[MOD] Australian Colonization

Australian Colonization v. 0.40.01

My first mod, and I'm happy enough with it to reveal it to you all.
This mod covers the history of Australian colonisation, from the landing in Sydney Cove in January 1788 to federation in 1901 (play can continue for many years beyond this date).

File location: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11681

Current Features:

• Three Australian leaders. Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin, Peter Lalor. All previous leaders have been replaced.
• Native American leaders have been switched with Aboriginal elders. Personality and 3D models retained from original.
• English leader is now Queen Victoria. National trait changed to Conquistadors, representing the even greater technological advantage held over the Australian Aboriginals compared to the Native Americans.
• Can now also travel north to Europe.
• Timescale suitably adjusted for the period.
• Some 'Pedia entries have been suitably adjusted, as well as most general text entries.
• Start game with a Merchantman, a standard soldier and two petty criminals.
• Immigration slower than in original, particularly at start of game.
• Now works with official patch 1.01f and includes most changes made by said patch
• Resources changed as marked in changelog/update history

Known bugs:

• Victoria's face doesn't respond correctly during diplomacy.
  I'm sure the fix is simple, but I don't have a 3D program that I probably need to fix it at this time.
• Some text will refer to Queen Victoria as 'he' or 'his'. Some will refer to a single chief rather than multiple elders. Some older resources may be referred to. If you see any of these, please tell me.
• Some things have been assigned to entire nations rather than individual leaders/players. This is a game design flaw on the part of Firaxis that was never supposed to be seen, but the nature of this mod makes it difficult to avoid. It's meta.

Near future developments:

• A new version should be here soon to implement features planned for this patch but delayed, such as changing tools to require both iron and coal. Also, a new building that is capable of producing trade goods at the expense of either hammers or tools (not sure which yet). 3D bonus resources might also be available, but don't hold me to that. This will be my first foray into python code.
• Change in background music. I'm looking to get permission from William Barton to use his music, as it suits the game perfectly. He is the only person to have played didgeridoo with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Future developments:

• Victory type: Referendum - if you are at good relations with the Queen when you declare independence the normal way, you will not have to fight a war of independence.
• Replace founding fathers with Australian people.
• New 3D art for all leaders

Further future developments (post version 1.0):

• Random Event: Gold rush - Colony automatically created inland, gold 'discovered' nearby.
• (if at all possible) Version 2.0 designed for Civilization IV: BTS. - This is to make the mod as accessible as possible.

Ongoing developments:

• Updating and trimming Civilopedia
• Game balance correction

Update history
(0.25.01 -> 0.40.01)

• Resource changes
  • Silver - Gold
  • Cotton - Grapes
  • Cloth - Wine
  • Fur - Wool
  • Tobacco - Coal Ore
  • Ore - Iron Ore
  • Cigars - REMOVED
• Resource artwork, names of buildings, and names of workers have been suitably changed. However on the game map, bonus resources have not been edited. So coal looks suspiciously like a tobacco plantation.
  
• Tentative bug fix for immigration overflow error. Functional but untested.
  
• I'm halfway through pedia fixes for the above changes. Text trims have also been made.

Mod is now live.
This post reserved for future mod developments.

As an Aussie myself, this is great to see!

Where in Melb? I'm close to Franga.

Not giving myself away too much, I'm about halfway up Eastlink.

Cool I know the area. I used to work at Centro's HQ which is in a big shopping centre near there.

Updates will be fortnightly until I reach 30 posts, due to file moderation by Civfanatics for new users and me not wanting to have delays between when I post the change and when you can access it. After that, they may be as frequent as weekly.

Game crash fixes will be posted immediately, but I don't expect any of those for a while since I'm only using XML so far and I test before uploading.

In celebration of reaching 30 posts far faster than previously expected, I present the first update.

Update Ver. 0.25:

• All native nations now have accurate city names.
• Excess city names (all but London) have been removed from XML files

I've been working on such a mod myself, so if you'll allow me I'd like to help.

One major thing I've got is founding fathers (although my leaders are different, so Barton and Lalor are FF instead of leaders):

Politics:
Arthur Philip (Units cost 25% less to purchase in Europe)
Bennelong (Strengthens relations with the natives)
D'Arcy Wentworth (+3 Liberty Bells per Town Hall)
James Busby (Native lands cost 50% less to purchase)
Peter Lalor (Increases Liberty Bell production by the tax rate)
Henry Parkes (+3 Liberty Bells per Printing Press and Newspaper)
Edmund Barton (Increases hammer production by the tax rate)
Maybanke Wolstenholme (+25% Liberty Bells per settlement)
Samuel Griffith (+1 food on plots with at least 2 food)
Ferdinand Chevillard (+50% defense per settlement)
Henk Sneevliet (Provides 3 Elder Statesmen)

Trade:
Pieter van den Broecke (Market prices are less sensitive)
Jacques Specx (+1 movement for Merchantman)
Georg Eberhard Rumphius (Increases Education production by the tax rate)
John Macarthur (+50% Wool per settlement) [Note: Wool replaces Cotton]
William Redfern (+3 hammers per Town Hall)
Alexander Berry (+50% Lumber per settlement)
Edward Wollstonecraft (+50% Tobacco per settlement)
Edward Smith Hall (+3 Liberty Bells per Schoolhouse, College and University)
James Brogden (+50% production of Textile Mill, Coat Factory, Rum Factory, and Cigar Factory, 50% fewer Tools needed to construct buildings)

Exploration:
Luis Váez de Torres (+1 movement for Caravels)
Abel Tasman (+1 movement for Galleons)
Willem de Vlamingh (Sailing to and from Europe takes 50% less time)
James Cook (Provides 1 Merchantman)
Matthew Flinders (+1 Trade Goods per Dock, Drydock, and Shipyard)
William Lawson (+1 movement for Wagon Trains)
Gregory Blaxland (Pioneers require 50% less Tools)
William Wentworth (+1 movement for Scouts)
Charles Sturt (Provides 2 Seasoned Scouts)
Burke and Wills (+1 movement for Wagon Trains and Scouts)

I haven't quite finished Religion or Military (suggestions?) but here are some people who might be suitable:

Religion:
Richard Johnson
Samuel Marsden
John Williams
Robert Clark Morgan
George N. Gordon
John Gibson Paton
Maurice Leenhardt

Military:
Robert Ross
Francis Grose
Hendrik Merkus de Kock
Charles Fremantle
Johan Harmen Rudolf Köhler
Eeldert Christiaan van Daalen

Do you mind if I use that list (with minor modifications)? Founding Fathers was the part of the game I was most worried about doing because of difficulty in getting enough names in all the right areas.

Update will be a bit delayed due to its size. I am adjusting the resources to Australian equivalents, and due to the chosen resources this means a few game mechanic changes too. For example, there will be no equivalent to the Cigar building and there will now be a building to make trade goods (this might come later).

PiMan said:

Do you mind if I use that list (with minor modifications)?

Click to expand...

Of course I don't mind! That's why I posted it!

I'll implements them after v0.4 (the next version)

Nice one, but where's Ned Kelly in the founding fathers list ?

I'll probably add him to one of the lists. I'll have to think about what he does though.

Maybe he can go in the military for a laugh.

PiMan said:

I'll probably add him to one of the lists. I'll have to think about what he does though.

Maybe he can go in the military for a laugh.

Click to expand...

Ooh, that's a good one. Military needs more, but I was focusing mostly on Vinegar Hill and Eureka.

My version also includes Indonesia and New Zealand (and everywhere in between) so that's why there's a number of Dutch people there. I don't know if you'll want to include non-British nations but for what its worth I think it'll make it more interesting.

For the Netherlands, I had Anthony van Diemen (Mer, Ind) and Herman Willem Daendels (Mer, Mil).
For France I had La Perouse (Coo, Res) and Charles Guillain (Coo, Ent).
For Portugal I had Francisco Xavier do Amaral (Dev, Det) and Gaspar da Costa (Dev, Dis)
Spain didn't have any lasting colonies in the area, so I didn't include them.

Natives were:
Maori
Nyungar
Papuans
Pitjantjatjara
Wiradjuri
Palawa
Mataram
Macassans

Dryhad said:

Spain didn't have any lasting colonies in the area, so I didn't include them.

Click to expand...

You WHAT?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_East_Indies

Expanding to New Zealand is a realistic option for my mod, since they were once part of New South Wales too.
Expanding to Indonesia is not a likely prospect for some time. The conditions for colonisation in Indonesia were very different to that of Australia. Australia was a penal colony, and when I implement a convict system for the mod, then it would not be correct for Indonesia.
It is an Australian Colonization mod, not an Australasian mod.

Also, I like seeing how the game engine reacts to having more than one player of the same nation.

Is New Caledonia included in this? I'm giving the mod a try now.

Sorry, the French are not currently included to any degree and map scripts and such have not been created to even represent the area.

Dale said:

You WHAT?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_East_Indies

Click to expand...

Just the slightest bit too far north, I'm afraid.

Here's the last bit of my mod, with a bit of discussion. Constitution options (I wasn't sure how the constitution would work in a hypothetical "Federation Victory" if you will, but I figured I'd do this so that a. it's there if it's needed and b. Independence Victory can be kept as a "what if history"):

Immigration: Open Immigration OR White Australia (Slavery was never much of an issue in Australia, European settlement having begun in the dying days of the slave trade and Arthur Phillip's determination that it be slave free. In it's place, I've used the debate between allowing immigrants, largely Pacific Islanders imported under indentured servitude to work on sugar plantations, or maintaining the White Australia Policy, supported by the labour movement with equal parts fear for local jobs and racism. Open Immigration adds two indentured servants to each settlement and White Australia increases the production of manufactured goods by 25% [note that this is different from the vanilla Slavery's effect, which increases raw materials])
Election: Westminster Monarchy OR Republic (By the time of Federation, absolute monarchy had largely gone out of fashion. However there was, and still is, a debate on whether or not to keep the British head of state as our own. There is no functional difference between these and their vanilla counterparts)
Natives: Terra Nullius OR Native Rights (Terra Nullius means "Land Belonging to No One" and the idea that this was the state of the continent before European settlement remained official policy shockingly until the 1990s. After Mabo v Queensland, the policy was overturned. Aside from the changing of Manifest Destiny to a more Australia appropriate name, there is no difference to the vanilla version)
Religion: Same as vanilla (The separation of church and state is one of the few freedoms specifically enshrined in the Constitution of Australia)
Security: Same as vanilla

Hey Dryhad,

somehow Burke & Wills just don't quite fit - unless your +1 movement scouts & wagons die after 3 turns...