Éa, Dawn of the Mortal Races (phase 1, pre-alpha code development and discussion)

I've added a Credits section to the OP. Of particular note is the section on 2D art. I've been seeking (and as often as not obtaining) permission from artists to use their images. You can browse the artists' galleries at the links provided to get a feel for the art that will be appearing in the mod. I expect this list to grow considerably over time. Thanks to Lplate for encouragement to do this the right way.

Few more queries:
If the Heldeofol are limited to only building buildings which support expansion and conquest, does this include culture generating buildings or are they limited to gaining culture through combat?

If Heldeofol conquer a city of Man, which contains culture generating buildings, will these generate culture for the Heldeofol? Will human units built by a Heldeofol Civilization generate culture through combat?

At the moment, there are tomes which reduce the research cost for gaining techs. Could there be any Tomes which reduce the tech maintenance cost associated with a branch of the shrubbery, only buildable when the final tech is researched ("I can't remember how to set up a harpoon.""Well,RTFM then.")?

Lplate said:

Few more queries:
If the Heldeofol are limited to only building buildings which support expansion and conquest, does this include culture generating buildings or are they limited to gaining culture through combat?

If Heldeofol conquer a city of Man, which contains culture generating buildings, will these generate culture for the Heldeofol? Will human units built by a Heldeofol Civilization generate culture through combat?

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Current plan is no culture from buildings at all (except perhaps for the capital, but I'm going to experiment even with that). Disallowed buildings taken by conquest will be quickly destroyed (for some gold). Every unit in a Heldeofol civ (of whatever race, and even if not built in a city) will have some particular "city of origin". Culture from kills will then be credited to that city. Yes... this is a rather one-dimensional race.

Lplate said:

At the moment, there are tomes which reduce the research cost for gaining techs. Could there be any Tomes which reduce the tech maintenance cost associated with a branch of the shrubbery, only buildable when the final tech is researched ("I can't remember how to set up a harpoon.""Well,RTFM then.")?

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Increasing research and decreasing knowledge maintenance are really the same thing. These are all just +/- percent modifiers added together for a final percent modifier. So you could have -110% knowledge maintenance and +40% research (form tomes or whatever) for a total modifier of -70%. You might get in a situation where you can only progress in one branch if you have a tome or a civ-/branch-specific bonus (Âb has this).

As the art doesn't originally belong to me I can't confirm/deny if there would be any particular problem with you using them. What I'll do is, where I can, try and find the original author of the art and see if I can get contact details/contact them.

MrCasperTom said:

As the art doesn't originally belong to me I can't confirm/deny if there would be any particular problem with you using them. What I'll do is, where I can, try and find the original author of the art and see if I can get contact details/contact them.

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Don't bother putting too much work into this. The images are good but not outstanding (I'd have to have a higher res version of the middle one). There are literally 1000s of wonderful images at CGSociety and diviantart, and a good fraction of these artists are willing to share their work if asked nicely.

Pazyryk said:

Don't bother putting too much work into this. The images are good but not outstanding (I'd have to have a higher res version of the middle one). There are literally 1000s of wonderful images at CGSociety and diviantart, and a good fraction of these artists are willing to share their work if asked nicely.

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Haha don't worry, I only check the file name to see if I still had the name of the author name was saved in any of them

Some of you might find this new tutorial a fun read...

Pazyryk said:

Some of you might find this new tutorial a fun read...

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Huh, that's quite a good bunch of tips. Nicely done!

Good tutorial. Moving on can be difficult when you've looked for over a year and think you've found the one(s) that you love.

nice tuto

ahah... didn't notice that Heldeofol can only build conquest /extension buildings... so no library ever for Heldeofol... so you can forget the name I proposed earlier that gave an additional "+10 science per pop of city conquered in each tech". (a prerequist I proposed was ... at least a library and a conquered city)

aarg, "I see you Pazyryk" !!

this thread seems dead but you are updating the first post... but the question is : "with what?"

well, I suppose it is artists names
I further suppose you stopped working on the mod, waiting for the release of GaK to give you a new impulse... too bad for my thirst for shiny mods I'll have to wait

I was at my folks house for two weeks. No modding computer, but I had my laptop... so I was pretty busy getting and organizing art for the mod. Basically, every great person has a portrait and every civ will have a different image. The images I'm getting are really outstanding. Too bad that a lot of them won't be seen until phase 5, 6, 7,...

The AI unit control (for GPs) amounted to 100s of hours of programming. Kind of burnt my out on Lua for a bit. But it works, so I'm very happy with it.

At the moment, I'm working through Civ AI. This will pick all techs and policies and (perhaps sometimes) affect build queue. Basically, the AI proceeds through stages, with each stage having different priorities and objectives:

1. Grow. Get techs to develop some food resources around capital. AI may pick up two 1st tier or it may go on to a 2nd tier.
2. Get Name. If it didn't accidentally get one above, AI will now prioritize triggering a naming condition. It knows which ones are "taken" and selects an available civilization to go for based on a variety of factors (e.g., which 1st tier techs it already has; what resources are nearby, etc.). The AI can readjust instantly (changing its tech queue) if another civ picks up the name that it was targeting.
3. Develop. There are any number of "plans" that an AI can pick from with names like "horselords", "naval domination", etc. (these are in tables). Plans are just lists of techs and policies for the AI to pursue. A plan is chosen mostly based on a civ's name, but also on other factors (e.g., I'm on an island; I'm next to an aggressive civ, etc.). A civ can still deviate from a plan in some ways. For example, a resource-enabling tech may be prioritized even if it is not in the plan.
4. Win. (later...)

#1 is done and the mechanics of #3 (though I haven't entered many "plans" yet). Working on #2 right now.

#2 sounds like a major coding exercise...

rocklikeafool said:

#2 sounds like a major coding exercise...

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Well I predicted (in some past post) that AI would be half the effort. The "AI stages" are based on a lot of observation of Civ AI (past & present & FFH) and specific needs of this mod.

Stage 1 (prioritize techs for growth) is something that is obvious to every human player but not coded in base AI (as far as I can tell) which puts AI behind right from the get go. The only thing that saves base AI is the tech tree layout (you start with Ag and the other food techs are somewhat inevitable). The Éa tech tree and its different food yield/usage makes it essential that the AI picks the right initial techs so it is not totally crippled. The way it works now is that the AI queues up 1, 2 or 3 techs so that it has some "minimum food development potential" around the capital (or moves on to stage 2 if this is impossible). Some of these are 2nd tier so they could "inadvertently" pick up a name here and skip stage 2.

Stage 2 (target name) is very specific to the mod. The code is written now and I'm currently debugging. It gives a score to each available naming trait:

1. Civ resource bonuses. For example, the "Ikkos" trait gets bonus scores for each horse resource out to radius 10 (more for closer).
2. Civ geography bonuses. Examples: Kaza for flatland river tiles; Fomhóire for lots of sea or island start.
3. Civ ad hoc bonuses. Some are good in a way that does not really depend on resources or geography (e.g., Nezhêlîba).
4. Total research cost penalty. The AI looks at total research points needed to trigger the naming condition. (This accounts for techs gained already in stage 1 and any progress toward techs.)
5. Total culture cost penalty. The AI looks at total culture needed to trigger the naming condition.

1 - 3 are in tables so it is easy to add a new civ, or to adjust values if a particular civ shows up too often or not often enough. The AI can back up and change its target civ (even bailing on its current tech research). This is necessary if another civ gets to the civ name first. But it can also happen based on other in-game events (e.g., if the civ pops a culture goody: this makes it much more likely to achieve a "1st to policy opener" condition). For now, I'm just dealing with the tech- and policy-triggered names, which is most of them. I'll deal with the 1st to building or unit later.

Stage 3 (follow development plan) is something that is going to give the mod a lot of flavor. In base civ, your "naval civ" (e.g., England) only really differs from other civs in two minor things (UB, UU and/or UA). In Éa, your naval civ (e.g., Fomhóire, Hy-Breasil) will pursue tech and policy objectives that make it much more different than other civs (since almost everything comes down to tech or policy, and in Éa you can get only a fraction of the techs in any one game). I'm speaking of AI civs here. As a human you have the choice to play Hy-Breasil as an agricultural civ, if you like (but that would be non-optimal). Each specific civ will have a number of "development plans" that the AI can choose from, and these determine all tech and policy choices (and perhaps other things later). For example, Fomhóire could pursue a "naval commerce" plan or a "piracy" plan. Plans are in tables so I can adjust them or add more in ongoing development (e.g., if human players find an optimal play strategy, then I can add a plan to imitate it). The AIs still have some flexibility within plan, however, so they could (for example) prioritize a resource-enabling tech outside of the plan if it is worthwhile.

Hmm...that's a fine bit of work, Pazyryk. Thanks for sharing your "pseudo"-code. I always enjoy hearing how a fellow programmer does their thing.

I though about something recently...
will "naval techs" give access to some units / mecanics that can be used out of sea ?
I mean, if you get too deep in the naval techs, you could end without any unit able to affect land.

however, one could imagine some land-units that may be related to naval techs... (or naval-related promotions), which wouldn't enable an army/conquest on land but would still enable some defense of sea-cities and attack/raiding the coast :

the examples bellow are only brainstorming and some concepts might be un-codable or too UI-consuming.
- +2mvt when attacking from the sea : allows to get leave the "boat", pillage the tile, get back on the "boat" (by whatever mechanics : real boat unit, or simple "embark unit" mechanics.
- +1 defense strength per sea/ocean tile surrounding the unit : when I defend a port-city, my unit is stronger if I'm on an island than if there is no sea : shows that the unit can use the sea (fleeing, changing attack path, embarking on the boat and launch arrows from it).
- +1 attack strength per sea/ocean tile surrounding the unit (or the target unit) : same as before:
- replace any of those by a +1 (or +2) First Strikes per surrounding sea-tile.
- amphibious : +50% attack from over a river (or from sea) : the ennemy is "unprepared" to have what was a natural barrier become a weakness.
- flat boat raiders : +1mvt, +1 strength (or +2) when on a tile close to a river (on a "fresh water tile" would be second best): think "vikings" : they raided deep inside land following the river courses and pillaging all around.
they could do this because nobody could know exactly their target, their path to attck, and they could flee immediatly through the river (that would translate in more strength when on rivers)

...etc

the concept in general is :
weak units far from the sea that transform into terrors (depending on the tier they are on) when they are on the coast.
maybe they are only good for attack and raid ...
maybe they can only move very fast
maybe they can only defend coastal cities without problem
maybe when their boats can bombard 3-4 tiles away to help their "weak" infantry to overcome stronger foes when close to the sea.
...etc

maybe those are organised through promotions so if you "multitech" you can get "Steel warriors of the sea" or "flat longboat archer sea raiders" or "amphibious elephants of doom"

I'm taking inspiration from XVII' century pirates and from the vikings. I suppose that one could take also inspiration from the malaysian pirates of old or polynesian raiders.

Calavente said:

I though about something recently...
will "naval techs" give access to some units / mecanics that can be used out of sea ?

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that G&K is introducing a lot of new naval mechanisms that should make navies quite exciting and dangerous:

1. Mellee ships that can attack and capture cities.
2. Ship capture.
3. IIRC, the ability to demand a ransom rather than capture a city.
4. [Edit: HN unlikely because the Sea Beggar (a privateer replacement UU) doesn't have it].

Most ships in Éa are going to be melee: galleys, triremes, dromons, etc. This makes strong navies a real terror for coastal cities even without land unit backup. Of course, they won't be able to hold a coastal city adjacent to a strong civ (which is good), but they can dominate island cities or cities not well-connected to core empires. Or they can just be pirates and take the ransom.

Ranged ships are going to be rare, either very high tech (galleons with cannons) or "specialty" (arcane barge). I have no idea if it will be possible, but if G&K ships work like current land units, it will be possible for them to have both melee and ranged attack. I might use this for something like a galleon. One assumes that they have some soldiers on-board in addition to cannons.

In a standard size Continents (or PerfectWorld3) map I think about half the cities end up being coastal. So I don't think any sort of "near the sea" abilities are needed.

Keep in mind that Bronze Working is going to give you both Triremes (an upgrade from Galleys) and Light Infantry. For the pinnacle naval unit (Galleon) you need Navigation, Iron Working and Chemistry, which happens to also allow Medium Infantry and Cannons. So a "conquering naval civ" is going to have some pretty tough land units. (A "commerce naval civ" can forgo the metal techs, but they will probably be focusing on commerce policies and have access to mercenaries.)

Any serious "conquering civ" is going to have to go down one (or more) of the existing military tech branches. Non-conquering civs should strongly consider picking up at least one of the 2nd tier techs that gives some defensive capability (Bronze Working, Archery, Horseback Riding, Mounted Elephants or Mathematics), unless they are getting the mercenary policy (in which case they don't need to worry about military techs at all since you can hire units you don't have the tech for).

Also, naval techs or naval civ names could gain access to/upgrades for the "defend while embarked" ability, so a naval civ could be much better at coastal invasions.

One interesting mechanic would be the ability for the civ being extorted to refuse to ransom. Of course, it could be assumed that the extortionists have a leading citizen or are threatening to destroy something. So, there could be a happiness penalty if the would-be extorted refuse.

rocklikeafool said:

One interesting mechanic would be the ability for the civ being extorted to refuse to ransom. Of course, it could be assumed that the extortionists have a leading citizen or are threatening to destroy something. So, there could be a happiness penalty if the would-be extorted refuse.

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I think if you refuse then the pirates just get the city. The pirates are then stuck with unhappiness and an indefensible city. The other civ has to retake the city and looses buildings in the process. (Much better if we all just cooperate and pay the nice men with the patched eyes and peg legs, isn't it?)