Marla_Singer
United in diversity
The idea of the modmod would be about enlarging the RAR experience at a global scale. I believe this could potentially be done mostly with pure XML and Art modding.
Enlarge map
Here is the basic: instead of depicting only a continent, the mod would be based on a full earth map. That means that it would necessarily include Europe, but here we are somewhat helped by "nature". Europe being relatively small, the 7 European powers (excluding Russia) would only have 1 to 4 cities in their homeland with no room to expand further, and the player (both AI or Human) would be naturally pressured to move out of the continent and found colonies elsewhere.
In order to simulate more interesting sea trade routes, "access to Europe" would only be limited to a single tile: the capital port (London, Lisbon or Amsterdam). I've tested that with the AI and it works. The only thing which may be needed to make distant colonies profitable may be faster boats. The Europe screen could be renamed "Royal market" for atmospheric reasons. As a matter of fact, chariots may also have easily access to it, it would only needs minor graphical tweeks.
The good thing about Civ4Col is that we can operate in truely giant maps with no pressure to colonize it all, neither for the Human player, nor for the AI. As such, I've been thinking that for such a mod to be really great, it would require a very large map.
On such a map, we could explore RAR potential even further. We could imagine new civilizations (ported from Civ4) which would have "European status" such as Ottomans, China, Japan and fill in the map with many other nations having "native status" (Tibetans, Mongols, Zulus, Kongos). Maybe some yields could be replaced as well so that we could add tea, porcelain or ivory. Maybe there could be interesting ways to depict the silk route as well.
Anyway, all this seems that could be potentially done. However, it would still require a lot of work. That's why I'm posting this thread. Would you actually be interested in such a variation of RAR or do you dislike even the concept in the first place? If you have other ideas on how it could work out, don't hesitate to share.
I actually need to know now, because a global earth map would take a lot of time to create. My prototype has a size of 300x150 tiles. That makes a total of 45,000 tiles, of which about 14,000 are land.
Enlarge map
Here is the basic: instead of depicting only a continent, the mod would be based on a full earth map. That means that it would necessarily include Europe, but here we are somewhat helped by "nature". Europe being relatively small, the 7 European powers (excluding Russia) would only have 1 to 4 cities in their homeland with no room to expand further, and the player (both AI or Human) would be naturally pressured to move out of the continent and found colonies elsewhere.
In order to simulate more interesting sea trade routes, "access to Europe" would only be limited to a single tile: the capital port (London, Lisbon or Amsterdam). I've tested that with the AI and it works. The only thing which may be needed to make distant colonies profitable may be faster boats. The Europe screen could be renamed "Royal market" for atmospheric reasons. As a matter of fact, chariots may also have easily access to it, it would only needs minor graphical tweeks.
The good thing about Civ4Col is that we can operate in truely giant maps with no pressure to colonize it all, neither for the Human player, nor for the AI. As such, I've been thinking that for such a mod to be really great, it would require a very large map.
On such a map, we could explore RAR potential even further. We could imagine new civilizations (ported from Civ4) which would have "European status" such as Ottomans, China, Japan and fill in the map with many other nations having "native status" (Tibetans, Mongols, Zulus, Kongos). Maybe some yields could be replaced as well so that we could add tea, porcelain or ivory. Maybe there could be interesting ways to depict the silk route as well.
Anyway, all this seems that could be potentially done. However, it would still require a lot of work. That's why I'm posting this thread. Would you actually be interested in such a variation of RAR or do you dislike even the concept in the first place? If you have other ideas on how it could work out, don't hesitate to share.
I actually need to know now, because a global earth map would take a lot of time to create. My prototype has a size of 300x150 tiles. That makes a total of 45,000 tiles, of which about 14,000 are land.