Fairy Tale

An Indian mythology based civ could be cool. If you want to pursue it I remember a few Total War research threads for both Rajputs and Sindh (Indus) factions. I would stay away from a Native America civ, their mythology due to its variations means it is very hard to imitate well. Look at Fall Further Chiskos for examples.

An Arabian Nights civ could be interesting, perhaps combine them with the Vampires. IIRC the first mentions in mythology of vampire-esqu creatures were in Arabia. The Ottomans exported the myths to Europe where it became Dracula. Heres a copy of Arabian Nights I found online. The story I copied is one of my favorites there:
http://www.bartleby.com/16/701.html

I have a few other ideas for possible civs, but how magical do you want this mod to be? FfH style magic or more LotR style magic?

The best idea I have is the Empire of Selredor (a placeholder name right now). Basicaly they consider themselves to be superior to all the other humans in the world because they view themselves as having a direct heritage to the 'ultimate' humans of old Zuur. However they believe Zuur collapses/dissapeared/lost power becasue they associated themselves with evil rather than good. After the chaos/power vacuum that occured after the fall of Zuur their leader, the High Priest of the Veil, advocated a strict magocracy/theocracy where doing what was right is paramount. They also believe that evil is separated from this world by a viel that is Order and progress so their civilization must achieve that perfect dream. What they must do to achieve that dream is questionable. According to one observer:
"Proud and cruel they were. Fair and merciless. Under their rule your life would be decent, punishments fair. But they considered no acts beneath them. So hight and proud were they, any action could be justified because they knew how proud they were. Any trip into deciet was simply an excercise in humanity." They remained reletivly secluded due to low numbers and the relativly peaceful that considered them warmongering religous nutters. Then the Collective came. Word of the Collectives arrival was slow to reach the men of Selredor, but when it did: out marched their armies. Disciplined and deadly, their armies saved the Principality but at what cost. The men of Selredor are weakened, their proud armies in dissaray, but they are building a new army more disciplined and deadly than any before seen.

Military: Their military is similar to European 'pike and shot' with disciplined longbowmen replacing musketeers. Their knights are effective but they pride themselves in their pikemen. Their weakness is low troop numbers and very expensive troops forcing them to use local militias and auxillary regiments more than they would like. But any army made up of purely Selredan troops can hold its own against any army.
UUs:
>The Grey Men: They serve as the 'shock troopers' against the Collective. The Grey Men have distanced themselves from their humanity to feel no emotion. They are solely dedicated to destroying the collective.
Symbol: A red triangle pointed down like a V outlined in gold on a black background. that is the symbol emblazoned or embroidered onto their armour/surcoats.
They refer to themselves as being the Imperium of Man becasue they believe they are the only true humans left, all the rest are corrupted forms of old Zuur. However, they are no genocidal. They believe that with time the corrupted forms can become human again. One must not execute or excessivly mistreat them because then they are no better than Zuur. This is the sole exception to their belief they can do anything.
Basicaly they are the epitome of moral ambiguity. I'm not sure how useful they will be to use as they might be a bit too dark.
 
Nice! You've got the whole story done there and I'd be a fool not to use it. I'll add a civ inspired by your story and see where it takes us.

That'll be in future updates though; right now I'm working on getting Version 5 going, and it seems I haven't done too much and it won't be too impressive. The most job I've done is in the background; Tech tree design, some small python additions and balancing and such. No impressive new castles or shining knights in this update, I'm afraid, but it's imperative to get V5 out as soon as possible, since V4 is already patched to the fullest.

New civs will come at a later date, and so will Highwayhoss' idea of Guilds instead of corporations be included with later updates.

On the magic. There won't be too much magic in this one. If I find something suitable, it will be included, but as of now, I only have sorceresses and magicians involved (the magicians only serve as beefed up artillery really), and one spell, the Snaketrail Destruction spell that really works like a missile and can be carried by magicians. My intent is to make a few magical features, but really keep them at a low, since magic doesn't fascinate me as much as the hard clash of real steel on the field of battle. If I find suitable systems to add that enhance combat, they will be included, as said.

Thanks for your ideas and comments!
 


Full Version 5 of Fair Tale is available on ModDB right now. This update doesn't add much of big, shiny, impressive stuff, but rather focuses on balancing, some python additions and tech tree design among other things.

I've had a hellish week, and the fact is that it's a miracle that I could squeeze in this amount of work on the mod. Oh well, Version 5 bunches together all the Patches from Version 4 into one manageable file, and there is also a Patch for download for those who already have V4 and just want to upgrade to V5!

Download here



 
A few comments after playing Zuur to around year 7000 (you might want to fix the calendar. The Collective war occurs in 3000).
1>Perhaps they could use the Infernal city set from FfH.
2>Please replace the viking longboat with even the original civ model. The Vikings used Square rigged sails while the model uses a lateen riged sail.
3>Sometimes the WB wont work and simply crashed to desktop.
4>Camerca and Legion are practicaly identical with the Legion being almost always the better choice.

I found the perfect quote for School of Geography:
"I suspect that the towns cartographers place in the Uberwald Forest are made up simply to take up space. It also prevents them from having to write M.M.B.U., of Miles and Miles of Bloody Uberwald!"-Commander of the Watch Samuel Vimes. Terry Pratchett.
I realize the quote comes from Discworld, but it is just too awsome not to use.
 
@ Dumanios. Thank you kindly. Be sure to comment too when you've tested it. Comments and suggestions are important!

@ Ajidica. Yes. There is still some pretty substantial balancing to be done on the mod, I'm aware. I played the Zuur myself this weekend to check them out properly and noted a few things as well. Thanks for your points. I'll take them under careful consideration. The Camerca needs to be rebalanced; maybe even powering them up and making them stronger than the Veteran Legion and indeed placing them at a later date.

Yeah! I was not really pleased with the Viking vessel myself, but I left it there, since this is not a historically accurate mod. I don't want to use the original; however, I'll switch between the original Galley and my new Viking Longboat. As for the World Builder, I must say that I have no idea. I have never had any sort of problem with it. The WB usually crashes when graphics are missing. It might therefore be that I have forgotten some .dds with the patches and that's missing. I'll test the patched version of Fairy Tale on my girlfriend's brand new computer soon to see what's missing. I just have to let her use that new machine a bit first, before I take it over for my modding purposes. Heehee.

The timeline was merely written for the scenarios as well as to provide the background, but it could indeed be an interesting idea having random events pop up to bring the story on and perhaps introduce some new and exciting features into the game. For an example, playing the Collective would place you at war with all the other players at the year 3000, whether you like it or not, and that would mean that playing the Collective would be much more interesting, since you work up to that point when the whole world turns on you. Interesting.

Haha! That quote is real good. :D
 
Some Fairy Tale News

This has been quite a week for the mod. There's not been so many downloads (as usual really), and no activity on the forum or on ModDB, yet there's been a couple of other interesting developments.

In May, Fairy Tale will appear on the cover DVD of a French computer magazine. A bit of success at least, for this underdog mod. More on that later, when it's done. Also, Zero-Project, "my" music composer has added a feature on his homepage about Fairy Tale, modding and the fact that his music has been included in the mod. Thanks, mate! Check out Zero-Project's page, and listen to his music and read the article.

Work is going on with the next update too. And it will be a big one. There will be many new units, some buildings, and I hope to include a Guilds system as well. There will also be a new civ - The Empire, which will only be playable in scenarios, though.

Here are some parade pics of the units included in Fairy Tale. These are not even all the units, but only some of them! These pictures demonstrate the masses and diverse additions of fantasy and fairy tale units that have been made! The last picture demonstrates some of SaibotLieh's units included in fairy Tale.

 
Some Fairy Tale News

This has been quite a week for the mod. There's not been so many downloads (as usual really), and no activity on the forum or on ModDB, yet there's been a couple of other interesting developments.

In May, Fairy Tale will appear on the cover DVD of a French computer magazine. A bit of success at least, for this underdog mod. More on that later, when it's done. Also, Zero-Project, "my" music composer has added a feature on his homepage about Fairy Tale, modding and the fact that his music has been included in the mod. Thanks, mate! Check out Zero-Project's page, and listen to his music and read the article.

Work is going on with the next update too. And it will be a big one. There will be many new units, some buildings, and I hope to include a Guilds system as well. There will also be a new civ - The Empire, which will only be playable in scenarios, though.

Here are some parade pics of the units included in Fairy Tale. These are not even all the units, but only some of them! These pictures demonstrate the masses and diverse additions of fantasy and fairy tale units that have been made! The last picture demonstrates some of SaibotLieh's units included in fairy Tale.


Pretty impressive I'd said. :goodjob: I'm very happy that my units are part of this, seeing them on all the icy ground makes me think I should have dressed them in some thicker clothes however. :lol:
 
Very nice being on the magazine dvd. I'll see what ideas for Guilds I can find. It wouldn't be the best use of the system if they all were as bland as the BtS guilds. They were all practicaly identical.
What civ has the flag shown in the pictures? If my memory serves me right that was Germanic symbol from the late classical age. I think the name was Vulk-something.
 
The flag was included in DarkJedi06's flagmod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=14586). It was there used as a symbol for the Vikings, and it is from there I've taken it. In Fairy Tale it is the symbol for the Arcana Civilization. I actually don't know what it's called IRL.

I was thinking about replacing Corporations by Guilds and see where it takes me. I'll do a couple of them first; like the Bowyer's Guild and Miner's Guild or something like that, and see if it turns out OK. I'm actually just at the planning stage of the Guild Experiment, so ideas are very much welcome.
 
In May, Fairy Tale will appear on the cover DVD of a French computer magazine. A bit of success at least, for this underdog mod. More on that later, when it's done. Also, Zero-Project, "my" music composer has added a feature on his homepage about Fairy Tale, modding and the fact that his music has been included in the mod. Thanks, mate! Check out Zero-Project's page, and listen to his music and read the article.

Congratulations :goodjob:.
One of the best things which can happen to a mod.
 
Thanks! Yeah. And in France too. I'm a real and true France-lover.

All this is really good. However, it's real hard to mod an old game that doesn't receive too much attention anymore. But soon we'll all be modding Civ 5 and have like 10.000 dl's in a week! Then we'll be famous! :lol:

We just need to stick together, us old modders, because with Civ 5 there will be a massive amount of modders and mods emerging.
 
I'm in the process of playing a game as the Principality and it has been pretty interesting. I managed to plunge the continant into a huge war when I invaded the Dal Clan. I managed to take 2 of their cities (those 6 strength archers hurt.) before I sued for peace to rebuild my army. A few issues came up while I was playing:
1>Zuur doesn't expand. Full Stop. They had a pretty scary stack of Legions and Carceras in their capital but they didn't expand at all, even when I gave them free ships.
2>Did you intend for the Dal clan to be so powerful? They might have just gotten a really lucky start though.
>Dals 6 strength archers are not alot of fun and when they get them they could be used to do a rush on the nearest enemy very effectivly.

I have some possible tracks for Imperial diplo music, if you want I can upload them unless if you already have your own tracks in mind.

I found a decent quote to replace the vanilla one for Nothing:
"Do not despair that they is dead. Rather rejoice that they have lived! Fill the air with the sound of music and feasts to commemorate their passing. Sing songs of their glories to let the dead know they are coming! There will be time to mourn later; but for now, let us glorify their memory!"-The Angels of Gaea. John Varley, Demon.

If you care, the name for the Arcana symbol is the Valknut. It was more early Germanic than viking.
 
I'm working of the next update. The Empire is pretty much finished, with national anthem and all, but I'm interested in more anthems, so do show me them if you want, because there are going to be some more civs still.

I intended Dal to be irritating :crazyeye:, and I think they're doing a great job with it, but I am going to rebalance them to make them less of a superpower and more the minor annoyance they were indeed intended to be. (Edit: I weakened the Dal Archers substantially. I was going to make it so that Dal and indeed Elchers too, can only found four cities, but that requires SDK-changes. That will have to remain to a later date.)

Strange thing about Zuur. I checked the ship AI of the Zuur Transport ship, and there's nothing wrong, and the ship does have AI_SETTLER_SEA and all that, so I don't know why they don't understand to use it then. Typical Civ AI. I need to look into it further. The next update changes the Camerca, also, as you noted earlier. I made them more like crossbowmen rather than shock infantry this time around.

I can't really play the 100x100 map myself, since my computer is too bad and keeps protesting, so all the gaming I've done myself on the big one, has been on my girlfriend's computer. I'm getting a new machine within the weeks, so I'll be working more on the 100x100 map then, for it is needed, since the Empire will have its own great scenario on that map and I need to be designing the Great War between The Empire and an alliance of Zuur, The Collective and the Dead. The Demon King is rising from his Underworld Domain to take personal command of the Dark Alliance, overrun the civilized world and raise Hell on Earth!

Oh. Valknut? Never heard about that. I read about it on Swedish Wikipedia. The Valknut exists in ancient pictures from Gotland, an island off the coast of Sweden which was of major importance to the Vikings, and it was obviously a symbol for the god Odin. So it can indeed serve as a symbol for the Vikings, although I wouldn't personally have chosen it for the Vikings, I thought it such a cool symbol that i had to use it. It's almost hypnotic, isn't it? Thanks, and thanks for the notes on issues!
 
Update 5a

This Update upgrades Fairy Tale to Version 5a. This Update requires the previous Full install of Fairy Tale Version 5.

To Install, simpy unzip the Fairy Tale folder to your mods folder in your Beyond the Sword directory (NOT the MyGames folder) where you initially installed the game. Overwrite where asked. it is strongly adviced that you finish your ongoing games before installing the update, since this update may invalidate saved games, due to the great amount of changes.

This update introduces the Empire, which is a new civ that will only be available in scenarios. Therefore, to play with The Empire, you need to start the first initial scenario that has been made for it. It is named "Imperial Scenario - Introducing The Empire". The Empire is really a union between the Principality, the Nordic and the Elven civilizations, so the new civ makes use of some of the best units and buildings of those three nations. You'll probably trample your opponents easily in the scenario, but it's a hint of what is to come. There are several other important updates in this update too, not just the inclusion of The Empire. New units, buildings and some imperative balancing, among other things.

This update has been checked to be working on several computers.

The manual is opened by opening the ReadMe.html file supplied with the mod, and the Version History can be studied in the manual as well.


Download.


Changelog

*Changed the Crystallin King into "The Matriarch". The model is by SaibotLieh; suitable and good looking as always.
*The Great Prophet was also updated to one of SaibotLieh's models.
*My choice of music has received positive attention. Therefore, there are five more Zero-Project background music pieces in this release!
*Added The Empire. This is a nation which is a combination of the Elven, the Norse and the Principality civs. The Empire will therefore only be used in scenarios.
*Added the Imperial scenario The Great War.
*Added the Demon King and the Demonic Riders, units that will be used in the Imperial scenarios. Also created the Great Demonic Hive. In this update these units are still unused, since the Great Scenario taking advantage of them is still being created.
*Added the scenario "Introducing the Empire" to let the player preview The Empire civ at least.
*You can now hire Amazon Skirmishers at the Recruitment Centre as well. These are strong archery units. Models by SaibotLieh.
*The Zuur Camerca now replaces the Crossbowman, and is a good city defender.
*Magicians were substantially weakened. They are still good at bombarding cities and breaking defences, but not as good storming them. Also moved him to his proper place in the Tech Tree, at Spellcasting.
*The stronger Magician as it was, was moved to entering the game at Tech Advanced Magic, and is now known as the Archmage.
*Updated the Zuur Transport Ship's and Denerean Cog's AI packages to try and get them to transport their land units by sea. Hope it works!
*Made Nerva Dal-Compte Protective instead of Aggressive, and also made the Dal Archers weaker. Dal is not supposed to be a superpower.
*Minor animation error with the Crystallin Skirmishers (also used as Arcana Hero) was corrected by SaibotLieh and included here.
*Added the Miners' Guild to the game. This is the first experimental Guild. If it works OK, there will be more Guilds added. The Miners' Guild is built by a Great Engineer and you nee to have discovered the Tech Guilds, of course. The Guild is thereafter spread to more cities by building Guildmasters. All this complete with proper units, buildings and buttons.
*For fun, I also added the Mad Scientist's Workshop which can be built by Great Scientists. This special building will be building some strange and surprising equipment. The Collective Cannon is now built at the Workshop instead of the Collective Warfactory. Ideas for more strange machinery are welcome!

Screenshots


 
A Fairy Tale Video

Here's a promotion video for Fairy Tale. It's nothing much. Just some screenies ordered to the excellent Theme Song by Zero-Project. I must make a better one, but right now, I'm too lazy. :p

Watch it on YouTube.
 
A Fairy Tale Video

Here's a promotion video for Fairy Tale. It's nothing much. Just some screenies ordered to the excellent Theme Song by Zero-Project. I must make a better one, but right now, I'm too lazy. :p

Watch it on YouTube.

Cool movie:cool:

did you use a freeware moviemaker?
 
I just used Windows Movie Maker that comes with Windows. It was rather easy dragging and dropping pics into it, and it really looks quite simplistic as well :lol:

I will make a better one this weekend; possibly with some animated shots too, like the camera flying around the Fairy Tale Castle or something like that. And perhaps myself doing some voice acting, if I'm up to it, like Patrick Stewart in the Oblivion Trailer. Whhoaaa! :D
 
This looks great but my Tech Advisor seems broken, it shows seemingly random techs spread out randomly and the only thing I can click is the Exit button at the bottom (the slider doesn't work). Is this a bug ? I included a screenshot... :(
 
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