Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

[Sandmonster1989]

I was thinking about civilizations and their later respawn... like with Rome becoming Italy.
Why not have Babylon respawn as Iraq. I mean, Baghdad was an extremely powerful city through the middle ages... maybe it could get some UHV conditions based on that?
Persia should get an upgrade on their name when they respawn (seeing as how Iran is just modern Persia).

Give Phoenicians a modern civ name... I'm not sure what it could be... maybe they could be some people of the Levant (seeing as how thats where they already spawn) or a north african people... maybe make them the Canadians (it isn't fair that the Americans get all that north america and no one to share it with!!) Give the Canadians a unique building of a hockey rink... instead of theatre or colosseum (building not wonder).

 

[LuKo]

Persia should get an upgrade on their name when they respawn (seeing as how Iran is just modern Persia).

I think they just should have "modern name", like Russia or Germany (IRL Persia respawned as Persia and later changed name to Iran).

 

[Leoreth]

According to Iranians, they always called themselves Iran, but that's beside the point.

Civs will get a "special respawn treatment" when it's historically appropriate. I think the closest approximation of Phoenicia today would be Lebanon (I might add that as a dynamic name), but I wouldn't consider Lebanon and Iraq (both very young states) as continuations of Phoenicia and Babylonia. Persia is among the civs where a triggered respawn makes sense.

For the unit balance: I'm not happy with many aspects of how Civ in general handles units and their purposes, but have not completely thought out how to rework everything, so that's more of a long-term issue. I'm very sympathetic to how Corossol handled things in his modmod, however.

 

[The Turk]

Wait, are you kidding me? Why have Lebanon, which don't get me wrong, is a beautiful country, when you can have the Moors, Morocco, which played a HUGE role for a long time! Plus it would counter Arab intentions in N. Africa

 

[Opera]

Well if Phoenicia was to respawn where it actually spawned, it couldn't be Morocco.

 

[The Turk]

Well if Phoenicia was to respawn where it actually spawned, it couldn't be Morocco.

No S*** Sherlock

The point being that they already build Carthage immediately, so why not make them respawn their? I know its possible, to do that. But just have them respawn then as some generic North African country.

Also consider respawning Egypt as the Ayyubids/Mamluks (Fatimids are too soon), but they could act as a deterrent to the Crusaders, and could eventually wipe them out

 

[Cethegus]

Rabat and Marrakech are not really high-value starting sites. :/

If someone replaced Mayas (for example) to give room for another civ, Morocco wouldn't NECESSARILY be a bad inclusion. Then again, wouldn't they be too much like Korea? In other words, a two-to-three city civilization with no real value to RFC?

Phoenicia is fine. Even if it makes the Levant even tighter a region, it's better there than in Tunisia.

 

[dcode147]

Wait, are you kidding me? Why have Lebanon, which don't get me wrong, is a beautiful country, when you can have the Moors, Morocco, which played a HUGE role for a long time! Plus it would counter Arab intentions in N. Africa

w00t, a Moor/Berber/Morocco representative. They'd be a great nuisance to Mali expanding ahistorically northwards as well. Again, I think independents would do the trick, maybe not a completely new civ. Even better would be a separate independent civ whose cities are autorazed so their cities wouldn't affect player or AI city placement. But alas, looks like that isn't on the short-term radar


Regarding Lebanon, Iraq(Babylon) etc respawn ideas that are currently being thrown around, let's take a Turk-controlled Middle East for example. I feel like some measure of Baghdad's owner's stability(or some other number that shows whether they doing alright or not) should determine whether Iraq respawns or not. Gameplay-wise I'd much rather be playing against a single more powerful Turkeyv that can stand to challenge me, rather than a Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq all with feeble scores and will be insignificant in later forms of victory such as spacerace, UN or Score. Rhye did a good job of with keeping old European civs highly competitive for top score by not making nations much more powerful than Lebanon such as Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Canada all spawn to form civs taking valuable lands away from their colonial masters. Historically Lebanon and Iraq only became independent in the ensuing crises following Turk's lost in WWI which is represented by stability. We could make civs such as Lebanon more likely to respawn (aka not spawn when stability is collapsing as independent cities do, but maybe after nationalism spawn when stability is <-10). As for the respawned modern Lebanon and modern Iraq, I wouldn't really want to play as them cuz I feel they've not yet had as significant of impact upon world in terms of influence, power and culture as let's say Russia or ancient Egypt. Anywho, in summary I'd rather not see Lebanon or Iraq respawn every game, especially not in games when their owner is the only other superpower in the world capable of challenging the human player. If they do respawn, maybe just keep them as an unplayable civ as Rhye has now. I do agree however that civs such as Italy or Iran should have certain respawns (as in the case of India) since they've had more independent culture than random lines Europeans drew.

PS I'm very inelegant with words. Sorry for taking so long to talk about a small suggestion

 

[Leoreth]

I never said I would give the Phoenicians a special respawn treatment, quite on the contrary, I thought I was clear that there are some civs where this doesn't make sense. It was only asked if there could be a better modern name for them, and I only said that Lebanon would be the best possibility as a name.

The problems with the Moors is that Morocco is very poor and Spain has not enough space (and I don't want to meddle with Spain's performance). Although I also find it kind of sad that Al-Andalus doesn't allow for a decent Cordoba.

The whole respawn mechanics will be reworked a bit, by the way. I have noticed that my modifications to the stability system has made many civs more stable overall, which I intend to counteract. On the whole, it is desired to have more "rise and fall" during the game, with civilizations dying and returning again. I'm currently trying to test my possibilities, so more details later.

Important question: I can't shake the feeling that the better AI stability also comes from a weaker plague. Did anyone else notice that the plague is weaker here, compared to RFC? I mean aside from the reduced damage to units.

 

[DisposableHero]

I've played four or five games to about 1000AD today, on marathon, and Buddhism seems to spread like wildfire. I've not seen anybody convert to christanity or zoroastrianism. Christianity always seems to have 'none' as a holy city, even after it is founded.

 

[Leoreth]

Do you play with the most recent version (1.5)? In his last patch (which is included after this version), Rhye increased the chance for Christianity (Catholicism here) to appear in big cities and IIRC also decreased the chance of holy cities to get razed. It still can happen that the holy city is destroyed, though.

 

[DisposableHero]

I'm using 1.5 of Dawn of Civ.

 

[DisposableHero]

Also the 3000BC start for the Aztecs is broken. It doesn't bring up the 'continue' button and when you hit exit, it gives you a solitary catapault on ice.

 

[dcode147]

I never said I would give the Phoenicians a special respawn treatment, quite on the contrary, I thought I was clear that there are some civs where this doesn't make sense. It was only asked if there could be a better modern name for them, and I only said that Lebanon would be the best possibility as a name.

Yeah, it's kinda hard to find a modern-day "successor state" of sorts to Carthage. Maybe somewhere in North Africa like Algeria or Libya would work better? But then again, neither of those states have had a huge impact upon the world and I don't think people of the Mahgreb would pride their Carthaginian cultural heritage the way Swedes pride their Viking history or Iran prides its Persian (both achaemenid and safavid) history.

maybe make them the Canadians (it isn't fair that the Americans get all that north america and no one to share it with!!) Give the Canadians a unique building of a hockey rink... instead of theatre or colosseum (building not wonder).

I'd love to have more powers in less crowded areas of the world represented. Bu the problem with respawning Carthage in places like Canada might be that Canada's existence is in no way predicated upon the collapse of a Carthaginian state. Tweaking the number of civ slots (disregarding how hard the coding might be cuz i have no idea about that) may work if and only if it doesn't get out of hand. Without tweaking number of civs, maybe one possibility is to include a "Neutral" civ that represents all those peaceful neutral states whom all civs would usually have open borders automatically and if a player civ declares war on them, that player civ suffers a relations penalty with most other civs for "declaring war on a neutral state"? Too bad something like city states in CiV (or unimportant countries) can't be easily worked out...

 

[dcode147]

Important question: I can't shake the feeling that the better AI stability also comes from a weaker plague. Did anyone else notice that the plague is weaker here, compared to RFC? I mean aside from the reduced damage to units.

Perhaps its a good thing since very few countries ever collapsed on its own cuz of plague? I haven't played this mod enough to notice. Maybe you can make plagues lower population even more and have the plague building itself give even more instability or perhaps just make other things have less stabilizing effects?

 

[Leoreth]

I'm using 1.5 of Dawn of Civ.

Well, then I suppose the most likely reason is that you just got unlucky. As already said, the Catholic holy city can get razed early on, which of course completely screws up the spread of religions. Or did it happen multiple times?

Also the 3000BC start for the Aztecs is broken. It doesn't bring up the 'continue' button and when you hit exit, it gives you a solitary catapault on ice.

I'm currently trying to reproduce it.

Yeah, it's kinda hard to find a modern-day "successor state" of sorts to Carthage. Maybe somewhere in North Africa like Algeria or Libya would work better? But then again, neither of those states have had a huge impact upon the world and I don't think people of the Mahgreb would pride their Carthaginian cultural heritage the way Swedes pride their Viking history or Iran prides its Persian (both achaemenid and safavid) history.

Algeria and Libya share more with Arabia then they do with Carthage. We don't have to force it, some civs just cannot return one way or another.

I'd love to have more powers in less crowded areas of the world represented. Bu the problem with respawning Carthage in places like Canada might be that Canada's existence is in no way predicated upon the collapse of a Carthaginian state. Tweaking the number of civ slots (disregarding how hard the coding might be cuz i have no idea about that) may work if and only if it doesn't get out of hand. Without tweaking number of civs, maybe one possibility is to include a "Neutral" civ that represents all those peaceful neutral states whom all civs would usually have open borders automatically and if a player civ declares war on them, that player civ suffers a relations penalty with most other civs for "declaring war on a neutral state"? Too bad something like city states in CiV (or unimportant countries) can't be easily worked out...

Increasing the number of civ slots is no problem in itself, but an unimaginably amount of work. One would have to tweak the entire code to accomodate for that slot; I certainly won't do it.
However, Carthage is definitely dead in the 600 AD scenario and its respawn doesn't make sense for the reasons listed above, so why waste their slot? Theoretically, I can imagine to implement another postcolonial civ (probably Brazil).

Perhaps its a good thing since very few countries ever collapsed on its own cuz of plague? I haven't played this mod enough to notice. Maybe you can make plagues lower population even more and have the plague building itself give even more instability or perhaps just make other things have less stabilizing effects?

First I want to find out if the plague is working correctly, before I start tweaking things.

 

[AOS9001]

With all this talk of new Civs, the East Roman Empire (for 600 AD at least) and Prussia/Germany still better be on the table. Gotta represent, even if it is redundant.

 

[Leoreth]

With all this talk of new civs, I realise again that we're better in talking the talk than I'm in walking the walk

I ran two starts with Aztecs and everything seems fine. Again, I must ask you if that happened repeatedly. If so, you'd help me much in activating Python exceptions and reproducing the problem (there should be an error message then).

 

[dcode147]

Increasing the number of civ slots is no problem in itself, but an unimaginably amount of work. One would have to tweak the entire code to accomodate for that slot; I certainly won't do it.
However, Carthage is definitely dead in the 600 AD scenario and its respawn doesn't make sense for the reasons listed above, so why waste their slot? Theoretically, I can imagine to implement another postcolonial civ (probably Brazil).
First I want to find out if the plague is working correctly, before I start tweaking things.

We'll all be ready to talk the talk for you at a moment's notice Leoreth!

Brazil is essentially Portugal's lifeline and probably the entire reason Portugal was included in the game in the first place. During the Pennisular War, the Portuguese empire was essentially just Brazil for a quarter of a century. An independent Brazil will leave a weak Portugal that would be almost a non-factor in world affairs. Playing Brazil might also be a bit boring since Brazil was never involved in large wars that involve large exchanges of territory and most of its city placement would have already been decided by Portuguese colonizers. That said, I don't have any better suggestions. Perhaps a fictional Bolivar-led Gran Colombia might work out to challenge the European stranglehold of colonies in South America?

If civ slots is much of an issue, you might be able to squeeze out one spot by combining Rome and Byzantines while completely replacing Celts as independent or barbarian spawns of archers, swordsmen and gallic warriors. This might work since ancient Romans don't exist in 600AD. Byzantines are almost always certainly destroyed (you can maybe even script them to be destroyed by a certain date) so then you can still preserve the slot for your Italy spawn.
I'm not sure if Mayans respawn in modern times or not. That might yield a further slot that could be played around with if there's another sufficiently interesting modern-day civ that deserves to be represented.

 

[AOS9001]

We'll all be ready to talk the talk for you at a moment's notice Leoreth!

Brazil is essentially Portugal's lifeline and probably the entire reason Portugal was included in the game in the first place. During the Pennisular War, the Portuguese empire was essentially just Brazil for a quarter of a century. An independent Brazil will leave a weak Portugal that would be almost a non-factor in world affairs. Playing Brazil might also be a bit boring since Brazil was never involved in large wars that involve large exchanges of territory and most of its city placement would have already been decided by Portuguese colonizers. That said, I don't have any better suggestions. Perhaps a fictional Bolivar-led Gran Colombia might work out to challenge the European stranglehold of colonies in South America?

If civ slots is much of an issue, you might be able to squeeze out one spot by combining Rome and Byzantines while completely replacing Celts as independent or barbarian spawns of archers, swordsmen and gallic warriors. This might work since ancient Romans don't exist in 600AD. Byzantines are almost always certainly destroyed (you can maybe even script them to be destroyed by a certain date) so then you can still preserve the slot for your Italy spawn.
I'm not sure if Mayans respawn in modern times or not. That might yield a further slot that could be played around with if there's another sufficiently interesting modern-day civ that deserves to be represented.

Mayans do respawn occasionally in 600 AD, but they never do anything, just get vassalized by someone.

Gran Columbia could also be a fun Civ to implement, perhaps replacing Inca's. South American unification?