Firaxis´Conquests - thoughts from the modders POV

[Yoda Power]

Originally posted by BeBro


Yup, and I even have already certain ideas for that. It is just a matter of time

You are the man

 

[BeBro]

Here´s the city style I mentioned. The idea is that - despite the steam engine was already invented and in use in some industries - the main industrialization took place during the later 19th century in many European countries. So the cities around 1800 would look still more like they looked in the 17th/18th century - most bigger buildings (cathedrals, houses etc.) would be from that time. I added some of those colorfull houses we still have today in many older european city cores.

Feedback would be welcome, esp. I´m not sure if I should keep the walls for the walled style.

 

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by BeBro
Here´s the city style I mentioned. The idea is that - despite the steam engine was already invented and in use in some industries - the main industrialization took place during the later 19th century in many European countries. So the cities around 1800 would look still more like they looked in the 17th/18th century - most bigger buildings (cathedrals, houses etc.) would be from that time. I added some of those colorfull houses we still have today in many older european city cores.

Feedback would be welcome, esp. I´m not sure if I should keep the walls for the walled style.

I like it very much My only comment is re: the walls -- I'd "simply" add another bastion on each wall to make it have more of a Vauban fortress look.

I'm eagerly looking forward to your posting this set!

Best,

Oz

 

[Yoda Power]

Very nice, though you should tone the colors down just a but I think.

 

[BeBro]

Found another prob in the Napoleonic conquest: under certain circumstances some civs build units that don´t belong into the scn. When I attacked the last French city, they had a trebuchet unit there I think we could solve that simply by clearing all civs from the build lists of the units in question via editor - I saw that a lot of standard civ units (archer, spearmen etc.) are still there, and available for all civs. If we clear the lists, the last available unit for all (even without resources) would be the musket man.

 

[BeBro]

Originally posted by Yoda Power
Very nice, though you should tone the colors down just a but I think.

Do you mean this dark red on the church? Should represent red bricks. But I can make it a bit lighter.

 

[mrtn]

Could you make the size 2 city bigger? It's almost the same size as the size 1. Just add a few buildings, spread things out a bit.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I fortified the Flaks, and they still didn't do anything!

The only thing I didn't do was try to pick 'em up and throw them at the planes as they flew overhead!

And it was so frustrating because when I got my aircraft carriers within range, I'd put the fighters in the city, and every single one of them would be destroyed by bombing before the end of the turn, so I couldn't set them to intercept!!

*sigh* Ah well.. I probably wasn't supposed to hold Manila the whole game anyway.



Back on topic, the Napoleonic cities look good I think.

With regards to the AI building useless units, deleting the units from the game altogether makes the most amount of sense to me.

Because honestly, what's the point of have to scroll, scroll, scroll through the Civilopedia when most of the units aren't even in the scenario anyway. You could fit all the playable units on one screen I think if you just took the others out.

 

[Yoda Power]

Originally posted by BeBro


Do you mean this dark red on the church? Should represent red bricks. But I can make it a bit lighter.

Yes and I know. It just looks a bit to cartoonish when its not a little "dirty".

 

[thestonesfan]

I was going to start something like this. Maybe we should organize a "Conquest Fixers" team.

I've played three Conquests - Mesopotamia, Rise of Rome, and Fall of Rome. Rise of Rome was great fun, and would be fine with just some graphical additions, but the other two need a lot of work, IMO. Fall of Rome in particular is quite bad. Mesopotamia had some potential, but needs some more Civs to intensify things a little. I think we should devote a thread to each Conquest.

 

[Ekmek]

Originally posted by thestonesfan
I was going to start something like this. Maybe we should organize a "Conquest Fixers" team.

I've played three Conquests - Mesopotamia, Rise of Rome, and Fall of Rome. Rise of Rome was great fun, and would be fine with just some graphical additions, but the other two need a lot of work, IMO. Fall of Rome in particular is quite bad. Mesopotamia had some potential, but needs some more Civs to intensify things a little. I think we should devote a thread to each Conquest.

I'd have to add that "fixers" should use some of the new roman units out there and for Sengoku I replaced the galley and Caravel anim with the Baode and tongkang found in the forums

 

[BeBro]

Dom Pedro II:

With regards to the AI building useless units, deleting the units from the game altogether makes the most amount of sense to me.

Because honestly, what's the point of have to scroll, scroll, scroll through the Civilopedia when most of the units aren't even in the scenario anyway. You could fit all the playable units on one screen I think if you just took the others out.

I agree. But we cannot simply delete those units in the editor, because then the unit slots will be messed up - if you delete units, the editor counts the next available unit in the list as the deleted one. So the preplaced units in the cities are exchanged by something else. Eg. when I delete the warrior you do not have musketman etc. in the cities anymore, but knights etc.

So IMO we can either:

- delete all useless units, then placing again the right units in the cities (in that case it would be wise to note what and how many units are placed in which city before the deletion) which is a boring task

- or we could add some more units to "overwrite" useless units. Eg. let´s say we add a grenadier for Prussia, but putting him in the warrior slot. There are ca. a dozen units which need to be added for this, but we could use the same trick Firaxis used. They added one unit, eg. Guards infantry as different units with different stats, but the same anims.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Yes, that would work as well. As long as you can find units to fill those spaces... and I'm sure that won't be a problem for anybody...

 

[Supa]

You could either make these units unavailable for all civs.

 

[mrtn]

What Supa said, or you could add a tech that's a prerequisite for everything unwanted.

 

[BeBro]

Originally posted by Supa
You could either make these units unavailable for all civs.

Yeah, I know, but then they would still "contaminate" the pedia. It is annouying IMO to have warriors etc. in the civilopedia when you play in the Napolenic age.

OK, I did some replacement jobs. First I used Colonel Krakens excellent ships.

So I have now...

Corvette: Kraken´s unit, French replacement for privateer, 1HP bonus, enslavement,

Late Galleass: Kraken´s unit, Ottoman replacement for troop transporter, since they still used galleys/galleasses, even with slaves at this time

For the SoL´s I thought it would make sense to use the ranking system of the Royal Navy, so I made
SoL 1st rate: Kraken´s Ship of the Line
SoL 2nd rate: the standard SoL
SoL 3rd rate: the former ManOWar
Frigate (which would be 4th rate AFAIK) is unchanged

I also changed the availability of some ships, those countries rather known as land powers do not get eg. 1st rate SoL´s, and they´ll get transporters with lower capacity (used the caravel as brigg here).

Coastal battery: uses the PTW fire cannon from the "extras" folder, range 2, lethal naval bombardment, but very expensive and immobile. Should represent heavy guns of coastal fortresses, some of them are preplaced on strategic spots (eg. Gibraltar, Bosporus etc.)

Grenadier: from Steph´s Cossacks collection, for several countries. Currently their names sound a bit stupid, I named them Genadier A, Grenadier P, E etc. where the Letters indicate the country (P-Prussia, A-Austria etc), because it is not possible to use the same name for diff. units in the editor. Maybe I´ll solve that by using something like Royal Grenadiers (English), Koeniglicher Grenadier (Prussia) etc. - if one has good ideas here, let me know

There are still some slots to replace, however. Maybe I´ll give the bigger powers both standard cav and Hussars, since Hussars were widely used, not only by Austria (the Austrian could be still UU with bettter stats)

 

[mrtn]

I think it was embryodead who got the idea to name units with spaces in their names. "Grenadier" is not the same as "Grenadier " with a space in the name, but it looks the same in the game.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think the French deserve Privateers more than the British. The British had the largest navy... the French had to scrounge up vessels and crews where they could. They employed a lot of privateers as a certain movie that recently came out will show...

 

[BeBro]

I think it was embryodead who got the idea to name units with spaces in their names. "Grenadier" is not the same as "Grenadier " with a space in the name, but it looks the same in the game.

Didn´t know, sounds like a good solution.

However, just solved it a bit different. I have now a generic "Grenadier" unit for several smaller powers, which comes late in the game as well as a specific "Garde-Grenadier" (Garde=Guard) for Prussia, and a "K.K. Grenadier" for Austria. K.K. (known alsoas K.u.K.) is used for Austrian units of the 18/19th century often, it means "Kaiserlich-Königlich" which refers to the fact that the rulers of Austria had both the title of king and emperor (in German "König" bzw. "Kaiser").

I also gave most countries two types of cav - light (cossacks, hussars) and heavy (cuirassiers, imperial french, household, dragoons, carabiniers.

However, I always use the existing units for this (guards_infantry for the grenadiers, cavalry for the various heavy cav types), just their stats are different. I don´t want this to be a full scale napolenic scn, just a modification to increase the fun of the existing conquest

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by BeBro

Grenadier: from Steph´s Cossacks collection, for several countries. Currently their names sound a bit stupid, I named them Genadier A, Grenadier P, E etc. where the Letters indicate the country (P-Prussia, A-Austria etc), because it is not possible to use the same name for diff. units in the editor. Maybe I´ll solve that by using something like Royal Grenadiers (English), Koeniglicher Grenadier (Prussia) etc. - if one has good ideas here, let me know

First, Cossacks grenadier are not historically accurate for Napoleonic wars : they only regiment which was still using with kind of head gear was the Russian Pavlov Regiment.

Second, there is a way to have several unis with the same name : just use Civ3 Multi tools, make n copies of your grenadier, and keep the name.