[Development Thread] Battle of the Gods

EDIT: I NEED HELP!!!! With units and leaderheads. Anyone with the ability to understand the blender/nifskope thing and a willingness to be a part of this mod, please let me know. I'm trying but everytime I play with blender it ruins my mind.

Ok, so I'm developing a MOD in which each civilization will actually be based off of a certain Pantheon. At this point I have settled on the following civs and leaders:

Progress checker:

1. Greek - Zeus
2. Norse - Odin
3. Egyptian - Ra
4. Japanese - Izanagi
5. Aztec - Huitzilopochtli
6. Hindu - Vishnu
7. Angelic - Michael
8. Demonic - Lucifer

The last two will be based of the assorted mythologies of the Abrahamic religions, primarily Christianity.

Each civ will have unique hero units (only one can be built ever, example: Ares or Thor), unique lesser hero units (only on can be built at a time, example: Achilles), unique units (example, Minotaurs), unique buildings (to allow the building of lesser heroes and unique units), unique national wonders (to allow the building of hero units), and unique technologies (to allow the unique units, heroes etc.....)

And......the unique tech trees will eventually lead back to the same place, a universal tech to unravel the mystery of the void from which the universe was created. This will then lead to the discovery of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos, which will make available the highest level units in the game to anyone with the right tech and buildings.

I'd welcome any help/input/suggestions/education and will post updates here as they happen.....

So step one is the creation of the civs and the commissioning of leaderheads.

Here are the pics of the leaders, hopefully I can get custom leaderheads made by those who are awesome at it.....

This sounds great! I'm looking forward to hearing a few more details and starting to see it take shape. I've always had a strong interest in the histories and indigenous mythologies of the Japanese and Aztecs, so I'd be happy to give you a few thought or ideas once those civs start coming into form.

I remember making a leaderhead once when Civ 4 first came out.. I'd have to look up how to do it again, but if I get a chance tomorrow I'll try and give it a go for you!

I was also thinking that in cases where another Pantheon was similar or identical to one of those included, you could represent them as a second leader, so it'd still be the same civ but with some slightly different properties, like for example Jupiter (Roman) could be a leader for the Greeks, or Kukulkan (Mayan) for the Aztecs. Just an idea though

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I had considered multiple leaders, but more along the lines of Greece might Have Zeus and Hera, your idea has some merit though. For the time being, I'm gonna stick with one leader per civ for simplicity sake.

I've always had a strong interest in the histories and indigenous mythologies of the Japanese and Aztecs, so I'd be happy to give you a few thought or ideas once those civs start coming into form.

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Sweet, I'll be interested in your input, I'm learning about all of these from scratch pretty much except Greek/Angels/Demons

I remember making a leaderhead once when Civ 4 first came out.. I'd have to look up how to do it again, but if I get a chance tomorrow I'll try and give it a go for you!

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Awesome, but I've already found 4/8, Turns out Methyl Orange already had a great Zeus, and cfkane had a great Huitzilopochtli, plus two more that I can use with little to no changes. So remaining are Odin, Michael, Lucifer, and Ra. By all means, take a crack at 'em, I'm also going to post on the leaderhead request page.



Edit: Just found Ra by veBear, not quite as polished in the pic, but we'll see how it looks in the game. 5/8 woo hoo!!!!
Edit: Posted a request for leaderheads, cfkane's Lear might be a good start for Odin.....

OMG, this sounds extremely cool! The Cthulhu twist-ending sealed the deal, for me personally.

One thing, though: Why would the player have to build the hero units? These are basically great people, right? Its very possible to create something like a random event (well a non-random one in this case) that spawns a hero unit once the associated national wonder is created. I could script anything along these lines in proper Python, alternatively. Unless you of course are a programmer yourself.

This looks quite interesting. I look forward to hearing more of it. You could also make a lot of interesting mechanics changes.

And did you draw that concept art? It's AMAZING!

And did you draw that concept art? It's AMAZING!

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oh no no, I have nearly zero artistic ability, about the closest I get is designing this mod.....

One thing, though: Why would the player have to build the hero units? These are basically great people, right? Its very possible to create something like a random event (well a non-random one in this case) that spawns a hero unit once the associated national wonder is created. I could script anything along these lines in proper Python, alternatively. Unless you of course are a programmer yourself.

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@Baldyr
Well, I am looking at balance mostly, and I got my gameplay ideas from Fall From Heaven where world units and national units have to be built. But they also use the getting-a-unit-from-a-non-random-event thing, and I do like it, so perhaps we'll go with a lesser-hero or unique unit.

And I am not a programmer, although I am teachable, but I'd love to have any level of help you're willing to contribute from advice to full on collaboration. My main programming challenge is getting it so that each civ can build their own unique stuff, but never anyone else's. FFH has is set up so that you get a nice selection of unique buildings and units based on your state religion, but if you change state religions, you have access to a new selection. So you could be playing as the Elven civ, but by changing to Dwarven state religion, now you can make Dwarven units. I know civ-specific units and buildings are easy to do (they're already in the game), can civ-specific national wonders be done the same way?

unklmnky69 said:

My main programming challenge is getting it so that each civ can build their own unique stuff, but never anyone else's. FFH has is set up so that you get a nice selection of unique buildings and units based on your state religion, but if you change state religions, you have access to a new selection. So you could be playing as the Elven civ, but by changing to Dwarven state religion, now you can make Dwarven units. I know civ-specific units and buildings are easy to do (they're already in the game), can civ-specific national wonders be done the same way?

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Since you want to give each Civ its own tech tree there should be no problem with that. After all, units and buildings can be set to require certain techs, so only one civ at a time will have access to them. You won't even have to declare them as unique units/buildings.

I'm just not sure how feasible uniques techs is.....

I'm pretty sure that it is doable by giving each Civ a respective starting tech that can't be researched and is the prerequisition for the other techs of that Civ's techtree. The tech trees themselves will be a lot of work thou I guess.

You'll have to disable tech trading...

I like the concept.

unklmnky69 said:

And I am not a programmer, although I am teachable, but I'd love to have any level of help you're willing to contribute from advice to full on collaboration.

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I think you should either commit to learning programming properly or simply try to outsource the job to someone who already knows that stuff. My advice.

And if you get the XML and art portion of your mod up and running it would be quite easy to add scripts or whatnot. But I only work in Python, currently, so there are some obvious limitations as to changing the game rules and such. But spawning units and the like will be no problem at all.

Prompt me this summer or something and I would probably be able to pitch in. Otherwise someone else would surely be able to help out - unless you decide to learn Python modding yourself. (See my signature for some entry points.)

unklmnky69 said:

My main programming challenge is getting it so that each civ can build their own unique stuff, but never anyone else's. FFH has is set up so that you get a nice selection of unique buildings and units based on your state religion, but if you change state religions, you have access to a new selection. So you could be playing as the Elven civ, but by changing to Dwarven state religion, now you can make Dwarven units. I know civ-specific units and buildings are easy to do (they're already in the game), can civ-specific national wonders be done the same way?

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I currently have no handle of any of these specifics, but it would seem to me like straight XML work, and you hardly need any programming skills for that.

Asaf said:

You'll have to disable tech trading...

I like the concept.

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That should not be necessary.

In the CivilizationInfos you can specify techs that a civ can't ever have via DisableTechs. I haven't checked, so can't be absolutely certain, but that ought to prevent a civ from acquiring the techs listed by any means (including stealing via espionage, which might still be possible even if you disable tech trading - I've never checks that either). You could just list every unique tech in all the other civ's DisableTechs, but this method seems simpler.

So you'd just list every other civ's special tech in each civ's DisableTechs section. That would allow you to make civ-specific special techs (one given to each civ for free) that are the prereqs for each civ-specific tech. It also still allows you to have techs in common that are tradeable so you don't have to recreate big chunks of tech trees in each unique tech tree or lose out on the trade aspect of the game.

God-Emperor said:

That should not be necessary.

In the CivilizationInfos you can specify techs that a civ can't ever have via DisableTechs. I haven't checked, so can't be absolutely certain, but that ought to prevent a civ from acquiring the techs listed by any means (including stealing via espionage, which might still be possible even if you disable tech trading - I've never checks that either). You could just list every unique tech in all the other civ's DisableTechs, but this method seems simpler.

So you'd just list every other civ's special tech in each civ's DisableTechs section. That would allow you to make civ-specific special techs (one given to each civ for free) that are the prereqs for each civ-specific tech. It also still allows you to have techs in common that are tradeable so you don't have to recreate big chunks of tech trees in each unique tech tree or lose out on the trade aspect of the game.

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Awesome, that's the answer I've been looking for. I really didn't want to disable tech trading as it's a big part of my early strategy when playing. Thanks so much......

ok, BotG v.01is live......what does that mean? I have edited the xml so that there is only the 8 planned civs w/new leaders and custom LHs (or placeholders). Also included: buttons for leaders and rough-draft civilpedia entries. Otherwise it will play like a regular ol' BTS game. Not real interesting I know but......

If you'd like to alpha test, there's the file. Primary focus of this version; test LHs/diplomacy and find anything I have missed so far. (I'm entirely self-taught nad learning as I go)

Still needed: LH crafter to create the last three LHs.

Next up: Custom units with various downloaded graphics for each civ......

Ok, I have the human units for the first two civs uploaded. From left to right in each pic:
Back row; Warrior, Swordsman, Spearman, Pikeman, Maceman
Second row; Archer, Longbowman, Crossbowman
Third row, Chariot, Horseman, Knight
Front row; Settler, Worker, Scout
Feast your eyes....

First up, Greek, with the same units from BtS for comparison:

Warrior, Settler, Worker, and Scout are from the Varietas Delectat mod, all the rest are by danrell

And the Norse:

Warrior, Settler (with re-arrangement by unklmnky69), Worker, and Scout are from the Varietas Delectat mod, Beserker is from BtS, Knight is Bretonnian Lord by bernie14, all the rest are by Bakuel

Human units for Egypt. From left to right in each pic:
Back row; Warrior, Swordsman, Spearman, Pikeman, Maceman
Second row; Archer, Longbowman, Crossbowman
Third row, Chariot, Horseman, Knight
Front row; Settler, Worker, Scout

First is the BotG units with the same units from BtS for comparison:

Warrior, Settler, Worker, Scout, Spearman, and Horseman are from the Varietas Delectat mod, Chariot is the BtS Egyptian War Chariot, all the rest are by Bakuel

Kinda off topic question: where did you find those drawings? They look disturbingly familiar to me...

AFS said:

Kinda off topic question: where did you find those drawings? They look disturbingly familiar to me...

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Most of them I found on deviantart by an artist named Genzoman. The rest I found around the interwebs.....