[MEGA MODCOMP] Conqueror's Delight

I've gotten held up a bit. I'm rethinking the surrender functionality right now based on my experience with the new barbarian ransom option. The problem is that I had the city checking whether it should surrender every turn if it had enemy units within its radius. This is good because the surrender check is a rather substantial function, so limiting how many times its called is good.

The bad news is that once the popup is called, it doesn't appear to the invading player until the start of their turn. So the check takes place during the start of the defender's turn and then the option is not presented to the invader until the start of his turn. Well, a lot can happen in that time... It might be rare, but I doubt the defender would be happy if they managed to crush a seemingly overwhelming invasion force only to have the city surrender after the threat is gone.

I'm contemplating having this appear at the end of the invader's turn. We'll see.

I've held back on releasing the latest changes sans the surrender stuff because working on this barbarian change has really caused that itch to reinvigorate the barbarians as a whole to requiring a scratch I've played some Civ Revolution recently and I found it to be an entertaining (although not nearly as in-depth) game. I did, however, like the new stuff they added with barbarians and I thought they could seriously use some more personality in PC Civ.

I should have some screenies to post tomorrow to show you what I've done

Will be interested to hear how you solve it. Keep up the good work.

This looks very nice. I'm too busy to try it right now, but I think this may be the one mod that could take me away from playing FfH (and FfH modmods). That is, until I can convince someone to merge it with FfH. (I've already asked xienwolf to add it all to his FfH modcomp, which already included a few of your changes.)

A little teaser shot of what I've created

These are two shots taken from the same game. See if you can figure out what's going on

Barbarians adopting different ethnic looks based upon the cultures around them?

Barbarians sitting on resources?

Thorn said:

Barbarians sitting on resources?

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No, but that was a good observation.

Vrenir said:

Barbarians adopting different ethnic looks based upon the cultures around them?

Click to expand...

You're very warm. Just one detail off:

I've created a new info type called Tribes. (This screenshot featured a Warrior units from the Tatars (left) and the Cheyenne (right))

The map at the start of the game is now subdivided into tribal lands. Most unclaimed territory will fall within one of these tribal areas.

Tribes only affect the Barbarian player, and the best way to think of it is basically like smaller civilizations within one civ. Barbarian units of different tribes not only have differing graphics, the names of the units will display as their tribal names and in moments such as ransoming cities, the chief of the tribe's name will appear. Goody huts will appear with the name of the tribe they fall under as well.

Different barbarian tribes will also behave differently. Different tribes will get different free promotions for their units, and they will also have favorite units, as well as varying levels of aggression. So the Hsung Nu, for example, will be very aggressive and will usually get Horse Archers while the Tupi will keep more of their units in reserve and will get more Axemen with jungle/forest special abilities.

It's not a huge revolutionary change to the game, but it will make the early game more unique as you could across different varieties of barbarians. I'm also planning one additional Barbarian feature to add to a player's interaction with them in the early game.

And of course, all of this is moddable. There will be a new CIV4TribeInfos.xml to control all of these details.

Tomorrow I'll post a list of the tribes and their chiefs, favored units, free promotions and other details.

Man dude. You deserve a cookie.

Ya know... that'd be pretty dang fun to place as an aspect of each Civilization until you hit the proper Government Civic or Era. Have each city be a seperate Tribal entity and whatnot.

But even as is, kudos for a kickin' sweet idea

Dom Pedro II said:

I've created a new info type called Tribes. (This screenshot featured a Warrior units from the Tatars (left) and the Cheyenne (right))

The map at the start of the game is now subdivided into tribal lands. Most unclaimed territory will fall within one of these tribal areas.

Tribes only affect the Barbarian player, and the best way to think of it is basically like smaller civilizations within one civ. Barbarian units of different tribes not only have differing graphics, the names of the units will display as their tribal names and in moments such as ransoming cities, the chief of the tribe's name will appear. Goody huts will appear with the name of the tribe they fall under as well.

Different barbarian tribes will also behave differently. Different tribes will get different free promotions for their units, and they will also have favorite units, as well as varying levels of aggression. So the Hsung Nu, for example, will be very aggressive and will usually get Horse Archers while the Tupi will keep more of their units in reserve and will get more Axemen with jungle/forest special abilities.

It's not a huge revolutionary change to the game, but it will make the early game more unique as you could across different varieties of barbarians. I'm also planning one additional Barbarian feature to add to a player's interaction with them in the early game.

And of course, all of this is moddable. There will be a new CIV4TribeInfos.xml to control all of these details.

Tomorrow I'll post a list of the tribes and their chiefs, favored units, free promotions and other details.

Click to expand...

You managed it? Good thing.
Did you also manage to let specific barb tribes appear near where proper civilizations are? For instance Navajo near the Aztec, or Cheyenne near the Native American civ?

GeoModder said:

You managed it? Good thing.
Did you also manage to let specific barb tribes appear near where proper civilizations are? For instance Navajo near the Aztec, or Cheyenne near the Native American civ?

Click to expand...

You know, I hadn't until this morning, but while on the bus ride into New York today, I came up with a solution.

With any bit of modding in Civ4, you essentially run into two limiting factors: 1) Is it hard-coded in the exe? and 2) How much performance has to be sacrificed to do what I want to do?

In the case of implementing this part, it was a matter of that second constraint. And certainly, there will probably be a noticeable loss of performance with the process that has to be run to place these tribes realistically. The good news is that it won't be more than 2 seconds, and it will take place at the very start of the game when you're already waiting for a bit longer than that for the game to start.

The game will also place those tribes according to location as well. So you won't find the Inuit at the equator or the Tupi in the frozen north. That's not to say you won't get the occasional odd combination, but hey.. that's part of the fun.

The bad news doesn't really concern this particular modcomp, but it looks as though it is critical that the Tribe be set before the graphics are initialized for a particular unit. Otherwise, you don't get the different unit art variations because apparently the function that returns the unit art style is only called when the unit is first created (and i would imagine it's called again when the eras are updated). The problem with this is that it means you can't dynamically change unit art styles for existing units. I was hoping maybe we could have them change for different religions or civics, but I don't think that's going to happen.

xienwolf said:

Ya know... that'd be pretty dang fun to place as an aspect of each Civilization until you hit the proper Government Civic or Era. Have each city be a seperate Tribal entity and whatnot.

But even as is, kudos for a kickin' sweet idea

Click to expand...

Well, I've been debating extending the tribes' abilities to the players when you move into their territory. So, for example, if you found a city on Olmec land, the city's tribe will considered to be Olmec and the units trained there will look mesoamerican regardless of whatever the player is.

I'm iffy on this one, but what I will tell you is absolutely going into the game without question is that 1) Cities will keep the city art of their previous owners. I was told by the folks at Firaxis that this bug where the city art function in the SDK seemed to be completely useless has been fixed. 2) Units produced in captured cities will retain the unit art style of their previous owners.. or rather, the highest culture player.

Unit art isn't updated once the unit is set up/loaded whatnot. But promotions can change Unit Art can't they? And you've already written the code up to hide promotions from your enemies... so couldn't you set a new artstyle by hidden promotion to alter the Barbarians mid-game?

xienwolf said:

Unit art isn't updated once the unit is set up/loaded whatnot. But promotions can change Unit Art can't they? And you've already written the code up to hide promotions from your enemies... so couldn't you set a new artstyle by hidden promotion to alter the Barbarians mid-game?

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Well, it's a bit different. Promotions can change unit graphics, but they never change the unit's UnitArtStyleType, and that's what we're concerned about.
Also, my code for hiding promotions didn't do anything for the unit graphics. It just made it so that when you moused over the unit, it didn't display those promotions in the unit's promotion list.

When I saw those tribes, I had an idea for modern civil wars, but it relies on a few things:

• Different tribes attack each other
• Tribes can be made to stay where they are at all times
• Some tribes can be programmed to have a preference over who they attack
• The default tribe of a city can be overwritten (with loss of pop would be great) in a kind of "ethnic cleansing"

Now, I'm guessing some of that is possible with your new TribeInfos file, but if any of them aren't, I'd like to request them for a future version.

Also, while I'm asking questions:

1. Is the WoC core already integrated?
2. Are there any plans to include either the Revolutions mod, Influence Driven War either in part or as a whole?
3. EDIT: Does this have the same functionality as Assimilation for city capture?

Thanks.

Here is a list of the current tribes I've added to the game... The list is taken mostly from the Barb Cities list for the Barbarian Player. The names of the chiefs is the result of a brief and hasty wikipedia/google search, so it's definitely open to criticism and suggestions

Also, suggestions regarding promotions is welcome as well. You can also recommend new promotions based on the list of new promotion abilities on the first page if you think that the existing Civ4 promotions don't quite hit the mark.

Pirate

Chief: None
Unit Artstyle: European
Favorite Unit: Galley
Free Promotion: None

Special: There is a boolean tag to mark a pirate tribe. This tribe is not placed on the map, but Barbarian ships and the units spawned in them are made pirates. There's no reason to have more than one pirate tribe, and the game will take whichever one it comes across first.

Cherokee

Chief: John Ross
Unit Artstyle: Mesoamerican
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Chinook

Chief: Comcomly
Unit Artstyle: Mesoamerican
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Olmec

Chief: Yo Pe
Unit Artstyle: Mesoamerican
Favorite Unit: Swordsman
Free Promotion: None

Apache

Chief: Geronimo
Unit Artstyle: Mesoamerican
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Alemanni

Chief: Chrocus
Unit Artstyle: European
Favorite Unit: Swordsman
Free Promotion: None

Visigoth

Chief: Alaric
Unit Artstyle: European
Favorite Unit: Swordsman
Free Promotion: None

Goth

Chief: Fritigern
Unit Artstyle: European
Favorite Unit: Swordsman
Free Promotion: None

Hun

Chief: Attila
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Gaul

Chief: Vercingetorix
Unit Artstyle: European
Favorite Unit: Swordsman
Free Promotion: None

Numidian

Chief: Massinissa
Unit Artstyle: Greco-Roman
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Uzbek

Chief: Tamerlane
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Hose Archer
Free Promotion: None

Saka

Chief: Ateas
Unit Artstyle: Middle Eastern
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None
Favorite Terrain:

Ghuzz

Chief: Malik Dinar
Unit Artstyle: Middle Eastern
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Hsung Nu

Chief: Modo
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Polynesian

Chief: Kamehameha
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Ainu

Chief: Shakushan
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Swordsman
Free Promotion: None

Avar

Chief: Bayan
Unit Artstyle: Middle Eastern
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Kushan

Chief: Piye
Unit Artstyle: Middle Eastern
Favorite Unit: Archer
Free Promotion: None

Nubia

Chief: Candace
Unit Artstyle: Middle Eastern
Favorite Unit: Archer
Free Promotion: None

Kassite

Chief: Kurigalzu
Unit Artstyle: Middle East
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Vandal

Chief: Geiseric
Unit Artstyle: European
Favorite Unit: Swordsman
Free Promotion: None

Minoan

Chief: Minos
Unit Artstyle: Greco-Roman
Favorite Unit: Spearman
Free Promotion: None

Shawnee

Chief: Tecumseh
Unit Artstyle: Mesoamerican
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Cheyenne

Chief: Black Kettle
Unit Artstyle: South America
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Comache

Chief: Isa Tai
Unit Artstyle: South America
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Mapuche

Chief: Black Caupolican
Unit Artstyle: South America
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Tupi

Chief: Amoipira
Unit Artstyle: South America
Favorite Unit: Archer
Free Promotion: None

Inuit

Chief: Nanook (help me come up with something better than this!)
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Archer
Free Promotion: None

Tatar

Chief: Taibuga
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: None

Aleuts

Chief: Ivan Pankov
Unit Artstyle: Asian
Favorite Unit: Archer
Free Promotion: None

Tuareg

Chief: Tin Hinan
Unit Artstyle: Middle East
Favorite Unit: Horse Archer
Free Promotion: Flanking I

Saami

Chief: Olen
Unit Artstyle: European
Favorite Unit: Axeman
Free Promotion: None

Looks good, but might I suggest the Camel Archer for the Tuareg instead of the Horse Archer.

Unless Dom Pedro II mods the game to allow it, the Tuareg won't be able to have the Camel Archer because units are created by unitclass, which is how unique units are handled (Camel Archer is the same unitclass as Horse Archer).

Well, I'm also considering adding unique units for tribes.. it's a fairly simple process.

Believe me, I wanted a camel unit for the Tuareg. The real problem is not the Camel Archer's unique unit status, it's the late game arrival of it. You definitely don't want Knight-strength Barbarian units popping up when you have nothing that can counter it.

Whenever I get around to making my own full mod, I plan to have a line of Camel variants that would provide a Horse Archer-level camel unit for the Tuareg. I also thought that a number of the "Horse Archer" favorites for some of these tribes that should really be ancient heavy cavalry, but there is no ancient heavy cavalry in Civ4.

NikNaks said:

When I saw those tribes, I had an idea for modern civil wars, but it relies on a few things:

• Different tribes attack each other

Click to expand...

Well, units of different tribes attacking each other is, theoretically, possible. It's certainly possible to two units belonging to the same player to attack each other as Kael's team proved by accident with their pre-BtS hidden nationality solution. I remember him saying that one of the early glitches they found was with that.
And it would also be possible to shroud your own cities belonging to a different tribe in the fog of war. I would also imagine that it would be possible to have some of your units controlled by the AI (and potentially possible to get units under the control of AI players to fight each other).

Tribes can be made to stay where they are at all times

Click to expand...

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this...

• Some tribes can be programmed to have a preference over who they attack
• The default tribe of a city can be overwritten (with loss of pop would be great) in a kind of "ethnic cleansing"

Now, I'm guessing some of that is possible with your new TribeInfos file, but if any of them aren't, I'd like to request them for a future version.

Click to expand...

Tribes are not really bound to players (even the Barbarian player). There's nothing that specifically links Tribes to the Barbs except that the Barbs are the only ones affected by tribes.

I hear people seeming to want tribes to be expanded to all players, but I'm not really clear on what it is that people want... Are you saying you want a specific set of tribes for each player like for the Celts to have the Belgae, Arverni, etc.? Or do you want those free-floating, unaffiliated tribes to be integrated into different civs on a game-by-game basis? So if the Aztecs build a city on Olmec land, the city will be considered an Olmec tribe city?

If it's the former, one of the reasons I added the Home City information was so that there could be more tribalism between cities. I think inter-city (or really inter-regional) conflict within your civ makes more sense than adding the tribes in which basically amounts to the same thing but adds the additional problem of splitting tribal populations, etc. If it's the latter, then this starts to mess with the existing cultural system and I think it becomes a bit redundant IMO.

Also, while I'm asking questions:

1. Is the WoC core already integrated?
2. Are there any plans to include either the Revolutions mod, Influence Driven War either in part or as a whole?
3. EDIT: Does this have the same functionality as Assimilation for city capture?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

1. No, because I'm terrible about that. I swear it will be at point though!
2. Well, if they're in the WoC, then yes.
3. I'm not really sure which function you're referring to.

Dom Pedro II said:

Well, units of different tribes attacking each other is, theoretically, possible. It's certainly possible to two units belonging to the same player to attack each other as Kael's team proved by accident with their pre-BtS hidden nationality solution. I remember him saying that one of the early glitches they found was with that.
And it would also be possible to shroud your own cities belonging to a different tribe in the fog of war. I would also imagine that it would be possible to have some of your units controlled by the AI (and potentially possible to get units under the control of AI players to fight each other).

Click to expand...

That sounds good to me

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this...

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I guess I didn't word it very well. What I meant was, can a (barb) tribe be forced to stay in cities, instead of roaming and attacking, while others will continue to roam and attack.

Tribes are not really bound to players (even the Barbarian player). There's nothing that specifically links Tribes to the Barbs except that the Barbs are the only ones affected by tribes.

I hear people seeming to want tribes to be expanded to all players, but I'm not really clear on what it is that people want... Are you saying you want a specific set of tribes for each player like for the Celts to have the Belgae, Arverni, etc.? Or do you want those free-floating, unaffiliated tribes to be integrated into different civs on a game-by-game basis? So if the Aztecs build a city on Olmec land, the city will be considered an Olmec tribe city?

If it's the former, one of the reasons I added the Home City information was so that there could be more tribalism between cities. I think inter-city (or really inter-regional) conflict within your civ makes more sense than adding the tribes in which basically amounts to the same thing but adds the additional problem of splitting tribal populations, etc. If it's the latter, then this starts to mess with the existing cultural system and I think it becomes a bit redundant IMO.

Click to expand...

Well, IMO, tribes should be, basically, diverse Barbarian mini-civs. Maybe that's not what you're going for. So, I would go with the "if it's Olmec land, it's an Olmec city" option.

1. No, because I'm terrible about that. I swear it will be at point though!

Click to expand...

2. Well, if they're in the WoC, then yes.

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Well, they aren't. I thought they'd fit in nicely with this modcomp. Well, IDW would, anyway.

3. I'm not really sure which function you're referring to.

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The function where a city that's been captured gets the unique units of the captured civ (but only in that city) and cannot build its own units there. I think this would work with your tribes idea, but I'm not sure how.

Thanks for answering.