Idea for mod and scenario, free to use!

[Fullerene]

After writing to 'remove europe' thread I started to think possible ways implementing gameplay that allows more freedom from 'europe screen'.

First I got the Mesoamerican Empire Scenario Idea. In this scenario your goal is to establish strong empire in Pre-Columbian Mexico.You start with 1 city or few colonists and slowly build an empire from that 1 village.

My solution to the king player/Europe screen problem is quite simple: The king represents god(s) or priests. God wants you to sacrifice for him or bad events will happen: famines, plagues and such. You can sacrifice gold and other goods or even prisoners of war(more effective).

Im still not sure how to implement sacrificing-feature. Maybe europe screen can be modded to 'holy place' or something and you sell your sacrifices there. Instead of gold you will get 'morale or 'Spirit' . This Spirit is used to build improvements, buildings,to gain promotions for units etc...

Domestic Market mod from 'Androrc the Orc' is interesting and that would give another way to sell 'non-useful goods'.

Expert citizens( master farmers etc), would be gained with Spirit too or/and simply by experience from working on same profession long enough ( this is implemented in some mod already, I cant remember which).
Game will end when the Spaniards (REF) arrive. You win the game if you manage to push them back to sea (should be difficult).

There are certain problems making this scenario:

1: How to play without Europe screen?
-Possible solution: Make europe screen somekind of holy place where you 'sacrifice' goods instead of selling them. Buying goods should not be allowed.
2. How does AI plays if he can't get goods from europe?
-This might be bigger problem. I haven't yet viewed all the great mods out there, maybe some mod has already accomplished this. One way is to make other tribes 'Natives' but it would be bit boring for game experience.
3. Can you control where REF will spam? They should not spam in Holy Place which is located in your capital or near it. REF should come from the sea.
-I believe you can control REF spamming in some way, but I havent yet looked for it.
4. Needs some new graphics, indian temples, God/Priest leaderhead , new tribes, units (Jaguar warriors) etc.
-Not really a problem and not so important. But I'm certanly not graphic artist.
There propably is more issus too, but these are what i have figured out so far.
Oh and...
5. Map.
Needs map of mexico. Map from Mesoamerica mod from Beyond The Sword is ok, but I'd like to see map to cover bit more west from Tenochtitlan.

I will try to make this mod myself, but since I know I have tendency to abandon my projects and move on other projects , I wanted to share this idea, which I think is interesting.

 

[Ramstorp]

Brilliant idea... Don't give up!

 

[orlanth]

I agree that sounds like a fun idea Fullerene. I have enabled playable natives in the 2071 mod though they could use more features; and like you I've also wanted to try making a mod for playable native empires in the colonial era. This would also include the presence of Colonial civs as in the usual game, with the Native empire having to struggle to avoid being assimilated and overrun.

The Religion and Revolutions mod by raystuttgart adds a lot of cool features which would be great for use in a Natives mod; my hope is to try to make a playable-natives modmod by adopting some of these features if possible.

I agree the Europe screen could be replaced by Androrc's Domestic Economy; or could include some form of Holy Place as you mention as an alternative to Europe.

There are plenty of great Mesoamerican graphics out there so dont worry . I've already collected some for the 2071 mod and know where several other building and leaderhead graphics have been uploaded.

The RoR mod plans to have Natives can take Scalps by killing European colonists which I think is a cool idea. Scalps could be used by the natives in a sacrificial building to gain a variety of benefits. It could also be possible to take slaves or captives from rival tribes.

Well let me know if you'd be interested to collaborate on something like this. I likely can't finish it all by myself, but with some help maybe we could put something cool together

 

[Fullerene]

Yes it might be better work in team. I started other scenario project already, ( but I have problem there). Anyway, atleast we can first define what we want the Natives scenario to be,and what kind of things are realistically possible to achieve.

If my Roman scenario doesn't go too well, I think I might move back to this project. At the moment my idea is quite simple: Human player is the Aztec empire , which functions like colonial power, other mesoamerican empires are Natives and REF are Conquistators.
Europe screen is the Holy Place I wrote before. Game would start at date when Tenochtitlan was founded (1325).

But this is just my plan, I'm open for any ideas and discussion.

 

[raystuttgart]

The Religion and Revolutions mod by raystuttgart ...

Small correction:
Religion and Revolution is not my mod.
(I am a team member like all others.)

 

[orlanth]

Sounds cool Fullerene, I'll look forward to trying the Rome scenario.

Though its possible to try a mod with only natives; there's not much existing for natives currently so you'd have to replace and rebalance all of the existing professions, yields, and buildings with natives-only versions which would be lots of work. To be a more Civ-like game of empire building, it would also be cool to include a basic techtree and to have some other rival civs able to provide some competition. My basic concept was to enable native empires and colonial powers to compete against each other; and try adopting some features from the RoR mod such as the planned techtree which enables separate branches for traditional Native Knowledges and modern Colonial Techs. It would include most of the colonial buildings/professions from the standard game for the colonial civs, plus some additional unique buildings and units for the Native Empires (Sacrificial Altar, etc). Then there could be a strategic tradeoff between gaining more Native Knowledge (through taking scalps or sacrifices etc) to enable better harvests and some more powerful unique native buildings/units; versus trying to gain some Technology and adapt to the colonial ways, unlocking some of the existing colonial buildings/professions.

As victory conditions there could be several possibilities, let me know if you have any more ideas:
* Declare Independence / sovereignty over your continent, then fight off a REF Conquistator invasion force plus war against any nearby colonies
* Religious Victory: Reach the end of the Native techs, achieve x amount of Sacrifices / Scalps
* Advancement Victory: Reach the end of the Colonial techs, achieve x production of colonial goods

 

[thadian]

all you need to do is backscale the aliens into natives, your pretty much there. the overall model you have makes natives pretty good game even though a few lingering issues remain about colonization's overall implementation - asking for their resources but they think your offering, so when you ask what they want they offer more just to mention one example. of all the mods that effect natives in any way, yours is by far the best to be used as a "modcomp" model.