Cultural Citystyles for BtS, patch 3.19

[GeoModder]

18/05/10

After 579 downloads until version 0.98 I present you:
Cultural Citystyles, version 0.99 for BtS 3.19

This modcomp is the successor of Ethnic Citystyles 1.04 for BtS 3.17.
The namechance is mostly because Ethnic Citystyles covered ethnicities in general, not specific cultures. Since the mod covers at the moment 20 artstyles (some are still a work in progress), I felt the so-called flag didn't cover the cargo anymore.

Cultural Citystyles doesn't alter gameplay, there's only graphic changes.
The mod is now considered complete, barring hypothetical bugs.

Description:
This mod is made to make the civilizations more culturally diverse with the available art made by freelance modders and unused art by Firaxis. Basically, citysets of the different artstyle groups have been changed/altered until the Modern Era, where ever art was available for it. The future era is in general the same for all artstyles. In some cases you'll still see the normal ingame cityset buildings, which means I haven't found art for those spots or intended it to remain there. Also, for some units and buildings new .dds files are included which I felt made them look better without altering the basic model of it. Besides citystyles, new facility -and improvement art is included for the different artstyles. This part still needs some work. Included is Sepamu92's fishingboat modcomponent.

The new artstyles in this mod sofar are ANGLO AMERICA, AFRICA, ARABIA, EGYPT, CRESCENT, IBERIA, INDIA, JAPAN, RUSSIA, MONGOLIAN, NORSE, SOUTH EAST ASIA, NATIVE AMERICA, MESO AMERICA and SOUTH_PACIFIC. Don't expect truly different citystyles in all cases tho. Quite a number of them are hybrids, especially the Indian -and Khmer civ. The main new thing is that from the Industrial era on a mix of old and new city buildings are used. For instance in the Modern era you'll see Industrial city art and modern flats mixed for the European civs.

Installment:
Simply unzip the download to your Beyond the Sword/mods folder, check if there are NO double folders of "Cultural Citystyles" (Beyond the Sword/mods/Cultural Citystyles/Cultural Citystyles). Lastly, check if your CivilizationIV.config AND your CivilizationIV.ini files have Modular Loading enabled (should be 1).

Credits:
Thanks for the unit, building, effects, improvement, python -and xml files in this mod (in alphabetic order) goes to achilleszero, asioasioasio, Chamaedrys, cool3a2, C.Roland, Den9510, Deon, Denov, Ekmek, Freya, Ganart, GarretSidsaka, Hadrean, hrochland, johny smith, JustATourist, Refar, ricardojahns, SeZeReth, Saschkin, Sepamu92, Sevo, Walter Hawkwood, White Rabbit, Woodelf, the FfH artteam, the Firaxis artists and no doubt a crowd of other people I forgot. Sorry 'bout that.

Version 0.99 can be found here.

UPDATE 9/1/2013:
Relinked the download link to Filefront/Gamefront.

 

[Ekmek]

Awesome! Love the new cities!

did you include and of my modern mesoamerican cities? and red brick american cities?

edit: the mink is taking me to the main filefront page. maybe if its big you can upload it at WePlayCiv

 

[GeoModder]

Awesome! Love the new cities!

did you include and of my modern mesoamerican cities? and red brick american cities?

Modern meso cities? You mean that niffile that combined the colored mesoamerican cityset with some modern cityset buildings? I'm afraid not. I must have lost that cityset with my computer breakdown last February, or the one in May. IIRC the set was a tad dark too?
The red brick cityset is sure in. The northern Europeans use it, and once the Anglo-American artstyle is done the Americans will use it too.

Edit: I corrected the link. Should work now? (fingers crossed)
Edit2: Good you mentioned it, you're now in the credits section.

 

[The Capo]

That damn mink is always bringing me to the wrong places too!!!

Looks awesome, good work. This is certainly going into my mod.

 

[Ekmek]

i think I have the mesocities somewhere and could continue working on them.

hook me up with some credits for the redbrick cities, I don't want to be typecasted as a LH maker!

 

[GeoModder]

Done, check my second post.
And I'm sure interested in that Meso set once you're done with it. For further analysis, of course...

 

[mamba]

Wow, this one was a long time in the making

Nice job

 

[mamba]

PS what kind of alphabet are you using ? E before C ?

EDIT|: Grr, this was supposed to end up in the above post, not sure why it did not

 

[Lord Tirian]

New realease, finally! Makes vanilla civ visually so much more engaging!

PS what kind of alphabet are you using ? E before C ?

It's closing in to "A" - once it reaches "A", it's perfect - the Acultural City... wait, something is wrong!

Cheers, LT.

 

[avain]

Jippijajee!!!!!!

I like it very much!

Now onto merging...

 

[DYNAMICS]

Thank you sir, you are better than those lazy bums that designed Civ 4 cities. clearly the only effort they put into city design were the med sea civilizations...darn right disgusting.

 

[achilleszero]

GeoModder: There is alot of excellent looking stuff in this pack, that I have seen before. Did you make any of these buildings yourself? And is there art included that isnt finished? For example the Arabian colosseum is just 2 camels (very detailed camels mind you).

 

[keldath]

great work !

 

[GeoModder]

Thank you sir, you are better than those lazy bums that designed Civ 4 cities. clearly the only effort they put into city design were the med sea civilizations...darn right disgusting.

I couldn't have done all this without Firaxis art, and the xml examples in the Civ4City/PlotLSystem files.

GeoModder: There is alot of excellent looking stuff in this pack, that I have seen before. Did you make any of these buildings yourself? And is there art included that isnt finished? For example the Arabian colosseum is just 2 camels (very detailed camels mind you).

I can't make models from scratch, I don't have the programs nor knowledge for that. Sometimes I ask an artist to split a certain nif in separate parts (for instance the Native totem) and use the separate parts in combination with other models. Most of that you can see in the Native facility art I cobbled together.
The camels from the Arabian colosseum are straight from a camel resource I found on the resource download section. Heavy poly for what it is though, that's one of the reasons I put it on that spot because colosseums switch to a stadium graphic in the later era's. I admit, those camels would look much better with some desert underground and the outlines of a racetrack around them.

 

[Ekmek]

I admit, those camels would look much better with some desert underground and the outlines of a racetrack around them.

could that be a modified hippodrome?

 

[GeoModder]

The hippodrome comes to mind, but the side buildings look far from middle east. And I simply can't split up a model.
A description of the racetrack I read mentions that the spectators are in the middle of the track. I suppose that in ancient times the Bedouin set up some arabian tents as well.

 

[The Capo]

The hippodrome comes to mind, but the side buildings look far from middle east. And I simply can't split up a model.
A description of the racetrack I read mentions that the spectators are in the middle of the track. I suppose that in ancient times the Bedouin set up some arabian tents as well.

Well, I can say with confidence that in "ancient times" many middle-eastern colosseums were basically Roman, or were built during Roman times and used for quite some time, even today in some cases. So you could probably just use that model, and if you want it to be ethnically different just reskin it.

 

[GeoModder]

Erm... the Roman Empire never extended in the Arabian peninsula as fas as googled maps of it show?

I grant you that in the Syrian and Palestinian provinces the Romans probably build colosseums, but in the context of this mod that's part of the Crescent artstyle.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

So I see you decided not to use the retextured Viking citystyle I provided? Or did you just forget to include it?

I've got some more stuff that might interest you: a somewhat improved Arabic citystyle texture (not much, but compare for yourself), a "tuned-up" early citystyle texture from Col (as Civ is less drab, it is brighter and more vivid than original), and also a retouched Renaissance city lot texture (I always disliked the original).

 

[The Capo]

Erm... the Roman Empire never extended in the Arabian peninsula as fas as googled maps of it show?

I grant you that in the Syrian and Palestinian provinces the Romans probably build colosseums, but in the context of this mod that's part of the Crescent artstyle.

I guess I wasn't that clear. I know the Romans didn't go into the Arabian Penninsula, but I also didn't say that. The Arabs however did expand into lands that were once Roman/Byzantine, and the people there continued to use the buildings from that period. I haven't seen your buildings yet because I haven't tried the mod out, I suppose it would be easy enough to plug in and try out now, it just didn't seem that a couple of camels was appropriate for a colosseum.