Medieval:Conquests and World History Mod dev

[Kailric]

To help bring to the attention of anyone who would be interested there are some really cool things going on over at the Civ4Col forums.

For those of you who may not have played Civ4 Colonization yet, I would encourage you to do so. It's a very unique and fun Sid experience right out of the box (you can purchase off of Steam and I myself bought the boxed version off Amazon a while back). And then, if you enjoy it or not, there are some really great mods that have been developed for it as well. Some of them attempt to recapture lots of the features from the original Sid Colonization from ages back. Then there are some unique mods that have the feel of a totally different game...


Medieval:Conquests(M:C)

Current Features:

• Tech Tree, Imported from Civ4
• Medieval Military Professions and Art, with sub-profession Art capabilities so if you have an Leather wearing Infantry Profession, but have Chain mail, the Unit art will change to show Chain mail instead, plus gain a bonus to armor.
• Unique Trading System, that requires you to begin small with local trade, but allowing you to build up a huge trading empire by land or sea with access to the Ancient trade routes such as the Silk Road and the Spice Route.
• New Diplomacy, options such as Insults(to pick a fight) and Research Pacts
• Trading Point System, through trading you can unlock Trading Perks, that can give your Empire bonuses, or your Traders more cargo space and movement, or discover new Trade Routes.
• Build a Shrine, and watch as Pilgrims make the long journey to visit your lands, leaving behind gold and culture
• New Promotions, such as First Strikes (from Civ4), Trader specific promotions, and even a Hound companion promotion for your Explorers.
• Combat Modifiers, such as Shield Blocks, Glancing Blows, and Critical Strikes
• Hostile World, the medieval times were fraught with peril from bandits, marauders, Saracens, and even wolves and bears, oh my!
• Modder Friendly, each new Feature we add we are attempting to make it as modder friendly as possible
• Moddable Trade Screens, add your own unique land or sea Trade Screens easily, in Python and XML, that generate access plots and command buttons on the fly
• Plotgroup Options, imported from Civ4

Features in Development:

• Civic Screen, Imported from Civ4, over 90% completed
• Empire Wide Upkeep, to bring the feel that you are really in control of a massive Empire
• Lots more to come

There are three other mods in development based on the M:C design, the Rise of the U.S.S.R. mod, the World History Mod, which will span the whole of history, and the ever popular futuristic 2071 mod.

If these features, ideas, and concepts interest you then drop in and pay us a visit. We are ever eager for feedback and suggestions. If you are really interested there is plenty of job opportunities for you as well. Come join our team, and have a blast in the past, or the future, or everything in between.

 

[Nightinggale]

There are three other mods in development based on the M:C design, the Rise of the U.S.S.R. mod, the World History Mod, which will span the whole of history, and the ever popular futuristic 2071 mod.

There is one thing, which isn't clear from this post. There is ONE source code for the DLL. I came up with that concept because Colonization 2071 lacked a DLL coder. If Medieval Conquest leaves important design decisions to XML settings, then Colonization 2071 would be able to gain the needed DLL updates without having a DLL coder. Once the design for this showed up, more XML modders decided to make use of this.

The result is a decent phase of DLL updates for all mods mentioned in this thread, even though there are more mods than DLL modders. It also mean DLL modders don't have to waste time moving features from one mod to another. It also mean that more mods can be added with little or no time used by the DLL modders. Such a task would primarily be an XML only task.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Whoot, join us!!

 

[isenchine]

Why would I want to play Medieval in Colonization?

I mean, why would Colonization be a better platform to start mods than Civilization (IV)? Take this question as a naive question: I never tried Col much (except the original game! ) and then never tried to mod it.

There are so many systems already implemented in CivIV like religions, corporations, civics (plus all the mods). Are you just trying to copy over everything to Col?

I liked the trading system in Col where you actually had to transport your resources and receive gold or stuff in exchange. The trading system in CivIV is very limited, automatised and is not as rewarding in terms of gameplay as in Col.

Something else?

 

[Lib.Spi't]

The resource production in Col is the main difference, and all of the difference really flows from this, you also have much more population management, so each invidual pop requires food and is assigned a profession to generate a product, also each soldier is an individual that you take from your city, people also consume resources, and units require varying amounts of resources to build or 'recruit'.

So you have to manage and decide all of these production factors, and create supply chains. Rather than simply get 'bonus' resources and build buildings.

What you end up with is a much more trade and production centric game, where you have to manage many more yields than the 4? (did I count right) in Civ.

So basically Col. will appeal to the kind of people that enjoy builder, logistic, supply chain style games, like transport tycoon, Industrial Giant, Patrician, these sorts of things.

Then it is combined with military and empire building elements, along with a lot of the 'standard' stuff from Civ. Tech Tree, Civic Options, Maintenance costs, etc. These were not added to the Vanilla ColIV and are all being implemented into Col. Adding impact and emphasis on all of the Col only game features.

The Main ones being trade and production.

Basically, there are loads of things in Col that are different from Civ, that radically change what you do and why you do it.

So building Various (Non American Colonisation) mods, allows you to explore and work with some really interesting mechanics.

So in Medieval you have to not only build units and buildings, but you have to make the weapons and armour for those units, for Knights you have to have Nobleman, who require specialised food to appear in your empire, then you have to guard the supply chains and wagons that connect your cities, from the various nasties of the world.

You have to build settlements with particular goals in mind (so in civ you would build a city next to a copper, and then connect it to road and done.) In Col you have to build mining towns to collect ore, then decide if your mining town will hold the production buildings for refining the ore, or if you will transport the ore to another larger city and do it there. You have to make sure every city is producing enough food, or gaining a supply of it to support all the people it needs to run it's particualr operations. Then you need to train or recruit specialists to maximise your production of the various resources and goods.

The detail goes on and on, and it is an experience that is completely different from a standard Civ game or mod. Presenting different tasks and challenges compared to Civ.

If you can find Col. on the cheap, it is definately worth getting. Espcially with the mods availale that 'fix' a lot of things that people weren't happy with in the New Col Version.

 

[Nightinggale]

I mean, why would Colonization be a better platform to start mods than Civilization (IV)?

I will not start a debate on which one is better because they are different and both have strong and weak points. This mean "the best" depends on what you want to gain from the game.

There are so many systems already implemented in CivIV like religions, corporations, civics (plus all the mods). Are you just trying to copy over everything to Col?

The goal isn't to make civ4 in the colonization engine. Most code is written from scratch as civ4 code doesn't use colo specific options at all.

Some code is copied if it makes sense to gain the same ability. One huge disadvantages in the colo engine is the lack of a tech tree. Kailric wrote his own a while ago where he took the civ4 GUI, but the underlying DLL code is totally different and I'm not just referring to how it enables professions and other colo concepts.

Another piece of code, which is copied is PlotGroups. That too ended up being noteworthy different. I rewrote group spread code completely as civ4 relies on calling something in the exe, which isn't present in the colo exe. Now it only spreads across RouteTypes (roads). It will not work on strategic resources (coal, iron etc) as the colo transport system deals with that. Instead it is a shortcut to tell if two cities are connected by road. This gives options like buildings/wonders, which affects all cities it is connected to by road and is used for giving missions a bonus if they are connected to a monastery and stuff like that.

I liked the trading system in Col where you actually had to transport your resources and receive gold or stuff in exchange. The trading system in CivIV is very limited, automatised and is not as rewarding in terms of gameplay as in Col.

Transport system and the possibility to give different profession to units are the really strong points for the colo engine. Naturally the same goes for all colonization mods and remain a centerpiece of the gameplay. This focus is incompatible with lots of civ4 concepts and as such no colo mod tries to act like a civ4 mod.

I did add some optional automation to transports to reduce micromanagement. It basically boils down to stop automated traderoutes if the destination overflows and make cities request more yields (say tools) if they need it for construction.

Why should you play colonization instead of civilization?
The same as always. It is if you want "human units", which you can give professions and want to move cargo in units. The news regarding these mods compared to vanilla colonization is that there are a lot of new concepts and some of them are borrowed from civilization and some are new.

Why should you mod colonization instead of civilization?
If you want the colo gameplay.
Another reason would be the shared DLL source code. It allows fairly advanced mods even though no modder for that mod knows how to code C++.


It's perfectly fine to stay with civilization if that is what you want. This thread is all about informing of the new options regarding colonization modding, as we suspect there are people who wants to take a closer look, but are/were unaware of the current potential in colonization. A number of concepts mentioned here are fairly new and would not be available half a year ago. Modder friendly really took a turn for the better fairly recently.

 

[isenchine]

Thank you both for your detailed answers. It reminded me that professions are indeed important in Col and that even soldiers must come from the population. Another good point.

I will not start a debate on which one is better because they are different and both have strong and weak points. This mean "the best" depends on what you want to gain from the game.

I did add some optional automation to transports to reduce micromanagement. It basically boils down to stop automated traderoutes if the destination overflows and make cities request more yields (say tools) if they need it for construction.

But that's what I wanted to know (differences, strong/weak points)!

Good to hear about these modifications as I remember now that I was bored by some overflows in the cities and no message was pointing me to them. It was tedious to check inside the cities everytime and I simply stopped playing the game.

Now I might give it a try (to Medieval) in the (I hope) not too distant future.

Thanks again.

PS: I suppose Python is also part of the game.

 

[Nightinggale]

But that's what I wanted to know (differences, strong/weak points)!

I think most have been mentioned so far. The strong and weak points are actually the same points depending on what you want.

Units are also population. You can't spawn a whole lot of warriors to have cannon fodder without reducing your population a lot.

Luxury/strategic resources have been replaced with yields, which you have to move manually. There is no benefit for connecting a bonus resource with road.

The whole profession system with yield costs for making some professions (horses for scouts etc).

The whole trading with Europe economy. Medieval Conquest modifies this a lot as there are multiple "Europes" and it is also possible to sell some stuff to cities. The max sold depends on units and buildings in the city. This is in an early stage, but we expect much from it. Trading with other civilizations has increased importance.

There are a lot of other differences too, but not as fundamental as this. When they aren't great differences (from a coding point of view) it mean we can add it to M:C if we want to. An example of this is flying units, which is a much greater difference from a gameplay point of view than a coding point of view.

PS: I suppose Python is also part of the game.

Firaxis more or less made a mod of BTS and called it Colonization. This mean the setup with DLL, python and XML is the same. In fact it might be more advanced in Colonization as city and Europe screens has some fairly advanced python with building placement and drag-n-drop yields and units.

 

[isenchine]

Thanks a lot, this answers all my questions so far.

 

[Kailric]

It's perfectly fine to stay with civilization if that is what you want. This thread is all about informing of the new options regarding colonization modding, as we suspect there are people who wants to take a closer look, but are/were unaware of the current potential in colonization. A number of concepts mentioned here are fairly new and would not be available half a year ago. Modder friendly really took a turn for the better fairly recently.

Well put, Night. Thanks guys for your excellent responses. I've been so busy modding that I missed this whole conversation!

I started modding Civ4 right out of the box almost. My favorite period in history is the Middle Ages so I focused my attention there, but never could get the feel I was wanting. Then Civ4Col was released and I realized the potential that it had. Col has a more personal touch to it, more of what I like to call a "zoomed in" feel. While in Civ4 your population can be Professionals, they are static, and have no personality. They can be turned into Settlers and Workers, however, but Col takes this concept much further. In Col your population, for the most part, are your Units, your Professionals gaining Promotions and personality, and thus you get the more "personal" feel.

I'd say that is one of the main advantages and strengths of Col, while Civ4 is awesome for spanning the whole of history, In Col you can "zoom in" to specific points in History and really have a blast with game features, concepts, and Historical events.

I myself am really excited about the development of a History spanning mod for Col, because it would be like "zooming in" on all the high points in History.

Ok, back to modding

 

[Kailric]

We have released version 2.5 of this mod. One of the biggest changes is the Civics screen has been ported from Civ4 with lots of new effects. We have received excellent feedback so far and will have an update soon to address a few issues. Links are in first post.

Some of the new features are:

Spoiler :

2.5
Features:
-new school system (similar to Religion and Revolution)
-units and buildings buy yields (Demands) from the city. This can be setup in the XML
-currently only Units have Demands set
-domestic sales to units and buildings uses plotgroups (cities connected by road)
-Tradepost, Markets, and Guild Halls not warehouses sells overflow
-replaced altEquipment with profession subgroups
-Subgroups can have different art files and textures
-units can be more than one combat type (can have mounted and mail armor promotions etc)
-Vikings are playable
-bonus for connecting trading posts and missions by road
-savegames are more likely to still work after upgrading XML files
-Europe (Trade Screens) code had a major overhaul to make it less hardcoded
-EuropeInfos can be easily modified to add new Trade Screens
-plotgroups (group cities together when connected by road, from Civ4)
-improved performance
-buildings can give interest on player's gold
-garrisoned units produce yields under new Civics and Techs
-improved help text to better understand the new game features
-Units garrioned can be reassigned while in city screen (right click)

Domestic Advisor:
-new screens to count individual units in cities
-hides uninvented columns
-resizes to screen resolution (more columns on high resolution etc)

Civics:
-New Civics Screen (in M:C they are called Decress) borrowed from Civ4, with many new features such as:
-unit food consumptions can be changed
-civics can change growth unit as well as give random change to gain an expert
-number of units on docks controlled by civics
-workers can start work without movement
-mutual exclusive civics and much more
-New Luxury Food Elite units per Civic

XML setup changes:
-city building setup is handled by XML
-techs in tech screen can be assigned relatively to each other
-fixed several incorrectly named types in XML
-XML files loads types in all files before loading for real. This allow files to refer to not yet read files
-new translations can be added using XML only
-translations use English strings for untranslated strings
-TEXT XML files can have languages in any other and only English is mandatory

Fixes:
-several fixes related to automated transports and feeder service
-other bugfixes