Ancient World Mod [Brainstorming]

[thecrazyscot]

I'm planning on creating an Ancient World mod for Civ 6 with the intent to essentially create an experience balanced and paced similarly to the vanilla game, albeit shorter. A fairly baseline Ancient World mod would additionally create a great platform for others to create more specialized or in depth mods.

The core tech/civic trees and governments/policies I will (hopefully) be able to do on my own.

For civilizations I'm hoping to integrate a variety of user-made civs rather than creating my own, perhaps through compatibility files within my own mod.

These are what I will not be able to do on my own:

• Building modelling. There are several buildings which I would like to implement, but if every building requires a model I will not be able to do so. Even if they don't, including a building model would be excellent.
• Unit modelling. In order to create a fuller game experience, new units will be required to flesh out unit trees. This is not necessarily required for first versions of a mod, but will definitely be required for a fuller experience.
• Resource modelling. Sensing a common theme here?
• Coding. I can do XML/SQL, but whatever programming language Firaxis uses for Civ 6 (be it Lua or whatever) I know very little about, so features requiring coding I will not be able to create. This is of course assuming Firaxis actually allows us to easily edit the database, otherwise I will be much more useless than I thought.

I would love to work collaboratively with people on this mod, even for the things I'd be able to do on my own. I think things become a bit better balanced with additional input.

Planning Google spreadsheet

The spreadsheet includes a very rough draft of the mod tech and civic trees. They're not long enough to meet my goal (although the civic tree is closer), but I'm finding it a bit difficult to decide what to put in the Civic tech tree vs the Science tech tree.

(EDIT: updated the tech/civic trees to V2)

Current tech count: 35 45
Current civic count: 37 43

This is compared to the vanilla counts (68 techs and 50 civics).

Any comments/suggestions on the tech/civic trees? I think these are the most important things to get drafts of first as everything else seems to follow them.

If this thread is at all successful other elements of course will be discussed.

 

[Brackenspore]

I would like to see Alchemy tech.
Alchemy
Resources Revealed:Coal, Oil, Saltpeter.
Worker Actions Allowed: Oil Well
Oil Well: yields +1 production, +1 faith, +1 science
Coal, Oil, Saltpeter: yield +1 production, +1 faith, +1 science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#History

 

[TRO]

Nice. The transition from hunter-gathers to early sedentary cultures, and then onward to larger, more complex societies has always been one of my favorite topics. I also tend to prefer the feel of the civ games up to the Medieval or Renaissance first before technology changes the warfare aspect of the game so dramatically.

A couple of comments for your tech/ civics tree. Feel free to disregard, of course. I understand some of suggestions might be hard to implement for gameplay reasons, and I'm mostly commenting on historicity of the (very) early trees. I don't mean to nitpick either, only to comment on the biggest things that jumped out at me.

Techs:

• Pottery predates agriculture by (tens of) thousands of years!
• Mining also began well before agriculture, although the goal was flint/pigments rather than metals.

Civics

• Alphabet should not be so early in the tree. At least go with hierographic/pictographs.
• Ceremonial burial is one of the earliest practices that humans invented, dating back at least 100,000 BP.
• Music was another middle palaeolithic innovation, considering we have evidence for bone flutes going back ~40,000 years.

If you intend to really stretch out the early game, I think it's a good idea to split up some of your techs a bit more more. For instance, horse domestication came thousands of years after cattle/sheep/pig domestication. You could make an animal husbandry tech, but also a horse domestication afterwards, and then horseback riding even later in the tree.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I would like to see Alchemy tech.

Alchemy is already in the tech tree

Nice. The transition from hunter-gathers to early sedentary cultures, and then onward to larger, more complex societies has always been one of my favorite topics. I also tend to prefer the feel of the civ games up to the Medieval or Renaissance first before technology changes the warfare aspect of the game so dramatically.

Same. I feel like the early game is by far the best paced and balanced. Plus ancient civ = best civ.

Techs:

• Pottery predates agriculture by (tens of) thousands of years!
• Mining also began well before agriculture, although the goal was flint/pigments rather than metals.

Good points. I've switched Pottery to the beginning. I'm going to keep Mining where it is just for the purposes of the tech tree...I think it makes it flow a bit better. I have it concurrent with Agriculture right now with the idea that intent is geared towards the mining of metals.

Civics

• Alphabet should not be so early in the tree. At least go with hierographic/pictographs.
• Ceremonial burial is one of the earliest practices that humans invented, dating back at least 100,000 BP.
• Music was another middle palaeolithic innovation, considering we have evidence for bone flutes going back ~40,000 years.

I've switched up the Civics tree a bit, these were some good suggestions. What do you think of it now?

If you intend to really stretch out the early game, I think it's a good idea to split up some of your techs a bit more more. For instance, horse domestication came thousands of years after cattle/sheep/pig domestication. You could make an animal husbandry tech, but also a horse domestication afterwards, and then horseback riding even later in the tree.

Another good suggestion. I've made some more changes to the tech tree.

 

[Manifold]

I think about taking Saladin LH temporarily as a placeholder for a Persian or Phrygian leader, or is this to obscure?

some time ago that was my idea of an ancient techtree:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-world-of-odysseus-beta.351036/page-3