S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

Well, I had some ideas for Illian, so, I hope you find them useful. To set this up, I need to talk about the Great Hunt for the Horn, since a lot of my ideas for Illian involve it. My idea is this: The civilization that builds the Great Square of Tammaz wonder unlocks the Civilization Project The Great Hunt for the Horn for all civs to work on. Any civ that completes the project has successfully called a Great Hunt for the Horn and can buy Hunters for the Horn with faith points. But the civ that built the Great Square originally gets a 10% faith discount, any of their units that holds the Horn of Valere once it's found get a reduced cooldown for blowing the horn and the summoned heroes take a reduced amount of damage each turn as long as the Horn remains with this civ. Illian gets these bonuses for free, but building the Great Square doubles them.

Illian

Ruler - Mattin Stepaneos

UA - The Council of Nine: The members of the council spend so much time watching and interfering with each other, and the King, and vice versa, that Illian's people are largely left to govern themselves. The effects of Governors in cities are increased by X%. In addition, Illian receives all the bonuses granted by The Great Square of Tammaz wonder. These bonuses are doubled if Illian actually builds the wonder itself.

UU - Companion: A cheaper, slightly weaker, replacement for the longswordsman that receives free promotions and can be upgraded to a Hunter for the Horn once Illian completes The Great Hunt for the Horn civ project. The Companion receives the following promotions for free - Elite Formation: Any unit with Elite Formation receives a 15% combat bonus when positioned next to any other friendly unit with the Elite Formation promotion. The Companion receives this bonus immediately upon completion. Upon receiving its fourth promotion (counting Elite Formation), it is granted the Blademaster promotion. The Blademaster promotion gives sword-wielding units a +X/+X bonus to attack and defense. Only upon receiving its seventh promotion (including the two free ones) is the unit eligible to be upgraded to a Hunter for the Horn.

UB - Illianer Lagoon: Illian is a city of marshy islands built in a lagoon and connected by bridges. To reflect this, and the city's maritime and river trading economy, the Illianer Lagoon adds +1 production to coastal and ocean tiles worked by the city, and +1 gold to river tiles worked by the city, in addition to the normal effects of the Harbor building, which it replaces. Can only be built in cities located on the coast.

I'll work on ideas for the other civs, assuming this input is well received, but it's really late right now.

kidshowbusiness said:

Well, I had some ideas for Illian, so, I hope you find them useful. To set this up, I need to talk about the Great Hunt for the Horn, since a lot of my ideas for Illian involve it. My idea is this: The civilization that builds the Great Square of Tammaz wonder unlocks the Civilization Project The Great Hunt for the Horn for all civs to work on. Any civ that completes the project has successfully called a Great Hunt for the Horn and can buy Hunters for the Horn with faith points. But the civ that built the Great Square originally gets a 10% faith discount, any of their units that holds the Horn of Valere once it's found get a reduced cooldown for blowing the horn and the summoned heroes take a reduced amount of damage each turn as long as the Horn remains with this civ. Illian gets these bonuses for free, but building the Great Square doubles them.

Illian

Ruler - Mattin Stepaneos

UA - The Council of Nine: The members of the council spend so much time watching and interfering with each other, and the King, and vice versa, that Illian's people are largely left to govern themselves. The effects of Governors in cities are increased by X%. In addition, Illian receives all the bonuses granted by The Great Square of Tammaz wonder. These bonuses are doubled if Illian actually builds the wonder itself.

UU - Companion: A cheaper, slightly weaker, replacement for the longswordsman that receives free promotions and can be upgraded to a Hunter for the Horn once Illian completes The Great Hunt for the Horn civ project. The Companion receives the following promotions for free - Elite Formation: Any unit with Elite Formation receives a 15% combat bonus when positioned next to any other friendly unit with the Elite Formation promotion. The Companion receives this bonus immediately upon completion. Upon receiving its fourth promotion (counting Elite Formation), it is granted the Blademaster promotion. The Blademaster promotion gives sword-wielding units a +X/+X bonus to attack and defense. Only upon receiving its seventh promotion (including the two free ones) is the unit eligible to be upgraded to a Hunter for the Horn.

UB - Illianer Lagoon: Illian is a city of marshy islands built in a lagoon and connected by bridges. To reflect this, and the city's maritime and river trading economy, the Illianer Lagoon adds +1 production to coastal and ocean tiles worked by the city, and +1 gold to river tiles worked by the city, in addition to the normal effects of the Harbor building, which it replaces. Can only be built in cities located on the coast.

I'll work on ideas for the other civs, assuming this input is well received, but it's really late right now.

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Thanks for your ideas! These look great, I can see how to mesh them with what I've planned/implemented for the Hunt for the Horn already. Illian is actually the only civ out of the ones I've made thus far that have a UA, but I've been planning to add to it. The current UA means that any of Illian's combat units are capable of discovering the Horn of Valere (whereas other civs must build Hunters of the Horn for that explicit purpose), but I don't think that's powerful enough to stand alone as a UA. I very much like the idea of Governor bonuses for Illian thanks to the greater autonomy their cities would have because of the bickering between the council and the king. I think having both in their UA would make it powerful but not crazy, for now.

The companion is definitely a planned unique unit for Illian, though because the tech tree is currently in flux, I'm not sure what unit it will be replacing. I've been planning to have the Hunter of the Horn unit quite early on in the tech tree, otherwise it may be very difficult for anyone to find the Horn (especially in games without Illian in them).

I like the gameplay addition of the lagoon, +1 production from coast and ocean sounds fun (and will properly make Illian a powerful coastal civ, without forcing the player's hand) and +1 gold on rivers should prevent the building from being defeated by land-heavy maps (plus it's also quite good). From a flavor standpoint, is Illian known for its lagoons? Either way, that's a text swap at worst later on. Though researching this has led me to the possibility of having some kind of "natural wall" building that gives bonuses to marshes. Hmm, the possibilities.

My current plan is for the Hunt for the Horn to be a national project (like the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program in normal CiV). I've already restricted the cleansing of saidin to be a global project (because more than one of that makes no sense) but I think more than one Hunt for the Horn being called is fairly reasonable. (Who do you Hunt for, traveler?) This would give Horn of Valere-related bonuses to each CiV as they completed it. Otherwise I think we may be short on projects. The projects each civ can complete reliably are currently the Great Stump, the Hunt for the Horn, and the Bore (only for now, the Bore is also likely to become a global project, because what fools would do the project again having seen what happened to the last guys? And having more than one Bore doesn't make that much sense either.) That pulls us down to two projects for every civ each game, which is the same as BNW has available, so not too bad.

I would be reluctant to double up the Great Square of Tammaz's ability with Illian's, because I think that would make those abilities less valuable to players. I'd be very open to them complementing each other well though.

Thanks again for your input! There's definitely content I can merge into my plans from here. Feel free to question anything I've mentioned above, and if you've got ideas for other civs, do fire away!

Well, hmmm, if every Illianer combat unit will be able to find the Horn, doesn't that virtually guarantee they'll be the ones to find it unless someone else is sitting right on it? My idea for the square mimicing Illian's Horn bonuses was that in a game without Illian, it allows another civ to take Illian's place as "the Horn of Valere" civ, and in a game WITH Illian, not only does it put you on more equal footing with Illian, by building it you also take it away from Illian, so they don't get the extra bonus. Oh, and I used the word lagoon because my image of Illian has always had it be something like Venice. A city built on islands and sunken foundations in a marshy lagoon.

How early in the Tech Tree were you planning to put the Hunt? I think the reason most national projects end up towards the end of the tech tree is that that's when civs have spare production capacity to build them. Especially in shorter games. I would say maybe somewhere in the late middle of the tech tree. Kind of the equivalent of Archaeology? Particularly if you use my idea about Companions upgrading to Hunters, to give people time to earn the promotions. Also, what was your idea about Hunters? I was thinking they'd be fairly powerful combat units themselves, which is why I gated them behind a project, and faith points. If you're thinking that their primary value will be simply finding the Horn, well, my Companions idea might need to be revisited.

With all of that out of the way, here's my idea for Andor.

Andor

Ruler - Morgase Trakand

UA - The Queen's Blessing: Morgase Trakand is a great ruler in a nation with a history of great rulers. Her people love her, and are proud of their nation. Andoran cities suffer only 50% of the unhappiness generated by population compared to other civs and buildings which generate happiness are 50% more effective. Andoran combat units receive a 10% combat bonus when fighting in their own territory.

UU - Queen's Guard: Replaces Pikemen? Starts with the Elite Formation promotion (I'm figuring most of the nation's permanent military formations like the Defenders of the Stone and the Panarch's Legion will get this promotion for free). More powerful and more costly than the unit it replaces, the Queen's Guard also receives an additional 15% combat bonus when fighting within two tiles of a Great Person (this bonus is on top of the Great Captain's bonus, if the Great Person is a Great Captain), the unit also receives this bonus if within two tiles of a city ruled by a governor, as governors are former Great Person units.

UB - Inner City Walls: Replaces the Castle. In addition to its defensive bonus, it grants +1 Culture and +1 Happiness.

I decided on Morgase as ruler rather than Elayne, even though Morgase barely made it 5 books, and was under Rahvin's spell by the 3rd book. Elayne, by the end of the series, is completely overpowered. She rules Andor and Cairhien, is a powerful channeler in her own right with strong allies in the White Tower, the Black Tower is actually located in her territory, she has the Two Rivers, Ghealdan and Saldaea as committed allies or actual vassals, and she has an exclusive contract with the Band of the Red Hand and a virtual monopoly on dragon technology. It's too much. I'm going to finish this e-mail up here, but write a second one because I have some quick ideas for wonders and projects and I don't want to clutter this e-mail up more than it already is.

This is about a few ideas for wonders I had.


The Tower of Ghenjei - Well, the tower is a bridge to the worlds of the Aelfinn and Eelfinn right? And the Aelfinn grant requests and the Eelfinn answer questions, so i thought a nice bonus would be to have the Tower of Ghenjei grant a free technology and a free social policy.

The Fortress of the Light - Headquarters of the Children of the Light. Not sure what you could have this one do. Lets you recruit Children units?

You were looking for more national projects, what about a sort of Manhattan Project type thing, except instead of nukes you can build dragons?

Also, not sure how or if you were planning on incorporating the Band of the Red Hand, but that could be another Global Project, representing negotiating with Mat, or something similar. When you complete it you can buy Red Hand units with gold?

Could have sworn I had some other ideas but it got late on me when I turned my back somehow. Another time I guess.

what about putting the Age of LEgend Wonders be natural wonders ? (already present at game start)
for example:
-the Male Choedan Kal could either be a natural wonder , OR, the wonder can be "dug-out the Male Choedan Kal"...

other important ones :

-the place (I forgot the name) where Aiel get their wise ones and their clan chiefs.. a VERY important wonder (at least as a wonder-feature already present in game).

-shaihol gul could also be a natural wonder


last : I thought about another system for the "age-of-legend" wonders:
what about having lets say 10-20 "age of legend artifact" spread on the map.
then the wonder is "study the age of legend artifact" and is built like normal wonders.. but only if the age of leagend artifact is in borders ; the closest artifact being "studied" first) the player /ai would not know the result before-hand.

then: the game decides randomly (or pseudo-randomly) which wonder is "revealed" premanently on this place.
some of the resulting wonders could be "seals" that have to be protected against barbs/evil that can "break the seal" ...
some wonder could be the Choedan Kal...etc
some wonder might just be "small artifact"

some wonder might be "the stone and Callendor"... the civ that discover it has to protect it otherwise, if taken, the civ is destroyed, but it gives bonus, and can yield an artifact useable only by the "dragon reborn" unit

then you could have some "weights" to push or pull the choice of the wonders...
like a first wonder near Tear would have increased chances to be the Stone.
the Male Choedan Kal has greater chances to be found near Caihrien
the female Choedan Kal has greater chances to be found if the "ancient artifact" is close to water.
the eye of the world is more tricky as it is linked with the GREAT HUNT.

then the "project Cleans Saidin" would need multiple factors : Male Choedan Kal, female Choedan Kal, dragon reborn unit....etc


I think this system would help with showing that the people of the ERA do not know what all those artifact do..


I think the randomness

I've been away for a few days and it's great to see people are interested in this mod! I'll just give everyone a heads up that progress will be a bit slower during November as I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). But progress will still be made!

kidshowbusiness said:

Well, hmmm, if every Illianer combat unit will be able to find the Horn, doesn't that virtually guarantee they'll be the ones to find it unless someone else is sitting right on it? My idea for the square mimicing Illian's Horn bonuses was that in a game without Illian, it allows another civ to take Illian's place as "the Horn of Valere" civ, and in a game WITH Illian, not only does it put you on more equal footing with Illian, by building it you also take it away from Illian, so they don't get the extra bonus. Oh, and I used the word lagoon because my image of Illian has always had it be something like Venice. A city built on islands and sunken foundations in a marshy lagoon.

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I plan to investigate how quickly Illian finds the Horn on average (given the size of maps and the difficulty of getting non-naval combat units to every possible square, it might take a while) and calibrate their ability based on that. (Possibly restricting it to specific unit classes or something along those lines.) That investigation is only possible once I've got enough content to play a game through.

kidshowbusiness said:

How early in the Tech Tree were you planning to put the Hunt? I think the reason most national projects end up towards the end of the tech tree is that that's when civs have spare production capacity to build them. Especially in shorter games. I would say maybe somewhere in the late middle of the tech tree. Kind of the equivalent of Archaeology? Particularly if you use my idea about Companions upgrading to Hunters, to give people time to earn the promotions. Also, what was your idea about Hunters? I was thinking they'd be fairly powerful combat units themselves, which is why I gated them behind a project, and faith points. If you're thinking that their primary value will be simply finding the Horn, well, my Companions idea might need to be revisited.

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My plan for the Hunt was to be somewhere near the middle of the tech tree, in a sort of time that would be loosely appropriate to when Illian began hosting the Hunt in the WoT-verse. I was thinking Hunters would be an upgrade path for scouts (or whatever the scout equivalent ends up being). CiV units usually represent large military formations and Hunters tend to travel alone or in small groups, so I think an agile unit is quite appropriate.

kidshowbusiness said:

With all of that out of the way, here's my idea for Andor.

Andor

Ruler - Morgase Trakand

UA - The Queen's Blessing: Morgase Trakand is a great ruler in a nation with a history of great rulers. Her people love her, and are proud of their nation. Andoran cities suffer only 50% of the unhappiness generated by population compared to other civs and buildings which generate happiness are 50% more effective. Andoran combat units receive a 10% combat bonus when fighting in their own territory.

UU - Queen's Guard: Replaces Pikemen? Starts with the Elite Formation promotion (I'm figuring most of the nation's permanent military formations like the Defenders of the Stone and the Panarch's Legion will get this promotion for free). More powerful and more costly than the unit it replaces, the Queen's Guard also receives an additional 15% combat bonus when fighting within two tiles of a Great Person (this bonus is on top of the Great Captain's bonus, if the Great Person is a Great Captain), the unit also receives this bonus if within two tiles of a city ruled by a governor, as governors are former Great Person units.

UB - Inner City Walls: Replaces the Castle. In addition to its defensive bonus, it grants +1 Culture and +1 Happiness.

I decided on Morgase as ruler rather than Elayne, even though Morgase barely made it 5 books, and was under Rahvin's spell by the 3rd book. Elayne, by the end of the series, is completely overpowered. She rules Andor and Cairhien, is a powerful channeler in her own right with strong allies in the White Tower, the Black Tower is actually located in her territory, she has the Two Rivers, Ghealdan and Saldaea as committed allies or actual vassals, and she has an exclusive contract with the Band of the Red Hand and a virtual monopoly on dragon technology. It's too much. I'm going to finish this e-mail up here, but write a second one because I have some quick ideas for wonders and projects and I don't want to clutter this e-mail up more than it already is.

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I actually thought all the things you mentioned were great reasons to use Elayne as the leader! In normal CiV, there is more to the leaders and civilizations than the uniques they end up having, but their extra flavor often ends up being good shared material. (Any civ can build the Eiffel Tower or the Pentagon even though those are obviously synonymous with France and the US respectively.) With the Black Tower as a wonder already, I think Elayne opens up a great possibility to have a UA based around a strong relationship with the White Tower. Dragons would make an awesome end-game siege unit.

I'm also reluctant to reuse abilities from the base game. Morgase's ability here takes a component of Gandhi's, which I think, for players who've spent a lot of time with CiV, will detract from the WoT immersion.

Both the Inner City Walls and Queen's Guard sound like great ideas for uniques though! It'll be a difficult end decision on those ones against Dragons.

kidshowbusiness said:

This is about a few ideas for wonders I had.


The Tower of Ghenjei - Well, the tower is a bridge to the worlds of the Aelfinn and Eelfinn right? And the Aelfinn grant requests and the Eelfinn answer questions, so i thought a nice bonus would be to have the Tower of Ghenjei grant a free technology and a free social policy.

Click to expand...

Awesome, that sounds like a really good basis. The Aelfinn and the Eelfinn always have some kind of drawback to their wishes as well, though there aren't any wonders with "drawbacks" in the base game. I think it might be interesting to have this wonder offer some bonus that would be by itself overpowered, but balance it with a suitable drawback.

kidshowbusiness said:

The Fortress of the Light - Headquarters of the Children of the Light. Not sure what you could have this one do. Lets you recruit Children units?

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My plan for the Children of the Light is to have them be a UU for Amadicia. (Not to say they won't have influence anywhere else, a Whitecloak War scenario sounds quite cool!)

kidshowbusiness said:

You were looking for more national projects, what about a sort of Manhattan Project type thing, except instead of nukes you can build dragons?

Also, not sure how or if you were planning on incorporating the Band of the Red Hand, but that could be another Global Project, representing negotiating with Mat, or something similar. When you complete it you can buy Red Hand units with gold?

Could have sworn I had some other ideas but it got late on me when I turned my back somehow. Another time I guess.

Click to expand...

I've got some other plans for people like Mat, Rand, and Perrin that I've only just realized I forgot to include in the opening post. I plan to introduce some combat Great Person types as well (Great Channelers like Rand). Perrin will make a good Great Leader, and Mat's the perfect Great General (possibly reflavored to Great Captain) unless I decide to phase out that Great Person type. (Just adding to the existing GP types can make the GP setup very crowded.)

Calavente said:

what about putting the Age of LEgend Wonders be natural wonders ? (already present at game start)
for example:
-the Male Choedan Kal could either be a natural wonder , OR, the wonder can be "dug-out the Male Choedan Kal"...

other important ones :

-the place (I forgot the name) where Aiel get their wise ones and their clan chiefs.. a VERY important wonder (at least as a wonder-feature already present in game).

-shaihol gul could also be a natural wonder


last : I thought about another system for the "age-of-legend" wonders:
what about having lets say 10-20 "age of legend artifact" spread on the map.
then the wonder is "study the age of legend artifact" and is built like normal wonders.. but only if the age of leagend artifact is in borders ; the closest artifact being "studied" first) the player /ai would not know the result before-hand.

then: the game decides randomly (or pseudo-randomly) which wonder is "revealed" premanently on this place.
some of the resulting wonders could be "seals" that have to be protected against barbs/evil that can "break the seal" ...
some wonder could be the Choedan Kal...etc
some wonder might just be "small artifact"

some wonder might be "the stone and Callendor"... the civ that discover it has to protect it otherwise, if taken, the civ is destroyed, but it gives bonus, and can yield an artifact useable only by the "dragon reborn" unit

then you could have some "weights" to push or pull the choice of the wonders...
like a first wonder near Tear would have increased chances to be the Stone.
the Male Choedan Kal has greater chances to be found near Caihrien
the female Choedan Kal has greater chances to be found if the "ancient artifact" is close to water.
the eye of the world is more tricky as it is linked with the GREAT HUNT.

then the "project Cleans Saidin" would need multiple factors : Male Choedan Kal, female Choedan Kal, dragon reborn unit....etc


I think this system would help with showing that the people of the ERA do not know what all those artifact do..


I think the randomness

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Definitely, some new natural wonders are a part of the plan. Shayol Ghul and Dragonmount are the first two clear choices for that. The Glass Pillars of Rhuidean will definitely be a wonder (though Rhuidean itself is the Aiel's starting city).

I very much like the idea of archeological digs unearthing items from the Age of Legends! I hadn't considered that yet, but I think it is a good WoT-ification of the archeology system from base CiV.

It's definitely up for consideration, making the Age of Legends wonders into natural wonders, because it does solve a flavor problem. But I think it trades off gameplay against it, which generally isn't favorable. Having powerful endgame wonders is essential in CiV, since the rate of growth of pretty much everything accelerates as the game progresses.

Thank you all very much for the suggestions, they're very well received and have been providing a lot of ideas!

If anyone is worried that I've disappeared completely, fear not! I've been learning to convert Civ4 unit graphics to Civ5 so that I can get some fantasy-esque units for this mod. Creating new units from scratch (Trollocs, Draghkar, etc.) is still a ways off for me in terms of skill, but I can see myself getting there eventually. All building towards a good final product!

My main concern with Elayne is that she would be overpowered compared to other Civs. I mean, we spend so much time in Andor and there are so many Andoran POV characters, that some Andoran bias is inevitable. I mean, with Elayne in charge I can think of something like 5 UU's for Andor and a couple of UB's. Not to mention the bonuses you'd need to write into her UA. Compared to that, what do we have for Cairhien?

Cairhien

Ruler - Galldrian Riatin (Laman Damodred? They all seem kind of similar)

UA - Daes Daemar: The noble houses of Cairhien all strive to outdo each other in every possible way. When there's a vogue for libraries, every house must have a grand library, with the Royal Library being the grandest of all. When towers are all the rage, you get the Topless Towers of Cairhien. If ancient statues are the new fad, the King has to excavate the biggest statue ever discovered... Each city receives a 15% bonus to building construction. Can build circuses without nearby horses or ivory.

UB - Foregate: Replaces the market. With the destruction wrought in the Aiel War, most of eastern Cairhien is uninhabited, these refugees have set up semi-permanent camp before the cities' gates, requiring the King to import food to feed them and gleemen to keep them amused. +25% gold, +1 gold, +2 gold per incoming trade route (+1 gold for the owner of the trade route), +1 food, +1 happiness.

UB - Illuminator's Guild Chapterhouse: The King of Caihrien sponsors nightly demonstrations of the Illuminator's art to keep the unruly populace in line, and more or less pleased with him. Replaces Zoo. +3 happiness, +1 science.

I mean, those aren't bad. But does it really compare with an Elayne who will have Queen's Guard, Kinswomen, dragons, Two Rivers bowmen, The Band of the Red Hand, bellfounders and inner city walls, plus a UA that gives her unique diplomatic relations with The White Tower, Asha'man, Aiel and possibly a few other countries?

But if you like Elayne, you'll love what I came up with for the Seanchan.

Seanchan

Ruler - Fortuona Athaem Devi Paendrag

UA - The Ever Victorious Army: The Seanchan may not raze cities and receive diplomatic and cultural (tourism) penalties in their dealings with all other civs. In addition they cannot influence Ajahs in the Hall of the Tower. However, as long as they control the capitol of a rival civ, they gain that civ's UA and can build their UU's and UB's.

UB - Seanchan Patrol Station: Replaces Courthouse. Eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +1 happiness if city has a connection to the capitol. Cost 75 (3/4 of Courthouse). Maintenance 2 Gold per turn (1/2 of Courthouse).

UU - Deathwatch Guards: Receives Elite Formation promotion for free. Gets a 10% combat bonus against other units with the Elite Formation promotion.

UU - Exotics: Since you seemed okay with Andor having more than two uniques, I can only assume that there's room for all of these for the Seanchan. There's grolm and lopar. Torm and Crolm. Plus the two flying types. You could probably get away with cutting the Torm and Crolm since they mostly seem to be used for scouting and the fliers kind of make that redundant. The ground types at least, should be pretty powerful, with bonuses against cavalry and perhaps that Terror promotion some elephant units have. But they should be limited somehow, only allowed to construct X number at once?

UU - Sul'dam: And how could we forget the foundation of the Empire's power? A special kind of channeling unit. Takes longer to construct/train and is more limited (ex. Sul'dam don't seem able to heal, or else no Seanchan will accept healing, which amounts to the same thing), but are somewhat more powerful in battle. Can't be more specific as I'm not sure how you're handling the whole channeling thing yet.

This may seem overpowered to some, but I feel it captures the feel of the Seanchan civilization and is more balanced then it first appears. First of all, the Seanchan are unable to win a diplomatic victory and a cultural victory would be very difficult for them as well. They're only really set up for a military victory as they don't have any special science bonuses. Secondly, they're so obviously only suited for a military victory that every other civ has to take notice. Choosing to play as the Seanchan is an unofficial declaration of war on every other civ, a statement that you plan to conquer the world. When the Seanchan make their move, all local civs almost have to ally and strike back, in self-defense. If they allow the Seanchan to start knocking off civs, not only do they let the Empire move closer to its goal, but they've also let the Empire become even more powerful. Third, until the Seanchan actually take another civ's capitol, their Unique Ability is actually worse for them than if they didn't have one at all. They take diplomatic and cultural penalties, and every other civ is watching them like hawks. Even Tear and Illian would ally to stop the Seanchan advance.

kidshowbusiness said:

My main concern with Elayne is that she would be overpowered compared to other Civs. I mean, we spend so much time in Andor and there are so many Andoran POV characters, that some Andoran bias is inevitable. I mean, with Elayne in charge I can think of something like 5 UU's for Andor and a couple of UB's. Not to mention the bonuses you'd need to write into her UA. Compared to that, what do we have for Cairhien?

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Sorry for the confusion, I still plan to only use 2 UU/UB/UI/UGs for each Civ, I just think it's good that we have choices for some civs. (In base CiV, there is a lot more to each civ than the uniques that Firaxis chose for them, but those distill some portion of that civ that they wanted to emphasize.) I think we'll have the best (meaning, most flavorful and recognizable while still being balanced, not gameplay-wise superior) uniques for the civs which have the most choices, like Andor and as you outline below, the Seanchan!

kidshowbusiness said:

Cairhien

Ruler - Galldrian Riatin (Laman Damodred? They all seem kind of similar)

UA - Daes Daemar: The noble houses of Cairhien all strive to outdo each other in every possible way. When there's a vogue for libraries, every house must have a grand library, with the Royal Library being the grandest of all. When towers are all the rage, you get the Topless Towers of Cairhien. If ancient statues are the new fad, the King has to excavate the biggest statue ever discovered... Each city receives a 15% bonus to building construction. Can build circuses without nearby horses or ivory.

UB - Foregate: Replaces the market. With the destruction wrought in the Aiel War, most of eastern Cairhien is uninhabited, these refugees have set up semi-permanent camp before the cities' gates, requiring the King to import food to feed them and gleemen to keep them amused. +25% gold, +1 gold, +2 gold per incoming trade route (+1 gold for the owner of the trade route), +1 food, +1 happiness.

UB - Illuminator's Guild Chapterhouse: The King of Caihrien sponsors nightly demonstrations of the Illuminator's art to keep the unruly populace in line, and more or less pleased with him. Replaces Zoo. +3 happiness, +1 science.

I mean, those aren't bad. But does it really compare with an Elayne who will have Queen's Guard, Kinswomen, dragons, Two Rivers bowmen, The Band of the Red Hand, bellfounders and inner city walls, plus a UA that gives her unique diplomatic relations with The White Tower, Asha'man, Aiel and possibly a few other countries?

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I went with Laman as the leader for Cairhien, because he adds a bit more temporal variety to the civ selection. (I really like including Manetheren because it makes it feel much more like a game of Civ that we can have these empires from completely different times square off.) Both of the buildings you've suggested I actually have planned in other capacities. I have the Foregate as a wonder and the Illuminator's Guild as a wonder, with Chapterhouses being national wonders.

kidshowbusiness said:

But if you like Elayne, you'll love what I came up with for the Seanchan.

Seanchan

Ruler - Fortuona Athaem Devi Paendrag

UA - The Ever Victorious Army: The Seanchan may not raze cities and receive diplomatic and cultural (tourism) penalties in their dealings with all other civs. In addition they cannot influence Ajahs in the Hall of the Tower. However, as long as they control the capitol of a rival civ, they gain that civ's UA and can build their UU's and UB's.

UB - Seanchan Patrol Station: Replaces Courthouse. Eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +1 happiness if city has a connection to the capitol. Cost 75 (3/4 of Courthouse). Maintenance 2 Gold per turn (1/2 of Courthouse).

UU - Deathwatch Guards: Receives Elite Formation promotion for free. Gets a 10% combat bonus against other units with the Elite Formation promotion.

UU - Exotics: Since you seemed okay with Andor having more than two uniques, I can only assume that there's room for all of these for the Seanchan. There's grolm and lopar. Torm and Crolm. Plus the two flying types. You could probably get away with cutting the Torm and Crolm since they mostly seem to be used for scouting and the fliers kind of make that redundant. The ground types at least, should be pretty powerful, with bonuses against cavalry and perhaps that Terror promotion some elephant units have. But they should be limited somehow, only allowed to construct X number at once?

UU - Sul'dam: And how could we forget the foundation of the Empire's power? A special kind of channeling unit. Takes longer to construct/train and is more limited (ex. Sul'dam don't seem able to heal, or else no Seanchan will accept healing, which amounts to the same thing), but are somewhat more powerful in battle. Can't be more specific as I'm not sure how you're handling the whole channeling thing yet.

This may seem overpowered to some, but I feel it captures the feel of the Seanchan civilization and is more balanced then it first appears. First of all, the Seanchan are unable to win a diplomatic victory and a cultural victory would be very difficult for them as well. They're only really set up for a military victory as they don't have any special science bonuses. Secondly, they're so obviously only suited for a military victory that every other civ has to take notice. Choosing to play as the Seanchan is an unofficial declaration of war on every other civ, a statement that you plan to conquer the world. When the Seanchan make their move, all local civs almost have to ally and strike back, in self-defense. If they allow the Seanchan to start knocking off civs, not only do they let the Empire move closer to its goal, but they've also let the Empire become even more powerful. Third, until the Seanchan actually take another civ's capitol, their Unique Ability is actually worse for them than if they didn't have one at all. They take diplomatic and cultural penalties, and every other civ is watching them like hawks. Even Tear and Illian would ally to stop the Seanchan advance.

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That is a really interesting ability. I really like the concept of stealing other civs' uniques and it's quite flavorful for the Seanchan. I think, if anything, the Seanchan would have a tourism bonus rather than penalty though (although this is clearly a balance decision in your suggestion). Their armies may come first and clean up everybody fairly quick, but it's when their people arrive and their class structure takes over the natives that we see they've got a really oppressive and influential culture.

With the usage of ideologies for the treatment of One Power, I'm reluctant to lock the Seanchan into one of those choices. I think it's very Civ-like to let the player create a channeler-loving Seanchan. However, we do also want differentiation between the civs, which pulls you the other way. I'm fond of abilities that make one method of victory a civ's specialty, rather than locking them out of others. But Firaxis seem to be doing this more to make the civs stand out by BNW as well (and they have teams of designers to work on stuff). With an ability like you suggest though, it does create interesting counter-challenges. Say the Seanchan do have a massive tourism penalty, it's a nice end-game challenge for good players to try to win cultural victories with them. (I'm being my own devil's advocate, so that probably all sounds very disjointed.)

Before making any final calls on that I need to decide how I'm going to refactor tourism. Because I like the mechanic, but it obviously can't be called "tourism" for the WoT-verse and I don't want to just change the text keys and leave it at that. Even if it's only a small tweak to the system, but we'll see!

for Caihrien UA I'd propose (same as you in spirit, but a bit different; and it's a mechanic I found in CIV Master of Mana)
+25%building construction if building is already in the capital (to show that the other nobles fund the buildings when they are en vogue.) one could add a -5%gold or something;

Ah, gotcha, yes I misunderstood what you were saying about Elayne's flavor being something that could be expanded to all civs. As far as locking the Seanchan into one channeler ideology not being Civ-like... Well, I think there's only really two kinds of civ players. Those that look through all the civs and play the ones they think have the best bonuses for how they want to play, and those that are more history buffs and have a favorite civ whose flavor and unique aspects they want to enjoy. What I'm saying is, neither of those types would choose the Seanchan looking for a diplomatic victory anyway. Unless, like you say, they're looking for the ultimate challenge or something. Plus, in this case, the Empire doesn't exist without collared channelers, to the point where multiple characters speculate about the Empire collapsing if the fact that sul'dam can learn to channel becomes general knowledge. I understand what you're saying about locking out choices, but I feel that in a mod like this, people choosing to play as the Seanchan will know exactly what they're choosing and will actually expect it. As for their uniques, I would say ditch everything but the Patrol Station and the Sul'dam, and maybe give the Sul'dam the ability to convert defeated channeling units from other civs into new Sul'dam units. Make it a 25% chance, say?

And it seems to me that the Seanchan's culture/tourism isn't really influential in the sense that the present Civ 5 implementation means. Their culture is oppressive and virtually unavoidable, anywhere that they have a sword to your throat. Inside their military borders it can cost you your life not to toe their cultural line. Outside their borders their culture is met with hostility at best, or else downright revulsion. The slavery and channeler collaring alone turns people off most places. The rulers of Amadicia, Tarabon and Altara all faced the choice to kind of convert or die. That's not really a choice you can force on someone through tourism. I guess it really shouldn't be called a culture penalty, they should earn culture as normal. But in terms of influencing other cultures with tourism they should operate as though they have a different religion and ideology from every other civ, from the beginning of the game and permanently. Because, let's not forget, they also have the option of grabbing another civ's bonus that will help them win other victory types. What if you give Elayne something like a permanent +15 boost to influence with the Green Ajah and then the Seanchan capture her capitol? Probably their own UA cancels that out. But presumably one of these civs will get a UA or UB with some science boosts. What if they capture that civ? Or tourism boosts?

Yes, until they capture a civ or two their UA is kind of a liability, but once their conquest gets going? They'll be hard to stop in any kind of victory they want to try (except diplomatic). Oh, and I just thought of something. You're going to let people capture Tar Valon and disable the diplomatic victory anyway, right? Hard, but doable, if I recall correctly. Well, let's say if the Seanchan capture Tar Valon, the diplomatic victory is not disabled, but altered. Instead of the Hall of the Tower, it moves to Seandar and becomes some kind of Imperial Peace Council or something, with all of their diplo and tourism penalties now becoming bonuses. Instead of influencing the Ajahs, it goes back to being more of a world council thing as is already in the game, with the Seanchan as permanent hosts.

Anyway, here's Tear.

Tear

Ruler - High Lord/King Darlin Sisnera

UA - The Stone Stands: Tairen cities that are garrisoned by a Defender of the Stone receive 50% bonuses to their hit points, combat strength, heal per turn amount, and ranged attack. Additionally, as Tairen horses are acknowledged as among the best to be had, each source of horses yields double the normal amount, and if worked by a city, also provides +1 culture and +1 gold. (I'm not sure what resources you'll put in the game, but Tear is also known for its olive farms and the oil they provide, apparently. So, if you put olives in, add that each source of olives worked by a city provides an additional +1 production and +2 gold.)

UU - Defender of the Stone: Receives the Elite Formation promotion for free. If garrisoned inside a city, receives a 25% combat bonus and a ranged attack with a range of one square.

UB - Oil Press: Replaces workshop. Is basically a workshop that also provides +1 gold and +10% city gold production.

Man, you're making Foregate a world wonder? It's a glorified refugee camp, man! Alright, I'll have to think about it then.

Calavente said:

for Caihrien UA I'd propose (same as you in spirit, but a bit different; and it's a mechanic I found in CIV Master of Mana)
+25%building construction if building is already in the capital (to show that the other nobles fund the buildings when they are en vogue.) one could add a -5%gold or something;

Click to expand...

That is quite flavorful, but it duplicates the functionality of the Roman UA in CiV. I'm generally steering clear of using any existing UAs to make the mod stand out more from the base game.

kidshowbusiness said:

Ah, gotcha, yes I misunderstood what you were saying about Elayne's flavor being something that could be expanded to all civs. As far as locking the Seanchan into one channeler ideology not being Civ-like... Well, I think there's only really two kinds of civ players. Those that look through all the civs and play the ones they think have the best bonuses for how they want to play, and those that are more history buffs and have a favorite civ whose flavor and unique aspects they want to enjoy. What I'm saying is, neither of those types would choose the Seanchan looking for a diplomatic victory anyway. Unless, like you say, they're looking for the ultimate challenge or something. Plus, in this case, the Empire doesn't exist without collared channelers, to the point where multiple characters speculate about the Empire collapsing if the fact that sul'dam can learn to channel becomes general knowledge. I understand what you're saying about locking out choices, but I feel that in a mod like this, people choosing to play as the Seanchan will know exactly what they're choosing and will actually expect it. As for their uniques, I would say ditch everything but the Patrol Station and the Sul'dam, and maybe give the Sul'dam the ability to convert defeated channeling units from other civs into new Sul'dam units. Make it a 25% chance, say?

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I've gotta say that I'm part of a third type of player. Maybe it's just because I'm an achievement junkie, but I've been steadily playing through all of the civs in the game and what I want most is for each one to be interesting to play in some way. If I feel like winning a certain way, then I'll pick a civ I haven't played that has a beneficial ability, but I'd be quite put off a civ if I knew I couldn't adapt to how that game was going as well. Still, definitely worth consideration!

And I'm liking the idea of Sul'dam turning opposing, defeated channeling units to the Seanchan cause. Having damane as units that could only be generated this way might let them be included without being a UU (saving the Seanchan's second unique slot for something else). Possibilities abound!

kidshowbusiness said:

And it seems to me that the Seanchan's culture/tourism isn't really influential in the sense that the present Civ 5 implementation means. Their culture is oppressive and virtually unavoidable, anywhere that they have a sword to your throat. Inside their military borders it can cost you your life not to toe their cultural line. Outside their borders their culture is met with hostility at best, or else downright revulsion. The slavery and channeler collaring alone turns people off most places. The rulers of Amadicia, Tarabon and Altara all faced the choice to kind of convert or die. That's not really a choice you can force on someone through tourism. I guess it really shouldn't be called a culture penalty, they should earn culture as normal. But in terms of influencing other cultures with tourism they should operate as though they have a different religion and ideology from every other civ, from the beginning of the game and permanently. Because, let's not forget, they also have the option of grabbing another civ's bonus that will help them win other victory types. What if you give Elayne something like a permanent +15 boost to influence with the Green Ajah and then the Seanchan capture her capitol? Probably their own UA cancels that out. But presumably one of these civs will get a UA or UB with some science boosts. What if they capture that civ? Or tourism boosts?

Yes, until they capture a civ or two their UA is kind of a liability, but once their conquest gets going? They'll be hard to stop in any kind of victory they want to try (except diplomatic). Oh, and I just thought of something. You're going to let people capture Tar Valon and disable the diplomatic victory anyway, right? Hard, but doable, if I recall correctly. Well, let's say if the Seanchan capture Tar Valon, the diplomatic victory is not disabled, but altered. Instead of the Hall of the Tower, it moves to Seandar and becomes some kind of Imperial Peace Council or something, with all of their diplo and tourism penalties now becoming bonuses. Instead of influencing the Ajahs, it goes back to being more of a world council thing as is already in the game, with the Seanchan as permanent hosts.

Click to expand...

I see what you mean about their culture. I think there's a bit more to it than just affecting people who they've got direct power over, but the differences are minor anyway. Possibly, a culture bonus but a tourism penalty could be interesting, along this line of possibilities. Good at keeping out foreign cultures, but bad at spreading their own (short of military force). It makes the Seanchan an effective wall for other players going for cultural victories, which can lead to some fun late-game war-making.

With regards to the diplomatic victory changing, I wouldn't like to hinge the existence of a system like the Seanchan council on the presence of a specific civ in a given game.

kidshowbusiness said:

Anyway, here's Tear.

Tear

Ruler - High Lord/King Darlin Sisnera

UA - The Stone Stands: Tairen cities that are garrisoned by a Defender of the Stone receive 50% bonuses to their hit points, combat strength, heal per turn amount, and ranged attack. Additionally, as Tairen horses are acknowledged as among the best to be had, each source of horses yields double the normal amount, and if worked by a city, also provides +1 culture and +1 gold. (I'm not sure what resources you'll put in the game, but Tear is also known for its olive farms and the oil they provide, apparently. So, if you put olives in, add that each source of olives worked by a city provides an additional +1 production and +2 gold.)

UU - Defender of the Stone: Receives the Elite Formation promotion for free. If garrisoned inside a city, receives a 25% combat bonus and a ranged attack with a range of one square.

UB - Oil Press: Replaces workshop. Is basically a workshop that also provides +1 gold and +10% city gold production.

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I hadn't actually given much thought (yet) to the new resources I want to include with this mod (beyond cuendillar and zemai), and olives sounds like a very good one! The Defenders have been my frontrunner for a Tairen UU as well.

kidshowbusiness said:

Man, you're making Foregate a world wonder? It's a glorified refugee camp, man! Alright, I'll have to think about it then.

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I've always thought that the Foregate was more than just a refugee camp (at least before the war with the Shaido when it was all burned down). It was somewhere that you got to see the other side of an otherwise reserved and very class-hierarchy-oriented Cairhien.

However, I do very much like your idea of population boost from it! I'm currently mulling over "This city gains 2 population every time its food meter fills up instead of just 1" (actual descriptive text pending, but that's what it does). You could make a super-crazy-big city with this, which may be unbalanced. We'll have to see when I can actually playtest things.

Also, if anyone has any ideas for what to do about city names for some of the civs, that would be awesome. Currently, there are three known cities in Manetheren that I could find anything about, and there obviously need to be more than that for a game of CiV. Also, Illian and Tear (I think it was those two) seem to be the only cities in their respective countries, which is really annoying!

sorry, didn't even knew the roman UA.. (I don't own ciV currently)

As a side note, two-rivers Longbowmen and Tabbaco should be manetheren and not Andor..

as for Elayne and ANdor and all the bonus, just consider that the actual power of Elayne in the late books is the result of vassalizing some states and having so peculiar arrangements with some city-states. Indeed, most of the OPness of Andor you cited is a result of that.

All right, NaNoWriMo is over, which means I have a bit more time for modding again!

I've been tinkering today (and trying to remember how I structured absolutely anything). What I've achieved in the last couple of hours, is buildings can now require specific governor classes to be constructed:



And the same city after I gave myself a Great Engineer to govern the city as a blacksmith:



There is now a Building_GovernorOrPrereqs table (obviously these prerequisites are ORs) which permits this behavior.

This was my first shot at doing prerequisites via the DLL and I'll start by saying Firaxis's system is very confusing. I've emulated it somewhat, but I've made a couple of changes to the process as well. (Anyone looking for specifics should check out my latest commit to the GitHub repository.) Undoubtedly, there was a reason Firaxis used the system they did (maybe it saves memory?) but my tweaked system looks like it works too.

I've also re-enabled the CvAssert system in my 'ModDebug' configuration as suggested by ls612 here, which should be very helpful. I'll be putting more asserts in my code now that they can actually do something!

Today has been a day of expanding the tech tree. I've added a whole host of new techs (culminating in some fun ones we started to see discovered during the books). Screenshots are from the TechTreeEditor rather than in-game because I haven't rewritten the pipe system in the game UI to work with the new dependency types.

I believe I read someone else had done that before on these forums, but it was never updated for BNW?

Currently, all of these techs do basically nothing (and many of the base game ones still have their original buildings/wonders, which will change!) and have the same cost (20). I'll be working on adding some content to these techs before expanding the tree further into the future. The tree will definitely have to be an iterative balancing process, and I've already noticed some omissions in my reconstruction process. (You may notice that "The Wheel" is missing, which is a hilarious oversight on my part.) This tech tree has turned out to be thicker than the base game tree in a lot of places, but we'll see if I can keep that up and have the techs all be balanced and useful.

The start of the tree is very similar to what I posted last time, but now it leads into this:



And then this:

I know that Godan is in Tear.

Also, regarding Foregate, it was my reading, and I could just be remembering incorrectly, that it began as a temporary encampment of refugees from eastern Cairhien during and immediately after the original Aiel War who were afraid to return to their homes and farms. And as these people stayed on and stayed on, refusing to leave, the "encampment" became more and more permanent, with wooden buildings instead of tents, etc. I thought that this was a big source of Cairhien's problems. No one's farming the eastern half of the country so they have to import food and they're all unemployed so the King has the Illuminator's put on shows and spends money on parties instead of on re-establishing the eastern half of the kingdom.

If you wanted to put in more "historical" civs, what about Hawkwing's Empire?

All right, time for an update so you guys know I haven't left this mod to gather dust! I've been working on this throughout December, adding content and making everything more fleshed out. As always, keep an eye on my two Github repositories for an ongoing look at what I'm currently working on. I'm laying down the foundation of all the base techs/units/buildings that make up this mod so that the uniques for the civs can be built on top of that.

My last post talked about rewriting the pipe code for the in-game tech tree to render all of the different kinds of pipes I'm using that the base game isn't. Thankfully, Alzara did that many moons ago and saved me a bit of work, so I've incorporated his fix and it works perfectly.

I've also integrated olives and tobacco (tabac) from Barathor's More Luxuries mod component. And Cuendillar, herbs, and zemai are all resources now (though not yet placed on the map).

There are a bunch of new buildings and units, particularly toward the start of the tree:



This is actually an older screenshot, so I've added several more things since it was taken. All new buildings are using the colosseum icon for now, and new units are using the stone slinger or worker. (Aes Sedai have their own icon I pieced together a while back though.) This tech tree now has actual scaled costs for where the techs are, so it looks much more like a game of civ when you start (before, everything took 6 turns, which was weird). The new early-game content really defines the promotion/upgrade/prereq lines of units/buildings going into the late game, which will all inevitably be thoroughly tinkered with before this mod is anywhere near completed, but there's a definite groundwork forming now.

Units wielding the One Power can now be cut off from the Source via City-States (Stedding use this) or buildings (the Guardian wonder uses this). Currently, it makes them effectively civilian units while in those locations, though I plan for the effects of being cut off from the source to be configurable on a per-unit basis (i.e. all Aes Sedai are affected the same, all madmen are affected the same) quite soon.

There are now also Gleeman units, which can performa build/mission which generates happiness. We'll see how this pans out long-term balance-wise, but for now they're restricted by area (can't have two gleemen performing within 4 hexes of each other).

I've added a lot of WoT-esque early game buildings that perform the functions required to get a civ working, producing food, production, gold, culture, faith, happiness, all the fun stuff. So far none of the existing CiV buildings have stuck around, though some of my replacements obviously serve similar purposes.

Most of this stuff (read: basically all of it) is lacking in art. I figure I'll go on an art-athon once I've got a fair chunk of gameplay content in the mod and add icons for all these things. I think I've got a decent handle on being able to at least reskin a resource for some of my new ones. I may take a stab at creating a new improvement with a new 3D model since it's actually got less intensive animation setup than units do (from a glance anyway). But for now it's all gameplay content.

kidshowbusiness said:

I know that Godan is in Tear.

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Very true, I'll make that one of their cities!

kidshowbusiness said:

If you wanted to put in more "historical" civs, what about Hawkwing's Empire?

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Hawkwing's Empire is definitely one of the civs I'm considering in future 'expansions' for the mod. I also think the ascension/collapse of Hawkwing's Empire could make a great scenario.

Just saw this idea, and it seems fantastic. It's been a while since you updated, so I just wanted to ask what progress you've made, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

NFUN said:

Just saw this idea, and it seems fantastic. It's been a while since you updated, so I just wanted to ask what progress you've made, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

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Thanks, glad you like the look of it! Progress has been slow (short on time) but I haven't completely disappeared. The Github repositories I link to in my first post show fairly up-to-the-minute updates whenever I write any new code/add new content.

I've been tinkering with setting up continuous integration for this mod just for fun (see how far I can get it to work) over the last week or so. I've got the mod building automatically on a server every time I check in new code, which is quite nice, and I'm considering actually poking some testing stuff into the game core DLL, but CiV isn't structured to be very testable.

In terms of actual work on the mod, I'm part of the way through setting up a new city state type for Tar Valon that manages the diplomatic victory. I'll need to take a glance at my commits to make sure, but the current step is making sure they're included in every game where the victory is enabled.

So, I've been tinkering away on the Tar Valon functionality and its relationship to the diplomatic victory. For specifics on what I've done, check out my last few commits to the two WoTMod repositories. Also, if anyone wants to keep track of what kind of tasks I'm working on (and bugs I'm aware of), then check out the issues page on the WoTMod repository. There's no public release of this mod yet (though you're welcome to clone the repos and build it yourself - no guarantee of stability though), but I think this gives a good idea to any observers of the kinds of things I'm working on.

Also, I came on here to share (what I thought was) a funny anecdote. The player is able to look at the status of the various Ajahs (and their influence on the Tower) through the city state diplo menu for Tar Valon itself (this is what I'm working on right now, the UI for that). The button is named after the city and I actually forgot to give the Tar Valon city state capital a name. So it picked a random name from all of the other civs:



Had a good laugh at that.

Also, if there are any charitable artists perusing this post, it would be awesome to have a 'symbol' for the Tar Valon city state trait! The crossed swords in the image above is the militaristic one. I was thinking something like a single-towered spire. This is similar to the Blender-rendered models that sukritact worked with on the first page of this topic to give this mod an awesome "Govern City" mission icon. I've yet to master (or even become serviceable at) this particular style of rendering. (2D icon work I feel all right about, and 3D unit models work on occasion, but making these kinds of scenes from scratch still eludes me!)