Unique Civ-Specific Great People Names

CIV-SPECIFIC GREAT PEOPLE

Description:
In standard Civ 4 whenever a great person is born, the game draws from a single list for every civ to generate a name for that person, based on GP type. In this mod, every civilization now has its own unique lists of GP which it will use instead of the generic lists, just like in Civ 3. Scipio won't be born in Carthage anymore, but in Rome; Edison will always be American; Sun Tzu will always be Chinese.


[Link removed due to the file being lost]


Update (13/9/2009): I am currently working on a new version of this mod, which was deleted during the file hack months ago. It will incorporate many new changes, including support for saved games. See post #255 for more.

In the meantime, if you are still interested in using an old version of this modcomp, I advise you to check out Grave's History in the Making or my scenario WWII in the Pacific, which used parts of this. I will also leave up the old Warlords and Vanilla mods in this post.

What a great idea! This should definately be a part of the Ethnically Diverse Units Mod, and I think the idea of making unique Great People units for each civilization is fantastic. I am definately going to put something similar in the European Middle Ages Mod, and your list of names will be very useful. Thank you!

Dude, this is AWESOME! I was going to do this same thing myself for my mod, and I wasn't looking forward to researching ALL those names! I'll download this and take a look at it.

Thanks for making this!

It looks like the Total Realism modpack for Warlords implements unique people too, but I wasn't aware of it until after I posted this. At any rate, this mod is targeted more for people who don't want the game dynamics altered fundamentally, and the download size is of course much smaller.

Total Realism does look like a good source for additional names, though. I haven't had time to download it yet (it looks very impressive), but when I do I'll see about putting in more names, as some civs only have 3-4 names for certain GP types at present.

I have decided to go ahead and post the Warlords version of this mod, even though the great general feature still has some bugs in it. Hopefully, I'll get that ironed out sooner or later...

[EDIT: After downloading Total Realism, it looks as though they got the idea from me, based on the extreme similarity of some of the names (check out the Greek merchants). So at least after reading this people won't think I stole their idea. ]

Gaius Octavius said:

I have created versions for both Warlords and Vanilla, the only main difference being that the Warlords version has unique great general names, too. But at present I’m having some problems with the great generals in Warlords. For some reason, the game doesn’t seem to be using the names uniquely--it will use any name for any general born to any civilization. If anyone has any ideas on how to fix this, I would appreciate suggestions. The Civilopedia also unfortunately lists every single unique GP unit, which is a bit annoying, and I am trying to correct this.

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not only generals, also others GP have this problem - it is bug(feature?) in game engine - this problem is solved in my unique GP mod (link in signature), which is developed as part of Total realism (as you mentioned before)
also we have updated civilopedia to show only default GP
so if you are interested, PM me, i can help you with this

Mexico

Excellent idea, I was thinking of this as well. Another example of modding a game as part of a community, now I can spend that time I would have used on another project. Thank you!

Well done, Gaius Octavius!

I use the same idea in my own mod, but only for Russian GP .

Oh my GAWD I just added Gaius Octavius' Unique GP names into my mod. I hope I never, ever have to go through THAT again in my life! 720 unique names in total. Added in Mexico's SDK mod too. This method is ridiculously cumbersome, I may at a later point create another method that doesn't require acres and acres of XML to make this work. i think the list of names for each civ could be put into an array or list, reducing the number of entries signifigantly.

My hat is off to Gaius for researching all those names and doing all this work in the first place. I edited your XML to make 5 names for every category. I also added text key tags for every name (proper method) which are all listed in Civ4TextInfos_GreatPeople.xml. When I was done I layed down on the floor and cried for an hour. But this is a very nice addition to the game.

Hopefully Firaxis will incorporate this idea into the next version, it was a heck of a lot of work but it certainly adds a lot to the game.

well done is it okay to use this as a base for my tester mod for some reason ive come with xml files but cant put them into play?

Chazcon said:

Oh my GAWD I just added Gaius Octavius' Unique GP names into my mod. I hope I never, ever have to go through THAT again in my life! 720 unique names in total... When I was done I layed down on the floor and cried for an hour. But this is a very nice addition to the game.

Hopefully Firaxis will incorporate this idea into the next version, it was a heck of a lot of work but it certainly adds a lot to the game.

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Cumbersome is perhaps the understatement of the year! (You can imagine how long it took to actually find all these names!) For the life of me, I really can't imagine why Firaxis did not carry this idea over from Civ 3 (okay, I guess I can, but laziness is no excuse!) Actually, I was originally going to do it the way you are "supposed" to--with XML tags for each language, which allows for translation. But then I decided that it wasn't likely that I'd be translating all these names any time soon, so I just listed them directly instead of creating a link to TXT_GREAT_PERSON. Hmm, I guess laziness is an excuse after all.

The real problem (and I've been saying this ever since Civ 4 came out) is the lack of a good, official, and comprehensive game editor like in Civ 3--remember how easy it was to change the GP names? What Firaxis doesn't seem to understand is that even though they've opened up the game to exciting new possibilities with Python and XML, they haven't made it truly available to the common man. The car was a wonderful device in the early 1900's, if you could afford one; but it didn't really change the world until mass production made it cheap enough for everybody to afford.

At any rate, the lists are compiled now and hopefully when Civ 5 comes out (or another expansion to Civ 4) the great wise men of Firaxis will deem it good and proper to include unique GP names for all the civs.

The newest version of Civ-Specific Great Leaders has been posted!
Major changes include many more great people names and a fix for the pesky multiple civilopedia entries.

More features and new additions are still to come...

I was just wondering.. are the GP lists in order from oldest to newest, eg. like so that Martin Luther (15th - 16th century) is spawned before Albert Schweitzer (19th - 20th century) in Germany as a great prophet?

It looks like it in the list but I need to make sure. I'm pretty sure that vanila civ does this with the entire pool of GP names, so that St Peter and Moses are spawned in ancient times and Albert Einstein is spawned late in the game.

Chugginator said:

I was just wondering.. are the GP lists in order from oldest to newest, eg. like so that Martin Luther (15th - 16th century) is spawned before Albert Schweitzer (19th - 20th century) in Germany as a great prophet?

It looks like it in the list but I need to make sure. I'm pretty sure that vanila civ does this with the entire pool of GP names, so that St Peter and Moses are spawned in ancient times and Albert Einstein is spawned late in the game.

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Originally, yes, that was my plan. But the Warlords engine picks any name at random, so it kind of defeats the purpose to arrange them chronologically. This is actually good because it means you'll eventually see all the names, not just the first few. And this is why I'm doing the massive expansion of 2000+ names only for Warlords.

Vanilla Civ 4 still does it in order, though, so there I have largely tried to remain chronological. In several cases I have arranged them more in terms of importance or fame, otherwise people like Einstein would almost never be born, as they are 10 names down the list.

Hmm... you've gotten me thinking about modding my great people format to use age-specific as well as civ-specific names. I had actually thought about doing this before but it seemed too impractical.

Check your PMs.

Gaius Octavius said:

Hmm... you've gotten me thinking about modding my great people format to use age-specific as well as civ-specific names. I had actually thought about doing this before but it seemed too impractical.

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That would be great! I was nagging Gaurav to do this in the other thread but I don't think he was that enthusiastic about it. Hopefully you can do it
When you weigh up the odds between the two formats, the age-specific one is better than random because you can stand to get a few late-comer Great Merchants and such but I personally can't stand seeing modern GP in the ancient ages and vice-versa. "What were they thinking??" You would probably need to adjust the number of GP for each team though, so that the average player can get a GP in the right era. You can't have too many ancient GP otherwise you'll still be getting them at the end, however, you could have as many modern GP as you like, as long as the important ones aren't too far down the list. A bit of tweaking should do it Arranging them in terms of importance is a good idea, as long as they're still in the right era. I'm not sure how many GP I average each game, haven't played for a while (been modding)
Really though you shouldn't have to go to the trouble - Firaxis made a bad decision here, they should have kept it in order.
I would do it myself but as I said in the other thread, I've never touched python before, and it looks a lot harder than just changing stuff in the XML's. If you don't have time or something though I could try to learn

Unfortunately, I don't have any python experience, but it might be possible to do the same thing in XML, like with the art tags for each era. But I have to admit that this is unfamiliar ground for me, and I might not be able to do it. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out how to fix the great general bug!

It would be a very nice addition, though. The major problem I see, outside of implementation, is coming up with names for some civs for each era. For ones like China, Rome, Greece, etc., it wouldn't be hard, but what exactly is an American ancient scientist? (Of course, this is exactly the same sort of thing I heard when I started this project--it's hard to find names for each civ. But there they are. )

The solution I see would be to scale it in terms of each civ's life-span: in this case, America's ancient GP would be those from the early colonial period. Modern Aztecs could just be Mexicans, Incans would be Peruvians, etc. This would create chronological order. What do you think?

lil dissapointed Clint Eastwood aisnt in it, but its frickin awesome anyway!

Two Thumbs up!!

I still have to finish the big version, so you'll be seeing a lot more American great artists, including actors and actresses.

Gaius Octavius said:

It would be a very nice addition, though. The major problem I see, outside of implementation, is coming up with names for some civs for each era. For ones like China, Rome, Greece, etc., it wouldn't be hard, but what exactly is an American ancient scientist? (Of course, this is exactly the same sort of thing I heard when I started this project--it's hard to find names for each civ. But there they are.

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I had the same problem with the ancient american scientists (I merged your mod with the other Great Person Mod, the one with the pictures) which I'll upload when it's finished (with your permission of course and full credit to you and Gaurav) - I think that Edwin Hubble is the most ancient, then Einstein, but you already have them. It's hard to find other older ones. I'm mainly making artwork atm for your existing people but I'll be researching too.
You've done a good job with the names already though.

You will probably be pleased with the next expanded edition and get a lot of use out of it. Right now I have collected 1700 names, including a few American scientists who lived before Hubble, as well as later ones for the ancient civs (modern Egyptians, for instance). This will help balance things a little and would be much better for an age-specific mod (if I ever manage to do it) than the smaller list posted already. Also, Wyz_sub10 has a list from the mod that he and Jeckel were working on a few months back, so there are probably additional names there. Next stop, 3000...

I have to say I'm honored that this will be implemented in the Great Person mod. I always considered it to be one of the best, and when I saw it blended with mine in Total Realism I was pleasantly surprised.

You know, a thought occurred to me: we really ought to think about making some sort of petition or something to Firaxis to have them put this in a future expansion. It's not like the modding is that hard, and the lists are already compiled so it's not like they have to look them up again. And it doesn't change the gameplay, just the art, so it doesn't have to be balanced.
Just a thought.