Zambezi

Pouakai · Dec 31, 2012

Zambezi
Part of Terra Novus

Zambezi is a mod which aims to increase representation of the African continent in Civilization V. It will feature several civilizations, city states, wonders and more by the end of the project. First up are the civilizations, version 1 featuring three: The Kongo of the Central African rainforest, the Kilwa Sultanate of the East African coast and the Garamantes of the Sahara. Each has a unique effect, from bonus gold when meeting city states to an additional luxury resource or providing Fresh Water from cities. The city states of Zanzibar and Mombasa are replaced with Dakar and Meroe, respectively.
The Civilizations:

Garamantes:
Leader: Djalla
Unique Ability: Foggaras - City Tiles and Forts constructed on Desert Hill Tiles act as sources of Fresh Water
Unique Unit: Plumed Nomad - replaces Scout. Has double movement on desert tiles and can enter foreign lands without Open Borders
Unique Building: Qasr - Replaces Granary. +1 food from sources of Wheat, Banana and Deer. +1 food on Oasis tiles. +2 defence and +25 hitpoints for the city

Kilwa:
Leader: Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi
Unique Ability: Swahili Traders - Increased Gold bonus for meeting a City-State (bonus enhanced if first and after discovering Guilds). +1 Food from Merchant specialists.
Unique Unit: Dhow - Replaces Caravel. Becomes available with Compass and is weaker than the caravel, but can heal outside friendly territory
Unique Building: Coral Port - Replaces Harbor. Only 1 Maintenence, each sea resource provides +1 Production and +1 Culture. Has a merchant slot

Kongo:
Leader: Nzinga Mbande
Unique Ability: Glory of the Manikongo - Units ignore terrain cost on tiles adjacent to rivers and do not suffer a combat penalty when attacking over a river
Unique Unit: Pombo - Replaces Pikeman. Ignores terrain cost and has a bonus defending against ranged attacks. However, is less effective against Cavalry units
Unique Building: Raffia Mill - Replaces Mint. Provides +1 gold from Dye worked by the city, and provides +1 Raffia luxury resource. Must be built in a city with an adjacent jungle tile, and is destroyed if all adjacent jungles are removed.

Can be downloaded from CFC Download Database Here or Steam Workshop Here. Full credits within the mod folder. Part of Terra Novus

Pouakai · Dec 31, 2012

Screenshots:

Spoiler :

HardRocker · Jan 1, 2013

FIRST! Looks great!

Do you plan on adding any more? What City-states might you be adding?

Pouakai · Jan 1, 2013

Indeed we do - if you take a look at the map you might get some ideas! We'll be adding some of the ones from the Gods & Kings scenarios as well as some new ones for what I believe is a total of 13 new civs. The city states will be African too, but after 13 civs we might end up running out! This is also part of Terra Novus, which will be doing similar projects for most regions of Earth

sukritact · Jan 1, 2013

Your not making the Mali Empire are you? Because I've made a map for them not too long ago.

Pouakai · Jan 1, 2013

I believe we are doing Mali, although I'm not sure if we'll be able to work out the overlap with Songhai

JA_Lamb · Jan 3, 2013

I hope you'll run some sort of "slavery" in your Mod till about the 1960's as this was true of the "Dark Continent" till then, and hasn't really disappeared altogether till now, despite all the Politically Correct assurances to the contrary, in small isolated areas.

Pouakai · Jan 5, 2013

I think we'll probably avoid that if possible, despite the large part it played.

I think that for the next update it'll be optimised (That is, moving all civilizations into one set of files so that it loads several times faster) at the expense of modularity, with individual civs that are not yet available elsewhere being released seperately at a later stage. Is this okay with you guys?

JA_Lamb · Jan 5, 2013

You mean that if all the info. is put into one folder, the mod loads faster? ie, Civilizations, Text, etc? I didn't know that.

trystero49 · Jan 5, 2013

I far prefer it to be modular, but then again it is your mod.

I think it might help loading time if you code the whole thing in SQL. That way the game engine doesn't need to convert the XML to SQL every time it loads. I don't know how much time that will cut, though.

JA_Lamb · Jan 5, 2013

Thanks Trystero, but SQL I can only read at present not code. That's why I asked the question above.

sukritact · Jan 5, 2013

Pouakai said:
I believe we are doing Mali, although I'm not sure if we'll be able to work out the overlap with Songhai

Well tell me if you need it. And if you want to take a look: http://sukritact.deviantart.com/#/d5owld5

Pouakai · Jan 5, 2013

Oh, that's awesome. I'll definately be trying to get Mali in now!

As for the optimisation, by combining the XML files of all the civs (eg. All Building sections in one Zambezi_Buildings.xml file) the game has less work to do when loading / unloading the mod, thus making it faster. When I was testing it was taking the better part of a minute just with Zambezi and only three civs. With all 13 and Other mods the load time might be upwards of five minute before you can even set up the game. All civilizations would be released seperately to preserve modularity

FramedArchitect · Feb 5, 2013

JA_Lamb said:
Thanks Trystero, but SQL I can only read at present not code. That's why I asked the question above.

A few months ago I decided to use SQL exclusively for database modding, and am very happy I did. I find SQL better than xml for two primary reasons: data is more compact, thus easier to edit; and files load right up to the error position, making it ever so much easier to find typos and mistakes.

If you need a template to get started, my scenario mods have SQL entries for almost every major table, from buildings to units, and many of the secondary tables as well. There are also examples in there of all the simplest SQL commands, from table inserts and deletes to basic math manipulations.

JA_Lamb · Feb 5, 2013

FramedArchitect thank you for the offer, I'll take it up as I go along.

AbsintheRed · Feb 6, 2013

When will you guys add more civs to the mod?
Mali and Benin are already complete, or am I mistaken here?

Pouakai · Feb 6, 2013

We're currently waiting on some new art for some of the civs, which hopefully should come sometime this month

ArnoldI · Feb 14, 2013

Pouakai, have you seen that Tomatekh has a Benin and a Malinese civs? He also is working on an Almohads and a Great Zimbabwe mods, so you can take a look, as one civ of the mod is already made by him, right?

Tomatekh · Feb 14, 2013

ArnoldI said:
Pouakai, have you seen that Tomatekh has a Benin and a Malinese civs? He also is working on an Almohads and a Great Zimbabwe mods, so you can take a look, as one civ of the mod is already made by him, right?

Yeah, both of those (Benin, Mali) will be in the next version of Zambezi (the updates for the mods are basically done, just waiting on some artwork). Working on Zimbabwe has been stalled a bit as I'm really busy with work in real life at the moment, but once the next version of Zambezi is out I'll make some time to finish it so it can be in the version after that.

AbsintheRed · Feb 14, 2013

ArnoldI said:
Pouakai, have you seen that Tomatekh has a Benin and a Malinese civs? He also is working on an Almohads and a Great Zimbabwe mods, so you can take a look, as one civ of the mod is already made by him, right?

You didn't read the posts right above yours really carefully, did you? :rolleyes:

Zambezi

It belongs in a museum.

It belongs in a museum.

Student.

It belongs in a museum.

Artist and Modder

It belongs in a museum.

Warlord

It belongs in a museum.

Warlord

Prince

Warlord

Artist and Modder

It belongs in a museum.

Reluctant Modder

Warlord

Deity

It belongs in a museum.

I have no idea what I'm doing in Civ VI

Emperor

Deity

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