Generic Civs Revisited

[strategyonly]

So I ran into a problem. The city names. Hmm what to do about this. You can't just remove them since the AI needs to name the cities something. However you can totally tell what civ it use to be by the names of the cities they make. Any ideas?

All you need to do is change something like this
<Cities>
<City>TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_ISHIKARI</City>
<City>TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME_MONBETSU</City>
</Cities>

to this:

<Cities/>

It will place its own names in there from the python file (cant remember the name of it).

 

[Hydromancerx]

@SO

How do you mean? Like random names or what?

 

[climat]

Can it be an option? I prefer current "earth civs".

 

[Hydromancerx]

Can it be an option? I prefer current "earth civs".

I am not sure. Could something like this be completely modular? Mods? They are aesthetic changes so maybe.

 

[strategyonly]

@SO

How do you mean? Like random names or what?

Isnt that what you asked for??

 

[Yid]

Is it possible to rename an empire as soon as it has developed a Culture?

So you may start as the Delta Red tribe, but as soon as you build the Sioux culture you might be known as the Sioux Tribe. If you build other culture wonders you might either be asked if you want to change your name or stay. You could also link a name change to a revolution. This happened frequently in the past (like Russia became the Soviet Union) and could feel more natural.

For the AI I sugest one name change per era. So the Celtic Empire may become the English one later in the game.

The same may work for city names. Okay, before developing cultures names may be strange then. I suggest to take the name of the capital of the culture that your personality fits best (in terms of the current leaders). So it you pick the personality of Alexander, your first city will be Athens; if you pick Frederick its Berlin.

 

[pi4t]

This could form a decent basis, though again I'd rather see the initial 'base culture' available to a civ, or automatically given to a civ, no matter how generic it may be, be based on where they start their first city instead of any game choice at the beginning. If we try to make this work through 'culturally linked starts' it messes with a team start - the team members are supposed to start relatively close to one another regardless of what they choose at the beginning. I'm not sure if the Culturally Linked start overrides this or is thrown off by this.

I've also felt that, as others in this thread have mentioned, tying civs to their Earth locations is rather counterintuitive in a world which may not even have the same number of continents. I've just come up with an idea which should allow your base culture (eg European) to emerge from your location:

To begin with, civilisations have no cultures, and generic names*. At a certain point, such as Sedentary Lifestyle, you can make fairly cheap wonders for Culture: European, Culture: Asian, etc... There may be a small requirement, like needing jungle in the city vicinity for South American, but it should be probable that at least one civilisation somewhere will have that requirement. The wonders don't give any benefits in themselves, but allow you to build specific cultural wonders as usual.

However, and I'm not sure how easy this would be to code, these base culture wonders would provide that culture (probably in the form of a free Culture: [continent]) for every city within a number of tiles of it, which would preferably vary based on map size. Any city with one base culture in it could not build any (more) base culture wonders. This way, you'd end up with six overlapping geographical 'circles' for your different base cultures, and in order to get more than one (or two or three if you're very lucky with where other civs make their wonders), you'd have to expand to encompass far away cities in other 'continents'.

Oh, and names would if possible change when your civilisation acquires a culture, so they'd become the 'First European Tribe', or 'The European Water Tribe', or something like that.

*Side point here: I'd have thought it would be more thematic to come up with names which don't describe them as anything specific but are appropriate to the era, such as 'Water Tribe', or 'Red Lion Tribe'.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I've always suggested that since animal spawns are controlled by region, why cannot the initial base culture given to the first city be generated based on the same parameters as an animal spawn?

Renaming of the Civ is something I can do BUT I'd like that to operate not automatically so much as a choice among the cultures the civ possesses. I was waiting for AIAndy's simplified property mechanism for that project.

@SO: Recall that Heroes are Culture based rather than Civ based. No changes should be necessary there.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Isnt that what you asked for??

Yes. I just am just wondering how those names are generated. Is it a pre-made list?

 

[Hydromancerx]

The same may work for city names. Okay, before developing cultures names may be strange then. I suggest to take the name of the capital of the culture that your personality fits best (in terms of the current leaders). So it you pick the personality of Alexander, your first city will be Athens; if you pick Frederick its Berlin.

Not all cultures have a civ equivalent. So if I got say neanderthal culture there are no neanderthal city names to take from.

I've also felt that, as others in this thread have mentioned, tying civs to their Earth locations is rather counterintuitive in a world which may not even have the same number of continents. I've just come up with an idea which should allow your base culture (eg European) to emerge from your location:

To begin with, civilisations have no cultures, and generic names*. At a certain point, such as Sedentary Lifestyle, you can make fairly cheap wonders for Culture: European, Culture: Asian, etc... There may be a small requirement, like needing jungle in the city vicinity for South American, but it should be probable that at least one civilisation somewhere will have that requirement. The wonders don't give any benefits in themselves, but allow you to build specific cultural wonders as usual.

However, and I'm not sure how easy this would be to code, these base culture wonders would provide that culture (probably in the form of a free Culture: [continent]) for every city within a number of tiles of it, which would preferably vary based on map size. Any city with one base culture in it could not build any (more) base culture wonders. This way, you'd end up with six overlapping geographical 'circles' for your different base cultures, and in order to get more than one (or two or three if you're very lucky with where other civs make their wonders), you'd have to expand to encompass far away cities in other 'continents'.

Oh, and names would if possible change when your civilisation acquires a culture, so they'd become the 'First European Tribe', or 'The European Water Tribe', or something like that.

*Side point here: I'd have thought it would be more thematic to come up with names which don't describe them as anything specific but are appropriate to the era, such as 'Water Tribe', or 'Red Lion Tribe'.

First of all there are cultures you can get before sedentary lifestyle so that would not work out well. Second South America has alots of types of climates not just Amazon Jungle, there is Savanna-like Pampas, High Andes Mountains and even the cold Glacial south near Antarctica.

 

[Nimek]

I would like to be able to choose at the begining of the came

- name of my civ (textfield)
- color
- avatar (like roman crown, egyptian eye etc)

That way civs will be generic

 

[strategyonly]

I would like to be able to choose at the begining of the came

- name of my civ (textfield)
- color
- avatar (like roman crown, egyptian eye etc)

That way civs will be generic

I kinda like this idea.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I would like to be able to choose at the begining of the came

- name of my civ (textfield)
- color
- avatar (like roman crown, egyptian eye etc)

That way civs will be generic

You can do the first 2 already. The your name and your civ name can already be edited in the options menu. Changing your civ color is in the BUG menu.

 

[bill2505]

what about this.
leave the currect civs for everyone that wants to play with them and create the new system you plan with other civs

 

[bill2505]

So I ran into a problem. The city names. Hmm what to do about this. You can't just remove them since the AI needs to name the cities something. However you can totally tell what civ it use to be by the names of the cities they make. Any ideas?

can a event rename cities

 

[strategyonly]

what about this.
leave the currect civs for everyone that wants to play with them and create the new system you plan with other civs

Now i definitely like that.

 

[Dissonance]

Not all cultures have a civ equivalent. So if I got say neanderthal culture there are no neanderthal city names to take from.



First of all there are cultures you can get before sedentary lifestyle so that would not work out well. Second South America has alots of types of climates not just Amazon Jungle, there is Savanna-like Pampas, High Andes Mountains and even the cold Glacial south near Antarctica.

If going with this style, this should be quite simple. Your first cities will be forced to use "local landmarks" as names (as per the BUG option). The first culture built that HAS associated names (besides, we could potentially create a Neanderthal name list using known sites) takes over for your future cities.

An event could be generated that the first culture founded renames the city where it was built, starting the "modern names" chain.

Remember, Rome wasn't founded in 40,000 BC. It was founded in 753 BC. In 40,000 BC people likely lived in the Sassi di Matera cave, which may have been called "Grunt hmphph grunt".


I still suggest the start with generic names using common geographical/flora features, acquire name with culture(s).

 

[Hydromancerx]

what about this.
leave the currect civs for everyone that wants to play with them and create the new system you plan with other civs

But how would you keep real civs from spawning from generic civs? Likewise how would you kep generic civs from spawning from real ones?

Second that seems like it would confuse people even more. On of the main benefits of making them al generic is that people will no longer be able to pick say England and wonder why they don't have English units and buildings like in Vanilla civ.

This need to be an all or nothing change. Otherwise it will not work.

 

[strategyonly]

I still have NOT heard from the other modders on this??

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

If going with this style, this should be quite simple. Your first cities will be forced to use "local landmarks" as names (as per the BUG option). The first culture built that HAS associated names (besides, we could potentially create a Neanderthal name list using known sites) takes over for your future cities.

An event could be generated that the first culture founded renames the city where it was built, starting the "modern names" chain.

Remember, Rome wasn't founded in 40,000 BC. It was founded in 753 BC. In 40,000 BC people likely lived in the Sassi di Matera cave, which may have been called "Grunt hmphph grunt".

I still suggest the start with generic names using common geographical/flora features, acquire name with culture(s).

I fully agree with this. Initial cities should be automatically and randomly named based on nearby geographical features and/or resources. For example, if your starting 9 squares had a coast, grassland, caves, river, and banana (yes, I know the banana wouldn't show at the beginning, but I couldn't think of one that would), then your starting city could be "River Cave", "Coast Banana", "Grass Cave", etc. Admittedly, a player can change the name of a city any time they want to and to anything they want to, but the initial flavor would be more generic with basic 'primitive' names.

For that matter, the initial tribe probably shouldn't have a name at all until 'Native Language' is researched, but I doubt that is doable or even feasible. That would probably cause problems for the AI.

But how would you keep real civs from spawning from generic civs? Likewise how would you kep generic civs from spawning from real ones?

Second that seems like it would confuse people even more. On of the main benefits of making them al generic is that people will no longer be able to pick say England and wonder why they don't have English units and buildings like in Vanilla civ.

This need to be an all or nothing change. Otherwise it will not work.

I agree that the two should not be allowed to mix with each other. However, it could possibly be a Game Option set at game creation. Choosing this option would cause any Civ selected to turn into a generic one based on the region (European, Asian, etc) that the base Civ is from. Could it cause confusion? Possibly, but I think having the option present would be worth it for people who would not like to play under this direction change. After all, what this Mod is all about is having more choices.