. It's sort of like how Farms get +1 at fresh water, then +1 for non-freshwater instead of getting the +1 all at once, except replace "fresh water" with "capital".
Yes, this'd mean that an OCC-style strategy would make the non-capital bonus worthless, but it allows a smoother progression of bonuses for normal players, since I can have, say, Primary Capital +1 on one tech, and Primary Non-capital +1 on the next tech in line.

> The Enlightenment will be pushed back a tier, to Iconoclasm, so that you can't start it quite so early. The Apostasy tech won't have any negatives, though, so you won't be as rushed to end the myth period; the negatives start at Iconoclasm.

You're probably right though I thought I had cleared the cache before running the newest version of the mod. I'll check it out and see if the units are getting random promotions.

One question on the design side of things; are you concerned at all that once people reach the end of the myth content they'll simply stop playing and start a new game? On a smaller map you could certainly be victorious before Enlightenment but anything with separate continents will require deep water embarkation etc. Since there are currently relatively few changes in the Empires mod and Ascension is not compatible with Myth, the game may start to feel very mundane after the Myth content finishes up. Do you think there's any room for a 'stay in myth' option? Or are you happy to have it always end, based on the fact that there will eventually be a feature-rich Empires section to play afterwards?

From what I understand, the myth content will eventually be compatable with ascension, just at the moment they conflict

One question on the design side of things; are you concerned at all that once people reach the end of the myth content they'll simply stop playing and start a new game? On a smaller map you could certainly be victorious before Enlightenment but anything with separate continents will require deep water embarkation etc.

I recently addressed some of this in the overview section on page 1 (just a couple days ago, actually), but yes. I fully expect that, depending on map type, the game might feel "over" once the mythological period finishes.

But to that, I point out two issues:
1> Previously, in vanilla, it might only take 150-200 turns to reach the Renaissance. I'm changing the game such that it's more like 300-350 turns to do the same in the Empires+Mythology pairing. That's the length of a full game in vanilla, so if after those 350 turns someone feels like they've played a complete game, then I wouldn't be surprised. Even if it's not possible to meet any of the explicit victory conditions for another couple eras, the game can still be basically over.
2> Since the Myth content is pre-Astronomy, there's no guarantee of dominance. In fact, slowing down the early eras increases the chance of a powerful competitor developing on one of the other continents, by conquering his own neighbors through the same mechanisms you used to conquer yours. My hope is that this'd make it still possible to have a competitive space race, just between a small number of powerful empires instead of a dozen squabbling nations. (Which fits with the concept of the Empires mod, as well.)

Since there are currently relatively few changes in the Empires mod and Ascension is not compatible with Myth, the game may start to feel very mundane after the Myth content finishes up.

To be clear, Ascension is not actually incompatible with Mythology in any mechanical way. (Except at the moment, where I haven't finished the Ascension transition, but that's a temporary issue; you WILL be able to use both once I'm done.) Thematically they don't mesh well, but the main reason why the two are "incompatible" is simply the endpoint issues mentioned above; if someone sees the end of the Myth era as the finale of the competitive phase of the game, then chances are there won't be much point in having future eras. Conversely, when playing an AC game I rarely start before the Industrial any more, which'd make it worthless to add the mythological content as well.

Do you think there's any room for a 'stay in myth' option? Or are you happy to have it always end, based on the fact that there will eventually be a feature-rich Empires section to play afterwards?

It's a tough question, and it's one I've gone back and forth on quite a few times. My design has been to have the Mythology content come to a definite end in the early Renaissance; you can be flexible on the exact timing, but it'd still happen at pretty much the same time for everyone. The first reason for this is simply one of scalability: I've added 83 non-Hero units in this mod, with power levels ranging from 3 to 25. But as awesome as Dragons and Colossi are, they're cannon fodder when facing Infantry (36 in vanilla, 32 in Empires) and Artillery, let alone Tanks or Bombers. So if I wanted to make it possible to keep the mythological age alive, I'd need to find some way to keep its content relevant once you've unlocked tanks and such; making Heroes and T4s scale with era would do this, for instance, but that adds a slew of balance issues. (Not to mention conceptual ones, where Achilles can now overpower a tank batallion and dragons can withstand surface-to-air missiles.)

The other problem is one of penalties. The Mythology mod adds a policy that, at the moment, gives -10% to food, -20% to production, -20% to research, -20% to gold, -1 happiness per luxury, x1.25 population unhappiness, and reduces the yields of many buildings to have them generate Favor. These are all pretty severe penalties in the early game, no question. But what happens to that gold penalty once you have Markets and Banks, each adding +25% to your income? Or the research penalty, once you have Universities and Public Schools? Or the production, once you have Workshops and Factories? And what if you can take enough time to get the flat +Gold, +Production, etc. of the various religious buildings as well? Those penalties start being less and less restrictive.

Fact is, if I allowed you to stay in the mythological eras indefinitely, you could eventually reach the point where the so-called drawbacks no longer have any major impact, while still benefitting from the linear yield increases of the religious buildings. This is the main reason behind the timing of the endpoint; any later, and it might actually be a good thing to stay religious. So I've added various incentives to NOT stay in the myth content, and I'm continuing to add more; the Crusades and Inquisition each give anti-Myth bonuses to your units, growth rates slow down as time goes on, and so on. The AI will build the Enlightenment as soon as it can, and I want the players to feel like he needs to follow suit or else he'll fall behind.

----------

Now, I do expect a certain feeling of loss as the mundanity of the post-Mythology content kicks in, since you won't be immediately transitioning to the futuristic content I've added. The Empires content won't be quite so pervasive, so there will be a definite change in feel. But I think of it as a transition from Checkers to Chess: same board, but a deeper game. The Mythological Age will be about a few powerful heroes fighting giant monsters, while the Empires will be about larger army-on-army sort of wars. Myth wars will be between empire A and empire B, while Empires wars will be 4-on-4 sorts of deals. So I'm hoping that people won't be TOO bored by the transition.

Update:
My machine will most likely stay offline for another week, although there are a couple things I'm going to try tonight. If those don't work, then it's time for a traditional Newegg shopping spree for parts. (Probably just a new MB, CPU, and RAM for now, plus a better CPU heat sink than the stock one I used last time. I'll hold off on buying a new graphics card until after Christmas.) Given the usual 4-7 business day delivery times, figure a week and a half until I'm back up and running.

Once I'm back online, then what happens next will depend on whether my data is recoverable. (It SHOULD be, but you never know.) Assuming it is, then I'll post v0.03 that very day; if not, then add a couple days while I re-do the fixes I'd put into that version. Regardless, v0.04 would come a few days later, as I've got a lot of it planned out already.

So in the interim, you can think about all of the usual balance questions. But the question I've been pondering for myself is this:
How forgiving should the minor god system be?
Right now, when an AI acquires enough favor to add a god, it'll pick one purely at random from the available choices, instead of picking one related to its needs of the moment or its personality. Likewise, when it experiences an event, the AI picks a random outcome, instead of choosing the one that gives the best immediate benefit. My intention is to bias the outcomes based on flavor ratings and such, but it's still going to be a mostly random choice.

The question before us is whether the player or AI should ever NEED to pick certain Foci or event outcomes over others. For instance, consider Happiness. At the moment, there's only a single Focus that adds Happiness (Beauty), so if you're short on happy citizens, a player would pretty much always want to choose Beauty, assuming his alignment is far enough in the E direction and his pantheon doesn't ban that one. Because of this, I've been looking into reworking certain other Foci (like Art, Justice or Balance) to add small amounts of Happiness as well so that Beauty won't be a no-brainer, sort of like how Fertility isn't the only one that adds Food and Wealth isn't the only one that adds Gold; they just add the most.
But should the balance be severe enough so that people feel like they need at least one +food focus, one +happy focus, one military-boosting one, and so on just to stay competitive? If not, then there's a real danger; if every choice is still viable, then it's harder to make the player feel like his decisions actually matter in the long term.

Okay, it may NOT be another week. Upon further examination, it might just be my video card and possibly some RAM that fried, and the MB might be okay. More importantly, though, I have access to my files, including the week or so of changes I made between the posted version and my last edits before the crash.

So, I'm going to post the last version of the Base and Mythology mods into the Files thread. There's just one problem: I honestly can't remember if that version actually worked. I was in the middle of fixing some things, but if it's not functional, then it's probably a very simple fix.

Now, since I can't actually PLAY the game or make edits in the current setup, there are a lot of things that I'm planning to change in the near future, like the tech bonuses. So understand that it's not really an up-to-date representation of the design.

EDIT:
For instance, I'm going to improve the Fertility/Crafts/Wealth/Beauty group to add a little Happiness at level 3; these four were a little on the weak side before, compared to some of the stuff I'd added later. I'm also going to make Art and Justice into Happiness boosters at levels 2 and 4 as well, and EVERY Basilica will add +1 Happiness (since you can only have two of these it's not unbalanced, and it makes up for the fact that those buildings now have no Priest slots). So the happiness side of thing should be a bit more manageable.
Similarly, I'm going to add yet another myth unit to the Plants focus; Dryads will move down to 2, Treants to 3, and I'll add some new unit at level 4. (Treants just aren't comparable to Dragons and such, power-wise.) I'm thinking of some sort of "nature elemental", something huge that spawns forests and such near it just by existing, and that can do some of the better terraforming actions. (Yes, I watched Hellboy 2 a couple days ago, and liked the concept of that monster.) Suggestions are welcome.
The point is, I've got a pretty long list of things that need tweaking. As soon as I have a functional machine again, I'll get all of this stuff done, and by versions .04 or .05 it should be good enough to advertise for more testers.

Now, on the subject of the version I posted, I remembered that in the Mandala view, when you click on a Focus it'll now screw up the image on the right-hand side. You see, I was switching from the small 64-pixel icons to a larger 128-pixel version, but the placeholders I was using for Foci (the Policy images) don't HAVE a 128-pixel version.
So if you want to make this look a bit better, go into Mandala.lua, and search for "IconHookup". There'll be one modifying SideFocusIcon (or it might be SideFocusImage), and on that line change the 128 back to a 64. It'll be in a screwy position, but it'll at least show the correct icon.

Just tried the new version and noticed that the correct original shrines are given in the capital on the first turn. On the second turn it appears that shrines are being granted for all the major gods of the AI players.

Just tried the new version and noticed that the correct original shrines are given in the capital on the first turn. On the second turn it appears that shrines are being granted for all the major gods of the AI players.

Ya, I'm getting this same error.

Dang. I swear, it was working when I was trying it out on my machine before the crash, so it has to be one of the last few things I tweaked before it all went down. So on the bright side, it shouldn't be too hard to track down once I get everything back online. I'm HOPING to have my first replacement parts tomorrow, and I'll check that then, with the goal being to have a stable version by Saturday at the latest.

This is why I wasn't sure about posting 0.03; I change a LOT of stuff as I test, so about half the time the game would have some major issue like this if I were to stop right then. It was just a toss-up whether the last version before the crash was one of the working ones or not. Most of these things cause an immediate, visible error in the Tuner, so they're not hard to fix, and so it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to get a working version out once I get my machine back... assuming the parts I've bought are enough to replace all of the broken bits. I could easily find more hardware problems and have to replace other components, too, which'd mean Monday at the earliest.

I continued playing the game through the end of the mythology content. Aside from the issue above, these are some things I noticed:

1) It is really unclear how much favor is needed for shrines to upgrade to churches, etc.
2) I never had anything upgrade to the fourth level.
3) Completing the Enlightenment project doesn't actually remove the mythology content.
4) The city favor screen is impossible to read. It would be helpful to cut down the number of digits displayed for the favor to just the integer or integer with 2 decimal places. I couldn't see how much I had in anything beyond the first two categories.

1) It is really unclear how much favor is needed for shrines to upgrade to churches, etc.

That's easy enough to fix in the City Favor UI. The thresholds are 100, 300, 600, and 1000, so it shouldn't be too hard to put that in, either directly in the readout or in some sort of tooltip help. I'll probably go with the tooltip option, because it saves space.

2) I never had anything upgrade to the fourth level.

It should only be possible to get a Basilica in your major god's two Foci and only in your capital; the primary could hit 4 at Monotheism, the secondary at Apostasy. And of course, it takes 1000 Favor in that focus. If that wasn't happening, there could be some other issue involved; I'll look into it. But it DID get to the Cathedral? It could be that you just never had enough Favor, which means I should change some of the Favor generators to build a little more.

3) Completing the Enlightenment project doesn't actually remove the mythology content.

Okay, that's a problem. Now, this MIGHT be related to whatever bug is giving you those extra shrines; if the MythStartTurn function is crashing partway through, it might never be getting to the block that handles the final downgrade.
The downgrade should be visible in the City Favor window of the mandala; the numbers should be dropping by ~100 every turn for every focus in every city. If they're doing that and the process just isn't ending, then that's one thing, but if they're not dropping at all, it's something else entirely. (Actually, I think I know what's causing it, but I'll have to wait until my computer's working again to be sure.)

4) The city favor screen is impossible to read.

Oops. My bad, yes, it was supposed to round off the values before putting them there. I'd left the decimals in for debugging purposes, and the fact that what I posted was my final test version probably meant that I never switched it back.

Okay, that's a problem. Now, this MIGHT be related to whatever bug is giving you those extra shrines; if the MythStartTurn function is crashing partway through, it might never be getting to the block that handles the final downgrade.
The downgrade should be visible in the City Favor window of the mandala; the numbers should be dropping by ~100 every turn for every focus in every city. If they're doing that and the process just isn't ending, then that's one thing, but if they're not dropping at all, it's something else entirely. (Actually, I think I know what's causing it, but I'll have to wait until my computer's working again to be sure.)


I wasn't seeing any drops. I played on for about 10 more turns after finishing Enlightenment before deciding to call it a game.

How often is the Spawn promotion sopposed to work? It hasent worked once for me.

I wasn't seeing any drops.

It was broken. I fixed it.

How often is the Spawn promotion sopposed to work? It hasent worked once for me.

It was broken. I fixed it.

------------
Since it's been kinda quiet around here, here's an update.

My computer works again.

I fixed every problem I could find in the Mythology mod. It seems to work now, although I haven't actually tried to play through a complete game. I did do a dozen or so test-case games where I artificially generated a bunch of Favor and then started the Enlightenment, and the downgrade/disbanding now seems to work correctly. But I'm sure there'll be more things I missed. I've also rebalanced pretty much everything, so I'll need a lot of feedback on which units are too good or too weak, which foci are too strong, etc.

The missing icons in the various mods have all been fixed, and the Ascension mod's conversion looks to be done, so it's ready to be posted for the first time as a complete 4-mod set. Ascension is still not compatible with the Mythology mod, thanks to the promotion cap, but I'll work on that for the next version. (That next version will also include the merging of ranged and melee promotions I've talked about.) So when I post the new versions tonight, you WILL be able to play an Alpha Centauri game by mixing Base, Empires, and Ascension, and it should be nearly identical to v1.09. (The "nearly" is because I've made a couple changes here and there.) Just remember to clear your cache first, please.

At the moment, the Mythology mod only has god icons for the first four pantheons, leaving Aztec, Sumerian, and Shinto. I'm going to try to build those atlases tonight before I post the files, which should make the mod's graphics a bit less horrible while you play. I still need to create better icons for the Foci and find 7 graphics to use for the pantheons; also, I'm still undecided about whether the pictures should be representational (a picture showing all of the major gods) or symbolic (some abstract symbol); for technical reasons I'm leaning towards the latter.
It won't take long to add these icons, the only question is FINDING them (especially the Sumerians). Also, I'm hungry so I'm going to go get dinner first.

Now, the Mythology mod still only has a single Event that triggers 10% of the time. I'm going to, at the very least, add the other four "Minor" events, and reduce the chances accordingly, but I need to fix something in the event code first. (There's a function that tells you if/when an event last occurred, but it's not working. I NEED that to work.) I'm hoping to get this fixed tonight; if I can't, then I'll leave these events at a lower percentage chance until the next time. The plan, you see, is that the 19 Events will have a cumulative 20% chance of occurring on a given turn, except that events are locked to happen no more than once per 5 turns, so you should average ~10 turns per Event. That's why the single event is set to 10% now, so if I can't get the history part working, I'll just set all five to 2% to get a similar effect.

I have a feeling that the Sumarian pantheon will be the last to have god icons.

BTW did you need the Aztec ones I posted?

I have a feeling that the Sumarian pantheon will be the last to have god icons.

BTW did you need the Aztec ones I posted?

The answers to these two statements are related; I've got the pictures you provided, but I won't put them in quite yet. The way I'm organizing this is to create two icon atlases for gods, pantheons, and foci.
Atlas #1 will has the first four pantheons' gods (#0-51), and will fit the seven Pantheon icons into the remainder of the slots.
Atlas #2 will have the last three pantheons' gods (#0-38) and the 21 Focus icons fitting into the remainder of the slots.
(That's 59 and 60 icons, respectively, for a 64-icon atlas. Except that two of the 64 slots are unavailable in the standard template, so 62 is the effective max. So doing it this way means using 2 atlases instead of 4, which means the mod isn't nearly as bloated with blank pictures.)

Now, what this means is that due to how the system indexes internally, it's just a lot easier if I do all god icons within a single atlas at the same time. So I won't add the Aztec (which you provided) or Shinto icons to the playable version of the atlases until I've got something for the Sumerians ready to go as well. Now, that "something" might be thirteen colored smiley faces, if I can't find anything soon, but there WILL be something beyond the simple tech icon placeholders I use now.

Heres 2 sumarian gods, were a pain to find, enki looks almost egyptian but still a decent picture

It's a shame you dont have Incan or Celtic pantheons, ive found a bunch of REALLY nice pictures for them

It's a shame you dont have Incan or Celtic pantheons, ive found a bunch of REALLY nice pictures for them

Like I've said before, there's really nothing stopping someone from adding a new pantheon if they really want to. It's just that for balance reasons, I needed exactly seven pantheons in the base version, they needed to meet a lot of intricate criteria for balance, and it'd be best if each corresponded to 2-3 of the vanilla civs, historically. The seven I went with in the end were the best combination I could find.

I knew that the Sumerians were going to be the hardest to find good images for, but they fill a few critical niches. For instance, none of the other pantheons I could find had a major god whose primary focus would be Beauty (or any kind of happiness, really). Plenty of sun gods, war gods, death gods, storm gods, and agriculture gods, but few pantheons even had beauty/happiness gods, and none of the others would have that as part of a major god's job. And on the minor gods, I needed a pantheon with Healing, Crafts, Plants, and Darkness gods of some kind.
And it's not just about what they have, it's also what they DON'T have. Three or more of the other six pantheons already had major gods focusing on Fire, Earth, Air, Fertility, Death, Storms, Travel, and Balance. I couldn't avoid adding to ALL of these (Storms, Death, and Air get majors in the Sumerian set), but all of the other sets I tried had much more.

So why is Anu Death/Darkness?

So why is Anu Death/Darkness?

Anu was just a tough one to fit in. He was a sky god, god of the heavens, god of the afterlife, et cetera. The problem was, if I gave him Justice, then I'd have a harder time fitting Utu in (since his main role was judge of the afterlife). Likewise, all of the air/storms stuff was clearly Enlil's area, so it was just a bit tough to find something to give Anu.

Now, I could shift Utu to Death and make Anu a Justice/Darkness god (or the inverse). But I've already got four major gods with Justice, so this'd work better if I could shift one of those others away from that focus, preferably to something like Crafts or Healing. The problem is that the only two pantheons that could conceivably do that sort of move are Hindu and Shinto. In Hindu I could move Shakti to Fertility/Healing, but that's the inverse of Isis (Egyptian). Shinto has Sarutahiko's secondary at Justice; I'd love to move that to Healing or Crafs, but the only other option in his lore is as god of crossroads and pathways, which could work for Travel.

So I could move Utu to Death, Anu to Darkness/Justice, and Sarutahiko to Earth/Travel. This'd at least result in more distinctive combinations, so I'd be inclined to try it.
The other thing I was thinking of changing is in the Shinto pantheon, switching Izanagi from Fertilty to Healing. Besides fitting his story a bit better, it'd add another healing god (which I really need) and make there be one pantheon with no fertility god. (Shinto would lack Beauty and Crafts as well, so it'd really be a yield-light set.)

Hey Spatz,

Im working with Alzara on the Naeralith Reborn mod, and i think your design and excecution of this kind of religion system is fantastic and would fit our needs perfectly. so i have a few questions for you:

1. Are we able to use some or all of your code and adapt it to our needs? we will credit you and those involved obviously.
2. how difficult would it be to add in new Foci and change existing ones?
3. How difficult would it be to change the pantheons and heir gods entirely?
4. Do you think a similar system would work well enough with 2-3 major gods as opposed to 4, and only 6-7 minor gods if the majors had 3 foci and the minors had 2 foci each?

basically ive added 24 foci into our design (primarily the 7 deadly sins and 7 heavenly virtues, as well as Might, Magic, Pain and Protection and 6 of our 'colours of magic') and have 7 pantheons with 3 major gods each (one only has 2 major gods) and each has only 6-7 minor gods.

here is the Mandala set ive been working on: if you are interested PM me and i can send you the assets. id also be happy to help out graphically wherever i can.

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/6030/mandala2small.png

1. Are we able to use some or all of your code and adapt it to our needs? we will credit you and those involved obviously.

I waited until tonight to respond because, thanks to various medical issues I've been a bit short-tempered lately. My first reactions, as a result, are generally not good ones, especially first thing in the morning. But my reaction now, after some time to think about it, is still basically the same as it was twelve hours ago: I have a serious problem with this.

To me, the acceptability of that request really depends on how far you go in that "some"-vs.-"all" part of the statement. This mod really hinges on four key Lua elements:
> The Mandala and its UI
> The underlying alignment system (Law/Chaos is obvious, but what other game has had Material/Ephemeral replacing the usual Good/Evil? And no, replacing "Law" with "Order" does not score any points for originality) and the Events it depends on
> The 3-source Favor system (including the self-upgrading religious buildings) and its
relation to the Pantheons' biases
> The Focus system, including my 21 Foci, their alignment limitations, and their benefits
If you're directly copying those four things (and it sounds like you're planning on using at least three of them in their entirety, or close to it), you've basically duplicated my entire mod, or at least all of the parts that I've spent months designing and debugging. That would go WAY beyond "adapting", and veer into outright plagiarism. Now, maybe you can better explain just exactly what you're planning to do with it; what you've shown in that image are the same Foci I use, just with others added, and the exact same two axes. You're keeping the 7-pantheon design, which makes me think that you're copying the Favor system as well since the entire reason for that number was the unique bias combinations.


XML is trivial. For the past three months, I've spent most of my free time on this mod. The entirety of the XML for this mod took at most three days, and that's being generous; most of that time was spent writing up text keys. I spent another few hours coding up various Lua unit abilities, or importing icons. Allocate a week or two for planning, and that leaves a whole lot of time where I was solely writing and debugging the Lua code. I'd start the game up, see where the Lua crashed, fix it, lather, rinse, repeat for weeks at a time. In the three weeks since I first posted this mod, I have yet to actually PLAY it even once.

Lua is not easy. I don't mind people using things like the Mandala as a template for their own alignment systems; it's a complex bit of mechanics, and took quite a while to get to its current state, but it's the kind of thing that'd be fairly useful to other folks as an example of how to resolve certain issues in their own designs. Now, I deliberately wrote most of my Lua code to be flexible, but not because I wanted other people copying it into their own mods verbatim; I wanted people who play my mod to be able to add in their own custom pantheons or tweak foci and such, becase many people had requests for pantheons that I wasn't able (or willing) to implement into the "official" mod.
I'm not opposed to people using bits of my code; the nuke interception code in the Ascension, the terraforming code in the base mod, and the all-terrain units... these are components that would be of use to a lot of modders, so I tried to make them as self-contained and flexible as possible. All they are is components, though; they're not the defining features of the mods in question. I use a few other people's components (Building Resources, Custom Notifications, and User Events), albeit with a few modifications, but these were all released as Components in the appropriate forum.

So if you're taking all of the Lua code, slapping a different layer of XML over the top, and calling it your own mod, I definitely do not appreciate that. But again, maybe I misunderstood exactly how much you were intending to use.

I have a serious problem with this.

Wow i did not expect such a negative response.

First of all have you ever heard of the phrase 'Mimicry is the highest form of flattery'? You should be flattered that so many people love your mod and the effort you have put into developing it. I know how difficult it is to mod, I myself modded Civ 4 for about 6 years (under a different forum name) including the Python and XML codes and whenever someone requested using a piece of my mods or using them as a basis for new ones (which was rare ill admit) i was completely flattered and proud that someone thought it was worth that much.

Secondly, you must have missed the point of what i asked or jumped to conclusions. First of all you seem to have completly missed the point that i said 'adapt'. As good as your mod is it dosnt fit our needs to the 'T' and so we will be adapting, chopping and changing a lot to better suit our own mod.

The Mandala itself was a neat concept, but i am leaning to a simpler UI (especially seeing as we have so many more Foci planned) The whole alignment system is kind of irrelivent for us at the moment, but if we were to use one i would have to agree that Good/Evil is a useless axis of alignment regarding gods and religion, and material/ephemeral is much better. Law/Chaos is obviously a must though. So no we will not just be 'slapping new XML over your LUA' regarding the Mandala or alignments.

We havent even considered the favour sources for our mod and i suspect we will have similar sources but we will likely adapt them as well. though how they would be adapted im unsure about. certainly there will be at least one other source i can think of that will require our own LUA work. So once more no we will not just be copying your LUA verbatum.

Regarding the Focus System: this was the main reason i found your mod interesting. the fact were adding in 24 new foci, that ive scrapped Seasons in favor of Sun and am chaning the benefits yielded from about 50% of them, the only thing we are really 'stealing' as you so kindly put it is the names of 20 of your own Foci.

Regaring the 7 Pantheons: we had 7 religions planned out well before you had even started this mod and even before civ 5 was released (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8718138&postcount=12), so please dont assume that we are stealing every aspect of your precious design. We are working on a complete overhaul fatantasy mod, not just some spinoff of an already existing mod. we were merely interested in incorperating your ideas and systems into our own mod.


now i have to point out that you are being very hipocritical in this statement:

but not because I wanted other people copying it into their own mods verbatim; I wanted people who play my mod to be able to add in their own custom pantheons or tweak foci and such,

you wanted to allow people to add in their own custom pantheons... hmm lets see adding in 7 custom panthons yeh thats what we're doing. so how is that different to adding in a Celtic pantheon tacked onto the end of your mod? just because were actually *removing* the existing 7 pantheons? you call using your code as a basis of another TOTALLY different mod is plagerism, but adding in a single panthon without changing a single aspect of anything else in the mod is not?... yeh that makes total sense.

oh and tweeking foci? yeh were doing that too, and adding in 24 new ones to boot, once more how is what we are planning on doing any different to what you 'wrote your lua code to be flexible for'. if anything we are further away from plagerism than someone adding in a pantheon or a god, or changing the bonuses from the water focus.

Since it's been kinda quiet around here...


Skyrim.

That's good news about your machine, going to grab the latest version and have a few games! Is there any specific feedback that would be helpful this time around (apart from any obvious problems)? I presume Favor values are still useful since we'll be generating a lot more now?

I see someone mentioned the DLC's potentially causing problems with the promotion cap... This might explain the the issue I had previously but I'll check it out in this version, making sure to clear the cache etc.

I waited until tonight to respond because, thanks to various medical issues I've been a bit short-tempered lately. My first reactions, as a result, are generally not good ones, especially first thing in the morning. But my reaction now, after some time to think about it, is still basically the same as it was twelve hours ago: I have a serious problem with this.

To me, the acceptability of that request really depends on how far you go in that "some"-vs.-"all" part of the statement. This mod really hinges on four key Lua elements:
> The Mandala and its UI
> The underlying alignment system (Law/Chaos is obvious, but what other game has had Material/Ephemeral replacing the usual Good/Evil? And no, replacing "Law" with "Order" does not score any points for originality) and the Events it depends on
> The 3-source Favor system (including the self-upgrading religious buildings) and its
relation to the Pantheons' biases
> The Focus system, including my 21 Foci, their alignment limitations, and their benefits
If you're directly copying those four things (and it sounds like you're planning on using at least three of them in their entirety, or close to it), you've basically duplicated my entire mod, or at least all of the parts that I've spent months designing and debugging. That would go WAY beyond "adapting", and veer into outright plagiarism. Now, maybe you can better explain just exactly what you're planning to do with it; what you've shown in that image are the same Foci I use, just with others added, and the exact same two axes. You're keeping the 7-pantheon design, which makes me think that you're copying the Favor system as well since the entire reason for that number was the unique bias combinations.


XML is trivial. For the past three months, I've spent most of my free time on this mod. The entirety of the XML for this mod took at most three days, and that's being generous; most of that time was spent writing up text keys. I spent another few hours coding up various Lua unit abilities, or importing icons. Allocate a week or two for planning, and that leaves a whole lot of time where I was solely writing and debugging the Lua code. I'd start the game up, see where the Lua crashed, fix it, lather, rinse, repeat for weeks at a time. In the three weeks since I first posted this mod, I have yet to actually PLAY it even once.

Lua is not easy. I don't mind people using things like the Mandala as a template for their own alignment systems; it's a complex bit of mechanics, and took quite a while to get to its current state, but it's the kind of thing that'd be fairly useful to other folks as an example of how to resolve certain issues in their own designs. Now, I deliberately wrote most of my Lua code to be flexible, but not because I wanted other people copying it into their own mods verbatim; I wanted people who play my mod to be able to add in their own custom pantheons or tweak foci and such, becase many people had requests for pantheons that I wasn't able (or willing) to implement into the "official" mod.
I'm not opposed to people using bits of my code; the nuke interception code in the Ascension, the terraforming code in the base mod, and the all-terrain units... these are components that would be of use to a lot of modders, so I tried to make them as self-contained and flexible as possible. All they are is components, though; they're not the defining features of the mods in question. I use a few other people's components (Building Resources, Custom Notifications, and User Events), albeit with a few modifications, but these were all released as Components in the appropriate forum.

So if you're taking all of the Lua code, slapping a different layer of XML over the top, and calling it your own mod, I definitely do not appreciate that. But again, maybe I misunderstood exactly how much you were intending to use.

For clarification, TheChanger found your mod and suggested it as a means to implement religion.

I haven't been following the design of this very closely as I've been busy updating my website and writing about my world (a project that takes up more time than my modding because it is personal to me... a world of my own creation as I'm sure you understand).

Forgive me then if I'm misinterpreting what is going on here, but from what I can gather TheChanger asked if he could take your mod and allow us to use it.
I would have thought of that as a modmod of your mod... it definately isn't plagiarism as Civilisation 5 is not owned by yourself.

Also, with regard to having 7 pantheons, TheChanger is correct in that it is coincidental that we would have 7 too. I have been writing for my world since early 2008, regarding material that I actually DO own as it is my own original writing.

If you don't want TheChanger to adapt from your design then this is fine. I don't want cause you any bother.

I do find it very disappointing though that a member of the civ modding community would react so aggressively to an appeal to modmod his work. It has been done countless times for mods like FfH as I'm sure you are aware.

I'm not so worried either way... I barely know anything about your mod as I haven't researched it.
One thing I don't want however is fights between members of the civ community who I know quite well, or any blind accusations directed at them.

A simple "I'd rather you didn't use my mod material" would have easily sufficed.

Al

Oh boy, this doesn't look good....

Oh boy, this doesn't look good....

LOL :D

That's what I thought when I saw this.

Al

Forgive me then if I'm misinterpreting what is going on here, but from what I can gather TheChanger asked if he could take your mod and allow us to use it. I would have thought of that as a modmod of your mod... it definately isn't plagiarism as Civilisation 5 is not owned by yourself.

First of all, plagiarism doesn't require me to have commercial ownership. All of the papers I've published are owned by the journals to which I've submitted them, and the copyright for my thesis is owned by the company that published it for my university, but if someone were to copy the entirety of one of my papers into a new submission and call it their own work, it'd still be plagiarism of my work regardless of my personal financial stake in the matter. So that argument doesn't hold water at all.

As to your other argument, to me, the concept of the "modmod" is for when a large mod includes several related or compatible mods in their entirety. Thalassicus' VEM includes a variety of mods and components made by other folks, and I'm sure he had to make some adjustments to make them compatible with each other, but when you download it, there's no hiding exactly which pieces are which and who did what. That's a modmod. That's not even considering that what you're "modmodding" isn't even through its Alpha stage yet, and was only first published less than three weeks ago.

I don't have a problem with someone using parts of the mechanics I've developed in other works. If someone wants to use the Mandala code as a framework for the UI of their own 2-axis graphs, then there's nothing wrong with that, given that most of it is in itself heavily based on the Social Policy popup in the core game. If you want to use the way I handled Favor as an example of how to implement a new yield of your own, that's fine, although I think you'd find that it's far too much work to do so, as none of the standard Lua stubs work for new yields and nearly everything had to be hard-coded in one form or another.
What I have a problem with is that, given how your teammate represented the implementation in both this thread and your own, it appears that my mod would be included effectively in its entirety, barring a trivial layer of XML (and yes, it IS trivial no matter how long you spent writing up the background material) and some artwork. Again, that's not "adapting", that's outright theft.

Sure, the 7-pantheon bit could be a coincidence. I'll accept your word on that. But is the fact that you're planning to use four levels of auto-upgrading religious buildings, that your alignment axes are Law-Chaos (excuse me, Order-Chaos) and Material-Ephemeral, that you add a new "Favor" yield that is generated by Priests, Battles, Buildings, and to a lesser extent Events and Improvements, that Favor handles building auto-upgrades on a local level as well as unlocking new minor gods on a global one... are those coincidences as well?

There's no originality at all in the mechanical design as presented, which is 90% of the work required for a mod like this. If you and your collaborators can't see the difference between allowing a player to tweak Age of Mythology's pantheons to their liking, versus playing a separate mod named "Naeralith Reborn" that is still primarily comprised of my own work, then there's no way this discussion can go any further.

What I was expecting was a bit of WORK on your design, something to show that you'd actually thought about ways to make a system that would work within your specific mod's design as it stood already, as opposed to flat-out duplication of my own systems in every way. Let's say you had decided to do the following instead:
* Make the axes Law-Chaos and Good-Evil (or Light/Dark, or however you want to define it)
* Keep the first three focus sets (the elementals, the yields, the Death/Healing/Art/War set), as these are fairly generic, and replace the rest with your own Foci. So the elemental/yield stuff would be "neutral" on the Good-Evil axis, while the various sins and virtues could be the Foci on the Good/Evil axis but be generally neutral on Law-Chaos, and the remainder of what you add could form diagonal sets.
* For the Foci you keep, come up with your own sets of benefits for them. These benefits should not in any way include "myth units" or "heroes". Also, come up with your own equations for exactly which areas of the mandala should unlock each focus (which you'd have to do anyway, assuming the alignment change mentioned above).
* Don't use Favor. At all. Instead of upgrading automatically through Favor, you manually upgrade religious buildings with something like gold or food, or sacrificing units in a city, or something similar, and teach the AI how to handle whatever mechanism you add. Likewise, instead of creating Priest specialists that add Favor, have the other existing specialist types add small amounts of whatever resource you use instead.
If you ever do feel the need to add a new yield, try to come up with an original concept for what it does and how it does it.

While the coding for this sort of concept would still have begun from a baseline of my own work, that sort of design would have at least required real effort to plan, implement, and maintain. Even all of the above wouldn't really be enough, in my opinion, but it'd at least show that you had been attempting to be original.

I have been writing for my world since early 2008, regarding material that I actually DO own as it is my own original writing.

That's great, and I respect that amount of work, but that's completely inconsistent with your position above. If the fact that your own work predates the release of your mod (at which point Firaxis/2Kgames basically owns the contents of your mod, gotta love those EULAs) makes a difference, then you can't claim that duplicating MY work isn't plagiarism just because I don't own the Civilization brand. Fair Use allows for anyone to use small parts of a copyrighted source in their own works, and other intellectual property laws follow the same trend, but the scope of the inclusion is VERY important. A paragraph or two, fine. A page, usually okay. But if you copy an entire book, write new first and last pages, and slap a new cover on it, it's never okay. Attribution is essential either way, but one of the key differences is evidence that the person doing the copying added something substantial to the work.

If you still can't get your head around this, consider: what if this situation were reversed? What if, today, I had announced (before asking you, of course) that I was redesigning this mod's XML content because I was so inspired by your setting, and was going to use all of the gods, nations, and such you'd spent the past three years writing, in my own mod? I might have to change a few names here and there, but it'd save me a ton of design work, and it'd be good for the community. Sure, this'd mean that your mod would never go anywhere, since by the time you finished it mine would already be long since established, but hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? I'd be sure to acknowledge you in the credits, so you should be honored.

Now, maybe you didn't realize just how much work Lua programming is and how little work XML is by comparison. And I'm sure you intend to add DLL/Lua/whatever mechanisms of your own at some point, just like I do, or add custom artwork (which does take quite a bit of effort). But understand that creating a mod while denying that the underlying mechanisms are the majority of the work is like creating a mod of any kind without acknowledging that the Civ5 engine is doing all of the real work. If I were to market my mod as a separate game, with a small "inspired by Civ5" label, and claim that it was a distinct work because I'd changed the units and tech names... well, it'd never even get close to that point because lawyers would quickly do that whole "cease and desist" thing they love, but I'm sure you get the point.

A simple "I'd rather you didn't use my mod material" would have easily sufficed.

TheChanger posted his Mandala design in your mod's thread before asking. Then, ten minutes after responding to my initial statement, calling me a "hypocrite" for objecting, he added an additional post over there explaining in much greater detail the system that you intend to use, all of which reinforced the fact that nothing substantial was being changed from my own work. These are not the actions of someone who actually cared about getting permission.

And then you come in here to defend him by expressing your disappointment of my actions? So no, you're not in any position to criticize the tone of my post.

First of all, plagiarism doesn't require me to have commercial ownership....... So that argument doesn't hold water at all.

Well you might be correct there. I think you might be overreacting slightly though.
Your reply was VERY long... I think maybe needlessly so.
Nobody is attacking you here. Least of all me.
From what I gather this was a request by TheChanger to replicate your work, not an attempt to cause an arguement.

What I have a problem with is that, given how your teammate represented the implementation in both this thread and your own, it appears that my mod would be included effectively in its entirety, barring a trivial layer of XML (and yes, it IS trivial no matter how long you spent writing up the background material) and some artwork. Again, that's not "adapting", that's outright theft.

I don't think that TheChanger specifically thought to do that, but again I'm really not familiar with your mod and have read very little about it.
I was just informed that we could possibly use it to help implement religions.
TheChanger only began designing things to show you because he is enthusiastic. I think you might have upset him by reacting so negatively to his request.
How much the design is adapted I do not personally know.

But is the fact that you're planning to use four levels of auto-upgrading religious buildings, that your alignment axes are Law-Chaos (excuse me, Order-Chaos) and Material-Ephemeral, that you add a new "Favor" yield that is generated by Priests, Battles, Buildings, and to a lesser extent Events and Improvements, that Favor handles building auto-upgrades on a local level as well as unlocking new minor gods on a global one... are those coincidences as well?

I'm not planning on using anything.
I was not involved in this design process.
I've told you already I know nothing about your mod other than what I have encountered with regard to this conversation and from posts by TheChanger.

There's no originality at all in the mechanical design as presented, which is 90% of the work required for a mod like this. If you and your collaborators can't see the difference between allowing a player to tweak Age of Mythology's pantheons to their liking, versus playing a separate mod named "Naeralith Reborn" that is still primarily comprised of my own work, then there's no way this discussion can go any further.

Again, I know I keep iterating this, but I have no idea how much of the design is being used by TheChanger's suggestion. I didn't come up with it and haven't looked into your mod.
I think it would go very far to say that Naeralith Reborn would be comprised primarily of your own work if your mod was integrated. It would be that the functionality with regard to religion in Naeralith Reborn would be 90% of your original work.
If I'm right then you have a problem with this because of all the effort you put into the original code and you don't want others to use it in the development of their own mods, correct?

consider: what if this situation were reversed? What if, today, I had announced (before asking you, of course) that I was redesigning this mod's XML content because I was so inspired by your setting, and was going to use all of the gods, nations, and such you'd spent the past three years writing, in my own mod? I might have to change a few names here and there, but it'd save me a ton of design work, and it'd be good for the community. Sure, this'd mean that your mod would never go anywhere, since by the time you finished it mine would already be long since established, but hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? I'd be sure to acknowledge you in the credits, so you should be honored.

Well if you were to ask me if you could use my gods etc that then Id suggest some sort of collaboration on a larger, more integrated mod.
Maybe I'm more laid back because the civ5 mod for Naeralith is not my primary focus in life. It's a side project based on my writing. My writing is what I care about the most as I'm sure you understand.
If someone wanted to make a mod based my writing and my world then I'd have no problem so long as I was credited as the creator of the world and involved officially with the development. It would help my publicity since the actual world of Naeralith is my creative property in its entirity.

Now, maybe you didn't realize just how much work Lua programming is and how little work XML is by comparison.

Please don't insult me. I develop software for a living and most certainly know the difference.
Also, I wish you'd stop referring to me in your comments. I've told you already that I know virtually nothing about your mod, haven't researched it and haven't come up with any ideas regarding it, nor did I have any proposals to use it.

TheChanger posted his Mandala design in your mod's thread before asking. Then, ten minutes after responding to my initial statement, calling me a "hypocrite" for objecting, he added an additional post over there explaining in much greater detail the system that you intend to use, all of which reinforced the fact that nothing substantial was being changed from my own work. These are not the actions of someone who actually cared about getting permission.

And then you come in here to defend him by expressing your disappointment of my actions? So no, you're not in any position to criticize the tone of my post.

Again with the word you. See above.
Also, yes I think that I am in a position to criticize.
Honestly I think that your initial reaction was way over the top, spurring an aggravated response from TheChanger.
I have noticed that you can be blunt in your responses sometimes, but the way in which you have reacted to him (in terms of the verbal language you are using), and even to myself, I've found almost borderline insulting.

In addition, TheChanger is someone I consider a close friend and I will defend his as such because of that.
Would you not defend your own friends in the same way?


Al

Spatz, dude, take a chill pill or something and relax man.

Im not out here to take your hard work and use it for my own nefarious gains, and as Alzara keeps saying, he knows next to nothing about your mod and im the one that has been following its design, not him. In addition he is correct that i was enthusiastic as i never expected a member of the civ fanatics community to be such a hostile, unwelcoming and demeaning person, i mearly did my Mandala for enjoyment as i like working with graphics, and the fact that i posted some design after the post above in another thread really has nothing to do with whether or not i care about getting permission. if i didnt care do you really think i would have asked in the first place?

If you want my advice id say calm down and dont take everything so seriously. what started as a simple request has blown completely out of proportion thanks to your patronising and hot headed tone. you might find people react better to you if your are less aggressive. But then again, what do i know?

Have a great day and good luck with your mod.

Be slow to criticize, quick to commend and when all else fails, forget about the whole conversation, shake hands and move on!

Seriously, I like both of your guys mods and have been avid followers of both since they first appeared here in this humble forum. I will continue to do so in hopes I get to play both of them!

Love you guys!!!

MXX

Be slow to criticize, quick to commend and when all else fails, forget about the whole conversation, shake hands and move on!

Seriously, I like both of your guys mods and have been avid followers of both since they first appeared here in this humble forum. I will continue to do so in hopes I get to play both of them!

Love you guys!!!

MXX

Lol how lovely :)
Thank you :crazyeye:

I'm glad people on these forums are so enthusiastic.

From what I can tell, Spatz's mod is good, though I know little about it.
Would have been cool to maybe work together.
The more, the merrier for work on Naeralith Reborn is what I believe :)

No grudges held with regard to the thread though... despite feeling that it was unnecessarily heated :shifty:

Al

Allatum is a Mesopotamian goddess, i think her Sumarian equivilent is Ereshkigal, Im not sure if she'll fit in, but I gess beggers can't be choosers

Allatum is a Mesopotamian goddess, i think her Sumarian equivilent is Ereshkigal, Im not sure if she'll fit in, but I gess beggers can't be choosers

Ereshkigal is a death goddess, which I've already got covered in that pantheon; note that based on our previous conversations, I'm shifting Utu to Death and Anu to Darkness/Justice in the next version. (I'm also doing the alterations to the Shinto pantheon I mentioned before, involving Izanagi and Sarutahiko.)
Now, Ereshkigal was also sort of a goddess of the changing of the seasons, and Seasons is one of the four Foci the Sumerians don't have, so I COULD drop one of the other minor gods in favor of her if graphics become too much of an issue. Not Shamash or Ki, as I need to keep the full elemental set, but I could ditch someone like Anunna (Balance) if need be, since way too many pantheons have certain Foci. I'll check my spreadsheets when I get home tonight to see which ones I can afford to lose. (NOT Healing or Knowledge, so Ninurta and Nanna are safe.)

Or, I could just steal that picture for someone else, like her sister Inanna (Ishtar), since I think that picture's more appropriate for a Beauty/War goddess than the first one you'd posted (which just felt a bit too Anime-ish). It's not like the players would really care, of course, but it'd be nice if at least the four major gods had good images to work with.

You know, Sumerians really had a LOT of death-related gods: Anu, Utu, Nergal, Ereshkigal... even the Egyptians didn't focus that much on the dark end of things. I ran into stuff like this in a lot of pantheons, where several gods would be associated with the afterlife, and another three or four with "fertility" in various forms, and so on, but the Sumerians really went overboard.

Just asking (seeing the pictures), but I thought the Sumerian gods didn't look even remotely human - weren't they though to be closer to birds?

Just asking (seeing the pictures), but I thought the Sumerian gods didn't look even remotely human - weren't they though to be closer to birds?

Not sure which pantheon you're thinking of, there, but everything I've found had the Sumerian gods as humanoid. Now, there was a LOT of back-and-forth between the Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, and early Semitic deities, and those were the basis for most of the Greek gods as well, so it's very easily possible that at least one group involved did it that way. But as far as I can tell, the only pantheon I'm using that didn't use very humanoid gods were the Egyptians, a group that pretty much mastered the "head of an X, body of a Y" concept.

IIRC, Babylon specifically.

Well, I've seen pictures of Marduk as a man with wings, and there's a little strangeness with Ishtar in the Babylonian/Akkadian version, but the rest were humanoid as far as I could tell. Again, these all got mixed together at various times, so there could easily have been one version like that, but the base Sumerian group I'm going with didn't seem to have wings or anything.

Okay, doing a little rearrangement of foci, and I've got two possibilities I need to decide between:

Option 1: Thor is changed from Air/Storms to either Air/Healing or Storms/Healing. (If I took the latter then I'd need to find someone else for Air, unless I want to get rid of the rule where every pantheon has the four elements. Freyr might be able to be worked in somewhere, but that'd require getting rid of another god.)
Option 2: Shiva is changed from Death/Storms to Death/Healing. Shiva is the god of destruction, but he's also about rebirth and immortality.
Option 3: Enlil (Sumerian god of Storms) is changed from Storms/Air to either Storms/Balance or Air/Balance.

You see, I have the following problems:
1> Thor and Enlil are inversions of each other (Storms/Air vs Air/Storms). I'm already shuffling Anu around, which'll break the other inverted pair, so it'd be nice to clear up both at once.
2> I have too many storm gods in general, and especially major ones. I really NEED to reduce this by 1.
3> I don't have nearly enough major gods in Healing or Knowledge. I can't do anything about the Knowledge one, since everyone other than the Aztecs has a god in that one already. But if I could shift even one major to Healing, it'd help.

In terms of game balance, option 1 (especially the move to Air/Healing) is by far the best as it fixes all three of these, but combining 2 with 3 would also have the same three effects.

Thoughts?

Heres Shamash

Okay, doing a little rearrangement of foci, and I've got two possibilities I need to decide between:

Option 1: Thor is changed from Air/Storms to either Air/Healing or Storms/Healing. (If I took the latter then I'd need to find someone else for Air, unless I want to get rid of the rule where every pantheon has the four elements. Freyr might be able to be worked in somewhere, but that'd require getting rid of another god.)
Option 2: Shiva is changed from Death/Storms to Death/Healing. Shiva is the god of destruction, but he's also about rebirth and immortality.
Option 3: Enlil (Sumerian god of Storms) is changed from Storms/Air to either Storms/Balance or Air/Balance.

You see, I have the following problems:
1> Thor and Enlil are inversions of each other (Storms/Air vs Air/Storms). I'm already shuffling Anu around, which'll break the other inverted pair, so it'd be nice to clear up both at once.
2> I have too many storm gods in general, and especially major ones. I really NEED to reduce this by 1.
3> I don't have nearly enough major gods in Healing or Knowledge. I can't do anything about the Knowledge one, since everyone other than the Aztecs has a god in that one already. But if I could shift even one major to Healing, it'd help.

In terms of game balance, option 1 (especially the move to Air/Healing) is by far the best as it fixes all three of these, but combining 2 with 3 would also have the same three effects.

Thoughts?

Don't know if you have a God for fertility in the Norse Pantheon but traditionally Thor was invoked by worshippers as such and also called upon to hallow marriages (another link to fertility). Of course Healing would work as well along with Storms but if you had a choice between the 2, fertility would be more accurate.

Don't know if you have a God for fertility in the Norse Pantheon

Freyja has Fertility pretty much locked up for the Norse. Or at least, while she's fairly flexible and could be used for quite a few Foci, nearly all of the other ones she's associated with are already being used by more specialized gods.

The thing that makes me want to ditch Air for Thor is that it's mostly a ranged combat focus, and that's not really what comes to mind when I think of Thor. One of my rules when setting up the pantheons was that every pantheon needed all four elemental foci covered, but this is one case where I'd be willing to make an exception.

But regardless, I REALLY need to remove one major Storm god, and the best choices for that are Thor and Shiva. Changing Shiva would be the best, as I like the idea of a Death/Healing god, but that still leaves the Thor-Enlil duplication. So the best thing, honestly would be to do all three: Thor to Storms/Healing (or Storms/Plants, as Thor was associated with oak trees and fertility in general), Enlil to Storms/Balance, and Shiva to Death/Healing. Or at least the Enlil change and then one of the other two.

Im getting a problem where when I choose a minor god, I don't always get a shrine in my capital

Im getting a problem where when I choose a minor god, I don't always get a shrine in my capital

You're not supposed to always get a shrine in your capital. If you have more than one city, then the game places the shrine in the city that has the fewest levels of religious buildings (with ties going to the older city), very similar to how Civ4 decided which city founded a new religion. That's almost never going to be the capital, so as long as one of your cities is getting a free shrine, it's working as intended.

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Update:
Things were a bit slow this weekend thanks to some outside issues (*cough*Skyrim*cough*).
I'm going to try one more pass at fixing a couple bugs in the Ascension mod today, then I'm going to play my first actual Mythology game. If I don't find anything really critical, I'll post the new version tonight or tomorrow morning; if you've got an opinion on the deity shifting mentioned previously, now's the time.
The version after that will be AFTER the Thanksgiving weekend. That next version will have many of the Events working, the last of the god artwork, and so on, which should make it the first functionally complete version; the corresponding version of the Base mod will also have the ranged promotion merging.

There are four big problems I'm dealing with in the current build of the Mythology mod:
1> The promotion limit conflict with the Ascension mod.
2> The current Events ONLY apply to the human player, because the User Events mod component I'm using never had AI functionality. This is one reason why I've left in the dinky little test effect; it'd be too big of an imbalance otherwise. On a related note, all religious AI decisions (like which minor god to add) are made at random. I'm going to implement Flavors for the various Foci and Event choices, and have the AI weight its selections appropriately.
3> The game won't actually save the religious mod data along with the rest, so you can't load an in-progress savegame. I know how to fix this, it's just going to get a bit messy.
4> The Heroes aren't in the game yet, mainly because their triggering Events aren't ready.

My goal is to fix all four of these over the Thanksgiving holiday, or at least partially fix them (like for #4, putting the eight Greek heroes in first and having everyone just use them to test the mechanisms).

I'm not sure but I thought city states couldn't gift myth units, if they can disregard this, but if they aren't supposed to be able to, this is a bug.

Belgrade just gifted me a Tiamat.

I'm not sure but I thought city states couldn't gift myth units

It's not intended. I'm still trying to figure out how to stop it; the AI clearly doesn't check the unit class overrides for gifted units, and since all of the non-pantheon Myth units have no tech requirements...

There are a few things I can do to make this better, but if I can't figure out what to do about these, then I might just have to put in a hack that auto-kills invalid gifted units and replaces them with something else.

Should priest specialists always generate the same resources regardless of what level the structure is (shrine/church etc.)? And if yes, should each of the buildings only support 1 priest?

Is there a place to where one can view a summary of the effects from their collective gods? I know you can figure it out from looking around the mandala but I couldn't find a place where it's clearly summarised.

Thoughts on adding a notification or pop-up when the player reaches enough Favor to pick a new god? It's very easy to forget and people playing for the first time may not know that they even can select new gods.

Should priest specialists always generate the same resources regardless of what level the structure is (shrine/church etc.)? And if yes, should each of the buildings only support 1 priest?

Yes, and yes.

The original design had higher-level religious buildings having more priest slots (going 1/2/3/4), but doing that meant that I had WAY too many priest slots in the game. As it is, you'll have up to one slot per focus you've unlocked (beginning at 2) per city, which is already a pretty huge number.

As for the first question, all priest slots are the same, just like all Merchant slots are equal, all Engineer slots are equal, and so on... except that which Priest slot you use determines which Focus gets that priest's Favor for that turn. This is why Basilicae don't have Priest slots; there's little point in building up more Favor within a Focus that's already maxed out. But yes, all Priest slots are equal; if I have any hope of getting the AI to understand them, that sort of thing is necessary.

Is there a place to where one can view a summary of the effects from their collective gods? I know you can figure it out from looking around the mandala but I couldn't find a place where it's clearly summarised.

Well, you could always print out the post on the first page of this thread... or go to that Focus' entry in the Civilopedia (once it's finished, since they're not there yet)... or click on the gold-ringed Foci on the Mandala... or just mouse-over the religious buildings in each city to see what effects they're giving. It's a lot like asking "where can I see all of the things my techs have unlocked?"; you can either go into the tech tree and look at the individual techs, or you can go into a city and look at the buildings you've built or that are available to be built, or go to the Civilopedia, or look it up on a wiki someplace. Replace "techs" with "Foci", "tech tree" with "Mandala", and so on, and it's pretty much the same answer. So I'm generally trying to hold to the same level of detail that the core game uses for its own systems.

Now, if this still ends up being a problem then I suppose I could delete the current god list on the right side of the Mandala and create an extra internal popup data window that shows exactly which gods you've picked and their currently unlocked effects. (Sort of like how in the Victory Progress UI you can click to get more detailed information of which spaceship parts each civ has built.)
It'd at least give me a better excuse for using the 256-pixel god icons, so I might do it anyway. And I could color-code each line based on whether you've reached the tech necessary for that level, whether it's capital-only, or whether it's unavailable. The one thing the player lacks right now is a good indicator of which level each Focus can reach at the current technology, and this'd help with that.

Thoughts on adding a notification or pop-up when the player reaches enough Favor to pick a new god? It's very easy to forget and people playing for the first time may not know that they even can select new gods.

It depends. I still haven't decided whether you should be ALLOWED to wait, or whether you should be like the AI and be forced to pick as soon as you have enough Favor (assuming any new gods are selectable at your current Alignment). If I'm intending to force the player, then I'd first of all have to figure out a way to create a new popup type (necessary to block the End Turn button, although I could edit that Lua as well if needed), and then add another option to the setup screen.

If the player's allowed to wait, then I'll add a reminder popup, except that I'll check first to see if the player has any valid minor god options at his position before notifying (since it'd get REALLY annoying to get a "Hey, you forgot!" message when it might be ten or twenty turns before you can reach a new area and actually pick a god. I know, it's easy to go past the necessary amounts (especially during a war, when you're generating lots of Battle Favor), but I'm already getting into the habit of looking at the top of the screen as I play to check.

Now, what I can do much more easily is simply alter the message on the top of the screen. Right now, it's "X / Y" where Y is what you need and X is what you have. If X > Y, I can just change that message to "NEW MINOR GOD AVAILABLE" or something similar, where mousing over the thing will continue to give the actual amounts you've accumulated if you don't want to add a god right then.

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Update: Another slight delay due to technical issues. New version will be tonight or maybe tomorrow if I can't track down this problem in the Ascension mod; if I can't track it down then I'll remove my debugging statements and release it as-is. It'll definitely be out before the Thanksgiving vacation, with the next version being next Monday-ish so that I can spend my 4-day weekend coding up all sorts of new stuff.

The Roman Balista has "limited visabilty" as a promotion to choose alongside Barrage and Accuracy, im sure this is not intended

So when is the new version coming out?

Also, what did you decide to do about the promotions?