[BtS] DIPLOMACY: a mod for Diplogames!

[The Almighty dF]

Do you mean the Celtic Civ will be divided into many different tribes?(As well as the native American Civ?)

Native Americans are already split up, for the most part. I think Capo's planning on doing a native module pack later on with the Enuits and a few others? (Hoping for Cherokee, I grew up really close to Cherokee NC and went there all the time, go I really got into their history and culture.)

What he's talking about here though is that he's going over some of the current civs and giving them more of a unique unit set. I'd imagine (and kinda hope) he'll keep the Celts as one civ.

 

[The Capo]

Capo. Curious, what do you think of the Richard the Lionheart LH in Civ Gold?

I haven't seen it yet, I've been busy and intend on doing a lot of civ stuff today. I was under the impression that Civ Gold was for 3.17 though. I am not exactly sure what to do for England. As of right now my intention is to keep the leaders they currently have and reskin Henry VIII's clothing so he and Charles V don't share attire. Although I have seen a Richard LH before, but its the one with the helmet on, if its the same one I most likely will not be using it. It looks cool, but it wouldn't be the vibe I'd want if I were to make my own Richard LH, and that's generally how I approach LHs.

As far as the Celtic thing goes; I am not going to break up the Celts into tribes. At one point I was thinking of making a Gaul Civ, but its a little pointless and even then the Gauls were also fragmented. And that is what the Romans called them anyway, so it would be like if the Native Americans (which is bad enough IMO as a Civ) were called "Indians." So no I won't be making different Celtic civs, although they will be pretty well represented. The French ancient set is going to look Gallic-Celtic, I think the Spanish and Portuguese units Bakuel is planning on making are going to be based on Celtiberian units, and as I've said before I am using Briton-Celts for Englands ancient set. So while there won't be different Celtic civs, the swath of Celtic culture will be represented in my mod quite well. I hope that helps or is encouraging to you.

 

[The Almighty dF]

I haven't seen it yet, I've been busy and intend on doing a lot of civ stuff today. I was under the impression that Civ Gold was for 3.17 though. I am not exactly sure what to do for England. As of right now my intention is to keep the leaders they currently have and reskin Henry VIII's clothing so he and Charles V don't share attire. Although I have seen a Richard LH before, but its the one with the helmet on, if its the same one I most likely will not be using it. It looks cool, but it wouldn't be the vibe I'd want if I were to make my own Richard LH, and that's generally how I approach LHs.

As far as the Celtic thing goes; I am not going to break up the Celts into tribes. At one point I was thinking of making a Gaul Civ, but its a little pointless and even then the Gauls were also fragmented. And that is what the Romans called them anyway, so it would be like if the Native Americans (which is bad enough IMO as a Civ) were called "Indians." So no I won't be making different Celtic civs, although they will be pretty well represented. The French ancient set is going to look Gallic-Celtic, I think the Spanish and Portuguese units Bakuel is planning on making are going to be based on Celtiberian units, and as I've said before I am using Briton-Celts for Englands ancient set. So while there won't be different Celtic civs, the swath of Celtic culture will be represented in my mod quite well. I hope that helps or is encouraging to you.

Yeah, it's the helmet one. Though he takes it off. I understand if you prefer sticking with Henry VIII, though. Both offer a fairly unique playstyle to England (one culture favoring Machiavellian, the other a warmongering zealot)
I just like the added bonus of having a Richard I vs Saladin fight. One step closer to a full on Crusades game.

 

[MadmanOfALeader]

Not to mention he's a fan of The Tudors, so Henry it is.

 

[The Capo]

LOL, yeah I am a fan of the Tudors. How'd you know that?

Anyway I'm hitting nothing but brick walls today! I wanted to get Askia released today but I'm having trouble figuring out this arm issue. I'm also having trouble getting CivChecker to check the XML I've done so far so I can get rid of that damned CTD error. I wanted to avoid putting in new flavored sets until I got that solved so it seems a lot is on hold for now. Unfortunately.

Hopefully Ekmek and Deanej can help me figure out how to get this stuff solved pretty quickly so I can commence with the mod. In the interim I've been looking around at modcomps to add to this. The main goal, as always, is to maintain the general gameplay of Civ IV while still adding cool features that don't throw off balance and strategy too much. I'm kind of thinking of adding the UN Peacekeeper modcomp, but I just want to make sure it will work to my specs. Either way I won't be adding new modcomps until the base mod is finished so I can make sure everything is working properly.

 

[IgorS]

Capo, if you are interested, I am checking all the city lists of all the vanilla civs in the game. I don't know if you made any changes/additions to vanilla city lists for your mod, but I am currently doing it for my game. If you are interested, I can share the final result with you by posting my new changed xml files here. So far I did a few changes already. Using Wikipedia and Google Earth I try to find all the cities in the game and erase stuff I can't find anywhere or change stuff that are incorrect. Today I already changed a few city names for China since some of them are actually provinces, not cities (Shandong is one example).
So, if you are interested, tell me.

 

[MadmanOfALeader]

I asked him to add Dubai and Gaza for the Arabic civ once. I think looking at recent history, they should be added.

I wonder if Jeddah is on the official Firaxis list, too...

 

[IgorS]

I asked him to add Dubai and Gaza for the Arabic civ once. I think looking at recent history, they should be added.

I wonder if Jeddah is on the official Firaxis list, too...

No, it is not. I will change a few thing it the Arab list. What do you think, should Bukhara, Merw, Shiraz and Fez remain in the list?
I already added the following cities:
Tripoli
Tunis
Kairouan
Algiers
Oran
Tangier
Casablanca
Marrakech
Amman
Riyadh
Beirut
Haleb
Rabat
Aqaba
I definitely will add a few more instead of the Persian cities I want to delete. Gaza, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Manama, Doha, Al-Kuwait and Ramallah should go in.

 

[MadmanOfALeader]

Also the Brazilian cities should be removed from Portugal's city list. We already have Brazil itself as a civ.

I suspect you've added a bunch of cities to Russia, Igor...

 

[The Capo]

I certainly would like to see your lists when you are finished, and I agree that the Brazilian cities should be removed from Portugal's list. I'm sure there are plenty of Portuguese city names we can add to their list.

 

[IgorS]

Well, removing the non Portugal-located cities was one of the first things I did when I got BTS.
And to your question about the Russian cities- not only I added tons of new ones, I also rearranged the list so it will look more logical. It seemed really odd to me that Yakutsk, for example, was seventh(!) in the list. WHY??? I don't mean to offend any Yakuts who might be reading this, but why is Yakutsk put before Smolensk, Orenburg, Krasnoyarsk, Kursk, Voronezh, Perm' and even Vladivostok? It is like putting Honolulu in front of Dallas, Savannah, Chicago, Baltimore... you got the point.
Yesterday I began researching the Egyptian city list. I found out that there are lots of cities that are mentioned twice under different names (Kahun and El-Lahun is one example), so I already did some changes.

 

[The Capo]

Well, removing the non Portugal-located cities was one of the first things I did when I got BTS.
And to your question about the Russian cities- not only I added tons of new ones, I also rearranged the list so it will look more logical. It seemed really odd to me that Yakutsk, for example, was seventh(!) in the list. WHY??? I don't mean to offend any Yakuts who might be reading this, but why is Yakutsk put before Smolensk, Orenburg, Krasnoyarsk, Kursk, Voronezh, Perm' and even Vladivostok? It is like putting Honolulu in front of Dallas, Savannah, Chicago, Baltimore... you got the point.
Yesterday I began researching the Egyptian city list. I found out that there are lots of cities that are mentioned twice under different names (Kahun and El-Lahun is one example), so I already did some changes.

Actually when it comes to Egypt I think it would be better to rename all of the Arab-named cities to their original ancient Egyptian names.

 

[IgorS]

Actually when it comes to Egypt I think it would be better to rename all of the Arab-named cities to their original ancient Egyptian names.

Actually the names are more Egyptian than Arab. I didn't really find real Arab names in the list. Also, the names of Egyptian cities are mostly Greek.
Here's my new Egyptian list, see for yourself:

Spoiler :

Egyptians
Thebes
Memphis
Giza
Alexandria
Heliopolis
Elephantine
Avaris
Pithom
Akhetaten
Nekhen
Abydos
Asyut
Lisht
Buto
Edfu
Busiris
Kahun
Athribis
Mendes
El-Ashmunein
Tanis
Bubastis
This
Sebennytus
Akhmim
El-Kab
Armant
Balat
Hawara
Dashur
Damanhur
Merimde
Abusir
Herakleopolis
Akoris
Hebenu
Tasa
Badari
Hermopolis
Amrah
Negade
Koptos
Hermonthis
Ombos
Aniba
Semna
Amara

 

[lsypeter]

Brazil as a civilization?Sounds brilliant!Do you mean that we can see some of the civs from the 3.17 extra pack in the 3.19 mods?
By the way,how about the Holy Roman Empire?Will it be divided into many empires?

 

[IgorS]

Following civs are already done: Americans, Arabs, Aztecs, English, French, Chinese, Egyptians, Russians. I am going faster than expected! Capo, I am sure I will finish all the civs really soon.

 

[The Capo]

Awesome work man, because of this I am going to try and get Askia finished for you. So I'm taking a break from flavoring (I have half of the civs flavored, although I am going to make final touches at the end) to add him to the game mainly to see what he looks like in-game before I release him and also to put in some of the new diplomacy texts, which means I have to find Madman's Diplotexts for Askia (if he made them, I don't remember).

And yes, Brazil will be a civ in the deluxe edition of the mod which should be out soon after the original release. The only new civs in the original release will be the Iroquois, Sioux (replacing the Native Americans), Israel, Polynesia, and the Franks (which should answer the Holy Roman Empire question, as they will be replacing the Holy Roman Empire). I am going to release the mod and then release the scheduled module packs, so there will be a bunch of new civs you can use too. Once I get those finalized I will plug them into the base mod, with a few extra features, and that will comprise the Deluxe Edition of Diplomacy 2.

Every modular civ I have made for the original mod will be available as civs for the new mod with some additions (Huns, Chile, etc.), its just a matter of time that's all.

 

[IgorS]

Awesome work man, because of this I am going to try and get Askia finished for you.

Thanks, but as much as I would like Askia... You know what LH I REALLY want to see... The one I started and gave you to finish. Any news on Tamerlane?
And I didn't come with nothing! Since we're both using Civ Gold's Idriss as Harun al-Rashid I decided to fix him a little so he'll look more like an "Arabian Night" king. I also gave him Suleiman's animation because Zara Yaqob's looked silly. So, what do you say on this?

 

[MadmanOfALeader]

I don't think I made some for Askia...

And I think I will change Ogedei Khan's text. I'll use the one I had for Attila instead. He's (well, commonly regarded to be) more of a ruthless barbarian than him.

 

[The Capo]

Bad news on Askia/Tamerlane for the moment. I apparently have yet to grasp the intricacies that is the latest Blender, if you really want to see how far the Capo has fallen you can check out Ekmek's tutorial, I posted what the result of my work on Askia was, its pretty bad so prepare yourself.

I will learn though, I learned Blender with no technical knowlege at all so I'm sure I'll grasp this one eventually. I have great "stuff" made for Tamerlane though; an awesome helmet, and some more Turkic/Mongolian looking armor for him to don as well, but I am still going to use your base model. If you could bear with me for a few days (weeks? ) he'll be ready to go. As far as Harun goes I am going to alter him quite a bit to make him look a little more regal and ornate, although the same base will be used (Idris). I also like your BG much better than the one I had originally.

On a more positive front; Bakuel is going to help me out with some of the Assyrian and Phoenician units, while he isn't going to make a whole set for me he is going to give me a lot of things to work with so I can put them together myself and make them look more unique. As a fan of ancient middle-eastern history I am really looking forward to my Hittite, Assyrian and Phoenician civs. In fact one of the mini-scenarios I have planned for the Deluxe edition of my mod is going to be an ancient near-east scenario. It won't be set to necessarily accomplish a certain goal but you will start out with different civs on a map with some minor nations thrown in. The civs will be Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, Hatti, Minoans, Israel, Nubia and Egypt. Just to clarify, it won't be that in-depth in that it will use the regular game engine of my mod, so there won't be any special religions or units added, but I still think it will be a fun little wargame to play. There are a few others I have planned that will be similar, and I am going to try and recruit a few of the scenario makers out there to make a few world map scenarios for me too, which I think will be pretty fun and increase the replay value of my mod.

@ Madman; don't worry about Askia just yet, I still have a lot to learn on this new Blender program, and right now I can't say with any certainty when I will get him finished, although I am going to try my quickest. Having said that a lot of the LHs are going to have to be delayed. Which basically means that it won't be until after the base mod is finished (and sent to you guys to playtest) that the new LHs will be added. So when you get the beta version for playtesting the only new leaders added will be ones either already made (like Logan, Hiawatha, Basil etc.) or ones that are still works in progress but are useable (like Kamehameha). I think the best thing for me to do at this point is to get the base mod finished with as many LHs as I have finished and get the beta out to you guys to playtest for me. This will result in a quicker playtesting period but will also help me see things I may not have noticed on my own.

 

[riddleofsteel]

Anywhere else to download this? The filefront link seems to have snuffed it.