[MOD] The Western World

[Rambuchan]

Very promising project. Well done so far

Your lack of naval warfare is simply fixed. Make all the ships much much cheaper on the build cost. Cheap ships = AI going for naval warfare. There is more you can do on this front but try it and see if your first Punic War happens.

You can also even out the tech research rates with judicious placement of river tiles (little ones here and there) and certain resources or luxuries which boost trade. So, for example, plonk a few more of these in Britain and you boost their research rate and also growth, which of course equals more science. But focus on the trade boosting resources/luxuries first as the growth could get out of hand. The good thing about this technique is you can bring certain civs in line without imbalancing everything else. These are just fine tuning tech tips. To deal with the 'thousand years out if whack' go with Quinzy's tips.

 

[Mopean]

Just got back from a few days' break,
@Rambuchan: I haven't really gotten around to naval warfare yet, but thanks for the tip. I noticed the AI tends to only build the lightest of ships (Penteconters/Ancient Galleys, in this era) and few in number. I tried to make naval more realistic by making them very expensive to build for the entire game, not letting them upgrade, etc. The problem in the ancient era wasn't that ships were so complicated or time consuming to build (on the contrary, Rome and Carthage were able to reconstruct their entire fleets within a couple months), the problem was getting rowers for the ships.

As the game goes on, ships get more and more tremendously expensive ( at least, in my planning notebook ) until you get to Carriers and Battleships which cost hundreds of shields but are immensely powerful and useful. I think I may have set the prices too high, at least for the ancient era (we'll have to see for the others, later, when I get to them) so I'll play around a bit.

The England problem will hopefully be solved once I give them their tin in Cornwall - since tin is necessary for you to do anything in the Bronze Age I suspect that tin will help to balance them out.

@themanuneed: Most of my civ games have been multiplayer scenarios using a mod I made up in about 3 days with no set theme, the idea of the mod was just for my friends to create their own civs. We were/are all terrible players, though, so my experience of Civ3 combat was always rather unfulfilling and not so fun, which I guess explains why I was so mesmerized (and then destroyed,) in a more tactical, more serious combat system. Either way since there are more units with different weights, I feel it is still more dynamic and fun than vanilla's combat. Do I make mounted archers for hit-and-run counter-attacks, or foot archers to support melee infantry and help defend cities? etc.

@Quinzy I like your boat idea - I think it would certainly help the seafaring civs (like England and Carthage) keep up with everyone else. England is isolated and Carthage's land area isn't too nice. I don't think I will reduce how many cities can be built - maybe reduce slightly the rate at which people can expand by increasing settler shield cost or through other ways. I like the idea of a vibrant, crowded, living Bronze Age world, rather than the typical feeling I get in a vanilla game of loneliness and emptiness, even after you meet people.

Libraries don't show up until later into the Ancient World era, so I don't think that they are necessarily the problem.

 

[nick0515]

Sounds like a very promising mod!

I'm curious, what is the mechanic for this?

- Great Schism ( Russia and Greece [who become the Byzantines] can 'switch' to Orthodoxy )

Regarding your Era change a thousand years too soon, you could change the minimum and maximum research turns for techs in the general settings tab to slow things down a bit. Or adjust the rate cap for governments available at the time.

 

[Mopean]

The tech Monotheism will allow Christianity for the Catholic nations, which is represented by a 'church' resource in their locations. Muslims will have 'mosque' resources, Protestants will have protestant churches, and the Orthodox will have their own as well once the tech 'Great Schism' is researched in the early High Middle Ages. They will use the same mechanic as Power in vanilla, but eventually religious buildings will not matter anymore beyond happiness effects, and so you'll still be able to power your factories in the late game without conflicting with the religious buildings. They only play their role in representing parts of the earlier eras, eventually there will be a point where this role is not as important, as things like the 30 Years' War wouldn't happen in the Victorian Era, for example.

 

[Mopean]

I'm considering adding Romania and Finland. They could serve to better represent Eastern Europe as well as playing important roles at different parts of history. Finland and Romania were both cool in World War II, Romania also serving the role as Dacia in the ancient world. I already added in the Netherlands as well.

It is more difficult than I thought it would be to find the names of cities in that country's language. It came by fairly well enough for Poland, though, using their endonyms.

Gonna do another test run with the tips you guys gave, in the hopes that the Medieval era should begin around 400 AD. If it works out I can finally move on to the Dark Ages (which has a lot going on and might take quite a while)

 

[Mopean]

I can now add the Holy Pentarchy and Vatican to the list of things that are represented in some mechanic or otherwise.
Vatican: Only able to be built in Rome, thanks to resources, allows Crusades.
Holy Pentarchy: A resource in each of the five cities of the Holy Pentarchy, which enable a building that can be built in the city. 5 of these buildings are required to build the Holy Pentarchy, which puts an Orthodox church in all of your cities while also doubling the effect they have.

The testing went well - the Middle Ages actually started too LATE because I managed to slow the game down so significantly. After some tweaks to speed it up a bit again it started working fine and I started adding in the medieval units for everyone.

 

[Civinator]

As you operate a lot with with resources (strat. and lux.), please take into account not to run into the Phantom Resources Bug (or Resource Overflow Bug).

 

[Mopean]

As I understand it, wouldn't that only happen if you had every resource in the strategic/luxury resources box at the city screen?

 

[Civinator]

As I understand it, wouldn't that only happen if you had every resource in the strategic/luxury resources box at the city screen?

Unfortunately that´s not the case. Here is one of the last threads concerning that problem: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=391951

My hint is to use era-none tech/building-combinations whenever possible and not to use unnecessairy strategic/luxury resources as perequisites. That bug is a game-killer.

 

[Erebras]

Quinzy's idea of a boat with Transport 1 doesn't work with nonhuman players, unless there is a workaround I don't know about. The AI will not load a settler without a defensive unit, so a transport curragh that can only hold one unit will not be used by the AI. Am I correct in this?

Also, take a look at my culture-specific naval units for my CivSpecific Mod. (You don't have to download it, just take a look at the unit progression preview on the first post of the thread to see what I mean). It seems you like variety for your units, and you can see how I addressed the problem of Chinese galleys and Middle Eastern caravels by using junks and dhows and longships. These would fit in nicely with your mod, I should think, and I'd be happy to share the statistics with you if you're interested enough.

 

[Quinzy]

If the AI won't load one settler, try a slot with 2 to allow them send a settler and a defender? Might be unbalanced, maybe. Who knows? It might need to be playtested.

 

[Mopean]

Well, I'm looking for someone who can collaborate on this project with me. As usual my management style is very disorganized and now its hard to keep track of everything. If someone is willing to devote some time towards helping in some way (mostly with text and (re)organization) I would really appreciate it and probably bow down and worship you. Plus I've been looking around and it seems many projects have some help. But I'll hopefully, eventually get down and finish the boring stuff. And the fun stuff.

Thanks for the advice about the resources, though, I will keep it in mind. I wasn't concerned because I considered it highly unlikely that one would end up with every resource in their cities (as that's where I thought the problem came in. Seems I was partway true, at least with luxuries and all) I think I will rely on a no era-tech prerequisite system for the religions rather than by region as I had planned, though some things will obviously still require a resource to be modeled appropriately.

I don't know at all if the seafaring civs have been taking advantage of their starting Curragh yet. I'm mostly busy with balance issues with the Persians, Mongols, Poles, Carthage, and Galls. The latter of which I've fixed and the others I have a plan for fixing, mostly involving LM terrains.

With the tin trade implemented, Spain and England tend to do a lot better than before, and Bronze Age warfare has become more difficult to start. There is not enough Tin on the world map for every civ, which I personally think is fine. The locations of iron deposits aren't based on any maps, unfortunately.

 

[Mopean]

Hey guys, does anyone know how to change the graphic of a landmark terrain? It's replacing the beautifulness with the default Civ3 terrain...

EDIT: And how to get rid of Expansionist civs scouts spawning in random places (Mongolian scout starting in Great Britain! O.O)

 

[Vuldacon]

Mopean, Not exactly sure what you are asking but If you have the Landmark Terrain you want, simply place it in your Terrain Folder.
If you want the Landmark Terrain to show the same as your normal Terrain, simply copy your normal terrain, paste it in a folder then rename it the same name as the Landmark Terrain. Place the Terrain file in your Terrain Folder.
Example: xggc.pcx would be copied and renamed lxggc.pcx

If you do not want Scouts, set the Scout to None in the Editor under Default Units in General Settings.
The Scouts for Civs that start with Scouts are randomly placed when the game starts and as far as I know this cannot be changed.

 

[Mopean]

Thanks very much, that was my question exactly. Sorry if I phrased it poorly.

 

[Mopean]

Going to update the OP with updated information about the factions including units and such, and then the screenshots post to include other information. I'll just update screenshots in separate, new posts.

 

[Mopean]

I have done so. Feel free to comment on the governments or look over the new countries and how their units are in the OP and second post.

 

[Mopean]

After a lot of tweaking I finally have the tech tree syncing up rather nicely. Most of the world enters the Bronze age by around 1700-1500 BC, which is decent enough (could be better, I suppose) and proceeds to enter the Iron Age by at most 500-300 BC, which is also pretty good, though I suppose it could start a little earlier, but that would make the Bronze Age a little too short for my tastes. The world also, perfectly, enters the medieval age around 400 to 500 AD, thus giving 1,000 years to each sub-era so far ( although the copper and stone ages each last a little longer. No real features or attention is paid to them, though)

The Visigoth, Byzantine, Frankish, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Seljuk, Umayyad, Slavic, Mongol, and Sassanid units are all ready for the Dark Ages, which means I can get to work on the other gameplay aspects of the dark ages like religion, viking raids, Muslim conquests, Byzantine conquests, rise of Carolingia, etc.

Also, Italian units are really hard to find, for the High Middle Ages. I was going to use Visigoth units for the Ostrogoths because I didn't see any point in searching for units to differentiate them, but the High Medieval Italian city states are lacking in flavor units as I can't really seem to find any good ones. It's easy to find anything else, ever, for Italy, though. :/

 

[Rambuchan]

Did you check the Medieval European Mod for your Italian units? To, ahem, plunder? I can't remember specific units off hand but there should be some good ones in there.

Also, sorry I didn't get back on your naval warfare thing. I did read your response and read it again now. I hear what you are saying about ships taking a long time and being expensive to build in reality. But, as I indicated, you just need to drop all of that thinking. The AI simply does not care about all of that. It only builds ships and uses them under the conditions I hinted at previously. Make them cheap!

 

[Mopean]

Hm, perhaps you are right. I'll see if I can make ships a lot cheaper. I still want heavy ships to be really significant though - like, having three battleships should be something really hard to get to, but really good, and have a lot of weight.