cmhwak said:
my internet connection has been down for a while so ive been messing around with civ 4 lately... mainly noodling around in your mod (i prefer fantasy to vanilla -- i loved the warhammer mod for civ3)... anyway, ive been digging into the xml files and getting all the info i can on the civs/buildings/traits/units etc and changing some/trying to change some to better suit my tastes (because i get nerdy like that sometimes). i know the mod is nowhere close to being done but i had a few questions. some of my information here may be wrong and some of this stuff may just not be in the game or yet or are never going to be. the questions will run on but i thought it best to keep it all together since there are multiple questions. here we go.........
- why do the khazad not get the dwarven units such as "dwarven warrior"?
The current dwarven warrior is Luchurip only because it is blocked from being upgraded to an axeman (which is a golem for the luchurip). The Khazad will eventually get a different warrior.
- some of the unique units (mainly warriors and scouts) seem to not be any different from the regular version besides the name. i know some of them have racial traits attatched for the slaying promotions but others like bloodpet or hippus scout do not seem to have any bonus or negative to them from the regular unit. is this just for flavor, have their distincive characteristics not been added yet or did i just miss something?
There are multiple reasons why we would create unique units. The bloodpet has unique art and a special relationship with vampires. The Hippus scout is unique art.
- all of the leaders seem to be pretty cookie cutter in their view of diplomacy. ive seen a few very minor tweaks here and there in the code but for the most part the only thing that seems to matter is good/neutral/evil, close borders and how you personally treat each one. if you are an evil race dealing with the clan for example, from what i see, if you do nothing but replace the clan with another evil civ, you will get the same results. the main point that got me looking into this is perpentach. he has a very interesting description -- prone to being random but also likes honesty. i was looking to see what changes were made to create this leader but i didnt find that any were made at all and like i said, at viewing the rest, little seems to be different from one to the next besides g/n/e. is this how the setup will stay or are there plans to give the leaders more personality later.... or have i missed something again?
There are 56 traits that define the leaders attitude. Alignment is definitly the biggest factor of these, but beyond that if we compare Perpentach and Jonus (two evil leaders) we have 17 differences amoung those 56. Bascially making Perpentach more erratic.
- i think this may have been brought up just recently but i cant find it... are there plans to give any positives to racials? ... from what i see there is no good to being an orc for example because the only reason it seems to be there is so people can kill you better with a promotion.
Remember that a unit is more than a promotion. We dont design at the component level but on the entity as a whole. An Orc Spearman costs 20% less than other civs warriors, is only +20% to city defense instead of +25%, and is of course vunerable to the orc slaying promotion.
We could compare their orc spearman to the other warriors. But to be honest although we design at that level we dont balance at that level. We balance the civs as a whole.
So I guess the short of it is that I dont see a need to add a bonus to the orc promotion just to have it. Its okay with me if it is only a negative effect. It is only a piece of the larger picture.
- i really like the doviello flavor. when ive fooled with mods in the past i always like giving people bonuses for their specific cultures location (such as the tundra bonus). while very interesting it seems very weak in actual play. there just isnt a lot of tundra on a normal map so the only thing their bonus seems to be good for is if you are fighting a losing war and defending your own cities in the tundra (though you could be out raiding some other civs backwater tundra city but the bonus is still only defensive so it helps you not). ive only played the civ briefly and i didnt notice any special buildings or anything other than the tundra defense to actually make the computer or player want to stay in the cold regions... it then just seems to become a grass loving not too powerful civ. is this the completed civ or do you have anything else in store for them?
Nothing to change the doviello. But I do want the world to start cold and gradually warm to the "real" map over the first 100 turns or so. That would give the doviello a strong early game benifit that would be mitigated by the midgame.
actually, i had a few questions about the lanun as well -- love the pirateyish aspect but aside from a couple of ships and a special unit and a pirate cove which doesnt even work at the moment, they dont seem so have any difference in their way of life from any other run of the mill human civ who just wants to build stuff or attack people. more piratey buildings or fewer generic buildings or variations or something would be great-- maybe they can only have the city states civic and cities can only grow so large so you much venture out and maybe something to help with penalties for having many little cities out and about in random areas. i dont know .... are the civs that are in the game now in their final state? thats a better question that sums it up i guess.
The lanun have +1 movement for their ships, -1 food from farms, start with a water mana, get an additional food from every water tiles, have an upgrade galley, can steal ships with boarding parties, can gain money from pirate attacks, and can build pirate coves.
No plans to add anything new to them.
- i was making a map and was placing the items around the hippus area after taking notes of what they will need. i did not find that there is a camel resource. you can domesticate them after learning a tech but you dont actually need camels. i find this to be a bit strange that you could be miles away from a likely place to find a camel but just by learning how to domesticate them, you also GET them. you have to have "ivory"/elephant-pic to create elephant units so why no camel resource? why not just change the camel riders into horse riders of a different type? there are few places outside of a desert area where camels will do you better than horses so i dont see why they are an improvement (a HUGE one at that - 5/11) rather than just a variation of a horse archer that works better in the desert. i dont see how you will be doing that much more damage just because you are on a camel rather than a horse. are these special fantasy camels?
From a design perspective it is a resourceless mounted unit. Allows unfortunate or small players access to a mounted unit. It si assumed that the camel riders are elite (t4) mounted units and their improved strength is more than just rabid camels, but increased equipment/training/numbers/etc. Units are just an abstraction of a fighting force, but an attempt to recreate that force.
The underlying mechanic is a t4 resourceless mounted unit. The "camel" is just flavor.
-is the diplomacy text in its final state? some of the things people say are very similar to other civs and some things are just down right stupid such as the "kumbaya" phrase you get from the kuriotates(which i think is actually just from vanilla civ4). its a bit off-putting. i dont really get a feel of the other civ from what they say to me... well, i mean i do but its just so black and white. everyone seems to be either a hippie or a straight up murderer. while some leaders are actually like that, its still the vibe i get from almost every civ. some phrases just dont seem to fit in as well. the lanun greeting for example -- something about staying in your big cities and leave us the islands -- while very flavorful, in the end it just does not make sense to the way the game is played because unless they are not doing so well, they are going to have cities that are just as large as any other player and unless they somehow get stuck out on a group of islands, their civ boundaries are going to looks pretty much no different from any others. another note: while they arent fully in the game yet, i did like the murcurians greeting. it summed up very well what they are all about and in an interesting way. i think its an example of one of these well done.
Its interesting that you complain both about the diplomacy being to general and to specific. It is a hard line to walk. I dont worry to much about the to specific, like the lanuns text. Im not attempting to fool the player into thinking he is talking with a real person and I would rather get some flavor across than worry about realism. There are 64 diplomacy tags and 35 leaders so we have a whopping 2240 lines to write. And your right, we definitly arent done with it. A lot of the default text is still in.
- worg riders require horses when they are actually riding wolves. is this supposed to be how it is?
According to my copy they dont require stables or horses. I thought that was a change in 0.13. But that might just be a 0.14 thing I forgot to put in the changelog. Either way they won't require horses in 0.14.
- how exactly did the civ names come about and are they in their final state? some seem to be very similar to one another... a lot of the civilizations city names could just be anothers... even if its elf, human or dwarf, a lot still sound the same and some just dont seem to be in the flavor of the civ. i know its fantasy and anything goes but the lanun for example have a few interesting city names but most just seem to be jibberish that makes me think more of a barbarian(or klingon) civ than a dashing-rogue type civ.
A variety of places. A lot came from Haarbal. Someone just pointed out today that the doviello and grigori shared a lot of city names so i wrote all new ones for the grigori. I agree that the lanun's city names arent very good, ill try to improve those a bit before 0.14.
thats all i can think of. like the mod so far. wish i could just FF to when you are done.
Thats for the feedback. Whats FF?
And the new traits seem very balanced, i can see some leaders getting charismatic or imperialistic. Vassal slave, the great wall (you can make it stop everything instead of stopping only barbarians 
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