The Years of Rice and Salt - C3C

I'm in the very early stages of working up a mod based on Kim Stanley Robinson's book "The Years of Rice and Salt". The premise of the book is that Europe was wiped out by the Black Plague, leaving the Arabs, Turks, Indians, Chinese, and Mongols to decide the fate of the world.

The Arabs control North Africa, Somalia, and the Arabian Peninsula. The Turks control a (much reduced) Constantinople, Anatolia, the fertile crescent, Afghanistan, and Samarkand. Both they and the Arabs have settlers ready to expand into newly abandoned Europe, populated only by scattered barbarians.
Some remnants of Europe survive, however. There are rumors of scattered Christians united in the north under the banner of the Scandinavians. Small in number but fierce warriors, the Franks may once again control Firanja (the Arab name for Europe).
To the east, a united India, with colonies as far away as Vietnam, links Arabia and Turkey with the massive empire of China. Though weak for now, this scientific people may yet find their days of dominance.
Further east, the massive empire of China teems and prepares for another war against the violent Mongols. The Koreans stubbornly hold on to their small hermit kingdom, while the Japanese wait offshore.

Across the Dahai (great ocean), the kingdoms of the Incas, the Aztecs, and the Hodenausee League stir and prepare to expand.

As a starting point I've used Pawel's Rising Sun mod. However, I've done a lot to alter the map and change some of the rules and I'll be ditching a lot of the units that he made (especially the Asian specific and WWII specific ones).

Again, this is very much in the early stages. I especially need input on things like relative city sizes in the 1400's (I've reduced city populations for Mediterranean cities since they caught some of the plague too. Otherwise, populations should be largely historically accurate.)


EDIT: I now have version .6 up. The main changes in this version:
-Persia is out of the game and divided between the Ottomans and India.
-The Ottomans now control the Arabian peninsula
-More irrigation in India and China
-The Mayans no longer have Panama

This update is mostly to see what people think about the elimination of Persia and the expansion of the Ottomans.

Cizzlewalk was going to make a similar scenario for a succession game, but decided not to. He got me quite interested in the concept. It sounds very interesting.

Since I've never done this before, what files do I need to put up here so that people can download a playable version? Just the .biq file? Where do I find the art and text files?

It depends, the biq if nothing in the main game structure is changed. It sounds, though, as if there are some units added, and perhaps techs, so you would need to post graphics, etc.

Okay, I've uploaded a primitive alpha version.
There are some problems (eg you might see some civilizations with airplanes. Just ignore that, it's a work very much in progress).

If this doesn't work and I left out files, could someone please explain to me what needs to be in there and where I should be able to find it.

What I did was I loaded the Rising Sun scenario in the C3C Editor and just altered it as I saw fit.

You'll need to include unit graphics that don't come with the regular civ3. They should come with the mod you included, just add that file to the download and you should be set as far as graphics go, unless you add more. If you haven't changed much beyond city placement, then just adding the original folder the person used for the mod would be enough, IIRC. You should ask him permission, though.

All use of units and graphics specific to The Rising Sun mod are by permission of Pawel.
The original map is by Kel-Al.

I'm having trouble uploading the art files. Even compressed the unit art files exceed the 2 mb limit for uploading.

So, as a temporary fix, I'm linking to Pawel's original Rising Sun thread, so that you can download the files from there until I find a way to fix this problem.

This scenario looks pretty interesting, so I checked out the alpha.

Here are some city name corrections/placements for you.
Tibet -> Lhasa
Beijing -> Peking
Saigon -> rename to Hanoi, Saigon is in southern Vietnam
Western Sahara -> Dhaka
Somalia -> Boosaso
Cairo-> move to 81:67
Kush -> Asmara (or move to (82:72) and rename to Meroe or Dongola)
Nubia-> same as Kush, omit
N. Madagascar -> move to (88:104) and rename Antanarivo
S. Madagascar -> rename to Ihosi
Cape Town -> Non-existent, omit
Sao Tome -> Non-existent, omit
Medina -> You are probably trying to show it's signifigance since it is so close to Mecca, I would recommend renaming it to Muscat which was rather significant and in the same place.
Persepolis -> move to (94:60)
Vancouver -> Non-existent, rename to Haida Gwaii Masset, Kitimat, or Matlakan
Mississippi -> rename to Chokosi
Carolina -> rename to Keetoowah (Kituhwa) or Tugaloo (Tugalu)
Niagara Falls -> move to one tile left
Chuito -> Non-existent, omit or rename to Quito
Cork-> Keep, or move northeast and rename Dubb Linn
Helsinki -> Move it to (80:24) and rename to Helsingfors, part of Sweden

also add Kyoto to (131:55) and make it capital of the Japanese

Thanks. I'll get right on those.

Note that some of the city placements won't change because I had them there for a specific reason (for access to a resource, for example).

Speaking of resources, I made several changes to resources in Conquests.

Tobacco, Tropical fruit, and sugar have all been changed to "luxury" resources. I did this to give the New World the trade in luxuries that it had in real life. I'm working on eliminating all of the tobacco and most of the fruit and sugar from the old world, but I think that I've missed a few spots.

I'm currently cutting out all graphics and techs that aren't native to Civ 3 - Conquests, in an effort to make this mod independent of Rising Sun and circumvent all of those technical difficulties. It'll also be a much smaller download when I'm done.

This scen is coming along well, it seems.

Question: The Years of Rice and Salt are really ten short novels focusing in on ten different parts of an alternate history. Some of these novels are far too personal to create into a scenario. My questions are:

1. Will you be making this project multiple scenarios?

2. If so, which of the small novels shall you make into scenarios?

As it stands right now, I'm just having the scenario start when the book does and ends in the year 2000. Of course, I may change that as things develop.

I might create separate scenarios starting in either the Age of Great Progress (Travancore ascends and starts conquering it's neighbors, around the time of the Industrial Revolution) or The Long War (approx. the era of the World Wars in "normal" history).

I am a big fan KSR and especially his Mars books. The Years of Rice ans Salt was a masterpiece of subtle storytelling; unfortunately, as one of his praises points out, the book seems to know more than it tells. There is a lot of guesswork in here to be done, a lot of filling in the blanks, etc. My only concerns will regard the Nakba, or Long War, where warfare went from a sort of Napoleonic Age/WWI to modern armor and jets, in just 70 years; also, the different governments should reflect the lack of Christian or Judaic influence and the bulk of religious advance should follow Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, or Daoist. Whew! Lot of work, but I'm willing to help, I loved the book (read it twice!).

@Thundercrow, u should keep china's capitol Beijing. Peking is the European name for it, and since there aren't any Europeans to name it, it should remain beijing.

I added the latest version of the .biq to the first post.

In theory, it should be playable if you have Conquests. Tell me if I missed something.

Some questions about play balance for you folks:
1. Should Arabia be divided up?
Historically and in the book, the area I have defined as "Arabia" was divided amongst the Mamelukes and the Alomohad Caliphate. I figured that the game would play better if Arabia were united, acting as a counterbalance to the Ottoman Empire. However, it might be too powerful as it is.

2. Should Scandinavia have a foothold on North America?
This foothold was taken from The Rising Sun, I kept it because it was vaguely historical (even if it didn't fit with KSR's version of history). I'm worried that it puts the Hodenausee (North American Indians) in contact with the Old World too early.

3. Is China too strong?

4. Should Damascus be Ottoman or Arabic?
I'm not sure which it was historically.
It's a surprisingly strategic area in case of a war between the Ottomans and Arabs; in Ottoman hands it puts the Sinai corridor between Africa and Mecca at risk; in Arabian hands it gives the Arabs access to Baghdad.

5. Should I put Persia in the game?
It'd be small and weak, controlling 2 or 3 cities (Persepolis (to be added), Samarqand, and maybe Buchara), but it would give the Indians and Ottomans something to take over.

6. Should India be divided?
Historically and in the books, northern India was divided between a few warring factions. I initially changed this to make India stronger and less vulnerable.

Okay, I found that there are still some holdovers from Rising Sun within the scenario, so it won't be playable in vanilla Conquests yet.

How do I change the artwork for mines to the vanilla artwork?

I should make a trip to the library & check out this series. Never heard of it, but sounds interesting. BTW-who or what is the Hodenausee League? Just did a Google search for it & was pointed back to this thread.

NM-Iroquois

It's not a series, it's a single book.

The Hodenausee League is, I think, Kim Stanley Robinson's creation.
In the book, it's a confederation of North American tribes that covers the Great Lakes area and part of New England.
I made them drastically larger for the scenario, though, to give them some hope of suriviving.

Single book/compilation of 10 short novels. Got it

BTW, Haudenosaunee is just the native word for Iroquois.

Oh.
Well, you learn more every day.