Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

Hi,
I'm sorry if this bug has been already reported : i'm using the latest version of this mod but can't even start the game. i click on mods, i activate the 2 mods, and then click on "solo" but the games simply close.

No, no one's reported that. Sounds like a problem at your end. A few questions to diagnose it:

1> Have you ever edited any of the game's core files by hand?
2> Are you trying to load this at the same time as any other mods? (And I mean ANY other mods.)
3> Have you bought any DLC?
4> Have you verified the integrity of your game files through Steam? It's easy for a core game file to get corrupted.
5> Does FireTuner give any message when this happens, and/or the log files? (If you don't have these turned on, you should do that; the flags are in your config.ini file.)
6> Did you try re-downloading my mod and reinstalling it? Sometimes files get corrupted between CivFanatics and your computer.
7> Have you ever used a previous version of my mods? If so, make sure you delete the old directory in its entirety before installing the new version.
8> Have you tried loading just one of the two mods? They don't HAVE to be used together, and this would help track down the problem.
9> Do you have this problem with any other large-scale mods?

 

[LetMyPeopleGo]

Of the official Firaxis-provided maps, those are the only ones that aren't compatible.



I have no idea what "Continents Plus" is. It's not part of the core game, so you either downloaded it from someone else, or it's a DLC map. Either way, I can't tell you if it's compatible, but thankfully, you can easily check for yourself. Basically, a map script is incompatible if it includes something like this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
function AssignStartingPlots:GetMajorStrategicResourceQuantityValues()
	local uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt = 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;
	return uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt
end
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
function AssignStartingPlots:GetSmallStrategicResourceQuantityValues()
	local uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt = 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3;
	return uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt
end
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(The above is from the Great Plains map.)

These override parts of AssignStartingPlots that I'd changed to add my new resources. So if a map script overrides
GetMajorStrategicResourceQuantityValues,
GetSmallStrategicResourceQuantityValues,
PlaceStrategicAndBonusResources, or
PlaceSmallQuantitiesOfStrategics
then it won't be compatible, because it won't know how to place the Omnicytes, Dilithium, or Neutronium. Basically, my "compatible" versions of the map scripts are simply ones that remove the above routines from the map script, so that it'll use the version in my modified AssignStartingPlots instead.

Thanks for a detailed reply, indeed I found a DLC from Steam "DLC_SP_Maps" and it contains new maps:

Amazon.lua which is not good for your mod

and

ContinentsPlus.lua
Donut.lua
PangaeaPlus.lua
Sandstorm.lua

Which are good for your mod,

none of the good ones declare, override or even include any of the following:
GetMajorStrategicResourceQuantityValues,
GetSmallStrategicResourceQuantityValues,
PlaceStrategicAndBonusResources, or
PlaceSmallQuantitiesOfStrategics, so they are safe to be played with.

 

[Ianwill93]

I love egyptian mythology! When can We expect a date? Who are going to be the the gyptian gods? And Are all the civs going to be available?
Sorry for all the queStionS

 

[Spatzimaus]

When can We expect a date?

Well, first you find a girl, then you ask her to go out with you. If she says Yes, then you're on a date! Pretty simple, even for us nerds.

Serious answer: whenever it's done. There's a lot of art assets that I can leave off for now, but there's a lot of Lua coding to be done to get a workable interface. So it won't be playable for at least a month, probably more. The bottleneck right now, besides just my time in general, is that I have to figure out four sets of bonuses for each of the 21 Foci. (Okay, there are three foci that only need three sets, as no gods have those as primaries.)

It's also going to depend on two other factors:
> Whether there's anything in the AC mod that still needs to be done. For instance, the 3D unit models; I'm not going to drop all of that halfway through to work on a new mod. The existing mod takes priority.
> To make it work, I'm going to need to split the existing mods, as mentioned before, so that I end up with a total of 5 mods (Ascension, Empire, Mythology, Base, Balance), although I might merge the Empire and Balance together in the short term. That'll take a little time to get right; I'll probably have to spend a week just making sure that everything still works in the old mods under the new structure.

Who are going to be the the Egyptian gods?

The Egyptian Pantheon:
MAJOR: Ra (Animals/Plants), Isis (Fertility/Healing), Osiris (Justice/Water), and Set (Travel/Storms)
MINOR: Bast (Fire), Geb (Earth), Horus (Air), Ptah (Crafts), Anubis (Death), Thoth (Knowledge), Sekhmet (War), Hathor (Art), and Nephthys (Darkness)
MISSING: Beauty, Wealth, Seasons, and Balance
PRIMARY FAVOR METHOD: Buildings (x3 Favor from Monuments, Temples, and Colosseums)
SECONDARY FAVOR METHOD: Battle (x2 Favor from battles)
Comments: This pantheon is very polarized, especially if you pick Isis or Set; it's also missing a couple of the more powerful foci (Beauty and Wealth), and there's very little focus on the elemental foci, which tend to be about raw power (although this is not as severe as in the Hindu pantheon). Instead, it strongly emphasizes the more unusual foci.

And Are all the civs going to be available?

I'm not tying it to your choice of civ (except that I might make the AI prefer to go with the appropriate pantheon just for flavor). After all, which pantheon would be appropriate for America? And I'm not going to add dozens of pantheons; it's a lot of work to add even one.
So you'll be able to pick any of the 6-7 Pantheons for your civ at the start of the game, regardless of which civ you take. You can pair the Egyptian pantheon with the Chinese civ, or the Aztec pantheon with the Egyptian civ; I'm just not going to limit you in this way. Each Pantheon will have 4 major gods to choose from, so there should be more than enough combinations for those 6 or 7 to cover everyone.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, since almost none of the ~250 people who've downloaded 1.07 have commented, I guess I'll have to give my own feedback. (Note that I'm playing with what's basically 1.08, which I'll release tomorrow unless I find some major bugs.)

I started a game last night, with my usual test case (Washington, King, Continents, Standard size and speed, Industrial start). Lately I'd been shifting towards Renaissance starts to have fewer free buildings, but I went with the Industrial because I was primarily attempting to test the space race changes I'd made for 1.08. And it went very well; or, more specifically, it did NOT go well. By the time I'd completed the Apollo Program, five other civs had completed it as well, and one (Catherine) had already finished the first piece. I'm currently #3 in score, with quite a few of the good Wonders (Sistine, Redentor, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty), but the AIs got the Forbidden Palace, Taj Mahal, and Pentagon. I'm fighting Egypt (the current #2 and my closest neighbor) in a nasty land war; the problem is that the only Egyptian city within easy reach is his capital, which thanks to the Kremlin and some policies has a power rating of 121 (his fringe cities are in the 40-60 range). So it'll be a while before I knock that down, and in the meantime I don't have enough large cities to be sure of winning the tech race for the spaceship parts, despite going Rationalism. And Greece is grabbing up all the city-states; with no Siam, it's going to be hard to keep them from a diplo win, but at least one AI is conquering unaffiliated city-states so Greece might not have the chance.

I'll probably still win the game, of course, but I might not win the space race; it'll all depend on who starts throwing nukes. Thankfully, Egypt has no Uranium, but I'm sure they WILL have Wall Street, so they'll have enough for at least one bomb when the time comes.

Thing is, after a few previous test games I'd determined that the infantry scaling was just off, and that conquests in the mid-Industrial were just too easy; in the vanilla game it went 18 (longsword/musket) -> 25 (rifle) -> 36 (infantry) -> 50 (mechinfantry). I'd previously reduced the mech infantry to 42; while the gap between those and infantry was now small in raw power, the extra mobility was worth it, or so I thought. In the last patch the longsword/musket were dropped to 16, so I decided to re-assess this; now, it goes
16 (longsword/musket) -> 24 (rifle) -> 32 (infantry) -> 42 (mechinfantry) -> 56 (skimmer). And I'm now seeing the effects in my current game; Infantry aren't quite the powerhouses they used to be, where you'd pair them with artillery to easily conquer in the mid-Industrial. My only concern is that I might have to reduce anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns as well to make sure they're not universally better than Infantry.

But that power change wasn't enough. So I'm, at long last, adding the Magna Carta, something I'd talked about previously. It's a National Wonder, at Civil Service (mid-Medieval), that is currently set to have two effects:
1> All Citizens (unemployed specialists) in your empire generate +1 Food. (This won't be enough to make them preferable to any Specialists, but it'll help large cities that don't have enough specialist slots, a common problem for the AI in certain eras.)
2> All units in your empire gain the Defensive Advantage promotion. This promotion is sort of the sequel to the Home Field Advantage promotion that every unit gets at the start; it gives +10% when a unit is defending (whether in your territory or not), and another +10% when defending against ranged attacks.
(There WILL be a third effect, some small local bonus for the host city. I just haven't decided what it'll be yet, but probably just a small Happiness boost.)
Basically, this'll keep artillery and bombers from easily picking off units in the field during those Industrial slugfests, especially with the reduction for Infantry. It also helps with naval fights, which invariably favor the player.

In the process of implementing this, though, I realize that I'd made a balance mistake previously: the Home Field Advantage helps city-states and players just fine, but the Barbarians never had it. I've made sure to automatically give them Defensive Advantage through Lua, once they reach the Renaissance Era, but they're still at a significant disadvantage relative to the players. So I might have to give them something extra; for starters I'll just give them that existing "+10% vs cities" promotion.

 

[dezuman]

Well, I can't give any useful feedback. My latest game was "ruined" by ******** Greece taking turn declaring war on me saying "durr know I can't win, declare war anyway! hurr!!" and 10 turns later giving me a juicy peace settlement. Since AIs on deity VERY rarely lacks huge GPT, that gave me a budget US army would envy

Firaxis fault, not yours, but game-breaking nevertheless

Additionally the "rookie" concept handicaps the AI further versus the player, because they rarely gets a chance to get rid of it (other than dieing, lol)
Really, on higher difficulties the AI should get a special "anti-player" combat bonus or something... Or just an across-the-board one, including the Barbs I guess...

Edit2: I would probably weep early game if the AI got a huge combat boost vs me, but enjoy the later eras SO much more! Feels so meh to one-turn-KO an average city with your 2 ancient super-infantries...


Edit: Oh I have one suggestion though: Make the AI build more wonders! Really, unless Egypt is in the game I can get pretty much all the wonders I want, cept the really early ones...

 

[Spatzimaus]

Since AIs on deity VERY rarely lacks huge GPT, that gave me a budget US army would envy

This is one reason I'm trying to make the AI more competitive on lower difficulties; right now, the only way to get a challenge is to crank the handicaps up so high that it's ridiculous, and that's bad because it encourages you to play the game in ways that it's really not balanced for. (Like the peace treaties you mentioned.) I really want the game to be a challenge on King or below, but the AI's really not up for that yet.

Additionally the "rookie" concept handicaps the AI further versus the player, because they rarely gets a chance to get rid of it

This is something I periodically look at, because yes, it's a problem. It's especially problematic for the Barbarian faction (including Psi units), because for barb units their first combat is nearly always their last as well (or at least that first fight will cripple them for some other unit to mop up later). There are basically three options:
A> Automatically remove the Rookie promotion from a unit X turns after it is created, through a start-of-turn event, if that unit hasn't been in a combat yet. X can be different for Barbarians, City-States, or non-human AIs if needed. So X might be 5 for the Human, 3 for non-human AIs, 2 for CSs, and 1 for Barbarians.
B> Remove the -25% combat penalty from the Rookie promotion, leaving it a pure bonus that makes your first fight give double the normal XP.
C> Leave it like it is now.

A and B can be combined; if the Rookie promotion was a pure benefit, then the "use it or lose it" aspect of option A might be useful to balance it out. It'd still favor the player, who'd KNOW to delay building his awesome unit until the war's about to start, but the chances of a unit being completed in a 5-turn window before the start of a war aren't exactly overwhelming.

Really, on higher difficulties the AI should get a special "anti-player" combat bonus or something... Or just an across-the-board one, including the Barbs I guess...

This'd be easy enough to do, but I generally dislike making deliberately lopsided balance systems. If there were a way to fix this without a huge handicap against the player, I'd prefer to do that. (I'm not saying that there IS a way to do this without the handicaps, though.)

Edit: Oh I have one suggestion though: Make the AI build more wonders! Really, unless Egypt is in the game I can get pretty much all the wonders I want, cept the really early ones...

This one goes back to infrastructure. The AI won't build anything that'll take longer than 50 turns to complete, but AI cities rarely have the production to ensure that. The human player will generally create his "research city" (usually the capital), "production city", "commerce city", and maybe a culture city; the AI won't be that organized. This is why I added the Red Cross/Wall Street/etc., each with its own local boost; these basically create specializations where there weren't ones before. One upshot of this is that the human will have two or three cities with good production, cities that can crank out those Wonders; AIs often only have their capital. Since AIs won't change their current build target until it's completed, and the Flavor values for most Wonders aren't significantly higher than those of normal buildings, the AI will generally choose to finish that Stock Exchange before starting the Statue of Liberty, and those extra turns are a huge advantage for the player.

You also see this with military units; a human will create his "military cities", usually the production one and the capital, and build the full set of military buildings there before cranking out units. As a result, human-made units generally start with 20-30 XP, while AI-built units often only have the Barracks bonus, and even that's only in games starting in later eras. The fundamental problem is the Flavor system. The AI has no real concept of "build queues"; a Human knows to build production stuff first (like the Windmill), research/happiness early, culture later, and shove all of the military production into the few cities with all the XP buildings, but the AI doesn't work that way. As for the Wonders, it's also from the Flavor system; for a Human, the national wonders are a high priority and the world wonders should be worth pursuing only if you have a tech advantage. The AI just doesn't weight things that way.

One thing I was thinking of doing, as a handicap, was very simple: any unit created by someone other than the active player (i.e., you) gets +10 XP at creation, through the standard Lua event. As for the Wonders, I can take care of some of that through Flavors; I COULD add a small wonder production boost to all AIs through the starting policy, but I want to try out a couple other things first.

 

[Spatzimaus]

A Mythology mod question for the people who care. I'm trying to plan some things out, and ran into a bottleneck.

Myth units will be their own combat class (or set of combat classes). Hero units will be slightly more powerful versions of normal units, with a large bonus against Myth units. So here's the question: should Myth units be:

A> Explicitly tied to your choice of primary God, where only Poseidon can summon the Kraken, only Zeus can use throw lightning bolts (which are technically an orbital unit), only Hephaestus can create Talos, and so on. While adding flavor, the downside is that with 24 or 28 primary gods to choose from, you'd never see most of these in action. (Also, it'll be really hard to find god-specific units for the Hindu and Sumerian pantheons.)

B> Tied to the specific Foci of your gods. That is, any city with a Church of Animals (L2) could build a Manticore as a unit; while Ra would get this significantly earlier than the other gods, and would be pretty much the only god that could ever unlock the L4 tier, the L2s would be available to most pantheons if they picked the right minor deities. This'd unfortunately mean that I'd have to mix themes together, where a greek pantheon could create a Rakshasa while a Hindu creates Minotaurs.

C> Purchased with Favor, and placed in your capital. If I wanted to keep this from slowing down your acquisition of new minor gods, I'd have to do some reworking of the system. For instance, your total earned Favor might dictate when you gain a new god, while Myth units and Hero units can be purchased with the Favor accrued in a temporary way, where the total costs of Hero units equals your Favor.

D> Awarded through the Events system previously described.

Your answer could include multiple of the above.

My current plan is basically option B: Myth units and Hero units can be constructed like normal units (except that Myth units would be like Settlers or Psi units, and add food to production in lieu of city growth), but the units would unlock depending on the level of religious buildings in the city. This allowed for some nice design choices; the Animals focus (Ra's specialty, but also the domain of Artemis, Skadi, etc.) would basically just be four tiers of Myth units, which might be really valuable or nearly useless depending on circumstances.

 

[CivOasis]

A or B.
I don't really want to see bizarre mixes, but it wouldn't be terrible.
Also, who would be present in each Pantheon?

 

[Ianwill93]

Well, first you find a girl, then you ask her to go out with you. If she says Yes, then you're on a date! Pretty simple, even for us nerds

First of all, thanks for this life-changing advice!!!!

A> Explicitly tied to your choice of primary God, where only Poseidon can summon the Kraken, only Zeus can use throw lightning bolts (which are technically an orbital unit), only Hephaestus can create Talos, and so on. While adding flavor, the downside is that with 24 or 28 primary gods to choose from, you'd never see most of these in action. (Also, it'll be really hard to find god-specific units for the Hindu and Sumerian pantheons.)

Second, I like this one.

 

[dinobot386]

B sounds good, but it should be pantheon specific, otherwise A

(also, the Kraken is norse mythology)

 

[Spatzimaus]

I don't really want to see bizarre mixes, but it wouldn't be terrible.

That's pretty much how I felt; while I'll still generally try to skew each Focus' creatures towards the gods that tended to have that focus as their primary ability (use an Egyptian theme for the Animals focus, Greek for Water focus, etc.), I'd prefer not to rigidly assign them by god. After all, I'm already decoupling your choice of pantheon from your choice of civ, so it's not like I'm adhering to any kind of accuracy as it is.

If I can find something unique to each god, then I can put that into the game in addition to the normal Focus benefits, although again, I'm not sure I CAN find something distinctive for certain pantheons. And this wouldn't invalidate option B above for the weaker Myth units; if having a level 2 Fire church allows you to build Rakshasas (from Hindu mythology), then all six pantheons can unlock them at some point, it'd just be easier for certain god choices.

Also, who would be present in each Pantheon?

Each pantheon consists of four major gods (each with a primary and secondary focus), and nine minor gods (each with a single focus). The remaining four foci would be entirely unavailable to that pantheon. Each pantheon has a primary method for generating Favor and a secondary method (6-7 combinations).
The permutations of these factors explain why the choice in deity matters for those folks who know nothing about mythology (including the AI): each combination has its own strengths and weaknesses, and different strategies for how to expand your pantheon.

While most gods were fairly easy to line up with the foci I'd created, there were a few awkward spots where the need for certain combinations overrode mythological accuracy. I tried to make sure that no two gods had identical Focus combinations, although there are a few "inverted" cases between pantheons (where Hephaestus is Crafts/Fire and Loki is Fire/Crafts).

I'd already posted the full Egyptian set a few posts up, and a page or so back I mentioned the Greek choices (with the full set of 13 consisting of the 12 Olympians, plus Hades). If I remember right, the big four for the others:
Norse: Odin, Thor, Loki, and Frigg
Hindu: Shakti, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (those four are pretty obvious)
Aztec: Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, and Tezcatlipoca
Sumerian: Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Inanna. (I know, Inanna, a.k.a. Ishtar is not as important as the other three, but I couldn't resist including a goddess of beauty/sex who also happens to be the pantheon's goddess of war. And yes, Anu would properly be called Ea since I'm going with the original Sumerian names instead of Akkadian for the rest of the pantheon, but I wanted the names to be a little less confusing, and the number of short "E" names was just getting to be too much.)

In most cases there were three obvious choices for major gods, and my fourth choice was a question of personal preference and the foci of the rest of the pantheon. Take the Greeks; there's no question that Zeus, Poseidon and Hades are the big three, but I added Hephaestus as the fourth because he'd clearly get the Crafts and Fire foci, which no one else overlapped with. If I'd gone with, say, Athena (Knowledge/War) then I'd have had nowhere to put Ares, since he'd be blocked from the War focus. War, Fertility, and Death were really the three most popular specialties for gods in mythology, so it took a bit of work to avoid issues like that.
I can post the minor gods and Favor biases when I get home tonight, but most of the favor settings should be pretty obvious; Aztec and Norse get the most Favor from battles, for instance.

The only question left on the pantheons is the seventh choice. Four options:
1> the Titans (Gaea, Oranos, Kronus, Oceanus as the majors, followed by Prometheus, Hekate, Theia, Rhea, etc.)
2> a more abstract Native American-ish animal-based set (Coyote, Raven, etc.), possibly using the Chinese Zodiac as a base if I can't find a coherent native set.
3> No seventh set at all
4> Something really strange, like a Chthulhu set.

I'm leaning towards #2 just because I don't want two Greek-themed sets and I don't want to sift through Lovecraft, but I haven't plotted out the full set yet so I'm not sure if it's workable. (It's a LOT of work.)

 

[CivOasis]

What about a Polynesian-themed set? I understand that you don't have the Polynesia DLC (mentioned in an earlier post, I believe), but that would be a pretty cool set to add.

 

[CivOasis]

Possible members being Tangaroa, Maui, Hina, Rangi/Papa..

 

[dinobot386]

Chinese or Japanese mythology would be nice, since the hindu gods don't really match most of the asian civs (except India, duh)

Native American is good too, but a little abstract when it comes to actual gods

If you decide to go with B, I have an idea that could make it feel less weird, there are lots of creatures that cross multiple mythologies, the Sphinx is both greek and egyption, the Phoenix goes across a rediculus amount of mythologies, and the Manticore actually orginated in India and was widespread in pre Islamic middleastern myths and even got to Greece

 

[CivOasis]

Chinese or Japanese mythology would be nice, since the hindu gods don't really match most of the asian civs (except India, duh)

Native American is good too, but a little abstract when it comes to actual gods

If you decide to go with B, I have an idea that could make it feel less weird, there are lots of creatures that cross multiple mythologies, the Sphinx is both greek and egyption, the Phoenix goes across a rediculus amount of mythologies, and the Manticore actually orginated in India and was widespread in pre Islamic middleastern myths and even got to Greece

Not to be overly cheesy or stereotypical, but dragons were pretty wide-spread among cultures, too (sees new Nessus...)

 

[Spatzimaus]

What about a Polynesian-themed set? I understand that you don't have the Polynesia DLC (mentioned in an earlier post, I believe), but that would be a pretty cool set to add.

I don't have ANY DLC. And likely never will, really. Not that that'd stop me from using a pantheon, mind you, and I'll look into the Polynesian gods, but I have specific criteria that I was using when choosing my pantheons:
> I have to be able to clearly map four primary deities to eight distinct foci.
> I have to be able to add nine other gods in the remaining 13 foci, without leaving out anyone important.
> The pantheon can't be too similar to any of the others I'm considering. No gods that have the exact same focus choices as one of the existing options, no leaving out the same 4 foci, no heavy emphasis on the exact same subsets as another pantheon.
> The pantheon can't be too skewed on a single axis. (You can't have the missing/blocked foci all be Chaos-based, for instance. This'd kill the AI's ability to navigate the mandala, and would ruin the Event system.)
> There has to be some good artwork of the pantheon to use for icons and/or literature to quote for the civilopedia. Preferably both. Name recognition helps, but if you talk mythology few people know anything beyond the Greek/Norse/Egyptian pantheons.
> There needs to be enough additional content to add some good monsters, heroes, god powers, and so on. See previous discussion. (Also, those monsters must be land-based creatures, except for any used for the Water focus.)
> No duplication of another pantheon with different names and backstories. Everyone knows the Roman pantheon was just renamed versions of the Greek gods, but how about the Celts using mostly renamed versions of the Romans'?

These sort of criteria shot down a few pantheons I'd been considering, like the Inuit one; in the end, I just didn't need eight different gods involving snow. (One perverse bit of the Norse pantheon? Not a lot of ice- or water-themed gods. Go figure.) I also wanted a nice geographical distribution; for simple reasons I HAD to start with the Egyptian, Greek, and Norse sets. Add one mesoamerican, one middle eastern, and one from India, and you've represented a pretty wide variety of beliefs.

So I'll look into the Polynesians later.

 

[CivOasis]

I think they might work, just a quick search came across 5 major ones.
I'll admit I don't know a ton, IDK if artwork is out there, and units might be more water-air based (that's logic and my own knowledge speaking, though, not someone remotely competent in the field).
Maybe Pouakai knows? His username's a creature from their myths (an eagle, perhaps done like the helicopter is (as weird as that concept is))

 

[Spatzimaus]

Chinese or Japanese mythology would be nice, since the hindu gods don't really match most of the asian civs (except India, duh)

The thing about the Hindu mythology is that there's a TREMENDOUS amount of literature in it, massive epics and poems about the nine Avatars of Vishnu, the aspects of each god, their consorts and THEIR aspects, and so on. Lots of good artwork, too. And there's a good amount of name recognition; if I say "Shiva" you know exactly what that implies, and if I say "Ganesha" you might have no idea what his specialty is but you probably remember that he has an elephant head, even if it's just from that one Simpsons episode.

But more importantly from a gameplay perspective, the Hindu pantheon is a perfect addition because it's not element-based; I had to go back to the Vedas to add four elemental minor gods, and none of the major gods go anywhere near that. That makes the Hindu (and to a lesser extent, the Egyptians) play very differently from the brute-force element-heavy pantheons.

Native American is good too, but a little abstract when it comes to actual gods

That's actually what I wanted for the seventh choice, originally. I want one "beginner" pantheon that someone new can try out for their first game, without bogging them down in having to remember the minutae of a pantheon. Originally I was going to go with a Druidic sort of "Sun", "Moon", etc. but since the whole current druidic thing is basically an artificial creation from the last couple centuries and bears no relation to the original, I wanted to avoid that.
I'm going to extend this simplicity to Favor-generation as well. So where each of the existing six pantheons goes 3/2/1 for Favor-generation methods, this one would go 2/2/2 to let people figure out what kind of pantheon fits their gameplay style best.
EDIT: And as I'd mentioned before, if I can't find a generic animal-based pantheon to use for this, I'll shift the Greek over to being the beginner choice, since it's the one the most people know by heart, and insert some other pantheon in its old slot.

If you decide to go with B, I have an idea that could make it feel less weird, there are lots of creatures that cross multiple mythologies, the Sphinx is both greek and egyption, the Phoenix goes across a rediculus amount of mythologies, and the Manticore actually orginated in India and was widespread in pre Islamic middleastern myths and even got to Greece

Yes, there are a lot of these. Especially when you see how many bits of Sumerian mythology ended up in everyone else's stuff over time, and a lot of mythologies got conflated in later eras even before Christianity started overtaking everyone. So I'm not too worried about having some units be universal.

His username's a creature from their myths (an eagle, perhaps done like the helicopter is (as weird as that concept is))

Not wierd at all, that's already how I'm planning to implement most of the air-based units from mythology, like Pegasus. The only actual Air units would be things like Zeus' lightning bolt, a pure bombardment effect (and even that could just be done as a siege unit instead).

Thing is, there are three main reasons I don't want water units:
1> Part of this mythological period will come before you research Sailing and Optics (which has the embarkation ability)
2> The churches will be in every city, and if the building has no effect on inland cities, it'd kinda suck
3> It's bad enough when normal units embark onto ships, but a Hydra embarking is just silly. So I was looking to move the embarkation ability even later in the tree.
So that limits me a bit, and it's why I didn't look into the Polynesian gods before.

 

[CivOasis]

To be fair, most of what I checked out was New Zealand, but they had a very clear boundary from land and sea, so it might work..