The problem is that reverse engineering it is beyond my abilities.
Well, even the most experienced and skilled modders started like that.
All it takes is enough motivation and time.
I tried to borrow just the Africa screen and area I could not get that too work, and I even tried just doing it from the Triangle Trade Mod which mainly just centers on that.
Adapting such features to your mod will require some programming skills of course.
But a beginner in programming (with basic programming skills) should still be able to adapt "Africa" to his mod in about one or two weekends.
If you have specific questions about some code, simply post them in the forums.
There are still people around that could (and most likely will) answer.
Honestly it would be nice if certain components were posted by themselves.
There are technical limitations to that.
(The game can have only 1 single core logic DLL for example.)
For some features (basic) ModComps exist.
If you know programming and commenting is good, it does not make such a big difference if the code you use is inside another (big) mod or inside a (small) ModComp.
In fact the big mods are usually the better place to look at, because their implementations have become far more advanced and stable than the (old) original ModComps.
(ModComps are often missing functionality and usually still contain a lot of issues.)
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Good luck with your modding.