Late starting New World Civs on Terra type maps

[mjs0]

I really enjoy playing Terra type maps, but when I reach the New World I would love to be able to find large civs that are well established but significantly behind in tech and social policies, so with that in mind I have a few modding questions for anyone listening...I'm happy to go investigate these myself if not, but if someone knows and can point me to the correct place then that would be great.

1. Is it possible to add an option that spawns AI civs in the New World later than those in the old?
2. Similarly, can I delay the appearance of City States in the New World?
3. Also, is it possible to restrict the tech level of City States to the average of Civs on the same continent rather than worldwide? The objective being to avoid New World city states that are significantly more advanced than the late starting major civs on that continent.

Some initial thoughts on the first question:

I assume, if there is no simple way to define this, that I could have a Lua function that checks the turn counter and creates the Civs on the empty continent after a certain number of turns have passed.
If the Civs have to be there from the beginning I could create new psuedo-units with no movement points (for Civs on that continent only) on turn 0 instead of the regular settler/warrior. This would allow the game to do its thing and pick good starting locations and then a Lua function would replace the psuedo-units with a real settler and warrior at a later date.
The later date could either be a fixed turn or it could be triggered by the first Civ to research a specific tech in the Old World.​

I am an experienced programmer but did little more than dabble in Civ4 modding and would appreciate any feedback on both the idea and the correct approach to take.

 

[Zetetic Apparat]

That is interesting. I assume that by inspection of the Terra script, it'd be possible to approximate the bounds of the 'New World'. You could then find every Civ with units in those bounds at 4000BC and then apply one of your 'crippling' strategies.

Pseudo-units seems sensible for a number of reasons. I'd have thought 'spawning' the new Civs upon the discovery of Optics (or similar) would work well, but you could also have any 'first-contact' with a New World civ by an Old World civ trigger spawning as a safety.

 

[Tomice]

I love your idea! In fact, I already suggested something similar before.

What about slower research until they meet an old world civ, followed by (much) faster research for some time after first contact, allowing them to catch up and be regular civs, if they aren't conquered?