The Touhou Mod Development Thread

So I've been making progress with my decisions -- they're actually rather fun to code, once you get the hang of them. For the most part, I'm using the decisions as a way to reflect bits of the character that I couldn't really do otherwise, without making rather schizophrenic UAs. (For example, Yumemi's UA may get slimmed down a bit with decisions... ) I'm trying to make them kind of balance out with costs or conditions, so that it's not just "Oh, a decision is available! *hit the button*", but a choice as to when you want to use it. Suika's Sake Bug requires an investment of gold and infrastructure, as well as at least 4 cities. Her Drinking Party now involves a rather substantial outlay of gold and population loss, but should have some nice and thematic rewards.

But now the topic of events comes up! I hadn't really given much thought to events, but looking at some of the recently published mods it looks like other mod designers are taking full advantage of them to reflect historical events. I've got a few ideas for the civs I've been focused upon -- Marisa will likely get at least one event to reflect her appearance in Fairy Wars, for example. But if anyone has ideas for just random Touhou-ish events, particularly related to my civs, I'd like to hear them. :3

The events of Hopeless Masquerade would be something that would be relevant to Keine's Human Village civ, although I'm not sure what it would do other than cause a negative effect.

Suika could get an event after taking cities that rewards her in some way, to encourage proper conquest. (Since it's not gonna happen via decision, after all.)

I'll point out that in EU4, events are often not good for the one receiving them, for instance the infamous comet. I don't know how much of that will carry over since there's no stability or prestige or legitimacy system, but much like how decisions are rarely decisions twice, events are not inherently positive.

nvdr said:

The events of Hopeless Masquerade would be something that would be relevant to Keine's Human Village civ, although I'm not sure what it would do other than cause a negative effect.

Suika could get an event after taking cities that rewards her in some way, to encourage proper conquest. (Since it's not gonna happen via decision, after all.)

I'll point out that in EU4, events are often not good for the one receiving them, for instance the infamous comet. I don't know how much of that will carry over since there's no stability or prestige or legitimacy system, but much like how decisions are rarely decisions twice, events are not inherently positive.

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Well, it is possible to make events that have only penalties -- the comet has been carried over into the Events and Decisions mod, after all. So something like Hopeless Masquerade could be interesting, although I'd have to read up on what happened in that game to see if there's ways it could have positive outcomes. Perhaps, if you've founded a religion, it may remove heresy in your cities...

Not entirely sure what kinds of rewards Suika could get for conquering cities... I'll have to brainstorm on what kinds of things could happen to oni.

As for Marisa, I have thought of one event I've been working on -- inspired by her relationship with the Three Fairies of Light, I'll have an event where fairies cause trouble in her territory. You can drive them off with troops, use lasers on them, or try to leave them alone in the hopes of possibly befriending them...

I kinda thought of something along the lines of the EU4 extended timeline mod's special horde event. It gives some nice bonuses as sort of a "Ruler rewards his followers" festival of conquest. (Not to mention the Genghisd dynasty specific event that instantly integrates provinces. >__>)

Basically I'd say a cultural bonus, some gold, and maybe some free XP on the unit that took the city. Perhaps some faith if it's a holy city and you have a religion of your own?

A note is that any civs based on Byakuren, Miko or Reimu could also benefit from the Hopeless Masquerade, since them and their followers are the key players in the event.

And that makes me think: how viable would a civ based on Kokoro be? I'd think that she'd not be affected by happiness either way. No unhappiness penalties but no bonuses either, that or they're exaggerated. Probably would also be culturally focused given her nature.

nvdr said:

I kinda thought of something along the lines of the EU4 extended timeline mod's special horde event. It gives some nice bonuses as sort of a "Ruler rewards his followers" festival of conquest. (Not to mention the Genghisd dynasty specific event that instantly integrates provinces. >__>)

Basically I'd say a cultural bonus, some gold, and maybe some free XP on the unit that took the city. Perhaps some faith if it's a holy city and you have a religion of your own?

A note is that any civs based on Byakuren, Miko or Reimu could also benefit from the Hopeless Masquerade, since them and their followers are the key players in the event.

And that makes me think: how viable would a civ based on Kokoro be? I'd think that she'd not be affected by happiness either way. No unhappiness penalties but no bonuses either, that or they're exaggerated. Probably would also be culturally focused given her nature.

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I don't really know anything about EU4, so I'm not sure what this horde event was like. Although Mongolia does have a pair of conquest-related decisions in Decisions and Events, depending on how many cities you have. (I think one gives out free Courthouses...)

Part of the issue with events is that they don't really occur in response to triggers, but occur periodically based on random values. You can set up events that can only occur after certain triggers (so, an event that would only happen after one or more cities was conquered), but they won't occur in actual response to such.

I'm also not entirely sure how much Suika would celebrate conquest, although that could be a more generic oni trait. The oni do enjoy fighting strong opponents, though, as well as take particularly valuable people captive... so there could be a kind of festival event that could occur after some conquests tied to those things...

Unfortunately, I don't really know enough about Kokoro to say how viable she'd be as a civ... I'd have to do more research on her. I've still got Reimu to start and Mima to finish (although she's coming along well), although I might start brainstorming civs after that...

EDIT: An idea for a Suika event just occurred to me -- the kishin are sent after hermits or celestials that have given too long. So one event could be a report that the leader of a particular civ has apparently lived too long, and thus you can summon a kishin to deal with them...

bouncymischa said:

Well, it is possible to make events that have only penalties -- the comet has been carried over into the Events and Decisions mod, after all. So something like Hopeless Masquerade could be interesting, although I'd have to read up on what happened in that game to see if there's ways it could have positive outcomes. Perhaps, if you've founded a religion, it may remove heresy in your cities...

Not entirely sure what kinds of rewards Suika could get for conquering cities... I'll have to brainstorm on what kinds of things could happen to oni.

As for Marisa, I have thought of one event I've been working on -- inspired by her relationship with the Three Fairies of Light, I'll have an event where fairies cause trouble in her territory. You can drive them off with troops, use lasers on them, or try to leave them alone in the hopes of possibly befriending them...

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I should probably look up how these events and decisions work because this seems like something that should be added to the Fairy Alliance civ, too. Probably mirror images or precursors of the Marisa ones. Fairies get "Go Cause Trouble In The Forest of Magic?", Marisa gets "Fairies Cause Trouble! What do?" Fairies get "Challenge Ordinary Human Magician?", Marisa gets "Accept Challenge From Fairy?"


hmmm... I wonder how doable some of these ideas are. I like the idea of making it less "a choice IF you want to use it" and more "a choice WHEN you want to use it." That idea gave me this idea for a Fairy Alliance decision:


Begin the Great Fairy War!
You have decided that now's the time. Time to show the big people of Gensokyo what fairies can really do! By rallying your armies with impressive speeches and colorful drawings of youkai and shrine maidens with X'es for eyes, fairykind unites on a grand crusade to carve their name into the tree stump of history! No longer will you have to spend all your money keeping everyone focused on their jobs -- but be careful, because if the grand crusade you declared fails, it's gonna be really, REALLY hard to get fairies to take up arms in your name again!

This decision would have little to no prerequisites, and permanently flip your abilities inside-out: halved unit upkeep costs, halved unit production speed. Maybe give all existing units March, because I feel like halved costs and production is a lot less attractive than the other way around. The idea behind it is you're saying "Okay, I built my army, I think I can conquer the world with this if I don't have to keep paying through the nose for it." It's not a decision of what cultural path to go down, it's like the decision of when to use your warcaster's feat in Warmachine.

Okuu would have something conceptually similar, "I'm ready to cut all ties with everyone and transform the planet into an irradiated nuclear hellscape out of love." What would Eirin get? Something about hiding herself or hiding the Moon or both?

I'd say it's worth remembering that Eirin is more than someone who made a potion and hid a celestial body in a pot in her basement. There's no lunar threat to the forces of Eientei, so a decision to "hide" from a threat that doesn't exist is odd. (Unless you're planning a civ with the Watatsukis? I'd support a semi-OP civ based on the actual lunar forces.)

BAiJR mentions Kaguya's "Lunar Capital Expo", which could be a cultural bonus of some kind.

There's also the events of SSiB/CiLR, the so called invasion of the moon by Remi and Yukari. Eirin played a key role in the Watatsukis knowing how to thwart both the decoy that was Remi's group as well as Yukari's own infiltration. (However, Yuyuko and Youmu did make it past the lunar defenses.) I'm not sure what all these events would entail in terms of affecting the game, but they're definitely worth considering.

I suppose I'll also note that the "Great Fairy War" was more of an internal conflict than fairies versus the world. For gameplay reasons I can see why you'd want it to be what you're suggesting and it'd probably help Cirno not trash her own research and economy as an AI. (It's absurd how bad it can get for her.)

While it's not a decision thing, I've always thought it was kinda strange that Utsuho can't do anything with her free early Uranium until the normal time it's usable. Someone who is effectively a sun god with total control of nuclear fusion should be able to use that power before building a late game national wonder. Although probably not at the same scale or power as is possible in late game.


Another thought for a possible civ: Kosuzu and Suzunaan, with a focus on great writers and similar.

Huitzil37 said:

I should probably look up how these events and decisions work because this seems like something that should be added to the Fairy Alliance civ, too. Probably mirror images or precursors of the Marisa ones. Fairies get "Go Cause Trouble In The Forest of Magic?", Marisa gets "Fairies Cause Trouble! What do?" Fairies get "Challenge Ordinary Human Magician?", Marisa gets "Accept Challenge From Fairy?"

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The Events and Decisions mod is quite incredible, and has been a lot of fun to incorporate into the civs I'm working on. It's been a while, so I can't recall how familiar you are with Lua, but once you've got a hang of the basics of how the events and decisions code works, it's incredibly easy to add new ones, and they're extremely flexible.

Currently, Marisa has an event -- "Fairies Cause Trouble" -- which has generic fairies causing trouble in the Forest of Magic by playing pranks on people. It's loosely based on the way the Three Fairies of Light would play pranks on Marisa, but over time grew to be more comfortable with her instead. So if you ignore the fairies, they'll eventually reveal a Fairy Tree (a unique improvement) in your territory.

Or you can just send out the troops to drive them away. Or blast them with lasers!

From what I know of the code, though, it would be possible to have an event occur for Marisa after Cirno declared a Fairy War, in which she got challenged by a particularly determined fairy who declared herself "the strongest"...

Huitzil37 said:

hmmm... I wonder how doable some of these ideas are. I like the idea of making it less "a choice IF you want to use it" and more "a choice WHEN you want to use it." That idea gave me this idea for a Fairy Alliance decision:

Begin the Great Fairy War!
You have decided that now's the time. Time to show the big people of Gensokyo what fairies can really do! By rallying your armies with impressive speeches and colorful drawings of youkai and shrine maidens with X'es for eyes, fairykind unites on a grand crusade to carve their name into the tree stump of history! No longer will you have to spend all your money keeping everyone focused on their jobs -- but be careful, because if the grand crusade you declared fails, it's gonna be really, REALLY hard to get fairies to take up arms in your name again!

This decision would have little to no prerequisites, and permanently flip your abilities inside-out: halved unit upkeep costs, halved unit production speed. Maybe give all existing units March, because I feel like halved costs and production is a lot less attractive than the other way around. The idea behind it is you're saying "Okay, I built my army, I think I can conquer the world with this if I don't have to keep paying through the nose for it." It's not a decision of what cultural path to go down, it's like the decision of when to use your warcaster's feat in Warmachine.

Okuu would have something conceptually similar, "I'm ready to cut all ties with everyone and transform the planet into an irradiated nuclear hellscape out of love." What would Eirin get? Something about hiding herself or hiding the Moon or both?

Click to expand...

Warmachine, hmm?

It is possible to make decisions that act like toggles -- the Egyptians have a pair of decisions that allow you to determine whether you get gold or faith from passing other Decisions. The main issue would be whether or not you could flip those effects with Lua -- I can't remember exactly how you implemented Cirno's trait, although I think it was through dummy buildings, in which case you could simply swap around which dummy buildings were present in the city. (Although I don't know if Cirno's UA would then try to override this...?)

I think the Lunar Capital Expo would be a great decision. I'm not exactly sure what it'd do, but given Eirin's emphasis on GPs, something like "gain +1 Tourism/Culture/Gold for each Great Person improvement in your territory" or something like that might be good.

Speaking of Kosuzu, one decision I thought of for the Tanuki was a reference to when Mamizou gave Kosuzu a book to encourage people to be nicer to the tanuki. It was something I didn't get to include in the core civ, but the decisions are a great way to incorporate it. It'll most likely help you gain favor with city states, although possibly at the expense of a great writer. (Or it may simply tie into how many great works of writing you have?)

It just goes to show how awesome the decisions system is -- it's a great way to include all of these little tidbits about the characters that couldn't really get included in the civ as a whole without making them too schizophrenic.

So, Mugenkan is finally out. That's a big weight off my shoulders.

It took like 30 seconds for that feeling of relief to vanish, but whaddyagonnado?

Huitzil37 said:

So, Mugenkan is finally out. That's a big weight off my shoulders.

It took like 30 seconds for that feeling of relief to vanish, but whaddyagonnado?

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It can be a definite trap to fall into -- having something nearly complete, but being unable to push it any further and being reluctant to publish it in its current state. But, honestly, Mugenkan is an awesome civ, even if the AI can't use it properly. I'm glad you got it out!

I'm setting myself the goal of getting Marisa and Mima published this month... it is Halloween season, after all!

Just saw Marisa posted on Reddit. The custom models and city name mechanic look really cool. Still awesome to see developments on these civs.

I've been sitting on a practically complete Hakugyokurou since february, but am still waiting for artwork. I really hope I can upload it sometime soon, because it just feels empty seeing all these civs without Yuyuko, knowing that everything pretty much works already.

Graan said:

Just saw Marisa posted on Reddit. The custom models and city name mechanic look really cool. Still awesome to see developments on these civs.

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Heh, if you like the custom models from the Forest of Magic, just wait until you see Mima's Evil Spirits!



Since I've managed to get the "cast a spell when you go to war" UI working finally, it's on schedule to be released in time for Halloween. Skeletons and Crypts and all kinds of spooky fun!

Graan said:

I've been sitting on a practically complete Hakugyokurou since february, but am still waiting for artwork. I really hope I can upload it sometime soon, because it just feels empty seeing all these civs without Yuyuko, knowing that everything pretty much works already.

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Ouch... what kind of artwork help do you need? I've been getting a lot better at making icons and such, and there should be tons of Yuyuko art to use for the various splash screens... Although I guess you were using commissioned art for Remilia, rather than existing art the way Huitzil and I do.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone has been following JFD's Cultural Diversity mod, but while the core mod is aimed at historical civs according to JFD it's fully possible to modmod it so that you can create your own new cultural groupings. So, for example, we could create a "Touhou" cultural grouping for all of the various Touhou civs.

So far, the Cultural Diversity mod is an aesthetic one -- it provides a cultural grouping with a unique soundtrack, splash screens, events, and starting bonuses (although the last one can be turned off if you don't like the idea of starting bonuses, and the events only work if you're using Events and Decisions).

So, since the main gist of Cultural Diversity is offering a group of civs their own soundtrack and splash screens upon entering a new era, would anyone else be interested? I'm not entirely sure what would be the best way to divvy up Touhou art for potential era splash screens, for one...

I know it's a bit unorthodox and perhaps un-feasible but I had kinda hoped that Mima's civ icon would be the off-center sun from her hat. (I had messed around with that design very briefly myself when I heard you were working on Mima but I just don't have a program that's actually any good for that purpose.) That said, the moon is quite nice looking and the colors are good. I am curious how they look next to Sweden though.

I'm interested to give her a try even if it is just gonna be my same old one city nonsense because I am bad at trying new things.

Actually, I'm in the middle of adjusting her icon, since I decided I did want to darken up the blue to make her more distinct from the other blue-and-gold civs out there. Is there any good links to what the sun icon looks like?

My current version of Mima is available here , if you want to give it a try.

EDIT: How about this for an icon?

Well, this account corruption bug is interesting. >__>

Anyway, that's not exactly what I meant about the star on her hat.

Here's some examples in a spoiler tag:



So basically my thought about the icon is that it'd be cool of it was that partial circle with the 3 or 4 triangular rays of light as it's usually portrayed. However, that is kinda unorthodox as a civ icon concept, so I'd understand if it's not reasonable. (Still interested to see her colors next to Sweden.)

Mmm... well, given that the "partial sun" appears to be more "a complete sun that's on the side of her hat and thus is typically only seen partially", I'm inclined to stick with the icon I proposed above.

I've never seen it shown as the full circle, and I think the thing I'm suggesting would be more interesting than a standard centered icon. And the partial sun is easier to associate with her, even if her hat actually does have more of the sun actually on it.

I'm probably overdoing my attempt at selling this idea which really isn't even that important overall, but I do think it'd look cool if executed properly. (aka it would look like her hat and hats are important. her hat doesn't have a boring centered full sun.)


Also, I was trying to figure out what sort of bonuses an actual lunar Civ (Eientei being excluded on the basis that they're based on Earth) would get and all I could come up with is a Peaches luxury which indicates that I'm terrible at converting the canon into Civ gameplay. I guess part of the issue is whether or not they'd be made intentionally OP, in order to be more in line with the SSiB portrayal of the Watatsukis.

nvdr 2 said:

Also, I was trying to figure out what sort of bonuses an actual lunar Civ (Eientei being excluded on the basis that they're based on Earth) would get and all I could come up with is a Peaches luxury which indicates that I'm terrible at converting the canon into Civ gameplay. I guess part of the issue is whether or not they'd be made intentionally OP, in order to be more in line with the SSiB portrayal of the Watatsukis.

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I considered at one point making a Lunar civ, with the idea that they'd be some sort of colony/beachhead on the Earth. Mostly because I wanted to try making a more sci-fi civ, but most of that got folded into Yumemi, who was a better candidate.

I had an epiphany today for Reimu, though, and think I might've come up with an interesting idea for her Miko UU. I'll have to experiment and see if it's possible, but I'm considering having her reduce city strength proportional to either a) the number of religious followers in the city or b) her faith per turn. The former encourages the religion game, so you'd want to use the increased faith from Branch Shrines and/or the Donation Box to pump out missionaries and spread your faith. The latter would be more streamlined, still encouraging faith production but making it a little more predictable.

But I think I can make some more synergistic loops now -- generating faith in the capital will let you take cities easier, and then you can use puppet cities to generate more faith/gold. Now that I've had a bit of downtime after the release of Mima and have a concrete image in mind, I'll probably start getting going on Reimu next.

Also, did have a talk with Huitzil about other Touhou civs to make recently. Byakuren and Miko are still strong ideas, but neither was particularly inspiring to him. We did toss ideas around for a Parsee civ, given that it would be quite amusing to have her get bonuses when beat to Wonders and such... Not sure if there's any other possible candidates... a Tenshi civ?

A Tenshi civ for Bhavaagra could take the idea of the Peach resource, although I'm not sure what sort of bonuses they'd get otherwise. Perhaps some sort of keystone wielding unit with an AoE earthquake attack, if that's even possible?

The Parsee civ also sounds interesting, and I'd suggest considering having her also get bonuses when lower on other metrics, like score, happiness, etc.

I'd almost say that if Byakuren and Miko are made into civs, then they should be designed together as direct competitors to each other, more than versus any other civs. But that's just my take on that duo.