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

The only reason to build all of the Tomes, using the Tome of Tomes is to mess up other players. Only specific Tomes should be of interest to a given CIV based on the Techs it is developing.

As an alternative for the Tome of Tomes
*don't allow construction of any other tome without the necessary pre-requisites
*give the owner of the Tome of Tomes a fraction of the standard benefits from any other Tomes that have been created by a different Civilization.

well, messing up other civs with no cost (25turns of a GS without further cost) is a cheap need-to-do investment.

further it enables you to have free reign on the secondary (and tertiary) tech paths you will follow once you've got many science-boosting techs... you'll be able to decide latter which tech you'll want to improve, depending on the ressources you discover, knowing that you have -25cost on all important techs (-20 due to tome, and additional -5% due to Tomes of Tomes)(plus the boosts due to "research oriented techs").

I agree.

Lplate said:

As an alternative for the Tome of Tomes
*don't allow construction of any other tome without the necessary pre-requisites
*give the owner of the Tome of Tomes a fraction of the standard benefits from any other Tomes that have been created by a different Civilization.

Click to expand...

I like this a lot (from a flavor point of view) but it makes other Tomes less valuable to make later. But I could eliminate that problem by just giving the boost whenever a Tome exists at all, whether owned by a different player or the same player. So, the owner of the Tome of Tomes gets 1/3 of the benefit of the Tome of Beasts if someone else has it. But they get 1.33 benefit if they have it themselves. (But I think I'll remove the small general bonus for all techs.)

The research-focused civ might still make a run on Tomes (and a little of that is OK), but it is limited by the other prereqs now.

Just a note on progress and what I need from you.

The merchant AI is working really well now. It's fun for me as developer so see the "thought" process in the Live Tuner. They look at many options weighting them by cost, time-discounted gain, travel time and other area opportunities (exactly as outlined in posts 89 & 99). They don't consider options that another GP from the same civ is headed for. If there are too many options (>50), then a city size heuristic is applied to lower the number the next time (for performance). Once they make a decision, they go to the plot and perform the action. If the action doesn't work for some reason, they reconsider. There is also the possibility for the "Civ AI" to interrupt a GP to allow it to reconsider if a new (possibly urgent) opportunity arises. However, generally speaking, an AI merchant doesn't reconsider options until it has gone to and finished its current selected option.

What I have now is a "debug build". Each full civ spawns exactly 3 merchants, which can do all merchant actions unconstrained by tech/policy prereqs. I don't want to release this build in the OP because it is just going to confuse people. I'll probably release it here in a post (in a day or so) for anyone following that is interested in seeing AI in action (or AI code). Unfortunately, once I get going on another GP type, I'll be adding another long list of bugs to work through.

I'm kind of racing with G&K. My goal is to get these GP AIs all working, plus AI selection of techs & policies, and all "phase 1 features" (post 3 & 4) before G&K release. What will we have then? Well, an excruciatingly unbalanced mod that only has placeholder art. Not at all appealing, is it? But at least then I can start to do some really course balancing adjustments while converting to G&K and adding phase 2 stuff (new race, religion, and some other mechanics).

what I need from you

Continued evaluation of ideas is always helpful. I don't always follow suggestions but I always consider them carefully.

2D art. There are really two parts. You can PM me or just post here if interested in helping:

1. Looking at my tech tree, you will see that they all just have the "sailing" icon. This is kind of drudgery work, but if anyone wants to fill in the appropriate icons (or add custom icons) to tables, I would really appreciated it. (I code all tables in SQL, but it is very easy to see where icon tags need to go.)
2. I have about 100 portraits going in to phase one (maybe 200 - 300 with phase 2). These are all jpegs that need conversion to dds format (using Gimp). My mod has a sort of "dynamic scaling" function that allows it to use portraits with different aspect ratios, but this requires some fairly specific file naming and jpg->dds conversion rules to be followed. I also will need an "icon" version of each person cropped out from the original. I'll be happy to talk specifics with anyone who is interested.

3D art. Unfortunately, 10000 lines of code don't make a fantasy mod if it doesn't have fantasy unit art. It may be best to wait a while on this on the chance that unit art will get easier with G&K (but who knows?). Eventually, I'll just bite the bullet and learn how to do this myself, but that may be a long long time from now. Until this happens, however, the mod is (at best) in a "development/testing" stage and not a real game.

Pazyryk said:

1. Looking at my tech tree, you will see that they all just have the "sailing" icon. This is kind of drudgery work, but if anyone wants to fill in the appropriate icons (or add custom icons) to tables, I would really appreciated it. (I code all tables in SQL, but it is very easy to see where icon tags need to go.)

Click to expand...

I'm guessing this can be done in an XML editor, correct? (I've been dreading trying to fool around with CivV, since we've no .dll access. ) If so, I might be able to help out a little. I can't do it all (unless you want it to take forever), but I can probably find a bunch of icons from sources like FfH.

rocklikeafool said:

I'm guessing this can be done in an XML editor, correct? (I've been dreading trying to fool around with CivV, since we've no .dll access. ) If so, I might be able to help out a little. I can't do it all (unless you want it to take forever), but I can probably find a bunch of icons from sources like FfH.

Click to expand...

No, just directly into SQL. If you open any of my SQL files in ModBuddy, they look like this:


It's a heck of a lot easier to read and edit than XML, so no need for an editor. PortraitIndex and IconAtlas are the last two columns in my Technologies.sql file. A lot of these could be filled in from icons that already exist in Civ5. For those that need to be added...well...unfortunately, I don't have any clue how to make an "icon atlas". But others have covered that in tutorials. Adding one to the game (once made) is easy.

Technologies.sql is attached below if you want to give it a go. If you only alter the PortraitIndex and IconAtlas columns, then I can just paste it back into my working file.

The taking forever part isn't a real problem here. It's going to be a while before lack of icons is the most important thing missing from the mod.

For the jpg--> dds + renaming.
I may be able to do some.
I've got gimp, and if it is only a "resave under a new format" it should be easy.

Just outline for me the general procedure and renaming (I can even resize and do some close-up if you want me to). And give the portraits somewhere.

give me the ending sizes for portrait and miniature;..
(I'm not sure I'll be able to do "round" miniatures..)

However, I can't promise a lot of work as my wife's expecting for the end of the month

Calavente said:

However, I can't promise a lot of work as my wife's expecting for the end of the month

Click to expand...

That probably takes priority.

Lplate has offered to try making some icons from 2D portraits. I'll PM you some art and specific instructions for resizing/naming.

Pazyryk said:

Technologies.sql is attached below if you want to give it a go. If you only alter the PortraitIndex and IconAtlas columns, then I can just paste it back into my working file.

The taking forever part isn't a real problem here. It's going to be a while before lack of icons is the most important thing missing from the mod.

Click to expand...

I'll give it a go. If you've any portraits that you have permission to use, then just PM me them in zip files or something.

Anyway, it definitely sounds like something I can learn fairly quickly.

It might make it easier for the Heldeofol titles if you use the format, x the y, e.g. Lothin the Fearsome.
These could be adopted whenever the condition is met but the old title could be kept instead. I wouldn't let two different Heldeofol use the same title.

Some suggestions;
the Usurper - changed leader
the True King - GP made leader for a second or subsequent time
the Tyrant - used population to hurry production
the First - first Heldeofol Civilization to get a name
the Merciless - razed a city
the Lord of the Horde - largest army
the Fork-Tongued - declared war on someone they had had open Borders with
the Sea Serpent - largest navy
the Butcher - killed 10 or more units in a single turn
the Dragon Helmed - slew a dragon
the Popular - happiest ( Heldeofol) people
the Magnificent - most (Heldeofol) Culture
the Oppressor - Dungeon in at least 50% of cities
the Overlord - has a puppet state
the One - conquered the last other Heldeofol CIV
the Drunkard - zymurgy tech
the Master - slavery policy branch
the Mad - berserker rage policy
the Merciful - made peace with a more powerful nation (so what if it's false advertising)
the Dark - Maleficium tech
the Wise - completed a Prophecy
the Opulent - richest Heldeofol
the Iron Fist - Iron Working tech
the World Renowned - trade routes with over 50% of city states and civs
the Great - largest landmass

I like those titles. But they are not necessarily exclusive with a "prefix" title. You could have King Yrd the Mad. I like the idea of adding these sort of suffex titles to GPs, both leader and non-leader, and for both races. A sage king could take a title like King Hoddrofnir the Wise. Or a non-leader could take the title Agnar the Dragon Slayer. There will be an event system that can trigger these kind of name prefixes or suffixes, but that is going to be down the road a bit.

Back to the art topic:

I have to apologize to folks here: I've had a serious change of heart about how to proceed with icon art for 2D portraits. The problem is permission. We all know that modders don't generally bother with it. My own moral compass tells me that it is one thing to display an image whole and unmanipulated (with copyright or signature in place, and credit given), and another to crop, edit and move bits into an icon atlases that will likely be passed around to other mods. A lawyer might disagree. But that is the opinion I have from at least two artists that display art on the internet. I've taken a huge amount of inspiration from the art I have found, and I'd really like to show it off in an "unmolested" form in this mod. Anyway, this is a discussion that I don't really want to have here, but please PM me if you have strong opinions.

In any case, my original idea for "individual-specific" icons for each GP is not going to happen. For now, I'll just leave it with the 5 GP icons from base. I'm withdrawing my request for help resizing/naming images too, since this only takes me 2 minutes after I finally decide what image I need. My request for "grunt work" in adding base icons to the technology table (post 126) is still valid, if anyone is interested (I'm not doing a good job of selling that job, am I?). And we still 3D art, of course.

For phase 1, all wonders are moving back into cities. They are still GP builds rather than city builds. That is, they are built by Engineers (or Sage for Great Library) rather than selected as a city construction. However, the Engineer or Sage builds it from a city plot rather than a non-city plot.

The reason is that I have been unable to overcome multiple issues related to the use of wonder art as an improvement. When we can finally work with improvement art (perhaps after G&K and definitely after dll release), then all or many of these will move back to being "plot improvements".

ok for me (if you don't need help for 2D art conversion... not my pb).
from an IP (intellectual property) point of view, you can change/modify the images from others... if they give you the permission to do so. constraining isn't it ?

Couple of thoughts:
Will there be a warning on the turn before tech research is completed? A player may want to avoid completing research and incurring the tech maintenance cost until some objective, e.g. capturing a tile with the desired resource.

Planning the right techs to research to take advantage of potentially available resources may be critical to success. Would you consider including a Tribe/Civilization whose special ability is that the location of all resources (or perhaps a certain selection of resources) is revealed to them when founded?
Possible name: Bradan Feasa
Founding condition: first to enable Folklore policy
Maybe give them a GP on founding; Fineagas (sage) or Fionn (sage or warrior)

Alternatively, would you consider some world wonders to provide specific bonuses - someone's heart could be broken if they've been crafting their Civilization with a vision of massive walled cities defended by arquebussmen, when they learn all of the Blasting Powder is on another continent.

General update: Sage and Engineer AI is now working in addition to Merchant AI. I'm hoping to release a new build late this week. It will have Warriors disabled (and you can only play Man) but the other 4 GP classes should be able to do everything advertised with full AI function. It's still going to have about 20% non-functional policies and civ traits. Not alpha yet.

Lplate said:

Couple of thoughts:
Will there be a warning on the turn before tech research is completed? A player may want to avoid completing research and incurring the tech maintenance cost until some objective, e.g. capturing a tile with the desired resource.

Click to expand...

I think my answer is... we'll see. It's sort of a tutorial function. If a player reads the doc or has played once, then they should understand that they need to plan research with their ultimate objectives very clearly in mind. Anyway, with my limited play testing, it seems like the player is "waiting for the tech to improve the resource" rather than "waiting for the resource that they already have the tech for".

Lplate said:

Planning the right techs to research to take advantage of potentially available resources may be critical to success. Would you consider including a Tribe/Civilization whose special ability is that the location of all resources (or perhaps a certain selection of resources) is revealed to them when founded?
Possible name: Bradan Feasa
Founding condition: first to enable Folklore policy
Maybe give them a GP on founding; Fineagas (sage) or Fionn (sage or warrior)

Click to expand...

Again, my testing here is very limited (really just short runs while debugging). But even with the free tech for humans, it is likely that you will have your starting continent pretty well explored before you are researching your 3rd tech. And the first 2 techs don't count at all for knowledge maintenance. Your first (free pick for Man) is probably going to be one of the 4 food techs depending on your starting plot. Then you have a very hard choice whether to go for a second 1st tier tech (for most resources) or go for a 2nd tier tech to gain a civ name (needed to start generating GPs and settlers). But I haven't seen any situation where lack of knowledge of local resources is a problem. Having said that, I do have hopes down the road to make exploration more challenging than base Civ5 (where one can explore the entire continent if not world before 2000 BC). But we can deal with that later.

Lplate said:

Alternatively, would you consider some world wonders to provide specific bonuses - someone's heart could be broken if they've been crafting their Civilization with a vision of massive walled cities defended by arquebussmen, when they learn all of the Blasting Powder is on another continent.

Click to expand...

Again, I think you are addressing a non-existent problem. I've generally made resources visible before the "enabling tech". E.g., horses from game start; copper and iron at Mining; blasting powder at Chemistry; mithril at Alchemy. OK, you won't know about the latter two for a while. But other than those, you should have a very good idea what is around very early. (However, you might actually decide not to go for a tech for a nearby resource. It's actually a decision in the mod and sometimes a very difficult one.)

Not sure what artwork you need, but before I have a variety of pictures stored from a writing project I was doing for a novel but never finished the background. Its largely cities or people (there's a couple of example below) which I can send if you want. Might work as backgrounds for the start or various other things if needed.

@MrCasperTom,

These are all good, except the middle one is too small. Please let me know by PM if these are yours and I have permission to use them.

In Erebus, civilisations could be positioned on the map with a bit of regard for Flavor, e.g. Malakim in the desert. Someone playing Ea may want to play in the mould of a particular archetype;
Piratical Slavers, Iron wielding orcs from the Underdark, Treehugging archers, Plains dwelling horsemen, Philosophers of the frozen hills, etc.
The starting position could make certain archetypes unfeasible. A player can of course always restart a game if the starting position doesn't suit. It could save a bit of restarting if they could select preferred tribe local flavors during map generation, i.e. Coastal, hilliness, latitude, features, bonuses.

I presume that the AI will choose it's naming strategy and tech path based on it's environment, so a flavour wouldn't need to be defined in advance for all of the AI.

As for units art, I suggest to take a look at the Faerun Scenario available in the mod browser (latest version of a couple days ago), at last a bunch of relevant fantasy units have been successfully designed for CiV: mages, druids, giants, assassins, clerics, paladins, demons and.... dragons! Yay! Nice work

Lplate said:

In Erebus, civilisations could be positioned on the map with a bit of regard for Flavor, e.g. Malakim in the desert. Someone playing Ea may want to play in the mould of a particular archetype;
Piratical Slavers, Iron wielding orcs from the Underdark, Treehugging archers, Plains dwelling horsemen, Philosophers of the frozen hills, etc.
The starting position could make certain archetypes unfeasible. A player can of course always restart a game if the starting position doesn't suit. It could save a bit of restarting if they could select preferred tribe local flavors during map generation, i.e. Coastal, hilliness, latitude, features, bonuses.

I presume that the AI will choose it's naming strategy and tech path based on it's environment, so a flavour wouldn't need to be defined in advance for all of the AI.

Click to expand...

This is in the plans, but pretty far down the road. I may even try to refine it more than just "forest start", etc. Since so many civs are resource based, I thought I could add options like "Elephant Start", "Stone & Marble Start", etc. I probably won't change the map at all but it would be easy to sort through existing start locations and plop the player at the one that best matches their choice.

texdionis said:

As for units art, I suggest to take a look at the Faerun Scenario available in the mod browser (latest version of a couple days ago), at last a bunch of relevant fantasy units have been successfully designed for CiV: mages, druids, giants, assassins, clerics, paladins, demons and.... dragons! Yay! Nice work

Click to expand...

Wow! Thanks for the heads up. (Why isn't the author posting here at civfanatics?)