[MOD] Civ Pirates! Diary and Discussion Thread

I am planning on making a mod baised on Sid Meirer's Pirates adapted to cIV. I haven't modded much before, but I understand python and xml and am willing to work through as much as is possible until the SDK arrives, which will really let me get down and dirty with the AI. By and large though I am still in the planning stage, brainstorming for new ideas. I thought it would be good to post some of my more solid ideas here over time. If any of you have additions, suggestions, or advice you'd like to share I'd be happy to hear them!

Ok, I've got my second alpha release ready to go. It has a complete map of the caribbean as well as 10 civilzations set up at starting points. There are no resources set up yet as I want to test the base performance of the starting locations before deciding which areas need more of a boost to make it more balanced.

If you'd be kind enough to run through a quick game and test it out and then open world builder after a while to see how you are doing compared to the ai. Please reply if you do here and let me know which civ you chose and what you thought about the strength / weakness of your starting spot.

Thanks and enjoy.

Development ideas post.

Gameplay ideas
During testing the game will play pretty much like cIV. As development continues the game should become more unique than a normal cIV game, depending on my success on being able to implement the loafty goals I have for this mod.

I'll probably make a custom civilization called "The Pirates", which will be the only civ that a player could play.

Player City:
The user would get a single city which would be a hid west of mexico (in a make believe area). Here they can build special buildings baised on what they have acomplished in the carribean region. These buildings will grant the users fleet and units upgrades to make them more effective at pirating. No units could be built at this city. Its more of a control mechanism than a normal city. Also try to make it impossible for any unit to enter the area around it so it can't be taken over by the AI.

The city could also be a way to measure how well your fleet is maintained and how well your crew is being treated / fed. If you don't buy enough food then your crew starts to starve and you start losing units eventually. Or if your ships are damaged it hurts your production. If your morale is down your people become angry ect.

Fleet:
You would start out with one ship, and as the game progressed you would be able to aquire more ships to add to your fleet.

Crew:
Special units will be created that serve different purposes. Some will be your average crewmember. Others could be merchants, specialized troops, captured royalty, the captain (hero), and possibly more as they come to mind.

These units could be moved to different parts of the map and they would serve their function. Merchants would get you gold (maybe use them as a basis of plunder). Troops could attempt to capture a town, and if successful plunder would await and you could install a new govenor of a different civilization. Captured royalty could be a different type of plunder where you ransom it back to the owning nation or sell it to a rival nation, but this would increase hostilities.

Limited Resources:
In regards to troops and ships, I'm thinking of perhaps making it so resources are limited and have to be bought at different ports to keep your fleet going. Not sure if I'd need to use units again, or if its possible to set up some counters and modify them on certain conditions.

Random Events:
What would life be like on the high seas without a hurricane here or there. Hopefully I can borrow some work from the random events mod to ease the workload off on this department a bit. Other random events would be encountering a band or hostile indians while exploring the wilds, fighting off pirate hunters, finding hidden treasure (perhaps mod in rudimentary treasure map directions via messages), discovering lost indian city, battling marquis or the baron even.

Strategic Battles:
If at all possible, I would like to 'pause' the main game and enter a mini combat mode when encountering a random event or when invading a nations port. There would be a 15x15 or 20x20 battle ground area set up where you would have a certain amount of units depending on the crew involved which would be pitted up against the AI. I Probably need to wait for the SDK to even think about doing this, as the AI would have to be modified quite a bit I think, but I really like this idea as it transfers well over to cIV style of play.

Sea Routes:
If at all possible, create new ocean and coast terrain types that make it possible to move faster in a single direction. I think this would be really hard if not impossible though. Also was thinking of making certain types of ships move faster in different waters. Smaller ships better in shallow waters while larger ships fare better on the high seas.

Planned Civilizations in the mod
Spanish
English
French
Dutch
Pirates
Indians (more than 1? probably)
Jesuits
hopefully more to come...

Units in the mod
Land:
Captain (explorer?)
Crew (scout model)
Troops (explorer? swordsman?...)
Pirates (swords)
Musketeers (musketmen)
Calvary (knight? calv? immortal?)
Cannon (cannon)
Merchant (G. Merchant)
Royalty (G. Artist)

Sea:
Barque / Coastal Barque / Ocean Barque (Galley)
Brige / Brige of War / Brigantine (Caravel)
Fluyt / Large Fluyt (Caravel)
Merchantman (Caravel)
Galleon / Trade Galleon / Fast Galleon / War Galleon / Royal Galleon (Galleon)
Frigate / Large Frigate / Ship of the Line (Frigate)
Pinnace (Galley)
Sloop / Royal Sloop / Sloop of War (Caravel)
Indian Canoe (Galley)

New resources planned
Tar
Coral reef
Shrimp
Saltpeter
more I can't remember atm.

Nice mod idea Btw, will the pirates in your mod be as one civ or different civs as different rival pirates ?

Crash757 said:

Nice mod idea Btw, will the pirates in your mod be as one civ or different civs as different rival pirates ?

Click to expand...

Thanks, I've not decided yet. I think there should be 2 pirate civs, yours and all the other competitors out there. You can either work with them to terrorize the high seas, or get paid by a nation to deal with these scum.

U should co-op with Paasky, he once made pirate scenario for Civ3, so he may be able to help more than me. At least, he had gathered fine custom soundtrack about pirate theme, u could use at least that, if nothing else
I myself would like to help more, but python scripting is too time consuming to me, so i can help only with testing, advices and picture & audio materials

nice idea, and you should probably try to get naval battles look like the men are fighting. If you could actually get them to be able to fight, and not the ships, then you can bolster you ships strength by loading units in. Of course, there would be a limit, and losing a ship would be all the more painful.

Just an idea though...