S3rgeus
Emperor
Woops, sorry, the PM notification is really small at the top of the screen and I never remember to check up there! I completely understand you not reading the books for this - they're enormous and that would be a huge ask!
I'd be happy to provide some snippets of Lua/C++ for specific features on request, but I've got limited time to work on modding and don't think I'd have enough to be a regular on another mod and still work on this one.
I completely understand if you can only make these units for someone who can join on as a regular for your mod. On the specific models you mentioned:
- Trollocs - Yes, multiple models for this one would be awesome. Based on a quick Google, it looks to me like WH Beastman Gor looks quite similar to a trolloc. Some trollocs in the books also have beak-like mouths. Here's some artwork with trollocs in them that I think captures the right kind of image.
- Myrddraal - These are usually described as cloaked rather than armored in the books (and if their cloaks hang limp "unaffected by wind" then that is even better - plus I believe easier to animate) and they're bald as well as eyeless. They do fight with black swords though.
- Draghkar - I'd put this one on the backburner compared to the others if we can't get animations like the Draghkar from the books - think sort of like the Dementors draining souls in the Harry Potter movies. Physically I quite like this artwork for Draghkar.
- Darkhounds - I saw some of these units and they definitely look awesome. I can reskin units no problem - but have you had any success with anything like having their running animation leave blackened footprints on the ground? I saw some serious progress with NomadOrWhat's wizard with adding new particle effects to other unit skeletons.
- Completely understand here - we need to do more design work on which Heroes go into the mod and such before making any 3D models.
Related to the work NomadOrWhat did on his wizard, has there been much success having different units use arbitrary particle effects from other units? Like a spellcaster that throws the catapult's city-attack as a fireball? I've kind of lost track of where the 3D tech has gotten for CiV mods, but I see a lot of very interesting first steps. I just know that whenever I open up Blender it eats my whole day trying new stuff out!
I think I have a few conflicting ideas with the way this would work. The Last Battle victory condition does replace the Time victory, but I'm in favor of "promoting" it from Time's 'second class citizen' status as a victory. Firaxis have balanced CiV so that players going for different victory conditions will all be approaching their endgame and final victory at around the same time if played with relatively equivalent skill - but the Time victory only really happens if everyone suitably hamstrings one another that no one wins a 'primary' victory.
But if balanced like the Firaxis victories, the Last Battle would occur around the same sort of time that players would be heading toward different victory conditions. What if the Last Battle were relative to 'world era' like the Trolloc Wars? We could even gate the other victories via techs on the tree that trigger the Last Battle. The science victory is easily gated due to its dependence on tech, but I think a suitably swing-y boosting tech for both diplo and culture would force diplo/culture players' hands to triggering that. What we don't want is someone who's really good at civ to run away with the game and never see the Last Battle because they always win before then.
I think having the normal victories as a stop-gap towards the Last Battle will put off a lot of players. I think once someone has completed a victory condition, the game feels very over. The only reason I've ever hit the "one more turn" button is to fire my entire nuke stockpile for fun. I see what you mean about changing the way these work - making them less 'final' - but I think that centralizes the game a bit much - there's only one real way to win and it definitely requires an army. Being able to win without one has always been one of civ's strengths.
I'll reply to a lot of your second post here as well, because we touch on some related topics there.
In terms of balance, I don't think we should prescribe a similar country-split of Light/Dark as the books. I don't think they're unbalanced if too many people choose the Shadow (remember: only one Shadow player can win, so they need to kill their rivals as well "only one first among the Dark One's Chosen" and all that - whereas the Light players can win as a group). Even if most/all of the world sides with the Shadow, it's still a massive slaughter.
I think this avoids players picking a side just to game the system. Players who choose the Shadow are at war with all other players, so it's not an effective way to stall to complete a different victory type midway through. Players who side with the Light can band together somewhat - but that may be restricted by geography, and is mitigated by Shadowspawn cropping up all across the map. In fact, the path of minimum internal turmoil is likely to be choosing the side you've leaned toward thus far (if you factor in what we've been talking about for bonuses/penalties of choosing against your actions thus far). I think anyone who wins a science/cultural/diplo victory in the middle of the Last Battle should already have been well on their way to winning the game that way - rather than for the war to drag on long enough that anyone might win another way before it's over.
I also think the competitiveness between civs will be a big factor of keeping the Last Battle balanced - particularly between Shadow players. If one Shadow player is about to win a cultural victory, the others will turn on him. This kind of setup can also create the great betrayals you've mentioned. Suppose you've been leaning mostly Light throughout the game, but you realize leading up to the Last Battle that one of your neighbors is going to win a cultural victory before you can win a science one. They've been leaning Light (as far as your espionage tells you). You make the ultimate betrayal. You side with the Shadow and tear them to pieces to crush their cultural hopes.
And what about those games that truly go into territory that would normally be caught by the Time 2050 victory? (This has honestly never happened to me, and I've played a lot of CiV. Maybe it happens more in specific circumstances I'm unfamiliar with?) I'm a fan of the Dark One deciding that all of humanity isn't worth it after a certain amount of time. An unmanageable sea of Shadowspawn that crushes even the most competent human tactician. I think "everyone dies" is a more apt description of a game where *no one* could get a victory together by this point.
The way I see the Last Battle victory condition working, after our last few posts, is something like this (I use the imperative for all these descriptions to make them clearer, feel free to question each one regardless of if I pose the way they work as optional):
The religion system is being rebranded and directed into a relationship with this victory condition (which is cool - it's a bit strange that religion doesn't really tie in to any of the existing victory conditions). Religion is now the Path to the Light (and referred to as Paths rather than religions), and by accruing faith you can choose a particular Path and spread it to other cities/nations. Your Path provides bonuses to you and any city following it in a similar-but-changed structure to the Founder/Follower beliefs in base CiV.
However, you are also presented with choices throughout the game that allow you to perform actions in favor of the Shadow in exchange for more immediate, short-term bonuses for yourself (potentially long-term ramifications for the world and negatives for other players). However, doing so is done at the cost of faith and possibly even weakening of your Founder beliefs on your Path. (I say Founder beliefs get weakened to avoid tipping your hand to other civs following your Path who would notice weakening in Follower beliefs, but that may not be an issue? It could be a form of 'espionage' to follow someone else's Path. Weakening follower beliefs certainly has a more immediate drawback on the Shadow-choosing player to counteract the bonus they're getting from the Shadow's boon.)
These actions accumulate over time to represent an overall 'leaning' of your civ toward the Light or Shadow. It's worth discussing how discoverable one civ's Light/Shadow balance is for others through espionage/other means.
The Last Battle is triggered at a fixed 'world era' that is equivalent to Earth's early Renaissance - the end of the WoT techs. However, 'world era' is determined by 'half of the civs reaching it or one civ reaching the era beyond it'. You can game that system by crippling but leaving alive enough civs that they hold back the world era from reaching the final one. So, we do something slightly different from what you'd expect. The 'world era' that triggers the Last Battle is the second to last era. There are only three techs in the last era and they represent the pinnacle of what any WoT civ achieved (books timeline, not AoL) in culture, diplomacy, and science. The science tech unlocks the final piece of the science victory project (see after this Last Battle section for discussion on cleansing saidin vs. breaking the seals). The culture and diplo techs I'm currently less clear on, but they'll need to be something essential like a wonder with a targeted ability that can push them over the edge for the victory of that type.
So one of the above triggers goes off (half of civs reach the penultimate era or someone researches a game-ending tech) and the Last Battle bursts onto the scene in full. Each civ is presented a choice: side with the Light or Shadow. But their choices are weighted differently based on their Light/Shadow balanced of Path vs Boon during the game (can we make a proper noun out of Boon for gifts given by the Shadow? That sounds like the kind of name they'd give to gifts from the Dark One in the vein of "Great Lord" and "Chosen" replacing "Dark One" and "Forsaken").
For these bonuses/penalties, I'm glad you liked the rebellions ideas! I'm a big fan of some of the ones you listed here (my favorites in bold):
I think being "turned" to either side in the Last Battle is being defeated in the game. Rebellions to the other side (not necessarily related to unhappiness - I can have rebellions triggered for any reason we like - in this case an ongoing thing proportional to how much your population disagrees with your decision. I figure Light-side rebels will join other nearby Light side nations and Shadow rebellions will be controlled directly by the Shadowspawn player.)
And then war. *dramatic music*
And whether it's a world of swarming Shadow-worshipping madmen that duke it out until only one stands victorious, a few staid followers of the Light who are swept under an overwhelming tide of Shadow, a cunning few Light followers who capitalize on the weaknesses of constantly bickering Shadow players to achieve a hard-won victory, to an entire world united under the banners of Rand al'Thor (dramatic name-dropping, not suggesting we use him) that fight bravely (spoilers?) and defeat the Dark One and save all of Creation - I think we've created an awesome ending to the game.
*deep breaths* What do you think? I've been considering this structure while we've been discussing changes to this victory type and I think it strikes a great balance between flavor, balance, and gameplay fun. But do question me on it - there must be things I haven't considered.
A quick side note: black and white choices are drastically easier from a programming perspective, because all I need to do is present the choice, and then set game state based on the feedback from that (player or AI). Organic systems that evolve over the course of the game (which definitely describes the above Last Battle victory condition) are dramatically more complicated because we need to keep track of all of the variables that are involved with either side and persist them with the player and have AIs make reasonable choices based on those values. (The AI will need to use these variables to make choices even if they don't have a final one, because they need to consider whether Light or Shadow benefits them more and weigh the benefits each provides accordingly.) You can use randomness to fuzz the logic, but eventually the code has to reduce down to:
Code:
if (lightPoints >= 0)
// do Light side stuff
else
// do Shadow stuffCaveat for all of you technical readers, we could avoid the above decision structure by making the civ AIs adaptive machine learning systems. I am one man and can't do that in a timely manner - though it would be crazy fun to try. Or we could make the AI capable of 'simulating' the game with 'assumptions' based on choices they can make. Either of these approaches would require a fairly beastly upgrade to civ's minimum specs. And strictly speaking we're not making an AI mod.
The Science Victory: Cleansing Saidin vs. Sealing the Bore
I'm not hugely attached to the Cleansing of Saidin being the scientific victory, and like you said, Sealing the Bore fits better into the timeline of eras that we're going for. I think this is a slightly separate-but-related decision to the above Last Battle wall of text.
Actually, just from quick consideration, I think I prefer Sealing the Bore. The science victory in CiV is the only remaining victory that can favor turtling up and not interacting with others (except for research agreements - and an otherwise isolationist approach probably prescribes going tall rather than wide to avoid war). The diplo victory makes you chase CSes (in our case, Ajahs and other civs supporting them), the cultural victory has you scouring the map for great works, and the domination and Last Battle victories are definitely very interactive.
What if the Science victory required finding the Seals on the map? Can we make that competitive? Where some civs are trying to protect the Seals and others to destroy them? (fun synergy: final tech that triggers the Last Battle reveals where the seals are/who has them already) It would be awesome if trying to win a science victory could put you in a position where you needed to steal a Seal from someone who was trying to keep them safe (either by conquest or espionage?). But then how do civs that are protecting the Seals ever win a science victory? Are there two 'competing' science victories? (that's kind of weird?) Or is 'protecting' the seals a mechanism ostensibly used to stop another civ from winning a science victory? I assume the Seals get broken if where they're held is captured by Shadowspawn?
It's a nascent idea, so there are a lot of unformed things and unknowns, but what do you think of the overall idea?
Awesome idea, thanks for doing that! Good to get more perspective.
I'm inclined to agree about the "feel." The word "omen" was used quite a lot in the books in reference to this (I think?) and whenever we're talking about it, we seem to use 'omen' as a clarification that we both understand right away. I think other readers will similarly recognize it, but I'm still not sure how to turn it into a suitable phrase for a Path.
The holiday I remember most clearly is Bel Tine, but I think that was Two Rivers specific? Taking a name from one of the holidays specifically sounds like a good idea. Do we have a comprehensive list anywhere?
Even after you mention it, I'm not sure I remember this. (Maybe something about watchers for Luthair Hawkwing's return - but not much.) Still, we're short, and if it's there then let's use it!
It's a good point, though honestly I had to check to remember the association between Jendai and the Sea Folk (it's been too long since I read the books). Like you said before, the Water Way and the Amayar are only really associated tangentially to the Sea Folk in the books. Is it worth possibly merging the Amayar and the Sea Folk into a single Atha'an Miere civ like Firaxis did with Polynesia?
I thought of doing this at first as well, but it breaks down pretty quickly, like you've said.
Is Wyld a name/word used in the books? I haven't come up with more for this particularly.
This ties in with what we're discussing above with the Last Battle, Paths vs Boons (I'm liking that name more) and such. Just thought I'd say I'm definitely interested into getting into specifics of design for beliefs! We should nail down the overarching victory first though.
I don't think using Ten Nations as an actual era name is a good idea, like you've pointed out there are a few problems with it. I think leaving some eras to be like normal civ is good too, because we don't want to overload the game with other stuff that drowns out the core gameplay.
It is really weird! The naming system used by the game is a bit different from that - I definitely think we should name the False Dragons, but at least in base CiV it works like this: "Great Scientist (Isaac Newton)". Which becomes: "0 (Mazrim Taim)", because the CiV code makes some weird assumptions. How we fix this will depend on the technical side of it, I think, because if it's completely impossible to pull a string starting "False" out of the DB then we'll need to avoid "False Dragon" as a name of anything unfortunately. Hopefully, there's something in the gameplay C++ code that's doing a dumb "if I can make this a bool, do it" which I can change.
I think the Band of the Red Hand makes a good Manetheren UU. Alternatively I was debating if Manetheren should have two UBs (or a non-combat UU or maybe even a UI) but their UA swaps out the majority of their 'normal' units with 'Band of the Red Hand' equivalents (that are stronger/give each other bonuses/etc).
Masema's madness and the whole Dragonsworn ordeal kicked off in Ghealdan and Queen Alliandre became quite important in the books. I do agree that they're minor compared to a lot of the others though.
. Trollocs should be fine, I'll start working on them either this weekend or next week as school is starting, which will let me have more time at home than the all-day tobacco working. For Myrdraal you basically want a black-cloaked eyeless creepy dude right? Are there any special effects you want me to attach, such as a flash for a spell-casting or whatever it is Myrdraal do for evil entertainment (maybe they're not evil. But tall, pale, eyeless, black-cloaked screams EEE-VIL!!! at me). His "cloak" will be more of a robe actually, clinging to his form. I'm sorry, but I have to use animations from basic Civ5 units - you've made a unit, you know how it is!
My ideas are more adapted to civ4 like religions.... 
