Tomatekh's New Civilizations

solved it by changing my download region, I get higher speed in Munich than in Israel...

Tomatekh said:

The only civ I was planning on doing it for was Xia which I have to update again anyway to add the completed Chinese translation. So there's no real issue.

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Only Xia? I was thinking you would do it for the Timurids with Persia, Harappa with India, Kievan Rus with Russia, and Mali with Songhai.

turingmachine said:

...Kievan Rus with Russia...

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Friendly local Ukrainian must side-eye this suggestion.

Kievan Rus' with Ukraine/Hetmanate - OK, but not with Russia (they were different beings with diffferent descent).

For God's sake, please, don't start the "Russia is not a sucessor of Kievan Rus'" flame war on this forum.

TheLohoped said:

For God's sake, please, don't start the "Russia is not a sucessor of Kievan Rus'" flame war on this forum.

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You are right, Russia is the successor of Rome.

BttLsht said:

You are right, Russia is the successor of Rome.

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Byzantine, Russian, Ottoman, French, German and Austrian groups should be removed and the civs should be placed in Roman one.

If it isn't trolling (except for the Eastern Romans (erroneously called the Byzantines)), I dunno what else it could be.

This was quite an obvious sarcasm

I'd honestly be down with Timur going in a Mongol subgrouping - he and his descendants made quite a big deal out of being the successors to the Mongol Empire, I mean its fairly likely he'd have invaded China if he hadn't made the somewhat fatal mistake of dying before he got the chance.

But then I'm a sucker for organisation like this and would have every civ organised in neat little subgroups if I could.

Urdnot_Scott said:

But then I'm a sucker for organisation like this and would have every civ organised in neat little subgroups if I could.

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this, and I wouldn't have civs as their own groups unless absolutely necessary - for example Finland or something unique like the Garamantes.

TheLohoped said:

Byzantine, Russian, Ottoman, French, German and Austrian groups should be removed and the civs should be placed in Roman one.

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Better yet, put ALL civs in as a subset of Ethiopia (for those who believe in the Out-of-Africa theory).

Mali should probably be in the group under Songhai (technically the other way around, but I think the preference is for groups to take vanilla civs as priority headings), but the Timurids are kind of a different thing from the Mongols, and it's been advised the Mughals ought to be under the Timurids in kind - which would make very little sense for them to then be under Mongolia. I'm also of the opinion Kievan Rus should be under Russia since they are kind of effectively Classical/Medieval Russia? But I can see the arguments for why not. Other than that I think all of Tomatekh's civs are pretty assuredly independent from others, aside from like, LS's civs that have more than a few of the same civs as here.

...Maaaaaybe Harappa under India? ?.?

So, first, there's a rather big bug with the Garamantes where your worker will sometimes duplicate and you get a free worker. Thanks to Tarcisio, I believe it's been figured out. I don't know how soon I can do an update, but, in the meantime, since it's something that can only trigger for a human player, just delete any extra workers that show up

Since I have to update them soonish, if anyone has any other feedback regarding the civ (abilities, decisions, think something should be changed, etc.), now's the time to post it.

As for JFD's Alternate Leaders mod, I don't know, I don't really see the purpose of the mod as trying to reduce mod civs into as many vanilla civs as possible. I know people's definition of what a civilization is differs radically, but the trend on Civfanatics seems to be to want to group every civ into broad cultures (which is odd because the forum is usually against the giant blob cultures that Firaxis tends to do in the base game).

Generally, I tend to view two things as the same civ if it's ethnically and culturally the same people and it's a clear case of a sole successor state. If there's a a dramatic shift in the ethnicity or culture or there's multiple prominent successor states that continue to co-exist, I'm more inclined to treat them separately. I'm also not really a fan of grouping a predecessor civ with a later civ.

So, I think I'm just going to go with my original plan to only do Xia with China (even though it's a predecessor state, my Xia mod is clearly designed as “China&#8221.

For Kievan Rus’ – Russia, first, I’m not grouping them because I don’t want a bunch of angry Ukrainians complaining on the workshop page that the mod is too Russian again I see nothing wrong with discussing Kievan Rus’ as part of Russian history and nothing wrong with discussing it as part of Ukrainian history. However, for something like this, it’s the issue of grouping a predecessor state that has several distinct successor states today. Actually, I wouldn’t really group Kievan Rus’ with either Russia or Ukraine. I sort of see the Golden Horde as a strict dividing line in the region, and Russia proper and Ukraine proper not really starting until the states that began to emerge following the conquest of the region. Now, if someone made a Rus’/Varangian/Rurik type civ, I’d consider grouping Kievan Rus’ in that.

For the Timurids – Persia/Mongolia, it’s the case of the Timurids adopting too much of Persian culture to still be considered just Mongolia but also not being Iranian (with Safavid – Iranian identity also being re-asserted in the area later) to just be Persia. There’s also the fact that the Timurids continued to exist in the Indian subcontinent even after Iranian identity was re-asserted in Persia. As I said in the More Civs thread, I’d be open to grouping the Timurids and Mughals together (since they’re both technically the same Gurkani Empire).

For Mali – Songhai, I don’t really see much reason to group them besides geography. Its two different ethnic groups (Mandinka vs. Songhai) with two completely separate centers of political power. Mandinka successor states also continued to exist after Songhai conquered the area. There are more closely related civs in Europe that similarly conquered/integrated each other’s territory that the forums would argue like crazy to be kept separate.

For Harappa – India, later Indian ethnicity and culture is so derived from the Aryan migration into the subcontinent that I don’t really think it works to group it with a culture that predates it.

So, that's my reasoning. The thing also is, it's really easy to just edit one file of a mod to group a civ. I feel if anyone cares that much about grouping a certain civ, they can just do it themselves, so I'm not too concerned about doing it myself.

I think you're on point in all of your thoughts, honestly. It's an alternate leaders mod, no more. We have cul div for blobs.

Tomatekh said:

Now, if someone made a Rus’/Varangian/Rurik type civ, I’d consider grouping Kievan Rus’ in that.

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This way you will receive both the angry Ukrainians and Russians for grouping them with a Scandinavian culture.

SuperWaffle247 said:

I think you're on point in all of your thoughts, honestly. It's an alternate leaders mod, no more. We have cul div for blobs.

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Yeah, people here on CFC started to treat TAL as a CulDiv clone/extension, and I think they lost grasp on what JFD initially intended. I personally think TAL should only apply to specifically named civilizations / countries that have alternate leaders. So currently, for example: Russia, Poland, Germany, England, USA, Mexico, China, Japan, Egypt, Ottomans, France etc. etc. However, civs like Bavaria shouldn't be grouped under Germany, because their leader didn't ever lead a unified Germany - unlike leaders like Bismarck, Hitler and Wilhelm II. Therefore, Gandhi should never be grouped with Akbar - as they led distinct sovereign countries in drastically different epochs, and as such cannot be considered "alternate". Even Alexander, Seleucus and Ptolemy don't really count as alternate - they were different monarchs, ruling over different countries. Seleucus was never a ruler of Greece or Macedonia, neither was Ptolemy - but some would like to lump them together with Alexander for whatever reason. Culturally and geographically - maybe. But in the end, their respective civilizations were different entities. If they were hidden under an ambiguous "Greece" tab in TAL select screen - they might be forgotten by the players, who will associate the name "Greece" and their icon solely with the hated Alexander - and never even click into that section to check what's inside.

Tomatekh said:

Now, if someone made a Rus’/Varangian/Rurik type civ.

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JFD, come here quickly! Prepare for trouble, and make it double!

I agree. I also want to stress to users that adding and altering support for this mod is one of the easiest code tweaks you can make, as a user - so don't worry if the game isn't set up exactly the way you want.

SuperWaffle247 said:

I agree. I also want to stress to users that adding and altering support for this mod is one of the easiest code tweaks you can make, as a user - so don't worry if the game isn't set up exactly the way you want.

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I wish there are a short instruction on how to make people mod's compatible with Alternate Leaders, YNaeMP or CulDiv that took literally less than ten lines of code to do,

Then paste it somewhere and make it clear to anyone who complained/will complain about it that this is modder's own decision they can do it by themselves if it bother them so much.