Tarot: Land of Arcana (WIP)

Ok, the gold.biq file I posted earlier has been updated with my latest version.

I like most of the cities that I set up, but I may need to spend some more time thinking about Asia and changing some of the cities so that they can network together better via roads... right now they are dispersed all over Asia. The West (Cups), North (Pentacles), and South (Wands) are pretty good. It's just Asia (Swords) that is giving me some trouble.

However, once I add Telepad units in the game, Asia may be fine. Asia may be huge but Telepads can make distance a non-factor.

Anyway, I'm finished for the day...
 
Ok, I'm finally feeling creative again. I have the same map with more interesting city names now. So this is sort of like rough draft #2.
Anyway, this is getting much closer to something that I would want to actually play...
 

Attachments

  • Honey.zip
    36.2 KB · Views: 70
Towers / Telepads:

Belem Tower|Cups
The Tower of London|Cups
The Dark Tower|Pentacles
The Red Tower|Swords
Tower of Babel|Wands

Note: This is still a work in progress...
 
Terrain:

In general, I am using Balthasar's South Asian Terrain files. But I am using pine trees instead of bamboo trees. And I added more cat-tails to the marshes and changed the color of the rivers from all dark blue to a mixture of light blue and light aqua blue. I think I changed the snow-capped mountains also.

Anyway, the terrain looks really good (to me) and the rivers and marshes look much better now. I uploaded some of my terrain files if anyone is interested in using them.

And here are some screenshots:

Rivers:
Spoiler :



Marshes with more cat-tails:
Spoiler :



River and Coast:
Spoiler :



Pine Trees and Snow-Covered Mountains:
Spoiler :



Asian Terrain:
Spoiler :




Flood Plains and Desert:
Spoiler :


 

Attachments

  • marsh.pcx
    247.8 KB · Views: 117
  • deltaRivers.pcx
    23.1 KB · Views: 64
  • mtnRivers.pcx
    17.4 KB · Views: 65
  • Mountains-snow.pcx
    106.4 KB · Views: 109
Ok, here is a list of cities that I have on the map for each Suit. I'm trying to give names to cities that evoke the feeling of living in an Ancient, Medieval, Occult, or Gothic world.
Order | Suit | Actual Place Name | City Name | Notes |
1|Cups|England|The Lion-Hearted|Medieval. Richard the Lionheart|
2|Cups|Scotland|The Highlands|There Can Be Only One.|
3|Cups|Wales|Cardiff Castle|Castle repeatedly used in Medieval Battles.|
4|Cups|Ireland|Rock of Cashel|Occult. Mythology related to the Devil.|
5|Cups|France|Bordeaux|Wine region since the 8th Century.|
6|Cups|France|Chateau de Puivert|Occult. Castle in the movie the 9th Gate|
7|Cups|France|Marseille|Ancient city once controlled by Rome.|
8|Cups|Spain|Castille||
9|Cups|Spain|The Rose of Aragon|Queen Isabella. Reconquista. Inquisition.|
10|Cups|Portugal|Belem Tower|Location of Knight's Templar|
12|Cups|Morocco|Morocco||
13|Cups|Crete|Prospero's Island|The Tempest|
14|Cups|Florence|Florence||
15|Pentacles|Germany|The Black Forest|Medieval.|
16|Pentacles|Austria|Holy Roman Empire|The House of Habsburg|
17|Pentacles|Netherlands|The Low Lands|Sad Eyed Lady of the Low Lands.|
18|Pentacles|Bohemia|Bohemia||
19|Pentacles|Poland|Devil's Crossing|Polish Mythology and Occult.|
20|Pentacles|The Baltics|The Baltics||
21|Pentacles|Romania|The Dark Tower||
22|Pentacles|Serbia|The Balkan Mountains|Serbian Army Strong-Hold|
24|Pentacles|Fictional (Ukraine)|Tyrants of the Fallen||
25|Pentacles|Denmark|Denmark||
26|Pentacles|Norway|Ravenswood|Gothic.|
28|Pentacles|Sweden|The Forlorn||
30|Pentacles|Oslo|Ice Wind||
31|Pentacles|Stockholm|The Great North|the Great North War|
33|Pentacles|Venice|Merchants of Venice||
34|Swords|China and Japan|The Far East||
35|Swords|Mongolia|The Golden Horde|Warriors. |
36|Swords|Fictional (Kazakhstan)|The Land of Thieves||
38|Swords|Thailand|Followers of the Way||
39|Swords|India|The Upanishads|Religion.|
41|Swords|Siberia|Somber Forest||
42|Swords|Fictional|The Forgotten Realm|Tribute to DnD|
43|Swords|Moscow|Moscow||
44|Swords|Fictional (Russia)|Field of Glory||
45|Swords|Volgograd|The Motherland||
46|Swords|Fictional (Russia)|The Black Rose ||
47|Swords|Fictional (N. Ukraine)|The Red Tower||
48|Swords|St. Petersburg|St. Petersburg||
49|Wands|Angora|Angora||
50|Wands|Istanbul|Istanbul||
51|Wands|Athens|Athens|War. Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War.|
52|Wands|Syria|Road to Damascus|Religious|
53|Wands|Israel|Land of Milk and Honey|Religion. Hebrew Bible. Description of Israel. |
54|Wands|Babylon|Tower of Babel|Religious. Occult.|
55|Wands|Rasht. Iran|Sea of Tears||
56|Wands|Baku. Azerbaijan|The Sacred Fire|Occult. Sacred Fires of Baku region.|
57|Wands|Persia|Persia||
58|Wands|Persian Gulf|The Sea of Sorrows||
59|Wands|Arabia|Arabia||
60|Wands|Mecca|Mecca|Religious.|
62|Wands|Cairo. Egypt|The Great Pyramids||
67|Wands|Naples|Kingdom of Naples||
 
I'm having trouble with something. Whenever I start a new game, the Cups puts a settler (standing up) on the map in unsettled Russian territory (top right of mini map below).



I've tried various settings and it always puts a settler up there. I even made the Settler unit itself unavailable to all of the Suits and I set the shield cost for a settler to 500.

Edit: I figured this out. You can set whatever starting units you want...it doesn't have to start with a settler...
 
Nevermind folks. I forgot to set the Starting location for the Cups. I had the other 3 Suits but forgot about the Cups for some reason.
 
I changed 'Norway' to 'Ravenswood'. The Raven is a great symbol for the Vikings and it sounds Gothic, so it fits the theme really well.

Side Note: If America was in the game, I would have placed Ravenswood in Boston where Edgar Allan Poe lived...

And for some reason I want to sing: "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands ..."
 
The Beauty of using the Tarot suits as Civilizations is that you can do virtually anything with them! Pretty cool.
 
Vuldacon said:
...you can certainly always use "Artistic License" with decisions.

Always Please Yourself...Most important to make the Game something You Really Like and have fun Creating and Playing.
Click to expand...

Vuldacon,

You are absolutely right about this. I was getting too hung up on details and got stuck for a while. So I am trying to free myself of rules and not worry so much. I decided to just focus on making a game that I would actually want to play and have fun playing...

Basically there is no way to make a game that everyone likes or that fits history perfectly or has a perfect map, etc. So in the end you just have to make the best thing you can.
 
I found this awesome site that will generate a hexagon-tiled world map for you with place names: Fantasy World Generator.

I like some of the names it came up with. One was called 'Sea of Tears'. So I may use that for one of the port cities by the Caspian sea...
Edit: done

Edit: I meant to say that you have to be a little patient for the site to do it's work. I clicked the button and then waited for I think 3-4 minutes before it finally churned out a map...
 
Gray Wolf said:
I found this awesome site that will generate a hexagon-tiled world map for you with place names: Fantasy World Generator.

I like some of the names it came up with. One was called 'Sea of Tears'. So I may use that for one of the port cities by the Caspian sea...
Edit: done
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link. The name generator at the same site is interesting as well. The "quasi-historical" non-European name generator will be good for city lists in alternate history scenarios.
 
Blue Monkey said:
Thanks for the link. The name generator at the same site is interesting as well. The "quasi-historical" non-European name generator will be good for city lists in alternate history scenarios.
Click to expand...

Welcome, yea I like the fantasy name generator too. It would be very useful for city lists. And the magic shop item generator is also really cool ... especially for DnD... and can give us good ideas about strategic resources.
 
I updated the city list. I added a few more Gothic sounding names: City List

The Black Forest
The Dark Tower
Tyrants of the Fallen
Ravenswood
The Forlorn
Masque of the Red Death
Somber Forest
The Black Rose
Sea of Tears
The Sacred Fire
The Sea of Sorrows
 
I found some interesting links that should help me out in this mod.

Edgar Allan Poe's short story: The Masque of the Red Death.

Dungeon and Dragon's gothic campaign of the same name: Masque of the Red Death (Ravenloft)

The Gothic Earth Gazetteer for the Masque of the Red Death DnD campaign.
The PDF file can be downloaded here: TSR 9498 Gothic Earth Gazetteer

Anyway, the gazetteer for the Masque of Red Death is really cool and has a lot of secret occult type organizations described in it. So I will read about them and try to incorporate some of the ideas in the Tarot mod.
 
This is hilarious. The South Park episode with Edgar Allan Poe as the "first Goth". The Goth kids summoned him but he doesn't care to help them. Southpark Goth Clip. I love it.

Waitress: [approaches table] Hey, are you gonna order any food, or are you just gonna sit there and drink coffee all day?
Poe: Leave me alone! I just want coffeh.
Waitress: [turns around and leaves] Little pr##k.
Poe: Bi##h.
Pete: [voice only] Poe? Edgar Allan Poe, where are you? [his face appears in Poe's coffee] What the hell are you doing?! Yo're supposed to be helping us!
Poe: I can't right now. I'm dealing with a lot and I just have a lot of anxiety.
Pete: Look, we [flips hair] summoned you to help us save the world!
Poe: What's the point? Save some people so some other people can be lame? And then those lame-os can be lamer to some other posers?
 
Different Types of Magicians:

Adept - Wizards, ultimate spellcasters.

Charlatans - Sorcerors, many different kinds of rogue skills...

Dandies - Dandies represent members of the upper class and high society. They receive many skills that involve influence and behavior. This class receives the ability to Charm others in order to make use of surrounding resources.

Diletantes - Diletantes are members of the rich and high society who enjoy spending their fortunes seeking 'thrills' of the occult nature. Diletantes can cast black magic and divine spells.

Explorers - Explorers are like Rangers. They attain magic abilities from their experience surviving and traveling the world.
They learn the art of Bluffing, Diplomacy, Disguise, and Etiquette. They are learn the art of Charm and can become excellent Diplomats and Spies.

Mystics - Those who are born with special abilities to tap in to the other realm and understand events that are unfolding. They have limited power in respect to casting spells though.
 
Progress Report.

My Civilopedia is really coming together. I just spent a whole lot of time going through each element of the game and all of the Civilopedia entries are accounted for, and everything is alphabetized nicely too.

I have to work on the "game concepts" part. Basically I need to strip out some of the text entries that do not apply to this game and add some other entries related to Tarot.
 
Progress Report.

Buildings, Resources, and Units are much better now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Thorvald of Lym
[TOT] The Centauran Gambit
Replies
10
Views
667
Blake00
Blake00
The_J
  • Sticky
Old World update #121
Replies
3
Views
442
Solver
Solver
The_J
Old World update #120
Replies
8
Views
1K
The_J
The_J
The_J
Old World update #119
Replies
15
Views
2K
Nikolai II
Nikolai II
Thorvald of Lym
[TOT] Civ 2.5: Civ3 in Test of Time
Replies
3
Views
981
Thorvald of Lym
Thorvald of Lym
Top Bottom