A General All Inclusive Mod

T

TheNewSaint

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Dec 19, 2005
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U.S., but the state changes alot...
I'm Gonna Lay This Out Fer Ya. There Are Several Different Things That I Think Need To be Incorporated Into One Mod. They Are As Follows:

Animal Expansion
Trade Alternatives
Additional Resources
Additional Units
New Buildings
New Wonders
Tactics Conversion
Some Nice Scripts
Miscelanious



Let me give you an overview of how I think this game should work. You start out with a little bit of land, very fertile, except for the mountain range to the back, and your economy just plain sucks. You will not get very far if you don't work on your city. Your first priority is not to build a military unit, it is to expand your knowledge and capabilities. So now you have a decision to make: What path will your capital, and therefore most of your civilization, take? Specialization is encouraged, for you will do better this way then with the Jack-of-all-Trades style.

Now, once you are able to support yourself, you can build a military unit. Exploring is not huge on my list. No, I think that you take your unit and move it to one of the many strategic positions on the map (a bottlenecks, highground, Peakside, etc.). Now you can either produce a settler, and build your second city (good choice) or you can expand more (possibly sacrificing a new city for the chance to build a wonder). You have done one or the other, so now you have one nice city, a colony level city, and a military unit at a strategic location. The game starts bracnhing out here, but I would say that the basic thing to do would be to continue growing (maybe building a few more cities, but not ICS, cause that's not kewl) You should now have a basis for a civilization. It's about 1000BC. You've done some skirmishing, but nothing huge. You now have advanced technologically, and your next decision is coming up:

"Do I want to build a crushing army, or expand my trade capacity?"

If you chose military, then you start building an army (now that you can sustain it). If you chose trade, then you build up your supply lines, and you really start exploring. Trying to do both will probably get you killed.

Military: With your network of cities, you really have your powerhouse. From here on cities that you build will not get very large, and will just be colonies. Asuming that we have a few resources, we can build some high quality units. Put these together (not all on the same square, because that's illegal). and you have an army. An army which can crush thy enemy. And so it shall.

Economy: With your network of cities, you really have your powerhouse. But that's not enough, you want resources. So you need colonies. We already have a few resources, so we'll put together a small army and conquer some strategic points, like parts of the middle east, in order to secure a part in the silk route that is running through there. Now we can connect into this long yellow line, and we not only have a trade route, but we start earning money (cause we happen to be playing as an asian civ and have silk). We now take moswt of our a\small army back to our main network to defend against barbs and rivals.

It is about this point that you notice increased barbarian activity. They have gained acces to new technology, and are using it. They have found out the use of... Ok. That's enough for now. I will update later.
 
Rather than order I thought I would skip around. We have here an entire post (up to 20000 characters) devoted to the economy. So hows about this:

There are many ways to expand your economy, and I think I will tell you that not all are easy, but all are rewarding. To get down to basics, one of the primary ways to increase trade is to run caravans across vast distances on predetermined routes and hope they get there and come back. On of the best routes to follow is the desert route (not particularly middle east, but on random maps large desert regions will be aparent, but that's for the script part of this thread...). Caravans are also the only way to trade resources. In order to trade, you first agree with an ally that you will trade and then you set something to trade for. Then, you send your caravan to one of your allies' cities. If it makes it, he gets the resource, but if not, you ally may be a little preturbed and demand a refund. But there could be a slight problem... you spent all your money! What now? You could always send another caravan - if you're dealing with a very close ally. Otherwise you may need to give that angry leaderhead something... technology? That would be hard to give up... It looks as if your going to be goaded into war... So try this:

"Give me twenty turns and you'll have it, I swear! But in the mean time, have some of my people!"
(Yes this is posible, with just a wee bit of scripting, you can have it really mean "Raise mood towards me temporarily, and have it cost something." But for only twenty turns. By then, if you have no money, you're dead! Your people are just another thing you can sell.

Yes, you just sold your people to prevent war. You spineless piece of filth. Your remaining citizens are *noticably* angered, and you still have only twenty turns to come up with the money (or the resource). So now you need my guide to getting money fast: For Dummies!

Units can be sold by being transported to the capital and bringing up the "Mercenaries" advisor, which allows the buying and selling of units. All units sold are sold to a pool of units which can then be bought from, so even though nobody buys the unit from you, you sell it to a market (the risk your run from selling units is that your enemies can buy them).

There is also another way to earn money through military terms: Bounties! Yes, ussually almost as soon as a hero is created, there is a bounty on his head. Killing the unit will give you a large reward. Rewards may grow if the hero continues to live, but be wary, you don't want somebody else to get to him first!

Yet another way to earn money is taxes. Ohhhh nooooo! Your people will hate you even more! You can set the overall tax level in your economic advisor, or change the tax for different cities. You can also put taxes on "items" coming in on trade routes from other countries.

Well I think that should cover it for now, but I am open to any suggestions...
 
There are some new units and unit types I would love to see incorporated. Now, the more I post, the more I see how all of my ideas fit together. So, I'll give some mideivil examples:

Heroes

Heroes are very powerful units that are great to have but hard to come by. They can only be purchased with valor, which is something that you as the leader of your civ earn by doing things that you should do (feasting, torturing misbehaving peasants, winning wars...). Valor can also be spent on giving yourself a promotion, which adds to what you can and can't do... but I digress.

Heroes have special abilities that make them great. Some are built like bandits, being able to turn invisible in woods, or desert, and then ambush or capture the enemy. Others are like great leaders; very powerful units with battle cries and auras of greatness that buff nearby units, and others are... well actually I'm not telling anybody but the person who makes this mod.

Caravans

Caravans are units that add more trade abilites, and are explained best in "Trade Alternatives" section. But as an overview, they are the way to trade resources, earn gold, and transport special items for your greatness (which give you valor if they make it to your capital) The downside of caravans, and the thing that makes them the most fun to capture, is that you can only have one unit in the same square as a caravan, unless the square contains a city.

Ships

This is one part of gameplay that I think needs to be improved a lot. For this I am thinking of beefing up naval battles to be more exciting, by doing special things:

Large ships of grand strength, carrying all sorts of weapons that can be fired. The weapons are given to the ship when certain units are loaded in, like with cannons, the ship can now shoot two squares away, or with pirates, the ship gains money from defeating other ships, etc.

Making naval units cost less. This way you can build both and army and a fleet, like it was done in the old days...

Some new Ideas for ships:

Prisonship: this ship costs money and unhappiness (yes, it takes away unhappiness), in addition to production,and can be unloaded anywhere (preferably a small island) to release barbarian prisoners, which give you something to practice on... Or you can release them right next to your enemies cities... :)

More Later
 
I could really spend a lot of time here, but I won't, I'm just gonna copy and paste my posts from another thread. You don't have to read it all, just skim...

Tacticism! Strategery! Just an Idea! Don't get excited!
This is an idea I'm sure was asked before, but I think I know how to do it (but I can't).

Give units 2+ attack types, as well as formations. This will change the flow of gameplay quite a bit and maybe even help us by giving us lined out anti-SOD gameplay or battles (maybe).

This is how it works. In gameplay, you may have only two units on any tile. If the tile has a fortress, the limit becomes three, and a city is five. Units have regular stats which are for defense. They do well in defending against a certain type of weapon. If you like this can be done with promotions. Attack types are given by having the unit upgrade by pressing a button. Upon upgrading, python sees this and sets movement to what it was before upgrade. So, say we have an archer.

"Hi!" This is the archer. His two attacks are... wait that's a bad example, we'll come back to him later.


This is axeman "Hi!" His attack types are chop- Kerplunk!!! -and Smash/Bludgeon- Thwwaak! -His chop does highest damage but is not good versus overly heavy (it can't penetrate) or wooden (it gets caught) armor. His bludgeon attack is affective versus wood (smashing), but not good for any type of metal armor. So he is built to kill everything but heavy plate type armor. He is going to attack a fanatic (cloth armor). Which attack should he use?

Chop! Because it does the highest damage, although neither are ineffective versus cloth armor.

What about a conscripted asian archer unit? Hint: Wicker Armor

Yes! Bludgeon! That's correct! Now if we look at an axeman from up north, he will be wearing leather armor. Remeber this, but now it's time to go back to archers.

Archers have very... unique attacks. They can attack at range (yes somebody figured that out, it's called the spelldemo mod), which does good damage to medium armored units and light armored units, and just a little for heavy. However, all archers have a backup plan, and on my particular ones it is called a dagger. Daggers are actually more effective versus units with heavy armor than an arrow (getting in the chinks) but not as powerful as an arrow on anything else. It does defend much better, however, because with the short distance on the battle field, an arrow will give you the first strike chance and then you're dead. If you want you could make it so that archers start with the arrow attack for first strike and then go to dagger, that is if you are going to use armor as defense and weapons as offense, not both as both.

(if you think about it, a xyphos blade will do well in defense if the armor of the defender is a heavy bronze phalanx type, but no so well with wooden armor, because a xyphos was made to be used when you were belly to belly with the enemy, so you could find the places in their armor that were most vulnerable. If you used wooden armor with it, you would be mutilated on the end of a spear before you even got to striking distance)

So, let's forget all the examples I gave and boil this down to ancient greece. We'll use three basic types of weapons: Peirce, Shock, and Smash

Peirce includes spears, arrows, darning needles (javelins), and daggers.
Shock includes xyphos blades, scimitars, murmillo swords, and throwing knives.
Smash includes butt spikes, shield bashes, and rods and shafts (common militia)

Pierce beats Smash
Smash beats Shock
Shock beats Peirce

(please tell me if I'm wrong at any point)

This works because with shock you generally have heavier armor and effective, precision blades. This would easily beat spears, and arrows and javelins too. Daggers might stand a chance, if for some reason you used them with armor good enough to withstand a shock blade

A smashing weapon is going to be out of control, moving around like mad, and with lots of force. In a tight formation tipicle of shock infantry, these will do a lot of damage. The other point is that the force that smash weapons carry is large, and if you can knock over 200+ pounds of bronze, the 140+ man inside will not be getting back up easily.

Now, in order to wield a massive smash weapon, you would need to cut down somewhere, and that would be armor. The only exception to this would be the flail/mace man. Arrows and spears do well against medium and lighter armor, and spears can be somewhat effective against a few types of heavy armor. Plus the long reach of most pierce weapons means that you are likely to get the first hit, which could be all you need.

Daggers are peirce, but I dont think they should be kept that way. I think they should be a part of the "Special" class. Special does all sorts of wierd things. (It is special).

OK. Tomorrow I post about my ideas on formations, and on Saturday I will talk about some miscelanious things. Right now, it's time to take a break.


Formations!

Formations are great. Who in their right mind doesn't love the idea of a formation? YOU don't!? Oh well, here it is:

We're gonna start here the way I did ancient greece, just so that you kinda get a feel for what it is I am talking about. Keep in mind that if this is done then it should include way more than 3 formations.

Inward V formation (good for defense against cavalry and other strong, but loose formations)
Box (great defense versus flanking menuvers, like a V formation...)
Line (strongest formation, pushing the weight and momentum of the entire column at the enemy)

V beats Line
Box beats V
Line beats Box

Makes sense, don't it?

In order to change formations, you upgrade your unit (just like selecting an attack) But, it can get more complex. For instance, I have my two units, and I say "Hey, a toxetos and a phalanx unit... I should put them both together! So you move them to the same square and "load" one into the other (ewww) Just kidding. What you actually do is select the "combine" button. This brings you to a screen that looks like this

_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l....Sprites Avaliable: 22 (11 + 11)
_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l
_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l....Sprite Types: Toxetose, Phalanx (click one)
_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l
_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l....Preset Formations: Line, Box, Inward V, Outward V, Horde
_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l
_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l....Recently Used Formations: K formation, Sparse, Parallel ll
_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l_l


In order to place a sprite, just click the one you want and move your cursos onto the grid. Depending on ther size of the unit (cavalry, siege tower, spearman, it will take up a different amount of space.

Infantry and Man units: 4 space square
Cavalry and Mounted: 6 space rectangle

Arrow in middle shows the way the unit is facing. By double clicking on the unit set the rotation automatically to the nearest angle of 12.5 degrees (eight directions) You can also click again to keep changing or drag your cursor for more custom variations (mostly asthetic, with a few exceptions) Note: The square's center never moves once it is clicked once, it just swivels. By clicking once and moving the mouse cursor you can move the unit's positioning.

All the sprites you can possibly use is up at the top (you may have a max of 11 in one unit and left overs are thrown away). The different types that can be mixed are below that (all the different sprites in the two units combined). Premade formations are just below that, and recently used ones are at the bottom (all recently used are custom made ones that work with the sprite type classifications (archer and melee). When you combine units, you do more than just change the formation (which you can do at any time at the cost of one movement point), you also combine abilities and strength. In other words the computer finds the mean of all abilities for each sprite and gives them to the new unit. So:

A Toxetoes, an archer with say, 2 tile away bombard and a bombard strength of 4, but a melee strength of 2, and a movement count of 2, has 5 of its 11 sprites combined with 5 phalanx, a melee unit with strength of 6 with a movement count of 1, will come out as follows:

Take the bombard strength of all ten units, which is 20 ({5*4}+{5*0}) and divide it by the total number of units (10), and you get 2, which makes sense because it's about half the bombard strength of your original toxetoes, which was about twice as many archers.
So:
Bombard=2
Melee=4
Movement=1 (will explain)

The computer takes the lowest movement and applies it to the entire formation, because people aren't gonna move faster because they're combined with other units: They're Going As Fast As They Can Already!

So the above is the base stats. With a formation, we can change certain aspects. Horde, for instance gives no attack or defense bonus, but, since it's really a lack or formation, gives the unit the movement of the mean (rounded) of all the sprites in the formation. So with the horde formation our "toxephanx" now has a movement of 1.5 or 2. Horde also has no preferred formation to go up against, because there is no strategery at all in the battle.

However, if we put our new unit (which you get to name) in the line formation, then we go back to 1 movement, but we get a bonus to attack, right? Well, not exactly. Yes, we do get a bonus, and yes, it's for strength, but it's not the full bonus, because the formation we made looks like this

.O.O.O.O.O.
X_X_X_X_X

With O being archers and X being melee. Now, as you may know, when you have this formation as a solid melee, it gets a bigger strength bonus because you will have your units like in example.bmp, where the first line (the top) is attacking over the head of the second one, and is actually pushing forward, so that the entire front line is like a meat grinder, and as you go over the enemy, the people behind you would stab them repeatedly (very greusome). This grinding motion that is what the phalanx is know so well for. With archers, you have the ranged peopel stand back and fire over the heads of the melee, pretty much killing the idea of a grinding pattern (but it does protect the archers). So, we'll find the optimal formation for our "toxephanx"

The optimal formation looks like this:

O
OXX
O.X
OXX
O

it looks much like a hat turned on its side. From here, the melee can work together and the archers can be spaced out to maximize arrow spread. The hole behind the middle melee is ok, because even if he died, there is still coverage of the area, and the middle archer could finish the person who entered the hole off (like a trap).

And don't say "I'm sure that's not optimal formation," because a group of greek resistance fighters on a raid for the tent of the persian emporer Xerxes used this formation when they were discovered, and were able to keep most of the party alive despite their definate disadvantage in numbers.

So that's basically how that works. Any questions? Please?

P.S., if somebody wants to do this, I think I know how it could be implemented... (P.M. me)
Attached ImagesExample.bmp (184.6 KB, 0 views)
 
There are some things that I think should be added to the game, in the way of random events. I think there are some things that Civ4 could benifit from:

Disasters

Plate Tectonics, Earthquakes
Tsunnamis
Hurricanes (Need I give examples?)
Forest Fires
Barbarian/Peasant uprising
Tornados
Droughts/Floods (I'm thinking rivers)
Volcanoes/Eruptions

Goodness

Forests grow gradually
More Later

If you are reading this, you have caught me in between copying stuff, so congratulations, stalker!
 
may I point out that if you feel like putting down your own huge list, do that, because I'm actually not opposed to thread jacking (I do it all the time :) ).
 
Not to be rude or anything,

But for the meantime you could get Nexus's mod, it's really fun.
I'll come back for the finished mod, cause' I'm looking for more stuff:p

Happy hunting Saint:king: Good luck everyone.
 
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