[BTS] Fictionalization IV

A Spanish Hero??? ZORRO!

LingLinsRevenge said:

A Spanish Hero??? ZORRO!

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he's not spanish he's from california (well perhaps he's spanish but he isn't really a hero of spain)

LingLinsRevenge said:

A Spanish Hero??? ZORRO!

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I had considered him for a while, but I dropped him just because I had trouble thinking of what his in-game role would be.

A great spy, perhaps?

electric926 said:

A great spy, perhaps?

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There's an idea...

Fictionalizaton IV is now past 1000 downloads!

Just an update:

Right now I'm working on new animated leaderheads for the mod. I'm almost done with Huitzilopochtli and I think I'll do Rufus T. Firefly after that.

I'm also planning some more hero units that won't be as combat-oriented as the ones I have now. If I can get a decent unit respawning function programmed (or get one from another programmer), they'll basically be stronger Great People who can respawn after being used. I already have James Bond as a Great Spy that can do this, and Sindbad as a Great Merchant. I was thinking of having Anansi as a respawning Great Artist, and Ayesha (She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed) for the Great Prophet. Though I'm having trouble thinking of a suitable General, Engineer and Scientist to use.

Don't worry. Cap has been planned since the beginning. So has Superman. I just need to get decent artwork for both and they'll be in the mod ASAP.

Hmm, if the Vikings are here, maybe you could incorporate Hagar the Horrible, maybe as a hero.

And I'm not?

I was just planning on having the Super Soldier project be just that: a project. It could be built with or without a war going on. After all, you can build the Manhattan project regardless of your battlefield engagements in a normal Civ game. After that, all nations could build a super soldier, which would have to have a customized name; it would be a bit weird to use Captain America if you're playing as the Mali. Cap himself would be more or less a slightly stronger infantry with plenty of defense bonuses and the respawning promotion.

As for Supes, he'll just be buildable like the other heroes in the mod. I have been thinking about how to handle him without making him overpowered. My main thought was to have one or two other heroes that are just as powerful, like DBZ's Goku.

But mainly I want the biggest weakness for all of the heroes to be time. Even tough early players like Achilles or Enkidu wouldn't last long once the right technologies come along. This mod uses the Next War future age and all the technologies that come with it, so hopefully Supes and Goku would be outmatched once the endgame comes along.

But anyway, Stark industries might work better as a corporation than a wonder. But if you really want a superhero-based wonder, what do you think of the Cadmus Project?

MadmanOfALeader said:

Hmm, if the Vikings are here, maybe you could incorporate Hagar the Horrible, maybe as a hero.

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good idea.

cfkane said:

And I'm not?

I was just planning on having the Super Soldier project be just that:

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Sounds like "Universal Soldier".



Other question:
How much fictional do you want to go?
Because i think, the Zeus + Poseidon from Methylorange are great, and Zeus was not the leader of the greeks (okay, i know that i didn't have to say it), but a leader at all.

Would have also some suggestions for some Leaderheads, if you're not to busy .

My main rule is to create a plausible world while not deviating too much from the source material or the real world.

Let me see if I can explain.

I'm not trying to create a fictional salad where all of these characters are just randomly thrown into the fray without any real bearing on each other. This is not Imaginationland. My main inspiration for the mod was the comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is built on the concept that all fiction can exist in a universe that obeys more or less the same laws that our universe does. It works in a strict parallel to ours. In our world, H.G. Wells published The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of England, in 1898. So in the League series, Martians invaded England in 1898. The world also parallels ours. Hitler started WWII in our world, Hynkel started it in theirs. The Virgin Queen beat the Spanish Armada in ours, the Faerie Queen beat it in theirs, and so on.

So this mod is more or less an alternate history mod, just using entirely unoriginal characters. When I started the process of looking for leaders (or wonders, or Great People), I looked for parallels with the real world. The Hynkel-Hitler duality is pretty obvious. Same with Elizabeth I and Gloriana. So in the mod, Fearless Leader replaces Stalin, Jack Ryan replaces George H.W. Bush, and so on. Of course, this doesn't mean I won't add a character just because it's fun (like Rufus T. Firefly or the Black Panther). Just so long as it's plausible.

I'll admit that I've taken slight liberties with the characters. Wu Qinghua, for example, only rose to the rank of Commissar in the ballet that she appeared in. But I wanted a leader that could represent the culture of Communist China in the mod. It seemed plausible that Wu could rise through the ranks to become a head of state, so I extrapolated from the original story and rose her rank.

Most of the leaderheads are already set, but if I'm going to add any more, they would have to both be true to the source, and work well within the world of the mod.

Glassoid said:

Maybe with the Cadmus Projects you could create some sort of super mutant or clone army to take on the heroes.

I don't know but maybe at the same time if you miss some of the Heroes you could have Villains as well to counter act the heroes maybe less powered that their heroic counterparts but with some other bonus that might raise the production or science output.

Though the idea of time taking care of the heroes seems sound . Maybe some Like Superman like in the The Dark Knight Returns from Miller he was pretty old but still could kick massive amounts of booty, so that's why I thought there should be something else to give civs without the units or somewhat backwards in tech a fighting chance.

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What if each Civ had its own superhero? Supes for America, Goku for Japan, Marvelman for England, and so on? There would be something of an arms race for each civ to get it, but once two or more civs build one there would be some form of balance.

Glassoid said:

Seems like a very nice idea. But I think there should be some kind of building (s) that increase the rate at which some heroes appear, instead of building them. Seems a bit more exciting to instead of building the unit in the standard form you would need to generate a certain amount of or random favorable percentage so that unit would spawn in your territory sort of like the founding fathers in the colonization II game.

Oh and I loled at the Imagination Land reference.

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Okay, I can see your logic. But having heroes appear the same way as Great People could get needlessly complicated. Yes, certain buildings can increase the rate at which GPs appear, but the points are spread out amongst seven units.

You could do the same with the heroes ingame, but the mod has around 20 heroes and counting. That's a lot of assigning building roles and complex XML work. Plus, if the heroes are generated randomly, there's a good chance they'll be obsolete by the time they appear, defeating their purpose.

So that's why I'm going with the FFH2 model of hero construction: world units built like wonders is just more streamlined by gameplay standards.

Sounds a good mod - bit of a laugh too! Can I request a port over to either Vanilla or Warlords? As I dont have BTS.

What an awesome idea!

*EDIT* Possible ideas and suggestions:

Civilizations:
Amazons / under Hippolyta
Gauls / under Asterix (although technically he's a war hero and their chief was Vitalstatistix)
Florin / under Prince Humperdinck

Religions:
Brianism - Monty Python's Life Of Brian
Discordianism
Church of the Sub Genius
Flying Spaghetti Monsterism

Wonders of the world:
Tower of Babel

It won't install! I try to extract it with WinRAR and it gets infinite errors of "The specified file path could not be found."

I just adore the concept of this mod - still haven't properly installed it yet, but will be doing so soon for a test drive.

Sorry re: above, missed that you already had the Tower of Babel.

More possibilities:

This Prydain reference ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prydain ) - if not for an entire civilization, perhaps some good things can be added to the Celts or the British from it.

A Great Artist, if you haven't already got him: The Phantom Of The Opera.

And how about an American M*A*S*H unit as a UU - maybe something like an Explorer unit with all the medic promotions?

A fictional Great Prophet: St. Urho (details here: http://www.sainturho.com/ )

Alternate military history includes all sorts of German units and inventions that never made it in this reality. The one that was always my gamer group's favorite was the Big Bertha / Dora guns - massive artillery capable of firing over the English Channel...

As a Buffy fan I have to suggest the Watcher's Council as a wonder of some sort. Perhaps it could spawn heroes, the way the old King Richard's Crusade did?

Bahmo said:

It won't install! I try to extract it with WinRAR and it gets infinite errors of "The specified file path could not be found."

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Hm, you are installing to the Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods folder, right?

I'll check that out.

waywardclam said:

I just adore the concept of this mod - still haven't properly installed it yet, but will be doing so soon for a test drive.

Sorry re: above, missed that you already had the Tower of Babel.

More possibilities:

This Prydain reference ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prydain ) - if not for an entire civilization, perhaps some good things can be added to the Celts or the British from it.

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I just might use that if I want to expand the Celts later on.

waywardclam said:

A Great Artist, if you haven't already got him: The Phantom Of The Opera.

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Yeah, he's in there. Although I'm calling him by his full name, Eric Claudin.

waywardclam said:

And how about an American M*A*S*H unit as a UU - maybe something like an Explorer unit with all the medic promotions?

A fictional Great Prophet: St. Urho (details here: http://www.sainturho.com/ )

Alternate military history includes all sorts of German units and inventions that never made it in this reality. The one that was always my gamer group's favorite was the Big Bertha / Dora guns - massive artillery capable of firing over the English Channel...

Click to expand...

St. Urho is a good find!

As for the UUs, I'll only be adding one new unit to each civ, the Legendary Unit. I've long been set on the Gunslinger for the American LU, but I might include M*A*S*H as a national wonder, and maybe as a unit that can be built with that wonder.

I hadn't considered proposed designs for units, though. I'll look into that as a German LU. But wasn't Big Bertha really used during WWI?

waywardclam said:

As a Buffy fan I have to suggest the Watcher's Council as a wonder of some sort. Perhaps it could spawn heroes, the way the old King Richard's Crusade did?

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waywardclam said:

I'm not sure...

But don't worry. I'm a Buffy fan too, and I'm definitely going to work it in somehow. After all, Transylvania is in the mod and Dracula is its leader, so vamps according to Buffy can't be all that hard to work in.

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I just checked my filefront account. It doesn't look like the folder is there anymore.

*#^$ filefront must have deleted my mod


I shall fix this...