Age of Mythology

[CivOasis]

When is the first version expected to be released?

 

[Spatzimaus]

When is the first version expected to be released?

When it's ready?

No, seriously, I've been working on it all weekend and it's getting much closer, but a couple of the key UI elements still don't work. Like, you know, the part where you pick a Pantheon/major god and the part where you pick minor gods. Without those working, there's not much point in releasing the mod for the rest of you to play with. I also haven't created the icon atlases yet, but that's not quite as important. I was going to try adding the icons tonight, once I get a few mechanical bits working better.

I'd worked on it a little in the past week, but I've been REALLY busy with Real Life issues (job, medical stuff, family stuff...) so it's progressing a bit slower than I'd have liked.

But most of the myth units are in (although they still need a major balance pass, especially since some of the special attacks haven't been coded in yet), all of the buildings are in (except for a couple specific National Wonders I'll add later), and a lot of the other UI elements are working now. My goal is to have it working by Tuesday, because I'm going on a short vacation starting Wednesday (I'll be back Sunday or Monday).

I'm still running into a couple technical issues, though. Specifically, if you declare a new XML table in mod A, then you can't seem to access that table in mod B. This forces me to duplicate a lot of code, since several mods share the same functionality. (That's the whole POINT of having a Base mod.) So for now, a lot of things are disabled; this might be something that resolves automatically once we get Dependencies, but regardless it's a problem right now.

 

[Spatzimaus]

And for reference, here's how I've laid the units out.

Tier 1 (low Focus units, usable on turn 1 if you have that Focus already): Strength 7, Cost 50, limit 9 per player. Marginally better than a Warrior, although slightly more expensive and they don't upgrade. There are only a few of these: Pegasus, Gargoyle, Zombie, Nemean Lion, and Fenris Wolf.
Tier 1.5 (low Pantheon units): Strength 9, Cost 75, limit 7 per player. You'll be getting these about the same time as a Swordsman, at the same cost, but swords have strength 11. But these'll have special abilities that make them worth having a few of.
Tier 2 (mid Focus units, generally unlocking in the early Classical): Strength 11, Cost 100, limit 5 per player. Same base strength as the Swordsman but with MUCH better abilities to make up for the higher cost.
Tier 2.5 (mid Pantheon units): Strength 13, Cost 125, limit 4 per player. You'll reach these as you're getting close to unlocking Longswords, which cost 120 and have strength 16. But the extra abilities, again, balance it out.
Tier 3 (late Focus units, generally unlocking in the late Classical to early Medieval): Strength 16, Cost 150, limit 3 per player. Same strength as a longsword, but lots of good specials.
Tier 3.5 (late Pantheon unit): Strength 19, Cost 175, limit 1 per player. Mid-Medieval, right when you get longswords.
Tier 4 (final Focus units, unlocking in the mid-Medieval or later): Strength 22, Cost 200, limit 1 per player. Note: I've now added a bunch more of these. Now, every Focus except War has a level 4 unit, and Animals of course has two.

So what'll normally happen is that by the end, you'll have three one-of-a-kind units (one for your Primary, one for your Secondary that unlocked later, and a slightly weaker Pantheon unit) and a handfull of good mythological units to back them up. But chances are, you'll still want quite a few mundane units; by the time you reach the 3s and 4s, the 1s and 1.5s will be much too weak to continue using as anything other than scouts.

Now, the unit lists. Anywhere you see XXX means I haven't decided what unit it should be, but that I HAVE created a placeholder.

At the moment, the Pantheon units are: (1.5/2.5/3.5)
Greek: Centaur, Minotaur, Cyclops
Egyptian: Wadjet, Sphinx, Ammit
Norse: Ravens, Valkyrie, Nidhogg
Hindu: Naga, Makara, Sarabha
Aztec: Ahuizotl, Cipactli, Xelhua
Sumerian: Utukku, Mushussu, Pazuzu
Shinto: Oni, Qilin, Mizuchi
Some of these were picked because of a certain niche that I felt was under-represented for each pantheon, so if you don't like certain choices, just be aware of that fact.

And the Focus-specific units have been reorganized. There are now no buildings providing units where the upgrades above them don't also provide units, and nearly every Focus has a level 4 unit. The ONLY Focus that ever provides more than one Myth type at each level is Animals, which gives two.
In some cases I might shift stuff around. But here's the plan.

Water: Scylla (3), Water Elemental (4)
Fire: Fire Elemental (4)
Earth: Gargoyle (1), Medusa (2), Basilisk (3), Earth Elemental (4)
Air: Pegasus (1), Thunderbird (2), Lightning Bolt (3), Air Elemental (4)

Fertility: XXX (4)
Beauty: Unicorn (4) Pretty fast and weaker than other 4s, but it has the Anti-Myth promotion.
Crafts: Colossus (4)
Wealth: XXX (4) Almost guaranteed to be a "kitsune" type of thing to go with Inari, the only major god with Wealth as a primary.

Death: Zombie (1), Mummy (2), Vampire (3), Phoenix (4)
Healing: XXX (4) Even if I haven't decided on a name, the abilities are already decided. Lots of healing stuff, obviously.
Knowledge: Oracle (4)
War: none

Animals: Nemean Lion (1), Fenris Wolf (1), Manticore (2), Scarab (2), Hydra (3), Griffon (3), Chimaera (4), Dragon (4)
Plants: Dryad (3), Treant (4) These are weak as units, but can plant forests and jungles.
Travel: XXX (4)
Art: XXX (4) I was thinking of something involving the Muses, or maybe the Sirens, but I couldn't come up with anything powerful enough to be a 4. So I'm looking into other mythologies for ideas.

Justice: Nemesis (4) As in, a Myth unit specialized in killing other Myth units.
Seasons: XXX (4)
Darkness: Shade (2), Rakshasa (3), Balrog (4). Like Nemesis, all Darkness units get an Anti-Myth promotion.
Storms: Tiamat (4)

Balance: Avatar (4) Question my ability? Then thou hast lost an eighth!

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What I'm hoping is that with these changes, everyone will have quite a few Myth units to choose from, with two or three big ones acting as the centers of your armies, but you won't be able to make a giant army full of them so you'll still want normal units.

The XXX units will be decided on in the future; since all of the missing creatures are level 4s, they're supposed to be one-of-a-kind creatures, so demigod-type beings are okay. And it's better if they don't come from the Greek or Egyptian mythologies, since those are already heavily over-represented.
If need be I can shuffle pantheon units into those slots and put something else in the pantheons, but I'd prefer not to.

 

[CivOasis]

So, ideas:

Fertility:

Ao Ao (Guarani). It's either a pig or sheep that eats people. Good news, though, it actually is the Guarani spirit of fertility. Somehow.

Encantado (Brazilian folklore, semi-current). Dolphin-people (shapeshifters) that seduce humans. Alternately good for seasons, they are said to control the weather.

Healing:

Kushtaka (Tlingit). Otter-men (shapeshifters), who will turn people dying in the cold into kushtaka for their survival. Obviously, that's a mixed blessing, and some variations have them tricking people and tearing poor victims to shreds.

Nightmarchers (Hawai'ian). Spirits of dead warriors, occasionally guide dying relatives to the spirit world.

Mapinguari (Indigenous Brazilian). Predatory giant ground sloth, impervious to all weapons, but afraid of water.

Travel:

Adlet (Inuit). Dog-human predators, noted for speed. Very tall, eat humans.

Bunyip (Australian Aboriginal). Water-creature (kind of like an otter or muskrat, in behavior). Descriptions vary, but very large. Honestly, I'd think this is the most well-known creature in their mythology.

Pouakai (Maori). Giant eagle, more or less. No, you are not mistaken, there is a forum-goer with that username.

Art:

Byangoma (Bengali). Fortune-telling birds.

Dirawong (Australian Aboriginal). Monitor lizard that, according to a certain group of tribes, taught the indigenous Australians most crafts, astronomy, etc.

Seasons:

Cadejo (Central American folklore). Honestly, this one'd be better for Justice, but, black-and-white dogs (black is evil, white is good), who either attack or save travelers (and/or drunks).

Chindi (Navajo). More or less, the ghost of everything bad about a person. Relates to seasons, though, in that it was the explanation for dust devils.

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I had more trouble than I expected with healing and travel. Travel might be a place where you just stretch it, but I'd move the Phoenix to healing, there are plenty of good substitutes for death.
One question: Are the elementals (and other "generic" myth units) going to get more specific versions? IMO, it would be cool if some of the unused myhtologies' equivalents of vampires, zombies, etc., get used there (or some of the existing pantheons, even - a vetala would be a nice replacement for "vampire").

 

[Scrambles]

Will we be able to select an 'end era'? So that we might just play a Myth game or test without ever going beyond the Myth content?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Will we be able to select an 'end era'? So that we might just play a Myth game or test without ever going beyond the Myth content?

No more so than in the regular game. There are quite a few mods out there that add that sort of thing, and I'll might look into creating a scenario that does that for this mod, but it's not how the content is designed. Now, the timing's going to take quite a bit of work to balance, since I want to make sure that there's a decently-sized window in which you'll use all those units I've added (60 Myth units, at last count, plus the Heroes are going to add another 56), so I WILL be stretching out the tech tree a bit.

I'm aiming for a ~400-turn window, on standard speeds, where you have Mythological content, with about 200 turns of heavy emphasis. It's built to follow more of a story structure; in the Ancient you'll only have a few minor bonuses, nothing too significant, so by turn 100ish you'll just be unlocking your first Pantheon units, selecting your first minor god, and approaching the level 2 buildings in your primary focus. By turn ~200 you'll be reaching the best part of the content, near the end of the Classical; you'll be unlocking the 2.5 Pantheon units and the 3s in certain regular Foci, and you'll have a couple minor gods. By turn ~250ish you'll start to reach level 4 in your primary, where the effects start to get REALLY powerful, and you'll be reaching your third minor god.

But at that point, things'll start to cause problems. The last truly big religious boosts are at Monotheism and Heresy (early Medieval techs), which are at the same tech level as Civil Service, Theology, Engineering, and Metal Casting, all full of useful things.
Then around turn 300 you'll hit Apostasy, the sole mid-Medieval religious tech, which is the first tech with a negative religious bonus (slowing down the growth of your Minor Foci slightly), and it's at the same tech level as Currency, Compass, Machinery, and Physics so the mundane parts of your empire will begin to dominate. (What's the point of adding a Wealth god when you can just build Markets in every city?) Apostasy is also the tech at which you unlock the Enlightenment, which allows you to end the Mythological content, removing the inherent penalties. You don't HAVE to build it right away, but it's not too much longer before you'll want to.
Near turn 350 you'll reach the last tier of the Medieval techs, which have Iconoclasm (which has a LARGE downside, in that it lowers the Minor Focus level cap by 1 in all cities, but it boosts your Secondary up to level 3/4), Education (Universities), Chivalry and Steel. Knights and Longswords are strong enough to make most of the Myth units obsolete, other than the very few level 4s you'll have. And Iconoclasm adds the Inquisition national wonder, which effectively turns all of your mundane units into Heroes by giving them a bonus against Myth units, so there's no longer a massive advantage for heavy Myth units.
And by turn 400ish, you'll be in the Renaissance, which has only one religious tech (Deism), a tech that reduces religious growth rates. And it's at the same tier as Astronomy, Banking, Printing Press, and Gunpowder, so you'll REALLY want to be removing the Mythology penalty by that point, since you'll be going on an expansion spree. (Remember, as long as the Mythology content exists, your Unhappiness-per-population is 1.5 instead of 1.2, which prevents you from going on the traditional Astronomy-based Settler binge.)

So that's the idea. A gradual buildup, a "golden age" (in the original sense) where mythological content dominates, a brief period where the religious content starts to become less desirable, a "dark age" where religion causes more problems than it solves, and then the Enlightenment that snaps you back to the standard Civ5 gameplay. The turn numbers I gave above are my targets, and I'm just starting to balance the mod to meet those goals, but it should give you a good idea for how long it's expected to last.

Now, 400 turns is a long time. In vanilla Civ5, that's how long it's expected to take you to reach the end of the tech tree, and even with my Balance mod changes (most of which are now in the Empires mod) that'd normally be enough to get you well into the Industrial. My big worry, here, is that the mythological content will be TOO dominant, to where the game's effectively over by the time you enter the Renaissance. Doing that sort of thing is pretty much guaranteed to make my other two Content mods useless.

 

[CivOasis]

Looking at my posts from last night, I'd say the Cadejo might actually be a decent option for travel.

 

[Scrambles]

That's cool, I ask my questions with my usual ignorance of how difficult these things are to implement
I thought , though, that the ability to select both the start and end era would be particularly useful for the Ages mod as one might wish to restrict a specific game to a single content mod, given how the three are quite clearly separated into specific eras. All sounds great, anyway. Look forward to trying it out.

On another point, will a hero be able to stack with standard units in the same way as a great person or are they each their own combat unit... or both depending on the hero?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Looking at my posts from last night, I'd say the Cadejo might actually be a decent option for travel.

Reading up on it on Wikipedia, yes, it'd work well for Travel. Traveler-oriented, adds a bit of flavor I like with the whole drunk aspect, and according to the stories is really tough (if not impossible) to kill. The major concern is that it's not really "mythology", it's just regular folklore. As in, more of a Paul Bunyan thing than a Cerberus thing, and from what I can tell it's only a recent legend (which'd make it strange to see them alongside swordsmen and such).
I'm already using some non-mythology creatures like the Vampire, but stories about those have been around far longer (almost a thousand years now); I'm okay with having the occasional recent myths represented, but I don't want to add TOO many recent legends, especially if they're ones most people have heard of. (No chupacabras, please.) The Cadejo is right on the borderline, so I'll probably use it unless I can find something better.

 

[CivOasis]

Yeah, I generally tried to stay away from folklore (the only other exception was the Encantando, which I really didn't care for, but I only had one other myth listed for that category).
I tried to choose more exotic options, so I didn't even bother looking at European or Asian legends, but I had trouble with travel and (surprisingly) healing.
Or so I thought at the time, I'm really not sure what possessed me to list the Cadejo under seasons...
Basically, from the list I posted earlier, the best options (IMO) are:
Fertility: Ao Ao
Healing: Mapinguari. Although, personally, I think putting the Phoenix here would be good, with something new at death.
Travel: Cadejo
Art: Dirawong
Seasons: Chindi

Basically, I just went through wikipedia's list, and chose whatever seemed to work...

 

[Spatzimaus]

That's cool, I ask my questions with my usual ignorance of how difficult these things are to implement

Implementing it would be pretty easy; it's the balancing of it all that's hard. The easiest way to ensure that mythological content doesn't completely dominate the game is to have its effects taper off at some point. What I'm trying to do, in terms of balance, is make it so that you're specialized-but-weak early on, then less specialized in the middle but with a nice, wide variety of bonuses adding up to a large total, and as you approach the end you're powerful-but-specialized.

Every player is going to suffer in a number of ways from remaining in the Myth Age (food, production, research, gold, culture, happiness, militarily...) and I want it to reach a point where your massive level 4 bonuses barely offset two or three of those issues. Early on you can live with that, but as cities begin to specialize it'll start to really add up; no matter how much production you gain from having Hephaestus as your major god, it won't be enough to make up for the inability to grow your cities and expand your empire.

I thought , though, that the ability to select both the start and end era would be particularly useful for the Ages mod as one might wish to restrict a specific game to a single content mod, given how the three are quite clearly separated into specific eras.

Believe me, it's something I'm worrying about. By their very natures, the Mythology and Ascension mods are going to be almost mutually exclusive; it's going to be extremely unlikely that a game starting with mythological content will remain competitive long enough to reach the future content. While the Empires mod mostly falls between them chronologically, its changes will spill over in both directions a bit, so it's less of an issue there.

On another point, will a hero be able to stack with standard units in the same way as a great person or are they each their own combat unit... or both depending on the hero?

They're their own combat units. They have to be, since their primary purpose is to counter the powerful Myth units.
Take Achilles, for example (as he's the only Hero I've fully added at the moment): he's a Swordsman, which normally have strength 11 and require an Iron. Achilles is strength 13, requires no resource (since you can't TRAIN heroes) and starts with four promotions: Charge (+25% vs. Wounded units), Volley (+25% vs. Fortified units), Siege (+25% vs. cities), and Hero (+50% vs. Myth units but generates no Great General points). Also, since you don't train heroes they don't get the starting XP from the Barracks and such, but they'll gain XP as if they were a level 0 start, meaning you only need 10 XP to get his fifth promotion and another 20 for the sixth. I might change that last part by artificially setting the Heroes' starting level to 2 or 3, which'd make it extremely unlikely that you'd ever gain more than one promotion for each Hero.

Now, that still sounds powerful. And for the Classical era, he really is, especially since his +50% means that he'll be able to counter all but the strongest Myth units without help. But is he better than a strength 16 Longswordman, especially one that starts with 20-30 XP (or that was upgraded from a Swordsman that had acquired plenty of XP)? Especially once you build the Crusade and Inquisition national wonders (which add +10% and +25% against Myth units, respectively, along with their other benefits)?

That's why I won't make any Great General-type Heroes; they wouldn't have that automatic obsolescence. When you get your first Hero they'll be the strongest thing you have, and will be the only thing that keeps you from being overrun by cheap Myth units. During the Classical Era they'll be going toe-to-toe with the moderate Myth units. But once you hit the Medieval and start fielding Dragons and such, it gets dicey for them, and when you get to the point where Knights and Longswords are the popular weapons then they'll take over the Myth-killing role. (A few Foci specialize in Myth-killing or Myth-boosting effects, so this isn't going to be a universal thing, but that's the general idea.)

 

[Spatzimaus]

but I had trouble with travel and (surprisingly) healing.

It's not surprising to me, any more. Very few mythologies emphasized healing, knowledge, arts, or crafting; it was generally all about war, death, storms, the sun, and agriculture. Most pantheons had multiple death gods, which was why I added Darkness as a second pseudo-Death focus. Similarly, Storms is sort of a double for Air, while Seasons, Plants, and Animals all overlap thematically with Fertility.

That's why the ones like Healing are the least-represented Foci, with only 3 out of the 7 pantheons even HAVING a God of Healing. Well, if you want to count really minor gods the number is higher; the Greeks had Asclepius as a healing god, but he's not one of the 13 Olympians, so he wasn't included in the mod. Most others were that way; while a mythology might include a healing-type god, they'd often be so minor that I couldn't justify putting them on the same level as the others.

Healing: Mapinguari. Although, personally, I think putting the Phoenix here would be good, with something new at death.

The Phoenix was a tough call. In a lot of ways it WOULD fit better as a Healing-related creature, but a few things made me put it in Death:
1> I didn't want to make Death be too doom-and-gloom. Zombies, Mummies, Vampires. In many mythologies the "death" god was actually a good guy, the caretaker of the peaceful afterlife or at least the impartial judge. Although, the exact seven Death gods I've picked are basically all negative (with Hades being the nicest of the bunch). Take the Egyptians; Osiris really should have been the Death god, but I needed to fit Anubis in somewhere, and I couldn't shift either to Darkness because Nephthys was already there.
Regardless, the Phoenix represented the "good" side of death, the rebirth aspect.
2> I wanted the Healing 4 creature, if any, to be something with a healing aura (heals all adjacent friendly units by 1 each turn); I was already adding rules for that effect, because every level 3 Healing temple does that for cities. The Phoenix really didn't fit that ability.
3> Level 4 creatures only unlock if you have that Focus as one of the two given by your central deity. Four major gods have Death as a Focus (Hades, Shiva, and Anu as their primary, Tezcatlipoca as his secondary), but only one major god, Isis, has Healing at all. The other two Healing gods are minor gods, who'll never reach level 4.
Now, given that the Phoenix was mostly an Egyptian myth, that's a pretty strong argument that it SHOULD link to Isis. But it'd mean that you'd only rarely see a Phoenix in-game, while whatever I replace it with would be four times as common.
(Similarly, the Seasons, Art, Beauty, and Knowledge Foci will only ever reach level 4 for one god out of the 28, which explains why I left these ones until last.)

 

[CivOasis]

Well, in that case, I really didn't find anything remotely along the lines of a "healing aura". Quite a few that were impervious to conventional assault, and some that had the complete opposite of a healing aura. Basically, of the three I suggested:
Mapinguari - it's an old indigenous legend, that survived until relatively recently (maybe still modern, don't recall at the moment). Basically, it's a bullet-proof Megatherium, so, not healing, but somewhat along the lines.
Nightmarchers - Hawai'ian warrior ghosts, occasionally guide people to the afterlife. Honestly, more of a death thing than a healing one.
Kushtaka - Native American otter-men (shapeshifters). There are two very different versions of the legend. In one, they save people from dying of the cold, by turning them into another Kushtaka. Obviously, not always a good thing, but still. Alternately, though, they lure people into the cold, rip them to shreds, then turn them into a Kushtaka. Not remotely a good thing.

 

[CivOasis]

As another note - I'm currently fighting a full-out war (my second one) in the ancient/classical era. That would be a lot of favor, honestly.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, in that case, I really didn't find anything remotely along the lines of a "healing aura". Quite a few that were impervious to conventional assault, and some that had the complete opposite of a healing aura.

I'm not saying that it's 100% definite that it MUST have that effect. Just that it's an effect I'd like to add, and that the Healing 4 creature would be the obvious candidate. If need be, I'll add a unit at Healing 3 as well and give IT the ability, but I'd prefer not to add even more Myth units. (Seriously, I'm at 61 now, with most players being able to build MAYBE a dozen types in the course of a game, with most never getting past six or seven.)

A creature with Regeneration 2 (that's the "heal everything each turn" version) could be appropriate for Healing 4, but I have to say, regeneration is already VERY common in this mod's Myth creatures. A creature with this wouldn't really stand out.

Nightmarchers - Hawai'ian warrior ghosts, occasionally guide people to the afterlife. Honestly, more of a death thing than a healing one.

Shade (Darkness 2). A few of the creatures I've added to the Foci are ones that are meant to be generic enough to represent similar units from other mythologies; nearly every society had a ghost-equivalent of some kind. Granted, "Nightmarcher" is a great name, but it's like our earlier Nidhogg/Mizuchi/Mushussu/Dragon discussion; while I'm willing to add those specialized variants as Pantheon Units, I wouldn't want to add them to the Focus units unless they were truly distinct from what I already have.

Now, you'll notice that Darkness has units at 2, 3, and 4 but no level 1s. I COULD add one more Darkness unit, as long as its stats were different than the Shade and Rakshasa. But there's one additional limit: all Darkness creatures get the Anti-Myth promotion (+25% vs. Myth units). In the AoM campaign, the Shade units were your scouts in the underworld (the only units whose visibility wasn't greatly reduced), and could instakill a target Myth unit by sacrificing itself. While I toned that last part down a bit, the anti-Myth ability is sort of Darkness' specialty.

Kushtaka - Native American otter-men (shapeshifters). There are two very different versions of the legend.

Pretty similar to the Rakshasa (Darkness 3), although maybe mixed with the Vampire (Death 3), depending on which version of the story you use. Rakshasas are the "shapeshifter" unit, with the Doppelganger's ability to steal promotions, and they also have a poisonous attack. Now, the "Venom" promotion, despite its name, does not automatically mean poison. I basically added a "slow" Damage-over-Time effect called "Disease" (average: 2 damage over 6 turns, plus your normal healing is reduced), and a "fast" DoT called "Venom" (average: 2 damage over 3 turns). So that cold bit could be very similar to the fast DoT. Ergo, it's just the Rakshasa by another name, although if someone were to add an Inuit pantheon it wouldn't be the worst choice for a Pantheon unit.

As another note - I'm currently fighting a full-out war (my second one) in the ancient/classical era. That would be a lot of favor, honestly.

This is why, a while back, I asked people for exact numbers for how many combats they got into in these eras. Obviously, the numbers will change as I stretch out the first three eras, but I need a ballpark value to balance around.

The thing to remember, though, is your choice of Pantheon. If you take a combat-heavy group like the Norse or Aztecs, then you'll generate three times as much Battle Favor as someone who takes one of the two combat-light ones (Shinto or Sumerian). And yes, that'll allow you to unlock new Minor gods very quickly during early wars, and upgrade your religious buildings as soon as you unlock the new levels.
But that's not really a good thing; if you depend on Battle Favor, then it's very easy to get trapped, where you're not in a war and so can't generate enough Favor to keep your buildings upgrading or add new minor gods. And if you're not upgrading these, then you're not getting the powerful unit promotions and Myth units. Building Favor, while the slowest, is the most consistent; a Pantheon that focuses on that method might not generate as much as a warlike group on a good day, but it'll never have a BAD game.

You actually saw this in the Age of Mythology game. The Greeks could generate Favor pretty quickly, by having one or two workers pray at the temple, and the Egyptians just generated it automatically at a slow rate by building five different monuments, but since you weren't constantly spending Favor, it wouldn't take long before you were gaining more than you'd ever need. The Atlanteans (expansion disk) were like the Egyptians, but with Town Centers generating the Favor automatically. And then there were the Norse, who'd ONLY gain Favor through battle. So what'd happen often in the campaign was, you'd be Norse, playing defensively (since in campaign missions you always started at a huge disadvantage), and your Favor wouldn't really budge. Without Favor, you couldn't make Myth units or buy certain upgrades. And then you'd have one big battle, generate more Favor than you could store, you'd buy all the stuff you needed, and you'd be back at zero again. But without that battle, you were hosed.

I'm trying not to have it be quite so absolute, hence the 3/2/1 splits, but that's the general idea. There's a second wrinkle as well: Building Favor, from Temples and such, is split across all Foci within a city. So the more minor gods you follow, the less Favor each gets; post-Monotheism, minor gods become less important despite you having even more of them, so reducing the growth of the Primary and Secondary isn't a good thing.

That is, let's say we're in the Classical, at a point where Primary growth is 4, Secondary growth is 3, and Minor growth is 2.
If I only follow one minor god, then 4/9ths of my Building Favor goes to my primary focus, 3/9ths to the secondary, and 2/9ths to the minor. So a Temple that generates 4 Favor per turn is adding ~2 to my primary. (Assuming a x2 for buildings, which the Aztecs have. Norse are only x1.)
But if I follow four minor gods, because I unlocked them earlier through a glut of Battle Favor, then only 4/15ths go to my primary (just over 1 point per turn for a Temple), 3/15ths to the secondary, and 2/15th to each minor. The total's the same, but it still slows down the growth of the shrines that matter most to me, my Primary and Secondary.

Battle Favor splits as well, although it's an even split there. So if you follow one minor god, then 1/3rd of the points go to your primary, 1/3rd to secondary, and 1/3rd to the minor. But with four minors, everyone gets one-sixth instead. Priest Favor doesn't split; it ALL goes to whatever focus' building the priest was working in, so it doesn't enter into this as much, but even there, number of minor gods matters (since you'll never have cities large enough to support six priest specialists). So again, a glut of early Favor from battles isn't necessarily a good thing.

 

[CivOasis]

Ah, ok.
Can't say I'm a fan of the "generic" units, I'd rather use units from unrepresented mythologies, but, since that's a flavor thing, doesn't really matter.
Interesting balance from the favor, too.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Can't say I'm a fan of the "generic" units, I'd rather use units from unrepresented mythologies, but, since that's a flavor thing, doesn't really matter.

In a perfect world, every pantheon would have its own suite of units, and the mod is already structured in a way that'd make that an easy thing to do, at least in terms of the XML. But there's a basic limitation in terms of artwork; as it is I'm not going to find workable unit models for even half of my non-Pantheon units. That's why so many of the units are "generic"; if they're units drawn from traditional fantasy, it's far more likely that I can find 3D models from Civ4. Now, I still have quite a few unusual choices in the Focus myth units, like the Rakshasa or Tiamat, so it's not all completely generic, but I don't want to pile too many unusual ones in.

Besides, beyond a certain point it doesn't matter what the unit looks like or what name it has; it all comes down to the abilities I give them in the code. There's a practical limit to just how many unusual abilities I can do, at least for now, so the number of combinations is finite. For instance, if I have one level 2 myth unit that has the Stun ability and a ranged attack, I really don't need a second one. If I could make seven of those, and have each one tie to a specific pantheon, then sure, it'd work, but what if I can only come up with 6?

Now, one possibility is to basically copy the UU system. Make it so that the Egyptians get better Animals units than the other six pantheons. But that has some serious balance issues in terms of which gods you pick, so I'd have to be very careful with this one. I'd rather just use the Pantheon Unit setup I've got in there now, where each pantheon has three extra tech-limited units instead.

Interesting balance from the favor, too.

I still have to find out how well it plays out in practice. There's a fourth Favor mechanism, the Base growth value (which depends only on which technologies you've taken and is never split across gods), so even if you make the absolute worst choice for pantheon, it still shouldn't hurt you too badly. You'll still get your Shrines and Churches in a reasonable amount of time, or at least that's the hope.

What I still need to find out, from actual play with the mod, are:
> Whether people (and by "people" I include the AI) use Priest specialists, and if so, how many they can generally afford to pull away from more productive purposes
> The best case and worst case for Favor generation on any given turn. Best case probably being a combat-heavy Norse game, worst case being an Aztec game with no early wars.
> Whether the reductions in culture, production, etc. are too crippling. For instance, right now I cripple Happiness in three ways:
1: Reduce the base Happiness value from 9 to 6.
2: Increase population unhappiness by 25% (1.2 -> 1.5 per)
3: Reduce luxury Happiness by 1 (from 4 per down to 3)
I really don't need all three, and even two might be a bit excessive; you can take the Beauty focus, or the Piety brach of the policies, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds. But I need to see, in practice, how hard it is to expand well. And, more specifically, how well the AI deals with these issues.

 

[CivOasis]

Well, if these penalties are the ones in the existing mods (and I'm using 1.08), then they're pretty strict, I'm getting pounded by unhappiness in the classical era.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, if these penalties are the ones in the existing mods (and I'm using 1.08), then they're pretty strict, I'm getting pounded by unhappiness in the classical era.

These'd be on TOP of the existing 1.08 penalties (base city unhappiness increased from 3 to 4, population from 1.0 to 1.2). Just remember that those unhappiness increases are basically offset by a number of additional +1 Happiness buildings (Temple, Aqueduct, Sewer System, Recycling Center, Monastery, Mint), so it's not as severe as it looks, as long as you're developing your cities. Similarly, you'll offset THESE unhappiness increases primarily through Priest specialists, who add 1 Happiness apiece (plus 1 point of Food, and 3/6/9 Favor) just like the Empaths do in the future eras.

As your cities grow, they'll need even more Priests to offset the quickly growing unhappiness, which'll generate Favor even faster, which'll unlock even more gods and upgrade your existing ones faster. Many of those gods will boost tile yields (especially those with certain resources) or provide gold/food/etc. directly, which'll mean you'll be capable of diverting even more citizens to be Priests instead of working tiles. Lather, rinse, repeat; this tradeoff is the core of the Mythology mod's design. If I didn't increase the unhappiness, then the AI would never bother using Priests and would get stuck at low Favor.

And yes, it's supposed to be strict, at least at first. The point is that with these changes, you just won't be able to expand like you could before. You'll be forced to slow down and not just churn out Settlers as fast as possible to grab all of the best sites, which was something the AI never handled well. This, in turn, means that the Barbarians are not as much of a pushover in the vanilla game, where they quickly become irrelevant as the continents fill up with cities; at the moment I'm not changing what kinds of units the Barbarians use (no Barb myth units for now), but that could be changed in the future to make them even harder to ignore.

Now, it's possible that the Priests just aren't enough to offset this unhappiness, that there's just no way to divert that many workers into Priest slots without utterly crippling yourself. So I've been looking into other ways to improve the process. For instance:
> Imagine an Ancient Era national wonder that gives +1 happiness per city, but that disappears once you end the Enlightenment.
> Or even simpler: if a Church gives +1 Happiness, Cathedral +2, and Basilica +3, then you'll see an automatic increase in happiness as your cities get more religious, and those are DESIGNED to go away at the Enlightenment. (One possibility is to make this Policy-based, such that you don't get these Happiness boosts until you complete a certain project.)

 

[CivOasis]

I don't know, I play on Marathon, and it's not too fun suffering through the ancient and early classical era when your neighbor is the most powerful military in the world, and you're pulling off -7-9 happiness.

For relevance, this is YNAEMP, and I'm Spain, stuck on the Iberian Peninsula, in a war against France.