Idea: Rhye's and Fall of the Ancient Near East

[King Coltrane]

ill write more tomorrow (i just got home and am exhausted from reading marx), but I would recommend the following for egypt:

have it as ONE civ with the goals that cover all three eras.

1) build the (maybe 3 or 4?) pyramids/sphinx by 2500 BCE (= old kingdom, the builders)

2) have X culture by 1700 BCE (= middle kingdom, the artists)

3) Have border that extend from Punt/Axum/whatever southern border you want up to Ugarit. Its a little more than was historically controlled, but not by enough to discount this is a UHV (did germany control England by 1940?!) (also, = expansionism of new kingdom).

i would also make Egypt have LOW stability in general, similar to Mali or Ethiopia. specifically for the levant. in this way, egypt could AND SHOULD expand within an appropriate geographic/historical timeframe, but they SHOULD also collapse at least 3 times. (1st time could be from expansion into the nile/economic plateau, 2nd time could be from an Hyksos invasion where you hedge your bets and hunker down in a base area, and third time could simply be from expansion beyond the historically controlled levant. Granted, this would happen after the UHV is accomplished, but still, it could be scripted in.)

 

[King Coltrane]

and yeah i have some books for you. ill write the citations tomorrow.

(ps, as for sumeria... while UR3 was relatively stable, there is the Ubaid period, the uruk period, the isin-larsa period, the lagash period, etc. basically there are many periods where sumeria was NOT united. Ur3 is an exception rather than a rule. think of sumeria like classical greece more than the macedonian empire)

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, but classical Greece was a civ in RFC as well, right? I think divided civilizations can work, they just have to focus on other achievements than territorial expansion.

For the Egyptian UHV, they seem to be appropriate for a classical wonder building goal. We can have the Pyramids, the Great Sphinx, Karnak and maybe the Valley of Kings as wonders. On the other hand, what would be the name for "cathedrals" of the Egyptian religion?

What I meant was you have experience and knowledge of modding. I have ZERO as of now. So I trust your judgement in this.

Thanks That's mainly a question of how you'd like the game to be, though, and that's ultimately your own decision. I simply wanted to describe some of the possibilities you have.

 

[TJtheTheologian]

Could some please give me list of everything I need to download and learn in order to mod? Thanks

 

[Leoreth]

Phew, that's a big question. If you don't know anything about modding, I really suggest you start doing something else before starting a full conversion mod (trust me, it gets frustrating otherwise).

The Modiki is your place to start, in any case. Python and XML can be modded without any extra tools with your normal text editor, but I suggest using Notepad++ because it's a lot more comfortable. XML is pretty self-explanatory in my opinion, the only to learn is what it can do and where to change it. Python is a really easy programming language if you ask me, but if you've never seen any you'd still need a guide (Baldyr made a good one in the tutorials section). I advise against looking at Rhye's code cause he's quite messy, but edead's is usually a good example.

An RFC full conversion doesn't work without modifying the DLL but that's the last thing to learn. You need a compiler to do that (and knowledge of C++). Here's the guide for setting it up.

 

[srpt]

I used the previous version of Sword of Islam as the base of my mod (RFC Classical World). I had no experience with coding before. I tried to mod Rhye's code first but got stuck so I turned to SoI since people said it was better organized.

My approach was to start with SoI as it was and change things little by little, always going back and running the autoplay to make sure it ran. I didn't change any features or try to eliminate anything at first. First I changed the start date to 300BC. This took a few days and caused some problems I had to work out. Embryodead was very helpful. Then I added my map, with all the data that required: settler maps, provinces, temporary unit placement plots (the famous antarctic catapult) etc. A lot of the map data doesn't really need to be there to run the game. I started with one settler map for all civs and a blank city name map. Then I changed the names of the civs. This can be done across all files in one click with notepad++, ie open all the python at once and replace "iAbassids" with "iSeleucids" or whatever. Then I started going through the python removing stuff that didn't make sense or adapting it so that it did. After working on the mod for a few months I now understand a lot more about how it works.

This isn't to discourage you from more formal ways of learning, but what's always most fun for me is to just start doing stuff. Even if it produces goofy results for a while, those results will probably teach you stuff.

Compiling the DLL is a headache at first but soon becomes routine. Asaf's tutorial is the key. The changes you will make will mostly be very minor.

So if you use SoI as a base I can probably help you quite a bit. I think your idea is great (I had the same one). First thing you need is the map.

Making this mod has been one of the most fun and satisfying things I've ever done (thanks again to Rhye and Embryodead), so I encourage you to get started.

 

[TJtheTheologian]

...hmm this will take a very, very, very, long time.

1) Learn how to mod, code, etc...
2) Research the Ancient Near East
3) Make the Mod
4) Test it
5) Refine it, refine it, refine ...
6) 1-2 years later I may have something

All by my little lonesome. It will be challenge but fun. Just need to stay motivated

 

[Leoreth]

I can offer my help if it's not too time consuming. And compared to actual coding, map making (the actual game map and city name manager, stability ...) will take much more time.

I suggest you start with these things. So research first, dig up city names for various languages, think of UB, UUs etc. In parallel, get a C++ compiler running and make the minimum modifications to SoI's DLL to get your mod running (clean everything that belongs to SoI and replace all civs with yours). Then it's just slowly replacing the XML files, which isn't actual coding at all.

 

[hangman]

Just need to stay motivated

My advice is to pace yourself. If it's not fun anymore, you'll burn out.