Machiavelli Mod

[kenkrajen]

i'm been doing a very long research paper on Machiavelli's The Prince, and it made me think how cool would it be to have a mod that took place in the era this was written? it sounds pretty interesting, to me anyway. now i'm gonna be upfront. i don't know the first thing about making a mod, what an xml is, or anything like that. but mainly i'm curious to see if anybody would think a mod set in rennaissance italy with a bunch of warring factions ranging from the Holy See to the Florentine to the Venetians to other italian city states to the invading French and the Spanish would catch anybody's attention. any machiavelli experts out there who want to throw around ideas about this?

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action: Moved to main C&C forum.

 

[Flintlock1415]

I think you should talk to the guy in this thread.

 

[apotheoser]

I think you should talk to the guy in this thread.

Well, sort of. I think the OP of this thread has a more traditional mod in mind, but set in the 14th century. It's still Civilization, though.

The "Merchant Prince-style" mod I was thinking of is a very different game. The original Merchant Prince as actually re-released as "Machiavelli: The Prince" (and even came with a copy of the book!!) but it didn't have much to do with Machiavelli. Except that you had to keep your popularity rating high while simultaneously engaging in assassinations, arson, secret war, et cetera.

 

[kenkrajen]

what i envision for this would be having to use all the tools machiavelli writes about. some mechanic to determine whether the populace likes you, hates, fears you. a bunch merc units that are buyable. the civs would be the Venetians, the Florentines, The Vatican, Spain, France, and Cesare Borgia (what city was he from)? leaders would be the ones listed in the books. something kinda like the Crossroads mod but set in Italy

 

[Flintlock1415]

Well, it seems to me Merchant Prince has more of a economic focus, vs. a Machiavelli mod with a political focus. I think it would be cool to see a fusion of those, but again the politics/economics would be difficult to code.

 

[GoodGame]

what i envision for this would be having to use all the tools machiavelli writes about. some mechanic to determine whether the populace likes you, hates, fears you. a bunch merc units that are buyable. the civs would be the Venetians, the Florentines, The Vatican, Spain, France, and Cesare Borgia (what city was he from)? leaders would be the ones listed in the books. something kinda like the Crossroads mod but set in Italy

Actually should be quite doable if you're willing to learn .dll programing, since there are many existing mods that could help support your ideas if merged. There is an Italyization mod (recently in development), a mercenaries mod (used by RFC mod), the Revolutions mod (jdog's), and the BTS Charlemagne mod. The superspies mod might be useful also.
A combination of modified civics and quests could probably help model Mariavellin politics.

The main problem would be emulating Colonization-style economics in Civ4 if you want detailed market tactics. Might need to use a quest-based system and look to systems from more abstract board games to emulate merchantile maneuvers, practically.