Éa, Dawn of the Mortal Races (phase 1, pre-alpha code development and discussion)

So :

*) Thaumaturgy unlocks general "meta-magic" spells/abilities.
*) Maleficium unlocks a more specific sorcery spells/abilities.
*) Divine Liturgy unlocks holy spells/abilities.

Am I getting this right?

Reading from your reply, I guess there are intertwining between religions and magic, with magic plays a boarder role than religion. For example, a player can pursue Maleficium without adopting Aŋra, but any Aŋra-adopting civs will always learn Maleficium. That is cool, since there will be plenty of development paths for a player to choose. The "factions" that I can imagine are as follow (from the most "Good" to most "Evil") :

*) Follower of Azzandarayasna without maleficium
*) Follower of Pantheistic Cults without maleficium
*) Non-religious civs without maleficium
*) Non-religious civs with maleficium
*) Follower of Pantheistic Cults with maleficium -> will fall
*) Founder of Azzandarayasna with maleficium -> will fall and become founder of Aŋra
*) Evil maleficum civs with the goal of becoming Aŋra

But then, with Prophecy of Vâ, civs will be forced into two blocks : "Fallen" civs (those with Maleficium) which will pursue Destroyer victory; and non-"Fallen" civs (those with Azzandarayasna, or non-Azzandarayasna with no Maleficium). So is there any way to prevent this to happen? I imagine a tribe of Aos Sidhe who use (limited) sorcery who don't want to Fall should have a kind of protection from Falling (and yet, still have the ability to cast sorcery magic). Or is it not possible, since sorcery itself is the embodiment of destruction (by consuming Ea's magic)?

I think that Ea is very interesting! I can imagine holding many role-playing games using Ea as background. :goodjob:
 
You got it now.

I'd still be more careful with the labels "good" and "evil" though. While everyone agrees that Aŋra is evil (I think even they would agree), everything else is a bit ambiguous or relative:

* Followers of Azzandarayasna think they are good (of course). However, no rule is stopping them from genocide or slavery.
* Pantheistic cults can vary a lot, depending on the particular "little gods" that they worship. Some are nice, some are nasty, some are hard to put on this metric (Cult of Bakkheia).
* Those that practice Sorcery but are not Aŋra followers are perhaps in a state of denial or indifference. But another way to look at it is that they are "realists". They all know that the mana they use is irreplaceable. However, they would be quick to point out that the amount they use (as an individual) is trivial next to the Sum of all Mana. And in fact, they are correct. They may even have an agenda that is otherwise "good" and be quite sure of their own goodness. (Becoming Fallen doesn't change any of this.)

The Prophecy of Vâ is pretty much inevitable, so a civilization that learns Maleficium is going to fall sooner or later. I wouldn't necessarily say it forces civilizations into two blocks, however. Some civilizations will know who is fallen and what it means; others won't. (I know this conflicts with my earlier statement that fallen get a diplo hit. My previous statement was incorrect.) Aŋra is visible as a religion (to player and AI; in fact, I think I will have dominant religion visible in the diplo list). However, "Fallen" is not really obvious to everyone (since GPs are "invisible", you can't even tell by units unless they start casting spells at you).

As I said, there are no explicit Good or Evil labels. In diplomacy, what you have are a set of "agendas". There are dozens of these, and they include things like slavery, magic, sorcery, anra, azzandara, etc (these are just coding labels; you won't actually see them). A positive score on these means the civ is likely to pursue it and/or have good relations with civs that pursue it. A negative score means they won't and will have bad relations. You could have a civilization that is more or less "good" because it has large negative values in sorcery, anra and slavery. But you also have more ambiguous situations like +azzandara and +slavery, or even +sorcery and -anra. You will see these play out as visible relationship modifiers (even though the specific agendas are not visible). For example, a civ with an anti-magic agenda might have this modifier, "We believe you are a civilization of sorcerers!" -5, even if it is not true (if they are anti-magic, they probably think all magic is sorcery).
 
You just made my day, even though my day was already good enough. I am extremely excited that this may one day become the FFH of Civ V and reinvigorate the Civ V modding community into new heights that will perhaps come to rival the glory days of Civ IV. Don't let me put too much pressure on you but do know that I, along with many others, love your work even without trying it out.

Soon, I will try out the alpha build to try it out for myself and I will assist you in the meager ways that I can.

Thanks!
 
Does anyone want to make religion icons for Éa?

If so, please give it a go and post complete or incomplete images here. Or just ideas or links to possibilities if you like.

General guidelines
They should be in color with transparent background, and "free-standing" without borders. FFH's (all except CoE and Empyrium) are good examples of the style we need. It will have to look good in both larger format (say 100 x 100) and at the three icon sizes used in game (religion overview, city banner, and text icon ... I'm not sure what these are off hand).

Azzandarayasna. I'm not set on this but I was thinking of using one of the more obscure Zoroastrianism symbols, perhaps the burning pot (see here).

Aŋra. The symbol of Ahriman is a peacock. This originates with a parable that says that Ahriman made the peacock to show that he was capable of creating beauty. (Hence, his destructive nature is a choice.) This is a tough one because it has to look like something at the smaller sizes. Possible templates here and here (I like the 2nd link as a possible pattern although the colors kind of suck... I think the eyes would still be visible after shrinking). Colors should be vivid like this.

The Weave of Éa. This should just be one of the (many) Celtic weave patterns. Probably in shades of green. Best if no IP issue (wiki commons is a good source).

The various Pantheistic cults are pretty obvious, though there is some room for creativity.
 
Making good progress on the mod again. See spoiler in the OP. The last build was converted to G&K, and the AI movement problem I had is now gone (thanks to some higher power). I'm now adding phase 2 content...
 
Hi.
I was looking at the OPs... and I got to think that maybe the mounted archers were not so great.
exact same strength as archer but only moving as a light horse (while needing 2 tech paths...and techs are real "expensive" here).

It seems you designed them as mounted archers as in "mounted infantry": archers that move using horses and unmount when fighting, instead of Horse-archers that are archers that fight on horses and use the bow from the back of the horse.

Maybe have them get an improve in melee str, between the archer value and the horse-value ?
(normally they should get roughly same melee value than corresponding unarmored horsemen :

the scyths or parthes or mongols horse-archers also used sabres/swords/axes/spear for close combat. It was just that they were more fearsome because of strating the fight way before (arrows) and after (arrows launched behind) and could bypass the melee fight doing hit and run arrowfight.

further, egyptian and assyrian chariot archers worked the same : the chariot provided a good plateform from which to launch arrows, which was not possible using horses (at that time). Then, mounted archers appeared and obsoleted the archer chariot as it was more nibble.

(to not mix with the greek/persic/hittite/celtic chariots that mostly did not use the bow from the chariot and just charged, used melee weapons and possible launched javelins)

so I'll easily be able to see them having
Horse Archers (300; 12/12; Horseback Riding & Archery) -> Bowed Cavalry (350; 15/15; War Horses & Bowyers; Yew)
-> Sagitarii (400; 18/18; Yew; upgrade from level 9 only)
instead of
Horse Archers (250p; 9/12; Horseback Riding & Archery) -> Bowed Cavalry (300p; 12/15; War Horses & Bowyers; Yew)
-> Sagitarii (350p; 15/18; Yew; upgrade from level 9 only)
respective archers being 9/12 / 12/15 and 15/18

And you could add "Chariot" or "Chariot archer" : 250p 9/12 animal husbandry, Archery, horses, 3mvt : it would reflect an early "archer mounted on something moving a bit faster".

and horses being
--Horse-mounted (non-armored: 4m; armored: 3m; all can move after attack; all require horses)--
Horsemen (250p; 12; H. Riding) -> Equites (300p; 15; War Horses)
Armored Cavalry (300p; 15; H. Riding; Iron) -> Cataphracts (350p; 18; W. Horses; Iron) -> Clibanarii (400p; 21; W. Horses; Mithril)

my 0.2
 
To be honest, the exact stats are the product of a hurried implementation without much thought. (I did put some serious thought into the various "lines", horse archers, infantry, etc.)

As a said in a post a few weeks ago, after playing through G&K I'm really enamored with the new 1-tile-ranged units (Gatling gunner and machine gunner). They have to get in close like a melee unit (and have "melee toughness") but attack without taking damage. Base Civ5 archers are used almost in the same way as siege (different targets, same placement), but the new 1-tile-ranged are used very differently than either siege or melee. For one thing, they actually work as fort/citadel defenders.

I'm 99% sure now that I'm going to make this the standard for both the archer line and all mounted-archers. Both will stand up well in melee (not as good as infantry or armored mounted, but still good) and they will used ranged attack with 1 tile radius. Only siege units will be able to attack at a distance. From a flavor perspective, you just have to imagine they are armed with swords and possibly armored (like the elves in LOTRs). From an AI perspective, this will work much better because the tactical AI still leaves its ranged units exposed.
 
So, next build will have spells and spell caster? Oooh.. shiny! #excited :lol:
I was under the impression that, until Firaxis releases the dll, we can't add spell effects like FfH (and a few other fantasy mods) had in CivIV. Maybe I'm wrong... :confused:

Edit:
I guess I mention this, because somewhere down the line, Naeralith will be adding spells.
 
Sure you can. The system is already built and working in my pre-alpha for things like take leadership, take residence in city, establish trade route, etc. These are just new unit actions that have specific prereqs and trigger some Lua logic. A "summoning spell" is really no different on the coding side (need some sound effects too, which I can do; I'm not sure about additional visual effects). The only thing that is really limiting me is lack of units (can't summon a demon if there is no demon unit).

(And before you ask, you are welcome to take code for Naeralith. The only problem is that the EaActions system is deeply embedded in mod-specific data structures... It may be hard to extract functional parts.)
 
Sure you can. The system is already built and working in my pre-alpha for things like take leadership, take residence in city, establish trade route, etc. These are just new unit actions that have specific prereqs and trigger some Lua logic. A "summoning spell" is really no different on the coding side (need some sound effects too, which I can do; I'm not sure about additional visual effects). The only thing that is really limiting me is lack of units (can't summon a demon if there is no demon unit).
Well, yes...that all is true. I guess I just meant I don't know if we can do cool visual effects yet.

(And before you ask, you are welcome to take code for Naeralith. The only problem is that the EaActions system is deeply embedded in mod-specific data structures... It may be hard to extract functional parts.)
Ah, thank you! I'll pass that along to Al and TheChanger! That's very generous of you.
 
Well, yes...that all is true. I guess I just meant I don't know if we can do cool visual effects yet.

I'm not sure yet either (I passed the question along to the experts on the sdk/lua forum). But really, I'm limited more by units and unit effects. I could make a fireball spell as Kael did in FFH by simply initing a "fireball unit", but first someone needs to make a fireball unit. There are other spells that would depend on new improvements, features or resources (w/ art). For example, see my Imprisonment spell from way back (never took a screen shot, unfortunately).

It's art that is limiting me. Not dll or anything else.
 
I'm not sure yet either (I passed the question along to the experts on the sdk/lua forum). But really, I'm limited more by units and unit effects. I could make a fireball spell as Kael did in FFH by simply initing a "fireball unit", but first someone needs to make a fireball unit. There are other spells that would depend on new improvements, features or resources (w/ art). For example, see my Imprisonment spell from way back (never took a screen shot, unfortunately).

It's art that is limiting me. Not dll or anything else.
Hmmm...I see. Well, thanks for clearing this up for me. :)
 
This is kind of a minor thing, but I'm implementing a new column in resources table that allows a different name for the resource on the map. So, for example, you can have "grapes" on the map but the trade resource is "wine"; "silkworms" -> "silk"; "shellfish" -> "pearls"; "cotton trees" -> "cotton"; "poppies" -> "opium"; etc. It's a totally minor cosmetic change, but it's been nagging at me for a while.
 
does this mean that as soon as you have grape, in the trade panel it appears as wine ?


or that when you have grapes in your BFC, you can unlock a building that produces wine ?
 
does this mean that as soon as you have grape, in the trade panel it appears as wine ?


or that when you have grapes in your BFC, you can unlock a building that produces wine ?

It's totally cosmetic. Wine is still RESOURCE_WINE and there is not really any new grapes resource. It is simply that the text you see on the map will be "grapes" rather than "wine"; the stuff that makes you happy and gets traded is "wine". (As I said, it's a very trivial thing. But it was annoying me with some new resources I need to add.)
 
More Phase 2 preview...

Pantheism and Theism policy brances. I posted general descriptions of these here. A few other things to note: Despite the obvious contrast between Pantheism and Theism, the more fundamental dichotomy is between Pantheism and Agrarianism. Almost all civilizations develop as either Pantheistic or Agrarian societies, usually but not always along racial lines (Sídhe and Man, respectively). The choice between these two branches has profound impact on how your civilization interacts with the land. On the other hand, Theism is more of an "accessory" policy branch (as are others) that can be used to advance a civilization in a particular area; it can't "sustain" you as Agrarianism or Pantheism. Pantheistic cities don't grow as large as Agrarian cities, but their smaller populations have significant (and unusual) advantages.

Pantheism (excludes Agrarianism & Theism)
Code:
Animal Lore -> 	Feral Bond   -/> Commune with Nature
Woods Lore -> 	Fellowship of Leaves -> 	Forest Dominion
Earth Lore -\-> Færie Lore     -\-> Through the Veil
  • Opener: free Druid; each Devout counts 20% less against appearance of GPs; unimproved land tiles become "wildlands"; The Weave of Éa will develop spontaneously in cities (this religion gives +1 food for each wildlands plot)
  • Animal Lore: animal resources become available from wildlands and provide +2 food & +1 production
  • Feral Bond: animal resources in wildlands provide +1 culture & mana; wild animal units no longer attack and they can be converted
  • Commune with Nature: +1 culture and +1 mana gained for every four wildlands plots owned (civilization-wide); all plot improvements are slowly regenerated to wildlands
  • Woods Lore: plant resources become available from wildlands and provide +2 food & science; no movement penalty for forest and jungle
  • Fellowship of Leaves: plant resources in wildlands provide +1 culture & mana; forest and jungle improvements are slowly reverted to wildlands
  • Forest Dominion: cultural borders expand spontaneously through adjacent unimproved forest and jungle into unowned or foreign-owned territory; world-wide, all forests and jungles gain +5 strength (affects feature spread; gain is applied each time a civilization adopts this policy)
  • Earth Lore: earth resources become available from wildlands and provide +1 production, gold, culture & mana; no movement penalty for hills
  • Færie Lore: can communicate with the Fey, the minor spirits of individual trees, rocks and so on (sometimes called the "little gods")
  • Through the Veil: can communicate with the major Spirits of Éa (Fagus, Epona, Aveta, Ægir, etc.; see Pantheistic Cults above)
  • Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to Mana
Notes:
  1. All land Civ5 resources have been categorized as animal, plant or earth (should be obvious which ones fit in which class; silkworms are animals, btw).
  2. Wildlands act as an "improvement" that you don’t need to build, but you still need the appropriate tech to make the resource tradable (Animal Husbandry for horses, Hunting for furs, Calendar for silks, etc.). You won't get as much yield boost as the actual improvement, at least not initially, but wildlands become better with more Pantheism policies and with specific Pantheistic cults. (Sea plots and resources are treated normally.)
  3. Færie Lore gives contact with The Fey, which are an actual civilization that is invisible to players without this policy. The Queen of the Fey has gold, a few resources and some other interesting items to trade (including spells and some artifacts).
  4. Through the Veil gives contact with a number of the major Spirits of Éa (probably a dozen or so). Each has a relationship level with you and can give quests as if they were a city state. As friends or allies, they can provide mana, resources, units and/or other things. If allied with you, a Spirit becomes a physical unit under your control. These individuals act as great people in most ways, and can even take leadership of your civilization...


Theism (excludes Pantheism)
Code:
Mysticism 		-> Monastic Tradition	
Way of the Wise		-> Heaven’s Mandate
Priesthood 		-> Holy Order  	-\> Theocracy (requires Devout leader)
  • Opener: free Priest; each Devout counts 20% less against appearance of GPs
  • Mysticism: +5 divine favor in capital
  • Monastic Tradition: +2 culture from monasteries; Follower effect: can build monasteries
  • Way of the Wise: +20% culture in capital; Follower effect, +2 culture in follower city
  • Heaven’s Mandate: +3 divine favor in capital; Founder effect, +1 divine favor for every follower city
  • Priesthood: Priests can build Temples; Enhancer effect: religion spreads 34% faster
  • Holy Order: Units with Azzandarayasna religion gain +20% combat; you can now spawn Paladin GPs (since these are dual-class Warrior/Devouts, they can come from either of these two "GP point pools")
  • Theocracy: +20% gold in capital; Founder effect, +1 gold for every follower city
  • Finisher: ⅓ of culture converted to divine favor.
Notes:
  1. Follower, Founder and Enhancer effects modify the Azzandarayasna religion just as base Civ5 beliefs (the belief is added when any civ takes this policy).
  2. Divine favor is useless unless a civilization has Azzandarayasna as civ-wide dominant religion (otherwise, the civ uses mana and all divine favor yields are set to zero)
  3. There are no "faith purchases" as in base, neither units nor buildings. Divine Favor is used to cast spells (large accumulation also makes the appearance of Devout GPs more likely)
  4. Monasteries (cost: 200p; require Azzandarayasna in city); +2 science and +2 divine favor; 1 slot for the “disciple” specialist (+4 divine favor and more likely to generate Priest GPs)
  5. Holy Order combat bonus: G&K actually introduced religion for all units, based on the city of origin when they are built (you can't see it, but it's there; it only affects gameplay for missionaries/prophets). I'm making this visible in the unit panel for all units. It will be used for Holy Order and probably other things.
  6. Only Priests can spread Azzandarayasna. "Missionary" and "Inquisitor" are promotions that Priests can take (the former makes them better at spreading religion; the latter allows them to remove heathen religions).

There is an altered Theism branch for the fallen. When a civilization falls, all of its Theism policies are converted to the "mirror" policy below, and this branch appears in place of the branch above. (Technically it is a different branch with different policies, though many have the same name.)

Theism [for Fallen civs] (excl: Pantheism)
Code:
Mysticism 		-> Monastic Tradition		
Way of the Wicked	-> Hell’s Mandate
Priesthood 		-> Unholy Order	-\> Theocracy (requires Devout leader)
  • Opener: free Fallen Priest; each Devout counts 20% less against appearance of GPs
  • Mysticism: +5 mana in capital
  • Monastic Tradition: +2 science from monasteries; Follower effect: can build monasteries
  • Way of the Wicked: +20% science in capital; Follower effect, +2 science in follower city
  • Hell’s Mandate: +3 mana in capital; Founder effect, +1 mana for every 4 followers
  • Priesthood: Priests can build Temples; Enhancer effect: religion spreads 50% farther
  • Unholy Order: Units with Aŋra religion inflict the Cursed promotion on units they attack; you can now spawn Eidolon GPs (basically "fallen paladins"; since these are dual-class Warrior/Devouts, they can come from either of these two "GP point pools")
  • Theocracy: +20% science in capital; Founder effect, +1 science for every 4 followers
  • Finisher: ⅓ of culture converted to mana.
Notes:
  1. Follower, Founder and Enhancer effects modify the Aŋra religion.
  2. Monastery is altered from above, giving mana instead of divine favor (the disciples specialist is likewise altered to give mana instead of divine favor).
  3. Cursed promotion gives -20% to attack and has a 20% chance of going away each turn
 
This is a fantastic design. This sounds like a tripple A launch title, not a mod.
 
That is interesting :goodjob:

So, cmiiw, when players found the religion, is it without beliefs and players can not choose beliefs (in contrast with vanilla G&K)? The belief then will be added to the religion whenever a player adopt the policy branch?

On artistic aspect of religion, will the major Spirits have diplomacy screen (like regular civ) or just bland one like city states?
 
So, cmiiw, when players found the religion, is it without beliefs and players can not choose beliefs (in contrast with vanilla G&K)? The belief then will be added to the religion whenever a player adopt the policy branch?
Azzandarayasna and Aŋra gain beliefs when certain policies are adopted (by anyone). The Weave of Éa and the pantheistic cults all have fixed beliefs that never change. (Perhaps I'll have something that can be added later through a ritual, but for now they are fixed.) This is a case where I'm reducing "customization" from base Civ5, but I need each religion to have a specific flavor and effect.

At the UI level, you never see anything like the base "choose religion" or "choose beliefs". Instead, you just have prophecies or rituals that appear where worker builds normally appear (same place as spells or great works by other GPs). Everything else happens "under the hood".

On artistic aspect of religion, will the major Spirits have diplomacy screen (like regular civ) or just bland one like city states?
I have large 2D portraits for both the Spirits of Éa and city states (a unique one for each). So I'm starting with the city state interface for both but they will both evolve over time (to include specific 2D image, at least). The Spirits will also appear in the diplo list, probably like a city state but in their own area.
 
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