Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

[Cosmos1985]

It happens almost every time I play as Portugal. I lose the hill and horses E of Lisboa, and end up unable to produce anything in the homeland. I either have to build a huge army and take down Spain or give up on Portugal and move my capital/centre to Brazil.

The tiles just east of Lisboa, right next to it? That shouldn't really happen, unless they outproduce you in culture massively, as you have the 80/20-advantage there? Are you using latest version?

Excellent idea about the SE Asia event-thing! Also mos def agree that the Khmer seems to be doing too well, especially when China has collapsed. Maybe make the event only happen for Euro Civs, and to be AI Khmer only.

Oh and nevermind the thing I mentioned about AP, noob me have overlooked the part about the prereq. of diplomatic victories enabled - so no problem there, just me being stupid

Edit: I'd by the way love if you lovered the spread rate of Asian Religions in Europe even more, it is still a problem to see Buddhist Europe in a 3000BC start way too often.
(The Buddhist wonder that gives you 2 hammers from priests - Shw.. Paya - combined with the civic that gives you unlimited priests can by the way be absolutely crazy overpowered, that combo can really give the player a huge advantage; 2P 1G specialists unlimited everywhere, with the only - minimal - downside being high upkeep for the civic. Oh and 50% GP boost also! So maybe that should be nerfed a bit, in some way)

Edit 2: When you decline a flip when a new civ spawn, they should probably be at total war against you - at least not be allowed to make peace as long as they don't have any cities. I don't know how often it happens, but my current game I was lucky enough to have the new civ moving all units out from the capital apart from civilian units, so took the capital and the civ was eliminated. They received some units when I declined the flip, and got some of my units that "betrayed" or whatever terms is used, and then after a few turns, they made peace, without any cities nor settlers.

 

[AOS9001]

If we're making map changes, can we get rid of this mountain circled in red from the 3000 BC start?



Kind of makes that desert area a complete waste of space, with only one way in and nothing there (in the normal map). Also, did anyone see my idea about expanding the Chinese stability zone into parts of Mongolia (as contested) and Manchuria (historical)? By the way, the southern half of Taiwan is still foreign zone.

 

[jammerculture]

that's some pretty rich dessert wasteland...

The spot 1S of the northern iron would be an ahistorical monster. Two irons in BFC wow

 

[Cosmos1985]

I was just reading the stability guide doc in the mod folder - about combos of civics effect on stab - and most of it made a lot of sense intuitively, but why is there a bonus for Parliament + Totalitarianism? What is the rationale behind that?

Also, I'm 99% sure I was running Republic and Representation in my latest game, when I changed to Parliament, but still got the transition to democracy-unrest-thing.

Temple of Solomon by the way ACTIVATES with Liberalism now, and not obsoleted by it, is that wad? The tooltip is just incorrect then

 

[Leoreth]

I was just reading the stability guide doc in the mod folder - about combos of civics effect on stab - and most of it made a lot of sense intuitively, but why is there a bonus for Parliament + Totalitarianism? What is the rationale behind that?

Also, I'm 99% sure I was running Republic and Representation in my latest game, when I changed to Parliament, but still got the transition to democracy-unrest-thing.

Temple of Solomon by the way ACTIVATES with Liberalism now, and not obsoleted by it, is that wad? The tooltip is just incorrect then

To be honest - I don't know myself anymore

The democracy unrest is still to be fixed.

You're right about the temple, I've changed it to fit its tooltip.

 

[civ_king]

that's some pretty rich dessert wasteland...

The spot 1S of the northern iron would be an ahistorical monster. Two irons in BFC wow

Don't worry, it can turn to dust later

I was just reading the stability guide doc in the mod folder - about combos of civics effect on stab - and most of it made a lot of sense intuitively, but why is there a bonus for Parliament + Totalitarianism? What is the rationale behind that?

Also, I'm 99% sure I was running Republic and Representation in my latest game, when I changed to Parliament, but still got the transition to democracy-unrest-thing.

Temple of Solomon by the way ACTIVATES with Liberalism now, and not obsoleted by it, is that wad? The tooltip is just incorrect then

IIRC Parliament+Totalitarianism is because the people think they have representation which pacifies them, but with totalitarianism the Parliament simply is a rubber stamp. So overall the people think the are represented (more stability).

 

[azander12]

Don't worry, it can turn to dust later


IIRC Parliament+Totalitarianism is because the people think they have representation which pacifies them, but with totalitarianism the Parliament simply is a rubber stamp. So overall the people think the are represented (more stability).

At the same time a parliament would give the people an institution through which to revolt, similarly to how the French Revolution began through the institution of the Estates General, or how the collapse of the Soviet Union began through their Parliament. Maybe Representation could add a bonus, representing things like the workers' soviets of the USSR, but I think Parliamentarism should be unstable with Totalitarianism.

 

[Orka]

Unfortunately I can't see your image, seems to be something wrong with the attachment ID.

I've considering Kashgar as well, Dunhuang also sounds good.

I don't know what you're going for with the Great Merchants - do you intend them to flip to the Mongols?

Woops. Does it work now:

Spoiler :

Inspired by corovanrobber's floodplains, I added a few of my own. Other than that, the rest is the same as my original. The oasises are intended to be improvable. There's space for one more city, perhaps Turpan or Hetian.

It's not a resource rich as corovanrobber's colorful map, but I was going for realism. The Silk Road cities were very wealthy, but never very large.

That was my rationale for spawning Great Merchants (which the AI settles) when the cities spawn. It makes the cities themselves valuable, not necessarily their land. I also had the idea of assigning free merchants with this python function (something I found from search; I don't actually know the full implementation):

city.changeFreeSpecialistCount(iSpecialist, 1)

But this way could be undesirable, since merchants produce GPP.

If we're making map changes, can we get rid of this mountain circled in red from the 3000 BC start?



Kind of makes that desert area a complete waste of space, with only one way in and nothing there (in the normal map). Also, did anyone see my idea about expanding the Chinese stability zone into parts of Mongolia (as contested) and Manchuria (historical)? By the way, the southern half of Taiwan is still foreign zone.

Definitely that mountain should be flattened. The actual silk road passes through that point (Kashgar). In 600AD it's already done.

 

[J. pride]

You should move Kashgar one tile south east to where the oases is because currently it messes up Samarkand's cross and in reality Kashgar is a bit more east than that

 

[jammerculture]

Ok this is much better.

Maybe instead of improvable oasis's and settled GM's we create a new terrain feature, silk road oasis, which gives resources and GPT to the civ controlling them.

after looking at this map

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/SeidenstrasseGMT.JPG

I think Kashgar should be on the eastern side of the pass, and Dunhang should be against the southern range as well, 1S or SE from where it is in your picture. Plus this opens up some more room for Turfan (hill between the peaks?)as well. You might also consider Khotan or Yutian as they are names that seemed to come up in a lot of maps and in a lot of text on the silk road.

It will be really cool to finally have this important part of the world and history be a part of the game. It opens up some interesting potentials i.e. future Persian UHV conditions, more chance of mongol destruction, etc.

 

[Orka]

I think Kashgar should be on the eastern side of the pass, and Dunhang should be against the southern range as well, 1S or SE from where it is in your picture. Plus this opens up some more room for Turfan (hill between the peaks?)as well.

Yeh, thanks, those would be more accurate locations, especially Kashgar. And Turfan is indeed between the hills, but it needs fresh water.

Now, when should they spawn? Historically, they didn't "appear" until the Chinese conquered/settled them.

 

[jammerculture]

I think indie cities around 150 bc makes sense. Having the AI China conquer them is a secondary consideration, imo, as they are really meant for the mongols, but they should be there for the human Chinese (or Persian/Indian player).

I've been reading about this area lately, and one of the things that struck me as being important is that the Chinese received horses as well as gems and furs in trade. Perhaps a method to implement this exchange in game is have each city have a special building "silk road" which would give access to one of these resources, controlling all three would net them all. Samarqand would receive the silk, perhaps a number of sources for trade.

 

[Cethegus]

At the same time a parliament would give the people an institution through which to revolt, similarly to how the French Revolution began through the institution of the Estates General, or how the collapse of the Soviet Union began through their Parliament. Maybe Representation could add a bonus, representing things like the workers' soviets of the USSR, but I think Parliamentarism should be unstable with Totalitarianism.

Agreed. So long as the main difference between Representational and Parliamential systems in real history has been which has more power over the other, the head of state or the government, I imagine there would be a conflict if the government wasn't as strong as the society it represents. What totalitarian states have anyway been parliamentary? Italy?

 

[AOS9001]

I think Kashgar should be on the eastern side of the pass, and Dunhang should be against the southern range as well, 1S or SE from where it is in your picture. Plus this opens up some more room for Turfan (hill between the peaks?)as well. You might also consider Khotan or Yutian as they are names that seemed to come up in a lot of maps and in a lot of text on the silk road.

It will be really cool to finally have this important part of the world and history be a part of the game. It opens up some interesting potentials i.e. future Persian UHV conditions, more chance of mongol destruction, etc.

Agreed fully. Central/Inner Asia has been ignored too long, it needs the same kind of love Europe gets.

 

[Cosmos1985]

(Figured it was time to for once have a post not only consisting of "It could be great if this and that", but actually DOING something myself also )
I take it that the Parthenon is meant to represent the Athenian democracy, which Civic-wise would be Republic and Representation (or maybe even Parliament?) in the two first columns. It only enables Republic though, which comes relatively early anyway, with Philosophy, and not Representation, which you'd have to wait ages for. So I've changed it so that it now enables all the civics of the second column, instead of the first. It's not really balanced or completely perfect, a better solution would maybe instead have it enabling solely Republic and Representation/Parliament, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. Also, it enables Absolutism early, especially a Roman player could very well want to take advantage of that etc. But... I like being able to recreate the Greek Quasi-Democracy, it fits the Greek GP focus well, and yeah, I dunno - use if you like!

Speaking of the Greeks by the way, Leoreth have you considered enabling winerys by Pottery, like in RFCC? Or however it's spelled in plural... the grapes-improvement.. the Greeks should be able to meet Dionysos right from their birth I'm no expert on the history of wine at all, but a quick Wikipedia search led me to this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wine , claiming "The earliest evidence of Greek wine has been dated to 6,500 years ago", so it doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

In the extremely small department, the Byzantines doesn't rename Antioch back when they've recaptured it after losing it to the Arabs, it keeps it Arabic name.

Edit: The file should be copied to Beyond the Sword\Mods\RFC Dawn of Civilization\Assets\XML\Buildings (after being unzipped first, obviously)

 

[Leoreth]

All those suggestions for the silk road are much appreciated. I don't want to join the discussion just yet, because I fear once I do that I'll start implementing it. And I finally want to take care of some bugs now.

(By the way, a fix for the transition to democracy bug is in the SVN now).

Agreed. So long as the main difference between Representational and Parliamential systems in real history has been which has more power over the other, the head of state or the government, I imagine there would be a conflict if the government wasn't as strong as the society it represents. What totalitarian states have anyway been parliamentary? Italy?

Depends on if you consider them "totalitarian" but Stalinist states usually had a parliament. The whole problem is that the point of totalitarianism is to "bring into line" all institutions, so it doesn't really matter if there's a powerless Representation or a powerless Parliament going on in the background.

(Figured it was time to for once have a post not only consisting of "It could be great if this and that", but actually DOING something myself also )
I take it that the Parthenon is meant to represent the Athenian democracy, which Civic-wise would be Republic and Representation (or maybe even Parliament?) in the two first columns. It only enables Republic though, which comes relatively early anyway, with Philosophy, and not Representation, which you'd have to wait ages for. So I've changed it so that it now enables all the civics of the second column, instead of the first. It's not really balanced or completely perfect, a better solution would maybe instead have it enabling solely Republic and Representation/Parliament, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. Also, it enables Absolutism early, especially a Roman player could very well want to take advantage of that etc. But... I like being able to recreate the Greek Quasi-Democracy, it fits the Greek GP focus well, and yeah, I dunno - use if you like!

Speaking of the Greeks by the way, Leoreth have you considered enabling winerys by Pottery, like in RFCC? Or however it's spelled in plural... the grapes-improvement.. the Greeks should be able to meet Dionysos right from their birth I'm no expert on the history of wine at all, but a quick Wikipedia search led me to this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wine , claiming "The earliest evidence of Greek wine has been dated to 6,500 years ago", so it doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

In the extremely small department, the Byzantines doesn't rename Antioch back when they've recaptured it after losing it to the Arabs, it keeps it Arabic name.

Edit: The file should be copied to Beyond the Sword\Mods\RFC Dawn of Civilization\Assets\XML\Buildings (after being unzipped first, obviously)

I decided against the second column to emphasize the difference between Greek democracy and modern democracies. The Greek polis had many shortcomings from a modern perspective, vote was limited only to wealthy male citizens, which is similar more to a form of Plutocracy if this was present here. Also, it was a direct democracy, so Representation and Parliament don't really fit (but incidentally, "direct rule" does).

I don't know about the wineries, wouldn't pottery mean a too easy access to early happiness?

Thanks about the Antioch problem, I'll fix that.

 

[J. pride]

Can we just get rid of the Vikings and have Sweden that spawn in 1000-1300ish ad. Vikings just cause problem for the rest of the civs and I think they would be best represented as barbarian cities and unit spawns in Northern Europe.

I mean really Vikings were never a single empire but rather a bunch of people bunched together much like the celtics. Sweden on the other hand was one of the most powerful states in the 1500-1700s. We can have a Sweden that spawns in 1300s, the same time as the formation of the Kalmar Union

 

[Orka]

Depends on if you consider them "totalitarian" but Stalinist states usually had a parliament. The whole problem is that the point of totalitarianism is to "bring into line" all institutions, so it doesn't really matter if there's a powerless Representation or a powerless Parliament going on in the background.

But wait, if a parliament is only rubber-stamp, how can it give the benefits associated with parliamentarianism (the extra hammer per town, which I suppose represents the benefits of their participation in gov't; and the unhappiness in other civs, who don't have the benefit of representation)? Not that it's significant gameplay-wise, and in any case the benefits are really abstract, but the Organization tab feels as confusing as the Legal tab in BTS was.

Thinking about wineries, I remember that Turpan was famous for its grapes. A wine resource (maybe 1N of it, outside of Dunhuang's cross) would be a good way to represent this, plus I don't think China has any wine, creating incentive to capture it.

 

[civ_king]

Could we make Russia settle less crappy Siberian cities?

 

[The Turk]

Could we make Russia settle less crappy Siberian cities?

Nope, because they are all crappy cities