Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
- Messages
- 3,584
Phase II (alpha) has been released! Please visit the thread here.
You begin knowing only that you are a small tribe, belonging to one of three races, without name, leader or history. Your civilization will soon acquire a name. Its character will develop over time based on achievements, discoveries, geography and other factors. Heroes and other great people will arise from the ranks of armies tested in battle, from places of arcane or divine study, or from the alleyways of your most corrupt cities. Some of these individuals will become leaders. All will pass in time (except perhaps for the ageless). Your small tribe has no lore, no epic tales of heroes or gods from times past. There is no past. The story of Éa is yours to make...
Pre-alpha download: Ea 20120701 Warning!!! This is early development code! It is going to be many months before this mod is ready for testing, let alone a good playable game. I'm posting code now for folks that want to follow development, or for code vultures that want to pick it apart for useful bits. See post#2 for tips if you want to start it and look around at the new mechanics. 11/28 update: alpha official release day is 21 December 2012.
Current build status:
Éa II, v1 (initial alpha release)
Civ naming and trait system The naming system is is working, for the most part, at least for Man. If you are first to a "naming" condition, then your civ will go from "A Tribe of Men" to "Ikkos", "Fir Bolg", etc. Most of these are just empty names, however. I'm currently hooking them up to actual effects. There will also be a popup (similar to a era change in base) with civ-specific image.
Leader Changes This works. Any GP can "take leadership" if you don't currently have a leader. The only way to undo this is to disband that unit, which will make you go back to "No Leader" and allow another GP to become leader. Currently, all GPs except Warrior have an effect. For now, they add +10% production, gold, science or culture (depending on GP class) to all cities.
Great People Generation is in, and you can see UI in the top bar telling your %chance for spawning each turn (note that this is 0 until you have civ name). It also shows points for each of the 5 classes, which gives you the relative likelihood of generating each type (dependent on specialists and unit xp). GPs can do a lot of the listed stuff but I still have a lot of work to do here.
Tech advancement The tree is in with a vertical scroll bar. I still need to add toggle arrows so that small screens can access high tier techs on the right. Knowledge Maintenance is in. Diffusion is in but not currently working right (it's popping techs when it is only ever supposed to give you 95% of a techs research cost).
Policy advancement The "Cultural Level" system is in and seems to work. I like the timing of the 1st policy (about turn 60 if you do nothing, much faster if you build a monument, much much faster if you build a fair and assign an artisan).
Trade Routes Recently added and they seem to work (it's an action for Merchant GPs). I still need to add UI to city screen. It will be a separate area on the right, showing each trade route for this city and any modifiers.
Tile Wonders These can be built by a GP joined with a worker or slave. Unfortunately, the graphics never update from "under construction" state to "finished" state. More importantly, I haven't added effects for Wonders yet.
AI Yikes! Some of the core machinery is in, but not really working yet. All tech and policy decisions will be entirely Lua controlled and tailored (i.e., "hard wired") to the mod's specific techs/policies. This provides better AI performance than any "generic" system, and easier to code too, though it means that any modmoder has to do some AI work for the AI to "see" and properly pick any new techs or policies. There will also be separate AI guiding GP generation (specialist focus by civ agenda) and a separate "unit AI" for each GP class or subclass.
I am NOT ready for specific bug or balance reports at this time, so there is no reason to post them. However, I welcome and will try to respond to general comments or questions about gameplay mechanics, UI, AI, or really anything else.
Phase 1 will never reach a playable state. Once the Gods & Kings expansion comes out, I'll shift development over to phase 2. We'll reach alpha (ready for testing) sometime during phase 2 and hopefully beta (a real game with multiple interesting victory conditions) during phase 4. I have plans for a total of 12 phases, each focusing on a different area of gameplay and introducing new game mechanics.
Phase 1, "Dawn of the Mortal Races" (initial pre-alpha release), introduces many new mechanisms and major changes that are the foundation for subsequent development. This will be primarily a code development phase. Here are the highlights:
Source Material
Éa is my own creation and there is no single source. The name "Éa" was used by LeGuin for the first island created in Earthsea and by Tolkien (in the form "Eä") to mean universe. "Ea" was the Babylonian name for Enki, god of water and creation (among other things), so plausibly a source for both LeGuin and Tolkien (that's my theory). A lot of the civilization names that I use come from old Irish myth and history. Others are re-spellings of words from a variety of languages (e.g., nežēlība -> Nezhêlîba for the slavery-founding civ) or names of real historical places, e.g., where earliest bronze or iron working are thought to have occurred. Many of the names for heroes and great people come from The Poetic Edda, the same place Tolkien got names for all but one of the twelve dwarves and many other characters. (Gandálfr was originally a dwarf for those of you who don't know.) I have taken words from the original language of Zoroastrianism, Avesta, to create the names of prophecies and other elements of the theistic religions (coming in phase 2), though Ahriman is a Persian re-naming of Aŋra Mainiuu and Azzandara is an alternate name for Ahura Mazda. Much of the Sídhe related material is from Gaelic mythology. All of these sources have inspired me a great deal, but I'm reinterpreting myths and meanings in whatever way is most useful for Éa.
Credits
Modding:
Kael - for the inspired and inspirational Fall from Heaven (and the Civ5 modding starter tutorial)
DonQuiche - for the excellent Civ5 modding wiki ... Really amazing!
whoward69 - for many fine modding tutorials and bits of code
Gedemon - for the initial "Lua skeleton" used to build this mod (taken and modified from R.E.D. WWII)
Redox - for AStar pathfinding algorithm
Spatzimaus, whoward69, Gedemon, Thalassicus, DonQuiche and PawelS - for answers to modding questions
CivFanatics - for the fabulous forum
2D images:
I have a lot of wonderful 2D art planned for Éa. Browsing the work of many artists at CG Society (in particular) has inspired the flavor of Éa as much as the source material mentioned above. Here are the artists that have allowed me to use one or more of their images. Please give these artists the respect they deserve and don't rip them off. So much training, talent and effort goes into creating these works.
Ruan Jia home cgsociety cghub
David Munoz Velazquez home cgsociety
Rob Chope home cgsociety
Stefan Valkanov cgsociety
Alayna Lemmer home cgsociety
Rochelle Green cgsociety deviantart
Benita Winckler home cgsociety
Jenny Lehmann home cgsociety deviantart
Markus Lovadina home cgsociety
Kristina Gehrmann home cgsociety
Roberto E. Quintero cgsociety
Eve Ventrue home cgsociety
Thomas Pringle home cgsociety
Alon Chou home cgsociety facebook
Eva Soulu home cgsociety
Isis Sousa home cgsociety
Henning Ludvigsen home cgsociety deviantart
Steven Stahlberg home cgsociety
Michel Victor Oliveira cgsociety deviantart
Lubos de Gerardo Surzin home cgsociety
Neville Dsouza cgsociety
Adam Kuczek home cgsociety
Sue Marino cgsociety deviantart
Ehsan Dabbaghi cgsociety
Bruno Cerkvenik home cgsociety
Shahan Zaidi cgsociety
Cole Eastburn home cgsociety
Ilich Henriquez home cgsociety
Tiziano Baracchi cgsociety
John Barry Ballaran home cgsociety
Pawel Brudniak home cgsociety
Lincoln Renall home cgsociety
Martin McKenna home cgsociety
Yang Xueguo cgsociety
Kulbongkot Chutaprutikorn cgsociety deviantart
Alexander Jack cgsociety
Alex Ruiz home cgsociety
Bente Schlick home cgsociety
Stephen Flack home cghub deviantart
Ann-Christin Pogoda home cgsociety
Mariana Vieira home cgsociety
Leonie Jannien Baauw home cgsociety
Mod development timeline (past)
If anyone is interested, here is the original post where I started forming ideas about a new Hero/GP system, which was two years minus one day before this post. I spent the next 6 months writing an exstensive (24 page) mod documentation while browsing (OK, downloading) a lot of 2D art that I might want to use, particularly as GP portraits. That artwork and coming up with great people names (at first random name generator, then Poetic Edda and other old sources) influenced the direction and flavor of Éa. I messed around a bit with modding right after Civ5 release, but mostly just got frustrated. After a bit of a break, I took it back up in August 2011, building a skeleton for the Éa mod (starting from Gedemon's WWII stuff). I knew that I needed to deal with a lot of images (so I wrote ModBBF) and to deal with table data save/load in a generic way or risk going insane (so I wrote TableSaverLoader). I was developing code for Éa through that whole time. In December I lost hope thinking there was no way in heck that I could ever complete anything. I had just bitten off way more than I could chew (I do that). Then I broke it up into 12 parts ordering things by "development phase". I put only the essential core mechanisms (GP and civ name/trait systems) into phase 1 while spreading content and add-on mechanisms over the 11 subsequent phases. That made things so much more managable. In late January I decided that it was likely to amount to something, so I posted the teaser thread.
Mod development timeline (future)
Who the heck knows? (No one is paying so I'm avoiding deadlines and commitments, for the most part...)
Here are some Great People in action:
Tech tree:
—Image by Ruan Jia
You begin knowing only that you are a small tribe, belonging to one of three races, without name, leader or history. Your civilization will soon acquire a name. Its character will develop over time based on achievements, discoveries, geography and other factors. Heroes and other great people will arise from the ranks of armies tested in battle, from places of arcane or divine study, or from the alleyways of your most corrupt cities. Some of these individuals will become leaders. All will pass in time (except perhaps for the ageless). Your small tribe has no lore, no epic tales of heroes or gods from times past. There is no past. The story of Éa is yours to make...
Pre-alpha download: Ea 20120701 Warning!!! This is early development code! It is going to be many months before this mod is ready for testing, let alone a good playable game. I'm posting code now for folks that want to follow development, or for code vultures that want to pick it apart for useful bits. See post#2 for tips if you want to start it and look around at the new mechanics. 11/28 update: alpha official release day is 21 December 2012.
Current build status:
Spoiler :
Éa II, v1 (initial alpha release)
- Converted 20120701 for G&K
- Added religions w/ initial beliefs (all religions have fixed beliefs, though some beliefs gained later by policy)
- Added GP class Devout with subclasses: Priest, Paladin, Druid
- Added GP class Arcane Practitioner with subclasses: Witch, Wizard, Sorcerer. Druid is subclass of both Devout and Arcane Practitioner. Note that magic will be very limited in phase 2 with a simplified mana system and just enough spells to make the victory conditions work.
- Re-enabled GP AI and it is working!, at least for merchants. Not sure what happened. All AI movement was broken in 20120701 (post-patch vanilla) but it is no longer broken in G&K-converted mod. (This is good because I can now finish base GP AIs, Artist and Warrior, and start adding phase 2 GP AIs.)
- Added Pantheism and Theism policy branches
- Added alternative Theism policy branch for the fallen (mirrors the normal Theism branch and is displayed in its place for any fallen civilization)
- Added Lua logic to determine "fallen" state and dominant civilization religions
- Added major prophecies (actions for the Devout GP class) and lots of Lua logic for religion founding (no AI yet)
- Added wildlands mechanic for pantheistic civs
- Created system to allow GPs to gain experience and take promotions
- Deleted almost all base promotions and added mod's own promotions
- Added Proselytize and various Druid rituals to allow active religious conversion
- Major overhaul of GP AI (again) to allow AI to learn all of its "values" for an action based on action definition (an action is defined in an EaActions table and by a few optional action-specific methods). The system is getting really generic now, which is good. Basically, anyone who can code Lua should be able to add a new action (including a spell) without opening up the AI code file. You still have to write some code for your action to calculate the potential payoff (or you can just supply a proxy fixed value).
- Added Heal Spell
- Added GP "individual modifier" system. mod = (5 + level/3) + applicable promotion bonues, rounded down. This value is used to determine the effect of almost any GP action, whether it be the instant effect of a spell or the permanent effect of a Wonder just built.
- Added "Wonders, Epics & Artifacts" popup window. It shows all world-unique objects that exist, whether owned by human or AI player. It can be found in the "diplo corner" with Religious Overview, Victory Progress, etc. screenshot
- Split off "Éa Media Pack" into a separate mod. This contains all art assets (the biggest part of the mod by size) and will need to be updated much less frequently then the main mod.
- GP popup screen now working. It scales image based on your screen resolution and is quite cool. screenshot
- Converted and added all GP portraits for Man and Sidhe for alpha release (103 total).
- GP aging and experience (passive and active) are fully implemented as described here.
- All buildings and resources added and double checked against doc specs.
- Pedia: Units categorized by race rather than era
- Added Naphtha resource
- All units added and double checked against doc specs. Many units currently use placeholder graphics, e.g., Keshik for all horse-archer line. I'll start to fill in unit graphic types (after alpha release) using some of the fantastic ethnic variants available. These can work for Man and Sidhe, but Heldeofol will remain on hold until we get some Orc/Goblin/Ogre-type units.
- Slaves added (see detailed Slavery system here). Slaves are maintenance free worker replacement, and also the "capture" unit for workers, settlers or slaves. Settler/worker/slave capture is now limited to those with this policy branch only.
- Slave Raiders policy added. Slave Raider promotion (earned) causes slaves to be generated from unit kills and population killed on city capture. Policy generates slaves during city razing.
- Slave Armies policy added. Slave Maker promotion (earned) allows land military unit capture (captured unit has Slave promo which hurts strength and experience gain)
- Slave Breeding added. With Slave Breeding Pen you can build settlers no matter the unhappiness, and cuts food loss from unhappiness in half (base GlobalDefines penalty has been reduced overall: Unhappy, -50%; Very unhappy, -75%)
- Servi Aeternam added. Interment Camp converts nearby revolting units to slaves under your control
- Debt Bondage added. With Debtor's Court you can convert city pop to slaves
- Added popup when a civ takes a name (will be civ-specific image later but for now it is just a placeholder image).
- Added a generic "time-discount" system for the AI to understand and compare future or per turn payoffs vs costs. See here and here.
- Merchant unit AI is now working.
- Added National Treasury (merchant city build). Requires Coinage and gives 5% interest on treasury.
- GPs now gain a title as part of their name when they become leader. For now, it is just King _<name>_ or Queen _<name>_. Any GP can be given a special (override) title via a simple edit of the EaPeople table.
- Added Tomes
- Sage AI now working
- Added wonders with effects (all are built in city by Engineer or Sage)
- Engineer AI now working
- Collected ~300 images for GP portraits and Civ-naming popups (see Credits section below)
- The Civ AI that picks techs and policies is now working. Some description in this post. It initially picks from 0 - 3 techs to get some capital growth, then actively and aggressively goes for a civ name.
- You cannot have diplo interactions with a civ unless both you and they have a leader. (You can still declare war by attacking or violating borders with a unit. But you will then be stuck at war until you can initiate diplo interactions.)
- You do not even see a civ in the diplo list until it takes a civ name.
- Changed GP generation spawning function. You now need some GP points to have any chance of spawning.
- Ouch! The new patch has broken AI GP movement! For the current build, I have disabled all GP AI (except that they will still take leadership).
- Hooked up civ naming traits to actual effects. About 80% complete.
- Added Academy and Trade House (still need foreign trade UI)
- GP spawning chance now accounts for Civs with "favored GP class" (see*) and the 3 policy openers
- Added code debugging feature that verifies that all SQL files read to end-of-file
- Three policy openers spawn GP now (Militarism, Commerce, Tradition). If this is your civ's naming event, then you get a specific GP (Nemed, Partholón, or Theano) as initial leader and your civ's namesake.
- First to Mathematics or Masonry spawn specific GP (Lagad or Sophroniscus) as initial leader and civ namesake.
- Randomly spawning GPs are now of the appropriate race.
- Heldeofol now spawn a Warrior GP upon their first kill. This GP is automatically made leader and the civ takes an associated name (all are now "Clan of <leader name>"; perhaps we can get more creative later).
Civ naming and trait system The naming system is is working, for the most part, at least for Man. If you are first to a "naming" condition, then your civ will go from "A Tribe of Men" to "Ikkos", "Fir Bolg", etc. Most of these are just empty names, however. I'm currently hooking them up to actual effects. There will also be a popup (similar to a era change in base) with civ-specific image.
Leader Changes This works. Any GP can "take leadership" if you don't currently have a leader. The only way to undo this is to disband that unit, which will make you go back to "No Leader" and allow another GP to become leader. Currently, all GPs except Warrior have an effect. For now, they add +10% production, gold, science or culture (depending on GP class) to all cities.
Great People Generation is in, and you can see UI in the top bar telling your %chance for spawning each turn (note that this is 0 until you have civ name). It also shows points for each of the 5 classes, which gives you the relative likelihood of generating each type (dependent on specialists and unit xp). GPs can do a lot of the listed stuff but I still have a lot of work to do here.
Tech advancement The tree is in with a vertical scroll bar. I still need to add toggle arrows so that small screens can access high tier techs on the right. Knowledge Maintenance is in. Diffusion is in but not currently working right (it's popping techs when it is only ever supposed to give you 95% of a techs research cost).
Policy advancement The "Cultural Level" system is in and seems to work. I like the timing of the 1st policy (about turn 60 if you do nothing, much faster if you build a monument, much much faster if you build a fair and assign an artisan).
Trade Routes Recently added and they seem to work (it's an action for Merchant GPs). I still need to add UI to city screen. It will be a separate area on the right, showing each trade route for this city and any modifiers.
Tile Wonders These can be built by a GP joined with a worker or slave. Unfortunately, the graphics never update from "under construction" state to "finished" state. More importantly, I haven't added effects for Wonders yet.
AI Yikes! Some of the core machinery is in, but not really working yet. All tech and policy decisions will be entirely Lua controlled and tailored (i.e., "hard wired") to the mod's specific techs/policies. This provides better AI performance than any "generic" system, and easier to code too, though it means that any modmoder has to do some AI work for the AI to "see" and properly pick any new techs or policies. There will also be separate AI guiding GP generation (specialist focus by civ agenda) and a separate "unit AI" for each GP class or subclass.
Phase 1 will never reach a playable state. Once the Gods & Kings expansion comes out, I'll shift development over to phase 2. We'll reach alpha (ready for testing) sometime during phase 2 and hopefully beta (a real game with multiple interesting victory conditions) during phase 4. I have plans for a total of 12 phases, each focusing on a different area of gameplay and introducing new game mechanics.
Phase 1, "Dawn of the Mortal Races" (initial pre-alpha release), introduces many new mechanisms and major changes that are the foundation for subsequent development. This will be primarily a code development phase. Here are the highlights:
- You begin the game simply as "a tribe of _____" (one of the two races in phase 1) without a real civilization name or leader. You will take a civ name (with an associated trait) early in the game and gain several additional traits throughout the game based on your achievements or other specific conditions.
- Leaders are derived from great people, exist as units on the map, and may be replaced.
- The Great People system is very different, both in the derivation of GPs and their function. GPs build all wonders, craft epics, establish trade routes and do many other things. GPs don't "disappear" after performing these actions; instead, they are limited by the fact that great accomplishments take time. Any GP can become a leader.
- Tech advancement is no longer the overarching "measure of progress" that it is in base Civ5, nor necessary for victory. The Tech Tree is wide but shallow (it's more of a Tech "Shrubbery") and used primarily as a civ-specializing system. There is both knowledge diffusion and knowledge maintenance. You won't be able to learn more than about a third of all techs in any single game (and only that if you are very research-focused). But you won't need more than that. By design, I am making 4 out of the planned 5 victory conditions achievable while illiterate (note that I didn't say "easily achievable while illiterate").
- Policy advancement is based on Cultural Level, which is a function of culture generated per population point over your civilization's entire history. There is no city number penalty.
- Gold has been moved away from tile yield in most cases (e.g., river and sea don't give any, but many resources still do) and shifted more toward population and trade-based generation, which involves several new mechanisms.
- Forests are not kind to Man. For the most part, you will want to clear these as fast as possible in areas where you are trying to develop. Fortunately, all civs can slash-and-burn from game start (chopping for production requires bronze working). But don't expect this to be easy. The forests of Éa fight back. (And jungles are even nastier...)
- Overall, the "civilization landscape" is much more varied than base in terms of both city sizes and distribution. You will see a few larger cities, but more typically smaller cities. Rule changes make even a permanent size 1 city worthwhile if it is holding a strategic point or valuable resource. Cities can be clustered together very close with only a 1-tile spacing requirement. However, an increased emphasis on resources (especially bonus food resources) forces cities to spread out more, at least on average, leaving a good deal of undeveloped "wildlands" between cities or between civilizations. This will be very important in later mod development.
- Extensive AI modding. I spend roughly half my programming effort on the AI [Edit Aug 2012: no, easily 80%]. The mod Lua code controls all tech and policy choices and all great person movement and actions for AI civs. Eventually, it will also influence build queues, war/peace choices, and other things. I have an intense dislike of the base flavor system. In Éa, the AI civ-level (tech and policy) decision process changes with the stage of the game (see here) and should provide optimal choices with a large degree of civ-differentiation. Great person activity uses rational decision making based on action value calculation with time-discounting (see here and here). (Sorry folks, I have no access to tactical AI so I can't do anything about that.)
Source Material
Éa is my own creation and there is no single source. The name "Éa" was used by LeGuin for the first island created in Earthsea and by Tolkien (in the form "Eä") to mean universe. "Ea" was the Babylonian name for Enki, god of water and creation (among other things), so plausibly a source for both LeGuin and Tolkien (that's my theory). A lot of the civilization names that I use come from old Irish myth and history. Others are re-spellings of words from a variety of languages (e.g., nežēlība -> Nezhêlîba for the slavery-founding civ) or names of real historical places, e.g., where earliest bronze or iron working are thought to have occurred. Many of the names for heroes and great people come from The Poetic Edda, the same place Tolkien got names for all but one of the twelve dwarves and many other characters. (Gandálfr was originally a dwarf for those of you who don't know.) I have taken words from the original language of Zoroastrianism, Avesta, to create the names of prophecies and other elements of the theistic religions (coming in phase 2), though Ahriman is a Persian re-naming of Aŋra Mainiuu and Azzandara is an alternate name for Ahura Mazda. Much of the Sídhe related material is from Gaelic mythology. All of these sources have inspired me a great deal, but I'm reinterpreting myths and meanings in whatever way is most useful for Éa.
Credits
Modding:
Kael - for the inspired and inspirational Fall from Heaven (and the Civ5 modding starter tutorial)
DonQuiche - for the excellent Civ5 modding wiki ... Really amazing!
whoward69 - for many fine modding tutorials and bits of code
Gedemon - for the initial "Lua skeleton" used to build this mod (taken and modified from R.E.D. WWII)
Redox - for AStar pathfinding algorithm
Spatzimaus, whoward69, Gedemon, Thalassicus, DonQuiche and PawelS - for answers to modding questions
CivFanatics - for the fabulous forum
2D images:
I have a lot of wonderful 2D art planned for Éa. Browsing the work of many artists at CG Society (in particular) has inspired the flavor of Éa as much as the source material mentioned above. Here are the artists that have allowed me to use one or more of their images. Please give these artists the respect they deserve and don't rip them off. So much training, talent and effort goes into creating these works.
Ruan Jia home cgsociety cghub
David Munoz Velazquez home cgsociety
Rob Chope home cgsociety
Stefan Valkanov cgsociety
Alayna Lemmer home cgsociety
Rochelle Green cgsociety deviantart
Benita Winckler home cgsociety
Jenny Lehmann home cgsociety deviantart
Markus Lovadina home cgsociety
Kristina Gehrmann home cgsociety
Roberto E. Quintero cgsociety
Eve Ventrue home cgsociety
Thomas Pringle home cgsociety
Alon Chou home cgsociety facebook
Eva Soulu home cgsociety
Isis Sousa home cgsociety
Henning Ludvigsen home cgsociety deviantart
Steven Stahlberg home cgsociety
Michel Victor Oliveira cgsociety deviantart
Lubos de Gerardo Surzin home cgsociety
Neville Dsouza cgsociety
Adam Kuczek home cgsociety
Sue Marino cgsociety deviantart
Ehsan Dabbaghi cgsociety
Bruno Cerkvenik home cgsociety
Shahan Zaidi cgsociety
Cole Eastburn home cgsociety
Ilich Henriquez home cgsociety
Tiziano Baracchi cgsociety
John Barry Ballaran home cgsociety
Pawel Brudniak home cgsociety
Lincoln Renall home cgsociety
Martin McKenna home cgsociety
Yang Xueguo cgsociety
Kulbongkot Chutaprutikorn cgsociety deviantart
Alexander Jack cgsociety
Alex Ruiz home cgsociety
Bente Schlick home cgsociety
Stephen Flack home cghub deviantart
Ann-Christin Pogoda home cgsociety
Mariana Vieira home cgsociety
Leonie Jannien Baauw home cgsociety
Mod development timeline (past)
If anyone is interested, here is the original post where I started forming ideas about a new Hero/GP system, which was two years minus one day before this post. I spent the next 6 months writing an exstensive (24 page) mod documentation while browsing (OK, downloading) a lot of 2D art that I might want to use, particularly as GP portraits. That artwork and coming up with great people names (at first random name generator, then Poetic Edda and other old sources) influenced the direction and flavor of Éa. I messed around a bit with modding right after Civ5 release, but mostly just got frustrated. After a bit of a break, I took it back up in August 2011, building a skeleton for the Éa mod (starting from Gedemon's WWII stuff). I knew that I needed to deal with a lot of images (so I wrote ModBBF) and to deal with table data save/load in a generic way or risk going insane (so I wrote TableSaverLoader). I was developing code for Éa through that whole time. In December I lost hope thinking there was no way in heck that I could ever complete anything. I had just bitten off way more than I could chew (I do that). Then I broke it up into 12 parts ordering things by "development phase". I put only the essential core mechanisms (GP and civ name/trait systems) into phase 1 while spreading content and add-on mechanisms over the 11 subsequent phases. That made things so much more managable. In late January I decided that it was likely to amount to something, so I posted the teaser thread.
Mod development timeline (future)
Who the heck knows? (No one is paying so I'm avoiding deadlines and commitments, for the most part...)
Here are some Great People in action:
Spoiler :
Spoiler :