Chronicles of Adea - fantasy mod development thread

[PawelS]

Nice that you're going to work on so many aspects of the mod, getting artwork for all units would be awesome

About the ideologies: As I wrote earlier in this thread, I'm going to use the BNW ideologies as alignments - Good, Neutral and Evil. I don't have any detailed plans about the tenets associated with the alignments, some of them can be magical in nature.

In my current plans religion is connected with magic - so if you worship the god of fire, you can cast fire spells, and so on. But there won't be any actual spells in the alpha, only summoned creatures (=units purchased with mana) and city enchantments (=buildings purchased with mana). Also there can be some extra promotions available for priests and/or mages depending on the beliefs selected - this should be possible with some simple Lua code. Mana will be used for both magical and religious purposes, but there will be two separate strategic resources - Magic Power and Divine Power.

Each belief should refer to a particular god (and will allow building a temple to that god). So yes, I need new beliefs, I'm not going to use the existing ones. Ideas are welcome.

Also I presume we'll need City Names?

Yes. I'm going to use SQL code that shuffles them, so they will be assigned to cities of the given civ in random order. So you don't need to specify which one is the capital, which is the second one, and so on. Just a pool of names used by a civ. The Dreamers already have some city names, added by trystero49.

About the Vodniks: Let me know what kind of information about them you need from me. Generally they should be mysterious, protective and mischievous beings, associated with fresh water (rivers, lakes, marshes), using reeds as their main source of food, so they will have Reed Farms and Reed Gardens. I must admit I don't have any ideas for their UUs...

 

[rocklikeafool]

One thing that might be cool is to have the capital always be the same city.

 

[rocklikeafool]

I must admit I don't have any ideas for their UUs...

Maybe something water-spirit like; some with gills and fin-like appendages, some incorporeal creatures taking the form of water, etc.

 

[PawelS]

One thing that might be cool is to have the capital always be the same city.

Hmm, I prefer when the capital is random too, but if the other team members want a fixed capital name too, I will make it so.

Maybe something water-spirit like; some with gills and fin-like appendages, some incorporeal creatures taking the form of water, etc.

Yes, something like that would be good. For example something similar to the Water Dancer unit from AoW2. But, as usual, the problem is the lack of unit graphics we can use.

 

[MrCasperTom]

Hmm, I prefer when the capital is random too, but if the other team members want a fixed capital name too, I will make it so.

I'm on neither side; I see why it would be interesting to be random city names (to add a slightly different feel everytime you play) but I also see why having the capital as constant would be good as well.

My personally feeling would be to assign a capital for each race (largely because everything needs a capital IMO) but leave the random name generation in at present. Then just see what the people playing it say as if they have a particular preference towards set capital for each game or just random capitals for random games then we can go from there. Heck if possible it could be (for the later version) seeing if we can create a simple checkbox that the player can choose random capital or not.

 

[PawelS]

I thought about it, and I see some advantages of having always the same capital name. So I think I'll make the capital name fixed, and the rest city names random.

 

[PawelS]

I successfully implemented Mages and Archmages in the game using recolored Scout graphics and animation changes from the Faerun Scenario by FramedArchitect. See the picture I posted here - red version (from Fearun Scenario) is Mage, blue version (my recoloring) is Archmage.

I have a problem with priests though - I don't have any good ideas which graphics should I use for them. I don't want to use reskinned Roman Legions from Fearun. Any ideas?

 

[MrCasperTom]

The 'simplest' solution might be to use the Inquisitor model from the basic G+K. I can't quite remember what it looks like but I think it would fit reasonably well, at least as a placeholder.

I'll get back to you on other alternatives as I look through the unit models out there.

 

[PawelS]

I'm going to experiment with Missionaries and Inquisitors tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I can get the combat animations right, as they are civilian units in base game.

 

[MrCasperTom]

Ah of course forgot all about that one...

 

[MrCasperTom]

Been a bit quiet of late. Just a small update, slowly working on things my end. I've also got a new laptop that can run both my program and CivV perfectly well so I can be a bit more active as of now.

 

[PawelS]

Sorry for the silence from my side. I decided to stop updating the G&K version of the mod, the next update will come after the BNW release and will make the mod compatible with the new expansion. At the end of July my current internship ends, and at the beginning of August I'm planning a short vacation trip. After that I will have more time for modding, so I'm going to work on releasing the alpha as soon as possible.

@Team members and all good people in the world : Don't hesitate to start some threads at the Adea Forum - share your ideas so we can work on the mod as a team

 

[MrCasperTom]

Funny you should say that, I was just about to bombard the forums with 12 design notes/discussion threads for the alpha + another one to merely theorise and right down thoughts about the world which can be explored later.

Also when I get back my own place (visiting the parents at present) I'll scan in the map I've drawn for the general area of the 12 races in the alpha. It's there to help my visualise the world (I plan to 'zoom in' on individual parts) but there's room to add things and obviously it won't be the only areas of land in the world.

 

[PawelS]

You mean a map of the game world? Generally I mean this mod to be played on random maps, but some custom maps (and maybe even campaigns later) can be added too. Also we plan to add more races later, so it's good that there's room to add things.

 

[MrCasperTom]

Yeah of the game world. I presumed the random maps but to shape the world it needs a map. I see it the same as the normal Civ V has Earth but we obviously mostly play on random maps.

 

[PawelS]

Makes sense

 

[rocklikeafool]

You could just throw this on the standard earth map and plan it out that way. After all, that allows you to place civs in the right climates and such, I would imagine.

So, I managed to get a summer internship here. Things will probably be very busy (and they've been a lot busier than I anticipated already). I apologize that all I've done is post periodically, guys. Don't have time for anything else really.

 

[PawelS]

I started a thread in the Adea Forum about policies. Discussion is encouraged

 

[rocklikeafool]

Heh, speaking of which, I do have a few of the policies coded. The UI still doesn't display it properly. But since I have a summer internship, I've not worked on it for a few months. I can probably do the coding of the policy file at least on the weekends, if you want. Can't promise a whole lot more than that.

 

[PawelS]

For now the mod isn't compatible with BNW yet (will do it in August, as I will have more time then), so I don't recommend making any code changes ATM. Especially when some policies are going to be changed.