MOD: Women of the Sword

"Behind every great man is a great woman"

http://www.filefront.com/15435619/WomenOfTheSword.zip

This is a pet mod project of mine that I think is ready for an Alpha release. It started out that I wanted to added Joan of Arc and it quickly grew into adding female leaders to all the civs. To keep the mod from having too many leaders, I then removed all the male leaders. This still left over 40 leaders in the game.

This release is more like a reskin of BtS and focused on the leaders and their traits. There is place holder art for a number of leaders. There are also a number of reskinned units, but by no means complete. While I plan to make some of my own leaderheads for the next release, I certainly won't turn down any contributions

I'm also open to feedback, specifically around leaders I should have included as well as leaders that should be cut. Also leader traits and flavor (I spent a great deal of time making sure there wasn't overlap with traitis; see the file WotS_LeaderTraitsFlavor.xls)

Speaking of which, I'd like to thank SaibotLieh, esvath, strategyonly, kathy and the other talented people for sharing female military units as well as the fantastic LeaderHead artists (I am still working on a file with credits)

Here are some details:

what's in
- 38 new female leaders (44 female leaders total)
- leaderhead xml (traits, flavor, diplomacy)
- some unit reskins
- Monkeys! (technically the gorilla animal unit)

what's not
- placeholder leaderhead art such as Sarah Plain
- new events
- some leaders are a stretch, such as Teuta for the Romans, Ishtar, Wu Quinghua
- some leaderhead head art doesn't match, such as Ice Queen as a placeholder for Viking leader Freydís
- some units aren't animated right, such as the Budhist missionaries

thanks in advance for checking it out and I you enjoy the direction it's headed.

could you show us some screenshots please

Manifold said:

could you show us some screenshots please

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Sure! I'll pull some together tonight. Is there anything in particular you want a screen shot of? I can do one of some of the units and leaders. I'll also add some more 'spoiler' information too.

Here is a 'spoiler' list of the leaders for each civ:

what percentage of the units r now females? or is it only leader changes

Interesting idea, but please do not put Sarah Palin in as a famous female American leader. Hillary Clinton or Elenore Roosevelt would be a much better choice.
For Rome, IIRc Teuta was Illyrian, not Roman. Galla Placedia would work. She was the mother of the Emperor Honorius and tried to play the generals Boniface and Flavius Aetius off each other, but failed at it.
For Byzantium, there were other females who were actualy Empresses, such as Irene (known for Iconoclasm), Zoe and Theodora (daughters of Basil II and Zoe reigned for nearly 50 years), and Anna Comnenus. Although Anna wasn't an Empresses she was a pretty interesting character and quite intellegent, she did write the Alexiad after all.

ilduce349 said:

what percentage of the units r now females? or is it only leader changes

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It's about 30-40% female units; the unique units are still mostly male, as well as the 'ethnic' units (for example, there is a female longbowman - or longbowwoman, but not a female greco-roman longbowman/woman).

I'm in the midst of doing an overhaul, evaluating the Amazon units Kathy posted awhile back.

Ajidica said:

Interesting idea, but please do not put Sarah Palin in as a famous female American leader. Hillary Clinton or Elenore Roosevelt would be a much better choice.
For Rome, IIRc Teuta was Illyrian, not Roman. Galla Placedia would work. She was the mother of the Emperor Honorius and tried to play the generals Boniface and Flavius Aetius off each other, but failed at it.
For Byzantium, there were other females who were actualy Empresses, such as Irene (known for Iconoclasm), Zoe and Theodora (daughters of Basil II and Zoe reigned for nearly 50 years), and Anna Comnenus. Although Anna wasn't an Empresses she was a pretty interesting character and quite intellegent, she did write the Alexiad after all.

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Fantastic feedback! Thanks! I knew Teuta as a Roman leader wasn't going to last. I'll seriously look at replacing her with Galla Placedia. And I like the idea of adding/replacing Irene for Byzantium.

So, part of the reason Sarah Palin is in there is because I wanted to have some fun with the diplomacy dialogue. The other part is that I'm planning ahead for the next mod once this one is complete. I agree that there are probably better choices.

Thanks again!

I suppose you could have alot of fun with Sarah Palin dialogue, I can see russia from my house, Gosh Darn it.
>For france, if you want a different female leader, you could include Catherine deMedeci. Her marrage to Henry of Navarre sparked of St. Bartholomews Day Massacre in PAris and the War of the Three Henrys (Also known as the French Religous Wars)
>For the vikings, wasn't the Kalmar Union founded under a female?

Ajidica said:

I suppose you could have alot of fun with Sarah Palin dialogue, I can see russia from my house, Gosh Darn it.
>For france, if you want a different female leader, you could include Catherine deMedeci. Her marrage to Henry of Navarre sparked of St. Bartholomews Day Massacre in PAris and the War of the Three Henrys (Also known as the French Religous Wars)
>For the vikings, wasn't the Kalmar Union founded under a female?

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I actually have Palin's first meeting dialogue include that she can see your civ from her house

kid anubis said:

I actually have Palin's first meeting dialogue include that she can see your civ from her house

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By golly, my name is [OUR_NAME]. I can see [CT_CIV_SHORT] from my house!



I once thought about making a palin LH, just so I could do that. I almost immediately dropped the idea. To much work for a small joke.

This mod looks like fun. It's on my download list for tonight.

BTW. The Danish Queen who was instumental in founding the Kalmar Union (The Nordic Union during the late Middle Ages), whom you are speaking aobut, was Margarete. She would be a good LH for the Vikings.

Le Sage said:

This mod looks like fun. It's on my download list for tonight.

BTW. The Danish Queen who was instumental in founding the Kalmar Union (The Nordic Union during the late Middle Ages), whom you are speaking aobut, was Margarete. She would be a good LH for the Vikings.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I've added her to my list to consider replacing/adding. My biggest constraint is that I'm likely going to be doing the missing LeaderHead art and that will take time.

Regarding the units, I should add that while I tried very hard to keep the leaders grounded in history, I've taken some 'liberties' with the units. For example, I'm using the Valkyrie as the European swordsman and a number of esvath's 'mages' as missionaries. Part of this was the lack of female units and part of it was because those units looked too cool not to use.

I am completely overhauling the units for the next release. I expect to have closer to 80-90% female units as well as a number of different art styles for early game units like spearmen (or spear women), swordsman, macemen, etc.

I will also have a new game start screen as well. I will not have all the 2D placeholder leaderheads replaced. I expect this to have this release ready in 2-3 weeks.

What I am wondering is, would most people still consider that a 'work in progress' or enough complete to officially 'release'? (Knowing that most mods are always works in progress).

If all units and leaderheads are replaced, i would say, it's in this case ready to download.

I do believe Dido has been done before, can't remember the mod.

Looks great. For Sarah Palin, you could have the following leader traits:

kid anubis said:

Sarah Palin

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This is why we can't have nice things.

Sine Nomen said:

Looks great. For Sarah Palin, you could have the following leader traits:

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Absolutely epic.

Sine Nomen said:

Looks great. For Sarah Palin, you could have the following leader traits:

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LOL.

I'm currently working on the missing leaderheads. I'll be posting them over in the LH forum as I get them done. I believe I need about 8-10, so it will be a while before I do the 'official' release of this mod. Probably 2 months at a minimum.

I'll be starting with a female Viking leader, a female Spartan leader, Susan B Anthony, and a female Native American leader. I'm also hoping some other talented members will create some female leaderheads that I can use