Typhlomence's Civilizations

Oh ok. I was mostly wondering about Nintendo civs, as I have interest in doing at least the Legend of Zelda (as my avatar tells, I am a fan ) and maybe Kid Icarus: Uprising civs (you seem interested in that too ).

Ooh, I'd love to see a Gurren Lagann civ or two! I feel like ones lead by Yoko and Nia might be stretching it a bit, but I could definitely see a late-series Simon-led civ, and maybe early-series Kamina-led and LordGenome-led civs as well, if the mood does end up striking you.

Zantonius Hamm said:

Oh ok. I was mostly wondering about Nintendo civs, as I have interest in doing at least the Legend of Zelda (as my avatar tells, I am a fan ) and maybe Kid Icarus: Uprising civs (you seem interested in that too ).

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Yeah, I guessed you would be interested in Legend of Zelda. I could probably do one just from scouring information from the Zelda wiki and what not, but I dunno, it doesn't exactly feel right doing it by myself when I've never (fully) played a Zelda game before... I at least know a bit about Kid Icarus: Uprising since I watched a bit of ChuggaaConroy's Let's Play. Plus I like Palutena

EDIT: Plus isn't there a load of different timelines as well? I'd have to pick which one to represent too...

RawSasquatch said:

Ooh, I'd love to see a Gurren Lagann civ or two! I feel like ones lead by Yoko and Nia might be stretching it a bit, but I could definitely see a late-series Simon-led civ, and maybe early-series Kamina-led and LordGenome-led civs as well, if the mood does end up striking you.

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Oh yeah, I definitely understand that Yoko- and Nia-led civilizations might be stretching it (to be fair if anyone else would make sense as a leader it would be Rossiu) but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Having the early-series being lead by Kamina and the late-series one being led by Simon solves the problem of representing both, too - I like that idea. My idea to implement Gurren Lagann (as in the mecha) is for a special Lagann unit to be granted once a certain technology is researched. If the Lagann unit defeats a more powerful armoured unit in battle it assimilates it and becomes a stronger version. So if you defeated a Landship with it you'd get a Landship-Lagann, for example, and then you could get a Tank-Lagann by beating a Tank and so on and so forth (and it would count unique units as well, so you could get a Panzer-Lagann if you beat a Panzer).

Unfortunately I can't model a Gurren Lagann for the unit when you beat a Giant Death Robot...

Typhlomence said:

Yeah, I guessed you would be interested in Legend of Zelda. I could probably do one just from scouring information from the Zelda wiki and what not, but I dunno, it doesn't exactly feel right doing it by myself when I've never (fully) played a Zelda game before... I at least know a bit about Kid Icarus: Uprising since I watched a bit of ChuggaaConroy's Let's Play. Plus I like Palutena

EDIT: Plus isn't there a load of different timelines as well? I'd have to pick which one to represent too...

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I am interested in making Zelda civs myself, as a matter of fact, and I do civ designs for fun. Maybe (NOTE: maybe) we could work together? I believe you are a way better modder than me, anyway (especially if you manage lua).

Also, if you're wondering about my legitimacy to design Zelda civs, I can tell you that the Legend of Zelda used to be my main interest for 2-3 years.

Zantonius Hamm said:

I am interested in making Zelda civs myself, as a matter of fact, and I do civ designs for fun. Maybe (NOTE: maybe) we could work together? I believe you are a way better modder than me, anyway (especially if you manage lua).

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You flatter me. But I can do at least some Lua; I haven't dabbled in UI stuff yet, but I somewhat understand how to alter gameplay using it, and I'll be trying to figure out E&D soon enough.

And yes, I wouldn't mind working on a Legend of Zelda civilization (on the implementation side) with someone else. Not right now, of course, but it's definitely something I would consider in future if you or someone else wants to.

Zantonius Hamm said:

Also, if you're wondering about my legitimacy to design Zelda civs, I can tell you that the Legend of Zelda used to be my main interest for 2-3 years.

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Haha, no problems, I wasn't worried about that. You said you were a Legend of Zelda fan and that's enough.

The main reason I wouldn't want to tackle it without knowing much about the series is that I wouldn't want to upset fans like you by not representing them properly.

I would want to do that, but, like you say, not right now. I have to finish the Dervish State.

100th post, and for this special occasion I'm going to share what I've thought up for Rosalina's uniques. Not only that, though, but I've been thinking of what to do for Daisy and Wario as well (even though I'm not planning to do the latter for a while yet).

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The Lumas - led by Rosalina
UA: Guardian of the Cosmos Mountainside cities gain a free Observatory after researching Astronomy. Can collect Grand Stars which provide empire-wide bonuses (maximum of six). A WLTKD begins when a Grand Star is collected.

• One star: Production in the capital +10%, in all other cities +5%.
• Two stars: Production bonuses doubled. Empire-wide Science +10%.
• Three stars: City Growth +20%. Ships and armoured units get an extra Movement Point.
• Four stars: Empire-wide Science +10%. Combat Strength of all units +10% while in friendly territory.
• Five stars: Production of spaceship parts +25%. Combat Strength of all units +25% while in friendly territory.
• Six stars: Production, Science and Growth bonuses doubled. Immediately starts a Golden Age.

UU: Starshroom Avaliable at Navigation. Special scouting unit that can travel over any tile. Cannot attack but can retreat from battle. Luma Scouts can be upgraded to it.
UB: Observatory Kitchen (Aqueduct) Gives a copy of the Star Bits resource. Scout units trained in the city gain +2 Movement Points.

Finally, I've got a first full set of uniques for Rosalina. Since we have those Grand Star bonuses in the UA, I'm not sure whether to just have Star Bits as a luxury now, but I still want to include them in some form, hence the first part of the UB. The second part, the +2 movement points, is supposed to tie in with the whole science/exploration focus that I'm aiming for.

As for the Grand Star bonuses, I want a Rosalina with six Grand Stars to get some nice, powerful bonuses without making her OP (regardless of the fact she's my favourite character ). So if you think they're going to make her too powerful then don't hesitate to tell me. Why I made production bonuses stronger in the capital and science bonuses the same across the whole empire, though... I'm not sure which road I want to go down, so I have both possibilities there. In the end I'll have them consistent, regardless of which I choose.

If you think the bonuses are too varied and complex, too, I can tone it down a bit in that department as well. I was thinking about both types of unit bonuses foremost - perhaps I should just have one unit bonus (to movement, and to all units), maybe? Or just have the bonuses to production, science and growth? Searching for the Grand Stars itself is already pretty unique gameplay...

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Sarasaland - led by Daisy
UA: Calico Kingdom All external Trade Routes provide half the amount of Gold generated as Culture. Improvements on Desert tiles provide +1 Food (regardless of type).
UA: Sky Pop (Triplane) +2 Range. +25% Combat Strength against other air units. Obsoletes at Lasers.
UB: Cruise Ship Port (Seaport) Gain Culture whenever a naval unit is trained in the city, equal to half its Production cost.

If you're wondering where the name of Daisy's UA comes from, I got that from the origins of the name Sarasaland. The culture bonuses for her civilization also stem from that, since Sarasaland is made up of four diverse kingdoms in Super Mario Land. "Desert Flower" was the other name for the UA I was considering, but since I don't think that's canon I changed it to what we have here. That's still the source of the food part of the UA, though.

I'm not entirely happy with the Cruise Ship Port unique, especially since I borrowed the idea of a culture bonus on unit production from JFD's Henry VIII civilization, but I wanted to reference the Daisy Cruiser somewhere. Of course, I could decide on a UB that references Daisy's general appearance in the sports games, I suppose.

And the Sky Pop is one of the vehicles that Mario uses in Super Mario Land, and I wanted to reference that too, since it was in that game that Daisy made her first appearance. I felt a unique Triplane would be more useful than a unique Submarine (that would have been the Marine Pop). Though I'm not sure there's a civilization yet that has a unique Submarine, and that might mesh well with the UB...

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WarioWare, Inc. - led by Wario
UA: Game & Wario Gain bonus Gold per turn for every Great Work of Art or Artifact that you own that was created by another civilization. +5% offensive Combat Strength for all units for every +5 Gold Per Turn, up to 25%.
UU: Treasure Hunter (Archaeologist) Has a chance of finding Treasure when digging up an archaeology site, which gives a large bonus of Gold. Can melee attack.
UB: Microgame Producer (Stadium) Produces +2 Gold for every culture building in the city that has its Theming Bonus in effect.

As you can see, I'm really drawing on Wario's love of money and treasure here, as well as his role in the WarioWare series. I decided on the ability of the UB since digging up artifacts also means you're probably playing the tourism game, though it wasn't my intention to make Wario a civilization for winning a Cultural Victory. Especially since I know I've already sort of done done a gold and tourism based civilization (Walmington-on-Sea).

Perhaps I could modify his uniques a bit so that it references WarioWare more? I must admit I've not played any of Wario's games* so I'm not sure where I could go there.

Also, I know that coding in a new type of artifact is difficult - I've seen some of the code for ViceVirtuoso's Nanoha civilization. However I'm not sure whether it would actually be a new artifact or just a chance that you'd get a large lump sum of gold after successfully digging something up with a Treasure Hunter. I suppose if it was a special artifact type, it would give you a choice between getting a lump sum now, or from getting more GPT for a foreign artifact from the UA.

(*And before you point out that I just said that I wasn't confident about making civilizations based on things I hadn't played before... the games that Wario stars in aren't that heavy in plot, as far as I know. At least not as much as something like The Legend of Zelda or Kid Icarus. )

Sounds pretty good!

Okay, I'm hoping to work on Rosalina enough that I can release her before the end of this month.

As for the Grand Stars... I'm thinking that the science/production increase for each one collected will be the same (maybe 10%, for a maximum of 60%), and then each level has an additional, small effect.

And for how they're collected, my thought right now is that if a unit belonging to Rosalina ends the turn adjacent to (or on) a Grand Star resource, and that tile is unoccupied by a foreign unit/city, she collects it automatically*. Also, Grand Stars are collected if they end the turn inside her borders.

Sure, that might mean that Rosalina AIs might have trouble collecting them, but I feel that might be the best way to do it.

Oh, and this means I'll probably not implement Grand Star Generators, though perhaps I could include it as an option.

Any thoughts?

(If units belonging to multiple Rosalina players are all adjacent to a Grand Star at the end of a turn, the one with the most units adjacent to it will get it. If they're even in number, it'll be randomly determined. Of course, if one of the units is on the tile, that one gets it.)

No objections here.

Typhlomence said:

The Lumas - led by Rosalina

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I'd drop the Science bonuses; +40% global Science is a game-winner by itself. Without that, it sounds powerful-yet-requires-work-so-it's-balanced, like Valentine with his Corpse.

Sarasaland - led by Daisy

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I'd say 25% of Gold to Culture would be more balanced; you don't want to completely overshadow Morocco.

WarioWare, Inc. - led by Wario

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This one sounds brilliant; I'd love to play this one when you make it. I am assuming that the GPT needed for +5% Combat Strength is not actually 5, but something like 50 or 100, right?

For that unique, you'll want to just hook it to GameEvents.BuildFinished and give a lump sum of Gold when any artifact is dug up. As you have seen, making new Artifacts from Archaeology Sites without a custom DLL is very, very ugly...

Thanks for your feedback Vicevirtuoso.

Vicevirtuoso said:

I'd drop the Science bonuses; +40% global Science is a game-winner by itself. Without that, it sounds powerful-yet-requires-work-so-it's-balanced, like Valentine with his Corpse.

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Ah okay. I was worried about that since I knew Science was already really powerful in game. I suppose that since the UA will give free Observatories (i.e. more science) I could drop Science completely from the Grand Star bonuses.

You're right, though, I was aiming for it to be powerful if you could collect all of the Grand Stars.

Vicevirtuoso said:

I'd say 25% of Gold to Culture would be more balanced; you don't want to completely overshadow Morocco.

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...and that's what I get for not remembering what all the original UAs are. I completely forgot that Morocco's UA gave Culture for external trade routes. And I was hoping it would be interesting too.

Oh well, that's my fault. With that in mind I might think of something else to replace Culture from trade routes.

Vicevirtuoso said:

This one sounds brilliant; I'd love to play this one when you make it. I am assuming that the GPT needed for +5% Combat Strength is not actually 5, but something like 50 or 100, right?

For that unique, you'll want to just hook it to GameEvents.BuildFinished and give a lump sum of Gold when any artifact is dug up. As you have seen, making new Artifacts from Archaeology Sites without a custom DLL is very, very ugly...

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Thank you, I'm glad I managed to cobble together something that was interesting.

Well, if you think that +5% Combat Strength per 5 GPT is too much, than yes, I could make it for every 50 or so GPT instead. Now that you mention it, it's probably better, especially since you should be getting additional GPT from the other uniques.

And yeah, kudos for you for being able to add the Lost Logia to that archaeology menu. I'm probably not experienced enough to add another one, let alone while keeping compatibility with that.

I'll have to figure out how to take advantage of GameEvents.BuildFinished since it's not in the Modiki and apparently you can't get what improvement was actually made. I should be able to figure it out when I get around to doing Wario, probably in conjunction with the Plot Archaeology functions.

Typhlomence said:

I'll have to figure out how to take advantage of GameEvents.BuildFinished since it's not in the Modiki and apparently you can't get what improvement was actually made. I should be able to figure it out when I get around to doing Wario, probably in conjunction with the Plot Archaeology functions.

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I thought BuildFinished returned the ImprovementID for the finished improvement? In that thread, they're complaining because roads, chopped down forests, and the like don't actually produce improvements, so they return -1 for the improvementID. But an artifact site counts as an improvement (IMPROVEMENT_ARCHAEOLOGICAL_DIG), so it should be able to catch it being completed. I think the main issue might be that the game quickly removes the improvement once it's done, but I'm hoping BuildFinished would still fire and say "hey, an Archeological Dig was completed here!".

bouncymischa said:

I thought BuildFinished returned the ImprovementID for the finished improvement? In that thread, they're complaining because roads, chopped down forests, and the like don't actually produce improvements, so they return -1 for the improvementID. But an artifact site counts as an improvement (IMPROVEMENT_ARCHAEOLOGICAL_DIG), so it should be able to catch it being completed. I think the main issue might be that the game quickly removes the improvement once it's done, but I'm hoping BuildFinished would still fire and say "hey, an Archeological Dig was completed here!".

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Looks like I misread it then, my bad.

If it does fire on the dig being completed, it should return a value for the improvement, although since a dig is a special case (you get to choose what you get afterwards) I'll have to test it myself.

Anyway, I thought about what I could replace the trade routes portion of Daisy's UA with, and I was thinking that I could keep the trade theme but give culture for trading resources instead? So for every resource you send to another civilization, you'd get some Culture for it.

Typhlomence said:

If it does fire on the dig being completed, it should return a value for the improvement, although since a dig is a special case (you get to choose what you get afterwards) I'll have to test it myself.

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It's one of the interesting things I discovered about BNW while poking at the artifacts/landmarks code. Artifacts and Hidden Artifacts are just another form of bonus resource, and Archeological Digs are just an improvement that can be built on top of them. The code only really gets weird once the improvement is complete, removing the finished Dig and giving you either an artifact or a Landmark instead. Still, it's probably worth testing just to be safe.

Typhlomence said:

Anyway, I thought about what I could replace the trade routes portion of Daisy's UA with, and I was thinking that I could keep the trade theme but give culture for trading resources instead? So for every resource you send to another civilization, you'd get some Culture for it.

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I don't really know anything about Daisy and Sarasaland -- is trade a big part of their culture? I could see the "culture for trading resources" idea being fun, though, as I've enjoyed civs in the past that encouraged me to go around trading stuff.

bouncymischa said:

I don't really know anything about Daisy and Sarasaland -- is trade a big part of their culture? I could see the "culture for trading resources" idea being fun, though, as I've enjoyed civs in the past that encouraged me to go around trading stuff.

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Well, there's really not that much to go on at all. Sarasaland only appeared in one game, Super Mario Land, and that was also Daisy's only appearance that wasn't a sports game or Mario Party.

However, what we do get from SML is that Sarasaland is a very diverse place - the four kingdoms that it is composed of are based on ancient Egypt, Bermuda, Easter Island and ancient China. That's why I decided on a Culture focus, and because of this multiculturalism I thought that getting Culture from trade would fit thematically, as well as being interesting.

While I picked the UB mainly for the association with the Daisy Cruiser, I think that might fit the above theme as well, as it along with the other part of the UA encourages the player to settle in various types of environments. I hope so anyway.

Typhlomence said:

Well, there's really not that much to go on at all. Sarasaland only appeared in one game, Super Mario Land, and that was also Daisy's only appearance that wasn't a sports game or Mario Party.

However, what we do get from SML is that Sarasaland is a very diverse place - the four kingdoms that it is composed of are based on ancient Egypt, Bermuda, Easter Island and ancient China. That's why I decided on a Culture focus, and because of this multiculturalism I thought that getting Culture from trade would fit thematically, as well as being interesting.

While I picked the UB mainly for the association with the Daisy Cruiser, I think that might fit the above theme as well, as it along with the other part of the UA encourages the player to settle in various types of environments. I hope so anyway.

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Ahhh, I can sympathize with your trouble -- I've been struggling lately to make Events and Decisions for civs based on characters who only showed up in single games, and briefly at that. So I can understand how hard it could be to extrapolate upon limited material...

Reading up on Sarasaland, I do wonder if something like the Cree's UA would work, where the cities you found would have different bonuses depending on what terrain they're in. I'm not entirely sure what those bonuses could be -- one thought was that they could have access to unique buildings, like a city founded in a desert area could build a Pyramids building that provided the +1 Food to Desert bonus, but then it seems like your UA just gives you a bunch of UBs, which can be kind of blah.

At the very least, I think the resources idea would play more into the concept of the Calico Kingdom, as it'd encourage you to settle in various places to get the resources available there. I suppose, at the very least, you could consider an effect like "bonus Culture for each city founded in a new terrain"...

bouncymischa said:

Reading up on Sarasaland, I do wonder if something like the Cree's UA would work, where the cities you found would have different bonuses depending on what terrain they're in. I'm not entirely sure what those bonuses could be -- one thought was that they could have access to unique buildings, like a city founded in a desert area could build a Pyramids building that provided the +1 Food to Desert bonus, but then it seems like your UA just gives you a bunch of UBs, which can be kind of blah.

At the very least, I think the resources idea would play more into the concept of the Calico Kingdom, as it'd encourage you to settle in various places to get the resources available there. I suppose, at the very least, you could consider an effect like "bonus Culture for each city founded in a new terrain"...

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I do like the idea of doing something like the Cree, actually, even if it's just aesthetic - e.g., if you found a city in desert, it becomes part of the Birabuto Kingdom with names in the style of ancient Egypt. I probably wouldn't go for being able to build a special building in a city in a specific terrain, though, for the reason you mentioned.

Anyway, I'll be putting what to do about Daisy's UA on the back-burner for now, as my main priority is getting Rosalina in game, then going on to see if I can implement the Grand Stars part of the UA. (I also have to attempt to convert this so I can have a suitable unit graphic for the Starshroom).

I've been wanting to post an update on how I was going with the Lumas, but I also didn't want to just post some text saying how I'm going. Therefore, I've been working on getting as much in the game as possible before I tackle getting the Grand Star part of the UA working. Which meant that last night I ended up staying up far too late trying to figure out which parts of my SQL were failing (yes, I've converted to the Master Code now )...

So without further ado, have a big post and a few pretty pictures:

For city names, I've used every single galaxy in both Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. The only ones that aren't are the capital and Rosalina's Ice World (Mario Kart 7). As that's about 80 city names, I recommend that you use Randomize City Names with this.

I haven't decided on the final additional effects for getting each Grand Star yet. Vicevirtuoso said that having Science increase with each one would make it overpowered, which I understand, but would having some sort of Science increase - 10% to 20% - for the last Grand Star be problematic too, considering you also get free Observatories at Astronomy?

I'm pretty sure that coding the UA will be really tricky, though I'm more concerned about how to show information about in the interface rather than the mechanical code behind it (well, I have to figure out how to use the TSL + Serializer but apart from that). I would either want to have a display in the top panel showing how many Grand Stars you had so far (and would have a pop-up with the effects - similar to the other resource counters, essentially), or use Sukritact's Modular City Info Stack, but I haven't done any UI coding before so I'll have to learn that first before I can even attempt those things.

Therefore, while I'm implementing the mechanics of the UA I'll probably stick with showing the "dummy" buildings that provide the effects in the city view, since they would be there regardless. (Is using dummy buildings to add effects still considered to be good practice or are there better methods to add things like Production per turn to cities? I'm sticking with what I know, but I don't want to keep doing it if it's frowned upon now...)

And a shot of their UU in game:

I'm using the Smoky Skies Airship as a placeholder right now, but I most definitely want to replace it with a custom model. This one, specifically, since it's very close in shape to a Starshroom already, and all I'll have to do is give it a new paint job. Unfortunately, my first attempt at converting it to Civ V (using the Helicopter Gunship as a base - I'll probably use the Airship animations if I can manage that) didn't work - Granny displayed the model fine, but I don't think the textures saved correctly as it appears invisible in Nexus (and that's the version where the viewer works).

I will continue to try doing it myself, but if I don't have any luck soon I'll either ask someone if they can convert it properly or use something else as a placeholder, as I don't want to delay this for too long just because I have no suitable unit model. Here's a copy of my attempt in case anyone wants to figure out what I did wrong.

Oh, and that Tank and Fighter? Well, let's just say I decided to give Rosalina some of her own flavour units. The first one to guess what these reskins are and why I chose them for her gets.... well, nothing, actually, but I welcome you to guess anyway. This civilization still should have compatibility with Ethnic Units, using all of Japan's units except for the Tank and Fighter.

I am looking forward to this civ's release! I cannot guess the Tank and Plane, though, can't seem to remember anything of the like in SMG...