The Mayans

Tactician Zhao

Lord Strategist
Joined
Oct 15, 2005
Messages
307
Location
Unknown Kadath
Greetings,

The following mod will add the Mayans as a playable civilization.. it includes complete Civilopedia info, static leaderhead, custom flag and unique unit graphics


Name: Maya
Techs: Mysticism, Agriculture
Leader: Pacal II (Creative, Industrious)
Unique Unit: Plumed Archer (Replaces normal archer, +1 Power, +1 movement, +25% city defense, +25% vs melee)
Flag: Mayan Mandala


http://www.filegone.com/7z3u

You can install it by unzipping the file into your mods directory (will create a directory called "Mayans"), then you can load the mod through the advanced menu in Civilization 4.


plumed.jpg
plumed2.jpg

I'm not satisfied with the unique unit (or the leaderhead graphic), so consider this a beta release.. any input or suggestions are welcomed, as always

To explain my use of the Plumed Archer (and its stats) for counterdebate, I know its not exactly historical, but I was having a problem deducing a more appropriate selection

As for the stats, I wanted to give them a more offensive tint than the standard archer, though I fear I may have made them overpowered.. I haven't tested extensively yet, but I am working on that.. and input is appreciated.. comparing them to the skirmisher, they have the same +1 to power, but have a +1 movement bonus as well.. they lack the extra first strike chance (I don't know how drastic that is to make up for the movement, but if you consider the first strikes are not an offensive weapon, it helps make some sense).. I switched out +25% city defense (leaving it with 25%) and gave it +25% vs melee instead to compensate for more offensive usefulness.. therefore, when defending against melee units in a city, it has the same bonus as a skirmisher (minus the extra first strike chance).. and the extra movement does not benefit a unit that is being used for city defense anyways (except for active defense, which was one reason I thought it might be appropriate)

Anyways, I apologize if it angers anyone, but I'm more than willing to listen to input
 
nooooooooooooooooooooooo

another red civ!!!! I won't be able to do it without secondary color!!!!!!

well, looks good!!
 
LAnkou said:
nooooooooooooooooooooooo

another red civ!!!! I won't be able to do it without secondary color!!!!!!

well, looks good!!


doh, I was trying to get away from blue, but I wasn't sure which colors are in short supply.. if you want me to change it, let me know to what.. it doesn't matter to me, I just didn't want to use yellow or green because of Aztecs and Incans nearby.. I'm not great with colors, because I'm partially colorblind :crazyeye:

edit: maybe you could allocate certain shades and mixtures of colors (as coded in the interface xml files) and hand them out to others for easy inclusion into the superciv mod? not sure if that'd be easier than changing them after the fact or not.. I'm working on another one right now, and wondering about it too
 
well, all colors are saturated....

but my biggest problem are of course red, green and blue. White isn't easy too cause there are not much margin i can play with
don't worry i made an excell file to have all the numbers....

the most important thing to have is enough differences to prevent mixed borders (look at it in Finmod thread). If you don't know which civ own some borders when you don't know this civ yet add some "realism"
("oh, yellow? that's hatetpschut!! she is creative, i need to grab stonehenge!!!" or "red? Japanese over there, need to build up my military")
 
Good job Zhao. A great addition.

As for the colors....why do they have to have default colors? Is that hard coded? Can't you simply play with 11 or 18 civs and have the colors get assigned after the game starts? I hate knowing who's nearby solely by the color of their borders.
 
Update: Fixed a stupid error I missed in the unit info.. sorry to any who downloaded the old version
 
Just a note -- the adjective for Maya is Maya, not Mayans. It's sort of a new thing, but anthropologists all agree on it. You can have a Mayan city, a Mayan unit, but collectively they are referred to as the Maya.

:)
 
update: changed the mod with the alterations made for the v1.09 patch, it is now up to date
 
Great news Zhao. I was just about to combine some mods so thanks for updating yours.
 
I saw a History channel show about the "Maya" and it mentioned a ruler by the name of "Eighteen Rabbit" (the hyroglyph for his name was a pariring of the hyroglph for 18 and the hyroglyph for rabbit). He was aparently a very powerfull king of a powerfull Mayan state. Might want to consider him as a potential ruler. The show also expalined that the Mayan people were never realy unified under one ruler, rather countless small kingdoms were constantly at low level war with each other. They speculated that the Maya would probably have been concoured by the Aztecs in a few more generations if not for the coming of Cortez.
 
The Maya people used a unique spear throwing weapon called the Alt-Alt. You could have two UU and make a change to the spearman. Reskin him more colorful and call him something like the Alt-Alt Thower. It's two bad you can't reuse the one from Civ 3.
As for a second Leader? Try Marcus Canul. He is a more modern leader who led a rebellion against the Spanish rule. I would sugest using Aggressive and Agrecultural with a lean towards State Property.
I'm a bit of a History Buff on mesoamerican history so let me know if you have any questions.
 
One of the problems the Ancient Mayans had was agriculture. They did amazing things in a region where it is difficult to eek out a living today. Aggressive and Agricultural, with a -1 upkeep penalty after a certain number of cities to simulate the constant struggles? Because of this they had an ineffective bureaucracy as well as a stratified society, and it seems like there became too few farmers to support the cities. Could this be modded to be eliminated when State Property becomes available?

However, the larger cities had population densities around 1500/sq mi which is amazing. A quick and dirty bit of info on the reason this civilization collapsed can be found in the book Collapse, by Jared Diamond.

Of course in this game we also want to do the "what if" scenario.
 
hi thisis good
 
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