Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

[Linkman226]

... That is the single most beautiful thing I've seen in my entire life.

Just looking at that screenie made me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnWf1sQkjY

 

[Linkman226]

Leoreth- I know you've been having a few issues implementing the Byzantines as a fully playable civ, and I have a suggestion.

The other day I came across a very old (Jan. 2007) RFC thread which gave me the following idea. Basically, the Byzantines would have a variable PROBABILITY of spawning at different times. For example at certain times they could have a 90% chance of spawning while other turns the probability is less one percent. In order for Byzantium to have any chance of spawning at all, the following conditions have to be met:

1) Rome/ Independents/ Barbs control Greece OR Greece is nonexistent (o.0 That would be unusual, but could happen from razing).

2) If Rome controls it, Rome's stability is shaky or less.

Now suppose those conditions are met; that means there is at least a 1% chance of the Byzantines spawning. The actual probability of them spawning, however, is determined by two other things:

1) The date- the later, the greater the probability
2) The actual stability of Rome. Yes, shaky is the bare minimum for Byzantion to spawn, but unstable, collapsing, and collapsed (dead) would have even higher probabillities.

To ensure Byzantion spawns in 99.9% of games at least eventually, jack up the instability modifications for Greece and Rome surviving past a certain date.

On another note: For those of you who were looking for Leoreth to convert jungle to forest in certain areas to ensure colonization, I have been able to do this in my own game. Panopticon designed a dynamic terrain mod for RFC that does exactly that; I just went through WinMerge and modified by Resources.py file to make those changes. The one game I played produced a fair bit more colonization of SE Asia/ East Indies. Would you guys like the file? I'll upload it if you want it.

The full list of changes in the modified Resources.py file:

Spoiler :

• Certain spots of jungle changed to forest, i.e., Manila, Colombo, Bandar Seri Begawan, etc.
• Indus Valley turns from desert to flood plains to allow Karachi to grow, to increase colonization of the area, and to help India become a modern era superpower like it is [becoming] today.
• Certain dynamic resources added to make certain spots more attractive- a fish off the coast of Bandar Seri Begawan, for example.
• The changes above occur in 1600 AD.

The other modification I made to my game was to borrow the idea of reduced instability for the traditional colonial civs to produce more colonialism from the RFCM:BWS modmod (also found in the Civilizations in Abundance modmod). I can upload that file too- it was just a matter of a bit of WinMergin the Stability.py. Although, a small note: I expanded on the original list of colonial civs in CiA. The prior list was Portugal, Spain, England, France, Netherlands but I added the Vikings, Germany, Rome (Italy)*, Russia, and Japan, since they did a fair bit of colonizing too. I can post that also, on request.

List of features in the colonization change:

Spoiler :

• Reduced stabillity hit for "colonial civs" founding cities outside their settler maps (does not count Europe or the Mediterranean).
• Number of cities penalty halved.

Leoreth, you could probably use these modifications in your next update. Just a suggestion. Oh and a quick question, Leoreth- in the Python for your mod Italy still uses the name 'Rome', right?

 

[Leoreth]

I caught this as Japan, when I saw the Germans settle Laos, I went insane.

P.S: With 1.64, my current game.

I changed the map to make those little islands more attractive...

That's really really great! Never thought it has to do with the presence of jungles there. I'll see if I can incorporate that (maybe I can even teach the AI to simply ignore the jungles when deciding for a new city, that would avoid making it too easy for everyone by removing them).

eoreth, when can we expect the next release, or at least one without the Democracy bug?

I don't want to release a version with broken Byzantines (there's also a Roman UP triggered crash that has to be fixed as well ). I'm currently working on that issue, and was able to track the problem further down (which is already an achievement because it's something else than I thought the whole time), but am now facing a new problem. No idea how long it'll take until I've sorted that out.

I could not agree more; PLEASE make those changes Leoreth. Also you did say that you would make some changes by mid-Feb, are any on the way?

Also I can't seem to change the capital or spawn cities, what could I be doing wrong? How do you do it?

PS Why is Batavia not shown on Java?

As said above, I've started working on it, but I don't know when you'll see results.

I still don't know what you're doing wrong. tCapitals should take care of everything for you.

Leoreth- I know you've been having a few issues implementing the Byzantines as a fully playable civ, and I have a suggestion.

The other day I came across a very old (Jan. 2007) RFC thread which gave me the following idea. Basically, the Byzantines would have a variable PROBABILITY of spawning at different times. For example at certain times they could have a 90% chance of spawning while other turns the probability is less one percent. In order for Byzantium to have any chance of spawning at all, the following conditions have to be met:

[...]

I thought of the criteria: Greece is dead OR Rome controls Constantinople. That happens quite often in my games, but every Greece player should be able to prevent that to avoid Byzantines messing up his game.

I'm not fond of a dynamic spawn date because this would require a lot of dynamic other aspects as well, techs on spawn for example. I think it's not bad to have some games without Byzantines.

Leoreth, you could probably use these modifications in your next update. Just a suggestion. Oh and a quick question, Leoreth- in the Python for your mod Italy still uses the name 'Rome', right?

Yeah, exactly. You can check if its Italy or Rome by using the method pRome.isReborn() which results in true for Italy.

 

[Linkman226]

That's really really great! Never thought it has to do with the presence of jungles there. I'll see if I can incorporate that (maybe I can even teach the AI to simply ignore the jungles when deciding for a new city, that would avoid making it too easy for everyone by removing them).

The thing is most land units can't travel by jungle... therein lies the problem.

In my modified version they settle the area though. Which is very nice.

 

[Gruekiller]

Maybe we could make some similar changes to Alaska? I've never seen a city settled there in any of my RFC games.

 

[Stelmack]

Alaska needs more oil, or the world needs to have lots of oil only in certain places

 

[Stelmack]

Also, you should definitely think about merging your mod with this one.

Although I like your mod better overall, the little changes made such as the jungles, resources, stability etc. could all be carried over to yours. Also the trading company wonder.

 

[Opera]

It sure looks interesting

 

[Linkman226]

Also, you should definitely think about merging your mod with this one.

Although I like your mod better overall, the little changes made such as the jungles, resources, stability etc. could all be carried over to yours. Also the trading company wonder.

I've already managed to make the jungle and resources fix. See my post above.

 

[Gruekiller]

Couldn't hurt to add that mod while you're at it, though. I have noticed that Africa's almost as neglected by Europe as Asia is. But only just.

 

[Stelmack]

I've already managed to make the jungle and resources fix. See my post above.

You took everything from that mod, like the late resource spawning as well?

 

[The Turk]

@Leoreth
I just noticed that you made one change to the mod in the SVN; is what you did have any affect on making the Byzantines finally playable?

 

[lumpthing]

Is it really necessary to have a separate Byzantine civ?

I know this debateable but they're basically the latter-day Romans. They certainly never thought of themselves as a 'Byzantine' empire. Personally I would prefer it to make it more likely for the Roman Empire's centre of gravity to be in the Eastern Mediterranean, and for the Western half to collapse but the Eastern half to survive. If Rome shifts its capital to Constantinopolis it could gain the unique powers of the 'Byzantine' civ.

If Byzantium spawned like other civs, wouldn't this force them to conquer a new Byzantine empire, instead of starting with the entire Eastern Roman Empire and seeing it slowly dwindle.

 

[Leoreth]

@Leoreth
I just noticed that you made one change to the mod in the SVN; is what you did have any affect on making the Byzantines finally playable?

Unfortunately not, I'm currently only trying some different approaches to single out the problem (which I think I now have). The commit was only to carry over the most recent version to all my computers (I use the SVN for that too, usually the commits without log messages). I strongly recommend to not update to that revision yet or revert to an earlier if you already have, because it's likely more broken than the previous one.

Is it really necessary to have a separate Byzantine civ?

I know this debateable but they're basically the latter-day Romans. They certainly never thought of themselves as a 'Byzantine' empire. Personally I would prefer it to make it more likely for the Roman Empire's centre of gravity to be in the Eastern Mediterranean, and for the Western half to collapse but the Eastern half to survive. If Rome shifts its capital to Constantinopolis it could gain the unique powers of the 'Byzantine' civ.

If Byzantium spawned like other civs, wouldn't this force them to conquer a new Byzantine empire, instead of starting with the entire Eastern Roman Empire and seeing it slowly dwindle.

From a strictly historical point of view you're right, but there's no way to make that happen realistically in RFC. First of all, the Roman AI is already challenged by conquering the WRE plus Balkans in time, so a new spawn for the ERE takes care of that quite nicely. It also gives the possibility to tweak the Byzantines to be more Byzantine-like (defensive and religious instead of expansive) and lastly, for the player the opportunity to play a more Byzantine-like game without messing with Rome.

The Byzantines will get a quite generous flip zone, but basically you're right for their 330 AD start, that they have to go out and settle/conquer parts of the empire that were historically already theirs. Think of it as the Justinian reconquests if you like to. The 600 AD start will be similar to how the Byzantines are now, i.e. starting with the cities they historically had. It's two different situations that can make you start better or worse off, depending how the 3000 BC scenario unfolds, but that's the case for civs like Japan or China as well.

 

[The Turk]

Actually thats a good point, if we want can we start a game as the Byzantine in 600 AD start now? Because technically they've already spawned in that one, and are ready to play. What do you say?

 

[lumpthing]

Leoreth: Good enough reason for me . Will their in-game name be Byzantines or Eastern Roman Empire (ideally changing to just 'Roman Empire' if the original Rome collapses)? I know the former makes things easier but it's so completely unhistorical, and seems out of place in a mod which goes to the extreme of calling all cities by the name used by the civilization which controls them.

Anyway now I've made my entry into this thread I'd just like to say thanks for creating such an awesome modmod. Marathon speed makes RFC infinitely more enjoyable and all the flavour-improving aspects of this mod have completely rekindled my enjoyment of RFC and civ (neither of which I had played for half a year). I love the way religion and ancient wonders are handled - so much more immersive now. I've been happily trying (and failing) to re-create the entire historical Roman empire by around 100 AD whilst also researching all techs Rome historical had in antiquity. Probably impossible but lots of fun.

I have some suggestions for making the modmod even awesomer but I'll leave that for another time.

 

[Leoreth]

Actually thats a good point, if we want can we start a game as the Byzantine in 600 AD start now? Because technically they've already spawned in that one, and are ready to play. What do you say?

Yeah, of course, it's just a matter of changing the cities to the right owner, making the Byzantines playable in the scenario and do some additional stuff like starting techs.

Leoreth: Good enough reason for me . Will their in-game name be Byzantines or Eastern Roman Empire (ideally changing to just 'Roman Empire' if the original Rome collapses)? I know the former makes things easier but it's so completely unhistorical, and seems out of place in a mod which goes to the extreme of calling all cities by the name used by the civilization which controls them.

I plan to call them Byzantine Empire. I know it's an ahistorical name, but that's actually the usual way for civilization names in RFC. Egypt didn't call itself "Old Kingdom" back then, it didn't even call itself Egypt. But I agree with Rhye that having names like km.t looks silly. So instead of arguing where to draw the line between necessary translations and anachronisms, I've decided to just use the common names of today

Anyway now I've made my entry into this thread I'd just like to say thanks for creating such an awesome modmod. Marathon speed makes RFC infinitely more enjoyable and all the flavour-improving aspects of this mod have completely rekindled my enjoyment of RFC and civ (neither of which I had played for half a year). I love the way religion and ancient wonders are handled - so much more immersive now. I've been happily trying (and failing) to re-create the entire historical Roman empire by around 100 AD whilst also researching all techs Rome historical had in antiquity. Probably impossible but lots of fun.

I have some suggestions for making the modmod even awesomer but I'll leave that for another time.

You have to thank edead for the marathon speed, but thanks anyway

And yes, it's probably advisable to remember your ideas for later, because right now I won't touch anything else until these frickin city ruins are taken care of.

 

[Linkman226]

You took everything from that mod, like the late resource spawning as well?

No sadly I don't have the coding expertise to include stuff like RFCE resources (potatoes, tea, etc). What I included was from Panopticon's dynamic terrain mod (which is incorporated in RFCM:BWS).

Leoreth, in my current game America hasn't even spawned yet and Italy is researching Fission

Italy really needs a nerf.

For now I'm gonna see if I can get them to collapse via spies, before Italy fucs us all

 

[Stelmack]

Just curious, whats that ruin problem you mentioned?

 

[The Turk]

Why not make the "Italian city-states" non-playable, therefore making sure they are weak, LATER you can then have in the 19th century, have the real Italy spawn for people to play as.