leaderhead reduction?

[Conroe]

Can anybody think of a downside to reducing the number of LH/civ to 12? It still enables a huge game with 11 players.

Note: A possibility could be reduce the number of civs to - say 12 - but give each civ 2 leaders. This acomplisches: Less UU/UB needed. However this would actrually increase the number of leaderhead-art needed...

Reducing the number of leaders could have the side effect of turning off some folks from playing your mod. I say this based upon anecdotal evidence from reading the main GD forum. Before BTS there were a number of complaints about not having enough leaders. And there seem to be many threads suggesting new leaders. I would probably go with Refar's suggestion of reducing the number of civs rather than the number of leaders.

And another Note: Have you seen this Guy. I made him a while ago without any real reason in mind, but he does not look medieval, and might fit the setting. The Sherif Badge and maybe the Hat (i dont remeber myself if i gave him a scull-cap ) can be removed:

I like the sheriff! He looks totally original rather than an existing leader with a different hat. I think you ought to keep him. Maybe give him a General Patton type helmet and make his clothes a bit worn. I could definitely see a "sheriff" running a post-apocalyptic civilization.

 

[davidlallen]

Not sure if you have gotten a Great Protector unit yet, if not give yourself one in WB. The art already represents a sheriff. I am not quite sure who created the unit art, but I snagged it from NecroCristi.

Creating civs is trivial, just a few lines of XML. A custom flag is nice but not required. Coming up with UU's is a little work. But the *huge* amount of work, and the stumbling block for me right now, is getting themed LH art. See the adjacent LH art thread for more details.

I am curious why reducing the LH count would reduce interest in the game?

Right now, there are 18 LH with very little flavor/customization: all default city names, no background, etc. My goal was to add more flavor, and doing that for 12 LH is a much less intimidating task than 18. Also this way I could get rid of the least post-apocalyptic-looking LH.

Maybe I should just attack adding flavor to the LH one by one, so that in the first release there will be 2-3 nice flavored LH and 15-16 which are very generic, rather than upgrading all of them at once.

 

[Conroe]

I am curious why reducing the LH count would reduce interest in the game?

Just anecdotal supposition on my part. I play standard maps, so 12 vs 18 doesn't really matter that much to me personally.

Right now, there are 18 LH with very little flavor/customization: all default city names, no background, etc. My goal was to add more flavor, and doing that for 12 LH is a much less intimidating task than 18.

It seems to me that, other than LH backgrounds, most of that work is related to the civs rather than the leaders. Aren't city names, UU's, etc. all added at the civ level and not the leader? Seems to me you could accomplish both goals by implementing Refar's suggestion of multiple leaders per civ. Maybe 18 leaders in 12 different civs? And my guess is most folks wouldn't notice if you doubled up on LH backgrounds for some of the leaders.

 

[davidlallen]

Just anecdotal supposition on my part. I play standard maps, so 12 vs 18 doesn't really matter that much to me personally.

It seems to me that, other than LH backgrounds, most of that work is related to the civs rather than the leaders. Aren't city names, UU's, etc. all added at the civ level and not the leader? Seems to me you could accomplish both goals by implementing Refar's suggestion of multiple leaders per civ. Maybe 18 leaders in 12 different civs? And my guess is most folks wouldn't notice if you doubled up on LH backgrounds for some of the leaders.

You are correct that city names go with the civ. But still, the limit is the number of good LH foregrounds.

 

[Jabie]

Another background. This one represents a governmental response to the Scourge.

******

The government had a plan; governments always do. This one went right the way back to the 1950’s. All across the country secret bunkers had been created. A civil servant with an overabundance of imagination and a penchant for reading espionage thrillers had decided to name them all after London Underground stations. As the crisis grew in tension, key individuals were identified and discretely alerted. Upon receiving a certain message they were to stop whatever they were doing and immediately head for the nearest Underground Station. They called the plan Duck and Cover.

When the warning sirens wailed and the missiles flew overhead, the men from the ministers dutifully dispensed with their plans for the day and headed to their cars. Their drivers knew the drill. In the dark times ahead, men would need structure, leadership and order. Without these things the dark beast at the heart of every man would be revealed, only one step up from the wolf.

And so, whilst the people died in the sleep, the ministers were safely tucked up in their beds. When the polluted rains burnt the skins of thousands, the politicians would be taking their early morning shower. Against a backdrop of terror, they would hold committees and discuss contingencies plans.

* * *

Christopher Lehman scanned the radio. It had been four days now. Euston was silent, Waterloo no more than hiss, he’d made brief contact with Victoria only to hear the gunfire and the screams. Most haunting of all was Piccadilly Circus, a recorded message from the Book of Lamentations, over and over and over...

The junior sub-minister for East Asian trade was the only one left to supply structure, leadership and order.

******

Leader: Christopher Lehman
Traits: Organised, Industrious
Demeanour: A little arrogant as he considers himself the true choice of the people.

Cities:

1. Charring Cross
2. Aldgate
3. Mornington Crescent
4. Barking
5. Goodge Street
6. Cockfosters
7. Southfields
8. Tooting Bec
9. Vauxhall
10. Wood Green
11. Seven Sisters
12. Kings Cross
13. Elephant and Castle
14. Kew Gardens
15. Ruislip Manor
16. Limehouse
17. Oxford Circus
18. Pimlico
19. Queen's Park
20. Northolt

Flag: Use the official Australia flag
UU: Government Diplomat - missionary units should that gets Mobilty for free.

 

[davidlallen]

I like it. I assume you watch the new Battlestar Galactica series, very similar. President Roslin was the secretary of education. Are the city names all places in Sydney? The ones I recognize also seem to be in London. I'd probably use the existing Chen leaderhead with same or some other background.

 

[Jabie]

Nope, they're all London tube stations. It fits in with the storyline and has a vaguely apocalyptic feel to it. And, yes, BSG was an influence.

 

[davidlallen]

I have put Christopher into the game with civ name "New Australia". I put Halloween Jack into the game, although I did a gender change and put it on Aelwyn. She was the closest I had to a rock star looking LH.

It makes a bigger difference than I thought. I liked seeing non-vanilla city names. I will try writing some backgrounds, more at the "Christopher" word count than the "Halloween" wordcount however

Thanks! Good job! More please.

I found an Australia flag available. I didn't change the Celtic flag, but I haven't spent much time looking through the available flags yet. I was a little disappointed to learn (everybody else probably knew) that civ flags are two color.

It helps to have a civilization name.

Also, I missed out asking for a "first contact quote". As far as I can tell, in vanilla, the vast majority of custom quotes happen at first contact, and very few elsewhere. In version 0.5, I think, or earlier, I took all the existing first contact quotes and just stripped out the leader requirement. There are some very recognizable quotes, like the George Washington one, or the Isabella one ("CLOSER contact, if you know what I mean"). These are selected randomly across all LH today, which can lead to some funny results.
As I add in new LH, having one good FC quote would help.

 

[Refar]

I definitely seen more than 2 color flags in mods. I have no idea gow it is achieved tho.

 

[davidlallen]

Can you give an example of a mod with flags with > 2 colors in the game (not buttons)? I can probably figure out how it works from an example.

 

[Refar]

Some civs in the New Civilizations database show tricolore flacs in screenshots.

Strategyonly's Mexico and America for example.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9994
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=8894

I am thinking that it is just a question of using a full color .dds (full white alpha, no transparency) instead of those decall .dds that are pllying TC to a flag.
I never took a close look at them however, so i might be wrong.

 

[davidlallen]

I haven't tried it yet, but after reading the forum it looks simple. Make a 60x90 full color graphic with no transparency, save as 128x128 DDS, and set bWhiteFlag in the artdefines file. I'll try with a full-color Australia flag first.

 

[davidlallen]

It was simple. I have a full color Australia flag in the game.

 

[Rasma]

One type I did notice was lacking was a mutated type of leader, such as Harold from the fallout series.
I think a ghoul type civ would be interesting
I would think it would need an additional bonus made for them though so they could have radiation without problems from it.
I think also the misspelled large city names I saw in another thread would fit this type of civ well.

 

[davidlallen]

I may add Ghouls from fallout. Both ghouls and deathclaws "should be" intelligent. I was trying to think of a way to have them be minor civilizations, or something, but I haven't found a good way to do it. I don't want to make either of them into playable civs. I think that would be too hard to play-balance.

I'm not sure of the best way to fit in the mis-spelled city names. I thought it would work well. But, this is only 20 years after the "Scourge" nuclear war, so I don't think names would get mis-spelled. There should be some more discussion about sets of city names in this new thread.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

Well you could set them as non-playable in the xml (the mutant civs that is). That way you could have those minor civs that only the AI can play.


I would like to see a minor civ that has adopted some cybernetics or were part of cybernetic experiments before the war. They could use bunker protected equipment (resource) provided by their palace to upgrade weaker units to different stages of cyborgs.

 

[davidlallen]

I've never understood too much about where minor civs come from. I believe that the first step is a barb city. Then, there is just some random chance that a barb city will "advance" to a minor civ. Is that right? I would like to reflect that there are really three different races (human, ghoul, deathclaw) which would have different units. I don't know, but I don't think there is a way to have different minor civs with different units. At least the base warrior would have to be a UU for each civ. The deathclaws could have additional units, like an all-white Ancient Deathclaw (STR 20, -50% against vehicles? Run away!)

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

Well the way Kael did it for FFH was that the minor civ would be an Actual Civ, just only playable by the AI. I think the Illians are the only one left at the moment waiting for the Ice Phase. They would show up randomly like any other civ or chosen to play against by the human. Barbarians civs would still spawn as usual, so I see what you are saying. When I think of a minor civ I think of a civ that the AI can play and can win the game with, but a major civ is one that the human can play. (<--- lesson on how to kill grammar)

 

[davidlallen]

I haven't played FFH so I don't know the details of the Ilians. There are some tags in the civ XML files related to minor civs, but if I understand what you said the Ilians don't use that flag. Instead they use something like "Playable 0 / AIPlayable 1" in the civinfos file. Is that right? That's actually a really interesting idea. It would be a full strength civ but with a set of unique units. It might or might not show up in any game.

Is there any way for the player to set up a game which explicitly excludes this type of race for whatever reason? Of course you can edit the xml to put AIPlayable 0, but I meant is there an option or something to exclude them? It would be hard to play-balance multiple configurations of such races. I don't think there is any way to make them "less likely" to be chosen by the random game setup either.

I know seZereth did some zombie art for the NecroCristi mod, and there are some screenshots from the old Fallout games for character art. This might be the right way to use those. Thanks!

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

yes that is what I was talking about. You may want to check out FFH if anything to see what Kael and co have done with the options menus. They have it set up so you can exclude certain heros, religions, play styles, etc., and IIRC when "ICE" phase sets in they will be able to set certain scenarios via that route (these option may be hidden from players). So I am sure there is a way to program the ability to exclude certain races by that. These guys are not stingy with their code work and freely let us fool with the wheel they have already invented...