A Canticle For Leibowitz

[Ajidica]

A Canticle For Leibowitz
Download link at bottom of post.​

Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America - burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again.
Are we doomed to it Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?​

The mod, A Canticle For Leibowitz is based off of the book by the same name by Walter M. Miller Jr. The book is post apocalyptic, but taking place several centuries after the Diluvium Ignis, the Flame Deluge of Nuclear bombs destroyed civilization. By the 26th century, almost all knowledge of pre-deluge civilization was gone, destroyed by the wild mobs of the Simplification. The book focus is on the Monastary of St. Leibowitz. The Leibowitzian Order dedicated themselves to preserving as much knowledge as they could from the pre-deluge civilizations. The knowledge they preserved is known as the Memorabilia.
The book is broken into three segments Fiat Homo, Fiat Lux, and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Fiat Homo is akin to the Dark Ages, Fiat Lux to the Reniassance while Fiat Voluntas Tua is similar to the near future). The mod takes place after the events in Fiat Homo and carries on through the events in Fiat Lux. The mod will play much like a normal civ game as each faction is in essence 'rebuilding' civilization.

NEW FEATURES:
Factions:
Kingdom of Texarkana- An expansionist civ that has an excellent starting position.
Military Order of San Pancratz- A militaristic civ that just broke from the Empire of Denver and has a two-front war with both Denver and the Bayring Horde.
Nomad Horde- Nomads ruling the Great Plains. What else to say?
New Rome- A strong, but isolated civ.
Kingdom of Laredo- Standard civ that rules from the south. In a good position to grab some land without expensive wars.
Empire of Denver- A large, but currently weak civ on the defensive against the Order and the Bayring Horde.
Kingdom of Chihuahua- A small civ to the south that has some excellent land available if it can avoid being boxed in.
Bayring Horde- Powerful raiders at war with both Denver and the Order.

Unit System:
In order to give more depth to the unit tree and keep army sizes small (to play to the strengths of the 1upt) I have made almost all units require "Supplies" and "Manpower" in addition to their normal requirements. Gunpowder units also require a special strategic resource.




Note:
This is an alpha release. Because of how I am handling units the game will be exceptionaly unbalenced because I have no clue how to properly balence them.
Because the map it temp, rather then creating a new one I just took a default North America map and closed off the East Coast and Canada with mountains.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is quite unbalenced due to my new units and the map is completely temporary, but the civs, leaders, and units are all new.

Future Plans:
You know, improve it!

Bugs:
When you first load up the mod, all of the civs may appear as random. Just chose one, load up the game, then exit out of it. When you go to chose a civ again, all should be named.

BE SURE TO LOAD UP THE MAP TITLED "A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ", NOT ANY OTHER!


I'm not uploading it to ModHub as it is still a rough alpha. Screenshots will be up later. The version on this post should be accurate.

 

[darkedone02]

An Interesting Mod, Post Apoclypse based on recovering the lost lore of the ages past, not like in Fallout and the Brotherhood of Steel or Follower's of the Apocalypse.

I might try this out in future version, continue working on this mod series, I've never had heard of this book and am interested to see some of the stuff that the book talk about in this mod your working on.

 

[shoggi]

Canticle for Leibowitz is one of my favorite novels. Nice seeing someone trying to make a mod out of it.

Though if I remember correctly, most "civs" you listed are barely mentioned in the book in the first place, so I don't know how you will deal with unique abilities, units and similar stuff.

Also, I don't know if you know about, or read, the second book "Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Women". It's not as good as the first one and way more depressing, but it expands on the renaissance part of the first book, set around 80 years after Fiat Lux.

Also, about "recovering the lost lore of the ages past", as darkedone02 said...
One of the plotpoints of the first story is that the Leibowitz Order doesn't try to recover knowledge, it tries to preserve it. Because most of the stuff they copy from books or blueprints, they have no idea what it actually means or does. They just collect it as memorablia and hope somebody will figure it out later.


Anyway, I will watch how this mod will develop.

 

[Ajidica]

Canticle for Leibowitz is one of my favorite novels. Nice seeing someone trying to make a mod out of it.

Though if I remember correctly, most "civs" you listed are barely mentioned in the book in the first place, so I don't know how you will deal with unique abilities, units and similar stuff.

I'm extrapolating. Fiat Homo made a mention about Oregon Country and crusades there, so I assumed that there must be some threat of heathens there which I represented as the Bayring Horde which were mentioned in Fiat Lux.
I probably should add a few more city state tribes to round out the north and other areas.

Also, about "recovering the lost lore of the ages past", as darkedone02 said...
One of the plotpoints of the first story is that the Leibowitz Order doesn't try to recover knowledge, it tries to preserve it. Because most of the stuff they copy from books or blueprints, they have no idea what it actually means or does. They just collect it as memorablia and hope somebody will figure it out later.

Well, the mod features more then just the Leibowitzian Order. Thon Taddeo of Texarkana definately used the Memorabilia for research and in Fiat Lux Brother Kornhoer made an arc lamp using information found in the Memorabilia. So while the Abbey may not make alot of use of the Memorabilia, other nations most likely did after Fiat Lux.

Nice to see someone interested.

 

[Hyronymus]

This sounds interesting, even though I never read the book .

Also, about "recovering the lost lore of the ages past", as darkedone02 said...
One of the plotpoints of the first story is that the Leibowitz Order doesn't try to recover knowledge, it tries to preserve it. Because most of the stuff they copy from books or blueprints, they have no idea what it actually means or does. They just collect it as memorablia and hope somebody will figure it out later.

Maybe take the hope that someday they'll understand as the goal for the Utopia project and make policies work towards that goal?

 

[Ajidica]

This sounds interesting, even though I never read the book .

I highly reccomend it. It is short (only 300 pages) and fairly interesting with numerous allegories running throughout the book.

Maybe take the hope that someday they'll understand as the goal for the Utopia project and make policies work towards that goal?

The Memorabilia is more like technical knowledge (One of the more amusing segments is where they try and discuss electricity but in Latin. An electron becomes a 'negative twist of nothingness' which leads to some confusion.).

I don't want to give too much away, but a major conflict in Part 2 is how the Memorabilia is being used by Thon Taddeo of Texarkana and the conclusions he draws from it.

I don't have alot of time, but I'll try and get a newer version of the map up with better balenced resources and a few more city states.

 

[darkedone02]

I highly reccomend it. It is short (only 300 pages) and fairly interesting with numerous allegories running throughout the book.


The Memorabilia is more like technical knowledge (One of the more amusing segments is where they try and discuss electricity but in Latin. An electron becomes a 'negative twist of nothingness' which leads to some confusion.).

I don't want to give too much away, but a major conflict in Part 2 is how the Memorabilia is being by Thon Taddeo of Texarkana and the conclusions he draws from it.

I don't have alot of time, but I'll try and get a newer version of the map up with better balenced resources and a few more city states.

If I find it on my local book store, I might give it a read, I'm right now busy reading my warhammer: Gotrek and Felix: The First Omnibus, It sound pretty interesting.

 

[Butterball]

Seasons Greetings to ya'll

 

[wurstburst]

Fantastic idea and very creative. Read the book a long time ago - don't remember a lot of it.

Definitely will check it out, once you get past the vanilla mechanics.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm kicking around a mechanic to make the game deeper.
It will be working off resources. I will be replacing Oil/Uranium with Manpower/Supplies. How it will work is each unit requires Y resources where Y=M(manpower)+S(Supplies). Elite units have lower manpower requirements, but higher supply requirements so it would look like Y=(M-1)+(S+1). Levy units would be the opposite, Y=(M+1)+(S-1).
The normal use of Iron/Horses would not be affected. The inent of this is to require the player to have more resources and force them to diversify, so no more making armies entirely out of Longswordsmen. Unless if you want them to be surrounded and worn down by levy troops.

I still have aluminum available for use. Any ideas on what I could use that for? I'm leaning toward either gunpowder weapons or Books (which are needed for libraries).

 

[Ajidica]

A new version of my mod is now up for trial!

After many trials and tribulations (curse you Fourth Age: Total War! for stealing my time) I have finaly gotten around to releasing the redone version of A Canticle for Leibowitz. Please see the first post for current information.

 

[_random_]

Downloaded. Should be testing the mod and getting the book from the library this weekend.

 

[rastak]

Here is a fantastic radio adaption from the 80's I think.


http://www.archive.org/details/ACanticleForLiebowitz

 

[Ajidica]

Can anyone offer any comments?

 

[Tarquelne]

Can anyone offer any comments?

I don't have Civ5 but ACfL is one of my favorite books and I think this is awesome.


Doing what I can for ya...

 

[LefferDP]

I realize it's an alpha, but not different enough to be interesting, currently. Just going to throw some ideas out there as a sort of brainstorm

* * *

I like the manpower / supplies idea, but I'm not sure I like it as implemented. I imagine these resources should be generated by cities rather than by findable resources. Maybe a city building that provides 1 manpower / 2 people or something similar.

The map and such doesn't currently convey "post-apocalyptic" to me. Perhaps add some ruined city structures. Factories, particularly. Maybe near Houston and other industrial cities? Definitely consider monuments to indicate significant US landmarks. Maybe some rarer science / laboratories around? I'm not quite sure how to handle science overall.

* * *

New Social Policy tree

Preservation
Provides the capacity for a civ to run a science / culture based civ
Base Power: Greatly increases the chance huts will pop tech

Booklegging - Grants a free library (Libraries have unhappy?) in the Capital (+x cities?)
->
Restoration - Grants a science bonus based on empire's city population. (+5% per citizen?)

Monastic Scribe - Priests/Artists grant +2 Science.
->
Illuminated Schematics - Grants a cultural bonus based on Science production. (20% of Science is culture?)

->
Revelation - 1 free social policy and 1 free technology

* * *

Civilization Powers

Bayring Horde
Looters - Gain 4 gold per unit killed. (or x gold per age that has passed) If defeating a direct successor (inc scout -> archer and other hidden successors?), upgrade for free on successful kill.

Military Order of San Pancratz
Vissarion Fanaticism - Receive +1 unhappy for each science building. Gain +20% military strength.

Kingdom of Texarkana

Kingdom of Laredo - Notable achievement seems to be about defeating barbarians and using them against enemies. Germany style conversion makes more sense to me?

Kingdom of Chihuahua - Maybe something more like +Gold% for trade routes and workers build improvements faster?

New Rome Not exactly feeling this one, but can't think of anything better.

 

[LefferDP]

How about a cyclical setup? Like compress the tech tree, accelerate cultural / science vics and at about 100 turns the wonder "Great Deluge" can be built or a series of nuclear launches can be tossed, which is advantageous to preventing non-military types from victory. Stuff gets blasted and you start with a city or a settler and warrior again, with some advantages?

 

[Eiken]

Very interesting mod, but you should make some "wonders" on map like LefferDP wrote, factories, secret labs, old military bases (those could be where you take suplies until you research some technology to produce them in city via building, same for manpower, starting with villages on mapand after researching some technology you can build some habitat complex to produce manpower and if its posible swap normal ruins with city ruins (it looks moíre apocalyptic).

And complete rewamp tech tree is needed, cant imagine that in postapocalyptic world they are researching animal husbandry etc.
Just my opinions

 

[LefferDP]

And complete rewamp tech tree is needed, cant imagine that in postapocalyptic world they are researching animal husbandry etc.
Just my opinions

Well, the idea that people become "Simpletons" and did away with knowledge means a lot has to be recovered. Ideally some simple skills would be kept, but certainly writing and philosophy would need to be researched. I imagine a sort of compressed tech tree that basically puts the first three standard eras into one dark ages era would be best and you could follow the standard tech tree somewhat from there.