European Middle Ages Mod Resurrection

I'm going to do some experimenting in the next few days... no rush, as this is not too integral to the mod, anyhow.

I'll set up a Scott barbarian unit, as I've mentioned, and see how it works out. I'll keep you posted.

As I'm really a rookie at XML, I'll probably need to ask questions periodically... since this seems largely copy and past of already made units, shouldn't be too difficult, I hope.
 
Craig, HeadSerf is right, vanilla does have the coding for unique buildings. If you get stuck on coding, feel free to ask us here - I'm sure I speak for Head Serf also when I say we'd be happy to help you! :) -L
 
Calling all buildings feedback!

Just a reminder to anybody test-playing the buildings - I would like your feedback, no matter how minor it seems! Pedia entries, strategy text, buttons, anything you have a comment on, I would like to know. I know I sort of charged ahead on the buildings, but it is still a group effort, and I want all of us to be happy with the changes.

Once the building pass group approval, I will do a final review and polish things up for Head Serf.

-Laina
 
Some sailing ship units that will be useful for our mod... the galley would be a Lateen Galley.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=209775

I see, you allready noticed my little shipyard. :) The Galley will be the first medieval unit relased. And there will be different versions: One with one sail/mast, anotherone with two of them.

So you could use one for "trireme" and the others for "medival trieme". (Yes, you see, I would suggest replacing just the names of "triremes" with "galleys" and the actual "galleys" with "merchant" or "transport" in general. This would make more sence to me, becouse galleys were medieval war ships and trading galleys were rather a ... exception in medieval times.)

:commerce::commerce:
 
Very nice units.

I largely agree with your assessment of the naming conventions I used. Actually, the difference between galleys used for war and those used for transport was more one of function rather that form. Load a galley with men, and add some weaponry, and it's a war galley. A galleass was basically a merchant galley outfitted with a lot of cannon, for instance.

That being said, the game doesn't allow switching back and forth of roles for ships. When built, a galley has one role or the other, and that's the way it'll stay. In this view, both a medieval galley (merchant use) and a war galley (medieval trireme) are actually the same ship type. So calling both "galleys" does make some sense.

I hope to use the Civpedia entries, when I've made them (a job that is half done, and sitting on my computer), to make clear some of the reasons for the nomenclature I used. For instance, in the medieval period, a trireme was rather different than the ancient kind. Instead of banks of oars, it actually referenced the number of rowers per oar... oars were actually much longer in the medieval period than previously. A medieval trireme, therefore, was actually a very different ship from the ancient ones.

I also determined the names based upon the major means of moving the ship along. Galley Class units are those whose primary motive power was via oars; Sailing Class primarily use sails. Under this definition, all oared vessels are galleys, including longboats, galleasses, and others. Agains, designating units as one type of galley or other makes sense in this view.

My view, then, is that "merchant" or "transport" is a use, not a unit descriptor. Not just galleys, but other ship types could be used as merchants, too. If we chose a "merchant" designation for galleys, we ought to do so as well for sailing ships. But then there would be Merchant Galleys and Merchant Sailing Ships... so we'd need to use the term galley, in any case, to define an oared merchant vessel. That being the case, Medieval Galley, as a designation, serves the same purpose.

Anyhow, in creating the names, I tried to create ones that made some sense (at least to me :)). The naming conventions are at least, logical, I hope. I hope they also reflect changed in tech, adequately. It's hard to reflect what was actually a very slow and evolutionary process with a system which is all or nothing... a tech is developed, and suddenly there is a leap forward in units. I had to sift through a number of different ship types to get those that I thought reflected the change in technology the best. For instance, the holk was considered for inclusion, but I thought it to be a transitional ship between cog and carrack, and so, did not include it, even though carracks were partially developed from the holk. Some of the other ships, such as Galleon, had multiple pregenitors (galley and sailing ships), but I chose to concentrate on its galley forbears as the main line of evolution for upgrade purposes because I wanted something for medieval galleys to upgrade to, in the end.

All this is to say, in my longwinded way, that the names used, while they may not be the best, were not randomly or lightly chosen.

Your ships are real good, in any case, and I hope you don't mind too much, their designations in the mod.
 
Firstly, @ Craig_Sutter:
I don't know if I already responded to you, but for me the Cog graphics are working fine. Here's a picture of how they should look.
 

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Now for the notes on the new buildings and such:

I played a full game through as England and won a New World Victory. I was playing on the large Europe map on Noble difficulty.

1. A fair number of the buildings currently have no models and are just pink blobs. :lol:

2. The Town Square is terrible and I can't see why anyone would want to build it. The -2 food and -1 hammer are not made up for by the buildings that are allowed from it; the Minstrel's Stage, Gallows, and I believe Fair. I propose that it has no disadvantages or advantages, and maintains a lower cost.

3. I'm very happy with how the keep, walls, armory, and castle have turned out. :goodjob:

4. The Belfry should provide +10% production and cost 40, not 30. The current boost of +5% is neglible unless the city is fairly large.

5. Leper's Quarantine should be removed, the +1 health is not worth the -3 gold, and there are already plenty of +1 health buildings.

6. The game allows me to build a Chancery in every city as long as I have 7 courthouses and 8 cities total. I'm guessing it was meant to be built only once. :crazyeye:

7. Conquest of the Arawak should be moved from the technology Pilotage to the technology Compass.

8. Fair should have no production disadvantage and cost about 20 or 30 hammers more.

9. Mint should cost more hammers.

10. I love the new buttons! They're very colorful and accurate, and fit the buildings perfectly! :goodjob:

11. Tavern should lose the -5% production and cost about 20 or 30 hammers more.

12. Inn shouldn't affect trade routes. I think the current +10% to commerce is powerful enough, since it increases both money and science.

13. The Astrologer's Tower should be removed. There are already enough science increasing buildings, and I'm finding that having the Astrologer's Tower, Apothecary, Scriptorium, and Library all increasing science to be too overpowering. :eek:

14. I think that +1 or +2 unhealthiness should be added to each difficulty along with +1 unhappiness.

15. Reliquaries shouldn't require Holy Cities. This way they can be used by more than 3 civilizations. :king:

16. Minstrel's Stage should be removed, it's not needed.

17. The Hanseatic League Wonder was left over from a long time ago I believe, and should be removed.

18. The Master's Workshop or whatever it's called should be removed, the production bonuses between that, the mint, and the forge add up to a lot. :crazyeye:

19. Courthouses should require Town Square. :hammer:

Along with these I plan on making an across the board tech cost increase of 5% and eventually adding some more techs at the end (future tech style).
 
How strange, with the graphics. My installation works perfectly, otherwise. I wonder what could be wrong. Not a big deal, as far as game play goes, but it would be nice to see the nifty ships. Oddly, I think my land units are ok, although I haven't checked them in detail, nor have I gone through the other naval units. I may have to do a complete reinstall in the future.
 
I plan on reworking the traits and then properly assigning them to the various leaders today. Here are what the traits look like right now:

Financial : +1 Gold with 3 Gold, 2x Production of Bank and Inn

Seafarer : Free Discipline Promotion to Naval Units, 2x Production of Dockyard and Port

Learned : +100% GPP, 2x Production of Library and University

Architect : +2 Health in every city, +50% Wonder Production

Conqueror : Free Discipline promotion to melee units, 2x Production of Armory and Wooden Walls

Wise : No anarchy, -50% civic costs, 2x Production of Court and Guildhall

Pious : 2x Production of Temples and Cathedrals

Industrious : +1 hammer with 3 hammers, 2x Production of Smithy and Master's Workshop.

Influential : +2 Influence in every city

I would like to:
-Have Architect have no +2 health, instead have +50% worker production
-Have Wise not have 2x production of Courts
-Have Pious produce missionaries 2x production
-Have Industrious not have 2x production of Master Workshop, but Mint instead
-Have Influential have 2x production of Courts and Castles
 
I've been working on the Barbarian UUs. Basically, I've been using the Scottish Highlander unit as my test UU.

First, I created a bonus called Barbarian. It is set so that it cannot be generated on map. I then made it a required resource for construction of the Barbarian_Settlement_Scottish building. Thus, I've created a nonbuildable building. It would only be placed by a scenario maker who wanted the city to generate a specific Barbarian UU. The Settlements are not capturable and are required buildings for specific Barbarian units.

Next, I created a new unit class, Highlander, and unit Highlander. I also created a new combat class, Barbarian_Melee.

Next, I created the Highlander with exactly the same statistics as the Scottish UU, except I did not require Iron.

Keep in mind that the Barbarian UUs are not true UUs. Concievably, any Civ with the Settlement building in a city could produce the units. I have made the buildings uncapturable, but they could be made capturable so that the UU's could be produced by regular Civs. Scenario makers could likewise place the buildings in non-barbarian cities and then, the units could be built.

Anyhow, here are the results of my fiddling...

-cities with the Settlement Buildings will produce the UUs. Ostensibly, the Scottish Highlander UU replaces the Swordsman, but the Barbarian unit does not, and the cities will also produce Swordsman units (in my experiments, 2 swordsmen for every 1 Highlander). I may be able to adjust this ratio by increasing iAIweight for Highlander (it is at 10 now, whatever that means).

-here's the downside... the randomly spawned Barbarian units now include Highlanders. I don't know if this is a downside, or not, but keep in mind that if I create Barbarian units for all the Civs with ground troops, there will be a lot more kinds of units coming at players, and some will seem rather ahistorical... Highlanders coming out of the desert, and Camel Riders coming off the northern forests.

-there may be better ways of generating the Barbarian units. I'm not adept at how unit upgrades work, but I think if the Swordsman unit, for instance, were to upgrade to the Barbarian Highlander, then the cities with the Settlement would produce Highlanders "instead of" rather than "as well as" Swordsman. However, then I'd be concerned that Swordsman could be upgraded to Highlanders by Civs. I don't know how Building requirements work for upgrades... does a unit have to be in the city with the building? or is an upgrade different from building a unit in the Building requirement?

Anyhow, what I really need is the feeling of the people involved in this mod if it is worthwhile developing this idea. The main thing I wonder about is the random spawning of a wide variety of barbarian type UUs. Will this detract from the game? Is there a way to control the units that will be generated by the spawn? If not, should I pursue this idea, of give it up as one that didn't pan out?

That's it for now.
 
Hello All !

Head Serf, thank you so much for your feedback! Here are some responses:

1. A fair number of the buildings currently have no models and are just pink blobs.

I was doing an experiment - instead of having unrelated buildings as models, I tried removing the NIF reference. However, I agree with you - pink blobs are inappropriate. (I was hoping nothing would appear in the pedia.) Instead, I'll assign a building, and then not add it to CityL, so it won't be placed on the map. I'll stay on the lookout for building models for any of these buildings. :)

2. The Town Square is terrible and I can't see why anyone would want to build it. The -2 food and -1 hammer are not made up for by the buildings that are allowed from it; the Minstrel's Stage, Gallows, and I believe Fair. I propose that it has no disadvantages or advantages, and maintains a lower cost.

The Town Square is currently required for Fair, Gallows, Market Place and Minstrel's Stage. I intended the -2 food and -1 hammer to simulate the displacement of workable land; but if you don't think it works, I will remove it. :) I do like using the Town Square as a gateway building, I think it's a nice addition compared to vanilla.

4. The Belfry should provide +10% production and cost 40, not 30. The current boost of +5% is neglible unless the city is fairly large.

Agreed, and done!

5. Leper's Quarantine should be removed, the +1 health is not worth the -3 gold, and there are already plenty of +1 health buildings.

I added the -3 gold, as historically, Leper's Quarantines were supported by public donation. Maybe it is a bit much though. How do you feel about -1 gold? I think we should keep it until we have tested the games at a higher level. With the increased unhealthiness in handicapinfos, I want to be sure we have enough buildings to counter unhealthiness. What do you think?

6. The game allows me to build a Chancery in every city as long as I have 7 courthouses and 8 cities total. I'm guessing it was meant to be built only once. :crazyeye:

Dang, then it still isn't working properly. I thought I had fixed it, but I have one last code change to try. Hopefully we have it this time!

7. Conquest of the Arawak should be moved from the technology Pilotage to the technology Compass.
8. Fair should have no production disadvantage and cost about 20 or 30 hammers more.
9. Mint should cost more hammers.
11. Tavern should lose the -5% production and cost about 20 or 30 hammers more.
17. The Hanseatic League Wonder was left over from a long time ago I believe, and should be removed.
19. Courthouses should require Town Square.

Done! (Fair now costs 125 instead of 100, Mint costs 175 instead of 150, and Tavern costs 100 instead of 80.)

3. I'm very happy with how the keep, walls, armory, and castle have turned out.
10. I love the new buttons! They're very colorful and accurate, and fit the buildings perfectly!

Thank you! :)

12. Inn shouldn't affect trade routes. I think the current +10% to commerce is powerful enough, since it increases both money and science.

Actually, Inn is +10% gold (not commerce.) I think if we remove the +25% trade route yield, +10% gold isn't enough of a benefit. I was thinking an Inn would increase trade route yield because merchants are able to travel through the area more easily and therefore more often. Currently, other buildings that affect trade route yield are Fair +10%, Hansa Memberships +25%, and Port +50%.

I like the Inn as is. In light of this new info, what do you think? We could compromise and have the Inn add +X% commerce? Perhaps +15%?

13. The Astrologer's Tower should be removed. There are already enough science increasing buildings, and I'm finding that having the Astrologer's Tower, Apothecary, Scriptorium, and Library all increasing science to be too overpowering.

I was trying to get the total science closer to vanilla - where there's a max of +100% from basic buildings (ignoring wonders and monasteries) - +25% each for Library, University, Observatory, and Labratory.

We have a total of +90% including the Astrologer's Tower - Apothecary +10%, Astrologer's Tower +10%, Library +25%, Print Shop +10%, Scriptorium +10%, University +25%. (Again, ignoring monasteries and wonders.)

I don't think that's too much - what do you think given the comparison to vanilla's +100%? If you still don't like it, I'll remove it. :)

14. I think that +1 or +2 unhealthiness should be added to each difficulty along with +1 unhappiness.

Great - that's what we have in there now. Did you play with the new HandicapInfos? (Or are you proposing add'l unhealthiness/unhappiness in addition to the changes I made?)

15. Reliquaries shouldn't require Holy Cities. This way they can be used by more than 3 civilizations. :king:

I disagree with you on this one. In order to provide religion-specific bonuses, I created 4 "reliquaries" - one for each religion (excluding Paganism.) If we allowed Reliquaries to built in any city, and even limited each reliquary to one per civ, then each civ could have potentially gain 1 torah scroll, 1 black stone, and 2 christian relics (assuming they produce enough great saints, and have each of those religions present in their lands.) I think making the bonus available to every civ defeats the purpose of having religion specific bonuses. (And it would make the Shrine of the 3 Kings and Relic of the True Cross pointless - why build these wonders when you can gain the relic for free with a great saint.)

I think limiting the Reliquary to the Holy City better controls the presence of these special religious bonuses and makes control of the Holy City that much more valuable.

What do you think?

16. Minstrel's Stage should be removed, it's not needed.

Actually, in both my test games, I've played as Germany, and I've found that I needed the Minstrel's Stage to help control unhappiness, as Jewish civs are at an unhappiness disadvantage compared to civs with the big 3 religions. Of course, this is an incentive to switch to the big 3 (a nod to Craig Sutter), but I think we should keep it to help Pagan or Jewish civs deal with unhappiness until they have the opportunity to convert. What do you think?

18. The Master's Workshop or whatever it's called should be removed, the production bonuses between that, the mint, and the forge add up to a lot.

The Master's Workshop is +25% - that is a lot to remove! The other buildings that add production are as follows: Belfry +10%, Guildhall +10%, Master's Workshop (formerly Workshop) +25%, Mint +15%, and Smithy (formerly Forge) +25%, for a total of +85%.

Vanilla allows +75%: +25% with Forge, +25% with Factory, and +25% with Power.

Here are some suggestions that would get us to +75% hammers overall:
1) We could remove the Belfry's +10% (Belfry's only benefit would be +1 infl, in which case I think the cost should stay at 30).
2) We could reduce Mint to +10%, and reduce the Workshop to +20%.
3) We could remove Workshop, and increase Guildhall to +25%.

What do you think? Or, do you think we should aim for a target production other than +75%?

Along with these I plan on making an across the board tech cost increase of 5% and eventually adding some more techs at the end (future tech style).

Sounds good! I will try to think of a few tech suggestions.

Let me know your thoughts - anyone else, feel free to jump in - and I will make these changes and post new files.

-Laina
 
Hi Everyone!

I forgot to mention that I had re-assigned the building leader traits when I worked on the building code, :mischief:, but I'm glad Head Serf is tackling this because I completely forgot that I had done that!

I would like to:
-Have Architect have no +2 health, instead have +50% worker production
-Have Wise not have 2x production of Courts
-Have Pious produce missionaries 2x production
-Have Industrious not have 2x production of Master Workshop, but Mint instead
-Have Influential have 2x production of Courts and Castles

I think those are all fine changes. I agree with Craig that Mint is a better fit for Financial, and that Wise should pick add Town Square as a double-speed building.

If we decide to keep the Master's Workshop, I think it should stay as the 2nd double speed with Industrious.

-L
 
@Craig Sutter, re: Barb UUs:

There is a way to have the Barb Highlander replace Swordsman - you have to assign the Barb Highlander to the Swordsman unit class, and then associate the Barb highlander unit with the Barb civ in CivilizationInfos. Then, Barbs should be able to build Barb Highlanders, but not Swordsmen. (You can look at a UU in vanilla for some code guidance.) (Also, if you'd like, post your code and I'll take a look at it.)

Also, if Barb Highlanders require a cultural center to be built, I'm surprised that they are spawning! That seems counter-intuitive. (?) Did you add the Cultural Center as <PrereqBuilding> for the unit in UnitInfos?

-L
 
By the way, you guys may have missed my comment on Barbarians, as it was nested in a response post to Craig, but what do you think about giving Barbarians some advantages in our Mod, in addition to what Craig is working on for scenario builders?

Head Serf, you're working on leader traits - what do you think about giving the Barb leader the "Aggressive" leader trait? Or, we perhaps we could hand-craft a "Barbarian" leader trait?

Other thoughts I had were adding two or three Barbarian UUs, and possibly a barbarian UB?

-L
 
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