[MOD] Civ3 Evolution - Atlantean Chronicles

[Madeira]

Well, I could go even further and mix it up with the battlestar galactica universe, and find some place for the 13th tribe on earth Then add some Cylon units and voila, sci fi scenario

 

[Madeira]

Seriously, I took the time to read that stuff, and finding it very interesting indeed, for starters im going to change Queen Boudica to Queen Galatea, legendary mother of the Gauls, Celts and Illyrians, then im considering removing the Hellenes from Greece and place them in France, and the Hesperians from Italy to Britain, possibly changing the civ names, so, Agamemnon with sort of be an ancient "french" king and Dardanus a "british" one, keeping ties to the greek culture for Agamemnon and roman culture for Dardanus.

Still thinking about it and had to write this in a hurry for lack of time.

 

[Madeira]

Could someone help me interpret the texts on that site I posted a few posts up? I think I misunderstood a few things, this is my current interpretation:

1. The Greeks were in Greece at the time of the Trojan War, they might have used some other name or had a completely different culture, they were invaded by people from western europe, the sea peoples. The Myceneans werent Greeks. In my scenario that may just mean I'll keep a greek civ and add the myceneans in France.

2. The Trojans controlled Britain, after the fall of Troy some fled and settled in areas that werent controlled by Mycenae and its allies, Portugal, Italy and north-western Turkey. In my scenario I may keep an Italian civilization, the Etruscans, and put the Trojans (Dardania) in England and let them evolve to reach the Roman culture and military, wether they end up building Rome in Italy or somewhere else is up to the player or the AI since the scenario starts way before the Trojan war and the founding of Rome.

3. I'll keep the Celts under Queen Galatea, but probably move them more to central europe.

4. Dont know if I'll change the Tartessian (Hiber in my scenario) civilization to represent Odysseus Ithaca, located in present day Cadiz (Spain)

 

[Blue Monkey]

Take a look at the wikipedia article on the author. He's a crank (not necessarily a bad thing
) who was invited to speak by a group of students. The site you linked to is a transcript of that lecture. Reference my previous comment on the lost tribes to help decide how seriously you should take the details.

 

[Madeira]

Ok im going to take a better look at it.
Im aware Wilkens is not taken seriously by the scientific community, but it would make an interesting player set up for the scenario. Basicly im thinking on keeping the Greeks and Etruscans in their historical places, but remove the Mycenean part from the Greeks and put them in France, while adding a new civ in Britain instead of the Picts (lacking some units for them) and give them the Roman units and culture. If I choose not to do this, I may just leave things as they are, Celts in France, Picts in northern Britain.

 

[Madeira]

Blue Monkey, I've read about the 10 tribes and think it has no interest for my scenario, because if I were to use it, then it wouldnt be just the Britons that are descendants of the lost tribes, the scythians and possibly others as well.

Wilkens theory also has a few things that wouldnt fit well with my scenario, for instances, we all know the Myceneans conquered the Minoans, but if the Myceneans are in France, they would be too far away to even be interested in Minoa, and I think its well proven the Minoans were centered in Crete. But still, I see his points concerning the geographical inconsistencies in Homer's work, like the full month it took Agamemnon to sail from Argos to Ithaca?

What if Wilkens is partially right? What if Troy really was in England? But Agamemnon's Myceneans were in fact Greeks, that had to sail the mediterranean and the north Atlantic coast to reach Troy? Certainly if Troy was in the other side of the Aegean, wouldnt it be cheaper and faster to march the troops by land?

 

[Blue Monkey]

The whole lost tribes thing was a joke! I was pulling your leg! See what happens when you take cranks too seriously & try to combine their ideas together?

 

[Madeira]

Oh, lol, naughty monkey

But whats your opinion on what I wrote above?

 

[Blue Monkey]

Oh, lol, naughty monkey

But whats your opinion on what I wrote above?

I think the Greeks ought to be in the Eastern Mediterranean & the Trojans as well. Other than that, whatever backstory you develop will let you decide where to put the tribes.

 

[Madeira]

Hehe

Well I've given it some more thought and decided to forget this idea, if I ever do a Trojan themed scenario after the atlantean one maybe I'll use it. Also, the map im using has Britain connected to France so the Myceneans would most probably invade by land anyway...

I'll follow your sugestion to use an Etruscan city as the capital of the Hesperian civ instead of Rome that didnt even exist at the time, although I'll keep Rome on the map. And I probably wont even have Troy in the Hesperian city list, I use Ilium instead.

Have a few more resources to place on the map, then I'll add some screenshots to the webpage along with some minor modifications. Allready have a new website on rented space, I'll let you know after I finish those modifications.

Concerning the resources, most of them are allready placed, but I've thought of asking your opinion on this: I got some real world maps with resources information that im using to place most of the resources, but those are present day maps, things could be different in the distant past, and maybe play balancing should be a more important factor when choosing where to place important resources, so I wonder if someone could help me decide in what areas I should place some resources, examples:

Copper and Iron: in regions with lots of hills or lone hills ok? Can any of these also be placed in plains?

Limestone: Hilly regions? Coastal plains?

I can provide a full list later

 

[Madeira]

Ok, the map is finally complete, I'll post screenshots soon of various areas showing civs starting settlements and surrounding terrain with resources.

Here's the list of resources with some notes about placement locations:

BONUS RESOURCES:

WHALES - placed in realistic locations around the world
DEER - temperate / tropical / cold Forests / Forested Hills / Savannahs
FISH - upwelling regions around the world only
CATTLE - temperate Grass / Plains / Hills
WHEAT - temperate / arid Grass / Plains / Flood Plains in Europe, Asia and N. Africa only (moved to Strategic Resources to allow construction of Wheat Farm improvement)
SUGARCANE - tropical Grass
TROPICAL FRUIT - Jungles
OASIS - Deserts
SHEEP - temperate Grass / Plains / Hills
RICE - tropical Grass in Asia and Africa only (moved to Strategic Resources as well)
KELP - realistic locations
MAIZE - temperate / tropical grass / plains in America only (moved to Strategic Resources as well)
COCOA - Jungles in America only
BISON - Plains in N. America only
LLAMA - Hills / Plateaus / Plains in America only (there were Llamas in N. America, they were wiped out probably by the Clovis event)
SEAL - Tundras

LUXURY RESOURCES:

WINES - realistic locations around the Mediterranean
FURS - N. Eurasia and N. America Forests
DYES - realistic locations
INCENSE - Arabia, India, Eastern Asia
SPICES - India and SE Asia
SILKS - SE and E Asia
GEMS - Jungles near rivers
GOLD - Hills / Plateaus near tectonic plate boundaries
TOBACCO - NE America and Caribean
SILVER - considering wheter to use it or not, if so should be in realistic locations, probably near tectonic plate boundaries
COTTON - tropical / subtropical Plains / Grass
OLIVE OIL - around the Mediterranean
JADE - realistic locations

STRATEGIC RESOURCES:

HORSES - temperate / arid Grass / Plains in Eurasia and N America only (in N America they're mostly in the great plains region, in Europe as far north as southern France and in Asia all over the steppes, Anotolia, northern Iran and Pakistan, a couple in N Africa too, many civs will have to trade for them, many will have more than 2 near their starting locations)
IRON - Hills / Plateaus worldwide, usually in realistic locations and a few more in others for play balancing
SALTPETER - some in Hills, lots in arid Plains / Deserts worldwide
COAL - realistic locations and a few more in others for play balancing
OIL - realistic locations
ALUMINIUM - realistic locations
URANIUM - realistic locations
ELEPHANTS - Savannahs in Africa and S Asia
LIMESTONE - usually in Hills, some in Plains, mostly near rivers
FINE TIMBER - Forests / Jungles / Forested Hills
COPPER - Hills / Plateaus near tectonic plate boundaries and a few more in other locations for play balancing
CAMELS - Deserts in Africa and Asia close to rivers

Thats it, let me know if you dont agree with anything or sugest some changes since I may be wrong about some things.

 

[Madeira]

Editor screenshots showing the American civs starting locations.
But first let me tell you how I balanced the civs starts, a civ is given one of 4 levels, level 1 means that civ will have a total of 20 citizens to distribute between its cities, how many cities it has in the beggining is my choice , it also has 200 culture to distribute, and 200 gold. Level 2 gives 10 citizens, 100 culture and gold, Level 3 is 5 citizens, 50 culture and gold, Level 4 is 3 citizens, 30 culture and gold. Starting techs havent been completely balanced yet.
Starting number of cities may still be changed.

The Atlanteans: Level 1
You can see the enlarged caribean, florida and yucatan, with Atlantis sitting in a land bridge that connects Florida to a large Caribean island, roughly on the place where the Bimimi Wall was found. They have access to a few strategic and luxury resources in the area, no horses nearby. The barbarian camps in this scenario represent Sea Raiders, who are a combination of Atlantean pirates and native peoples, lots of them around the Caribean, the Amazon sea and the Mediterranean. Early in the game its unlikely there will be hostilities between the American civilizations because of the distance that seperates them.

Spoiler :

The Akansea: Level 4
They have a single city in the upper Mississipi, lots of room to expand and no nearby civ. Remember, in this mod Settlers are unbuildable, you or the AI can only get them with gold, so its very unlikely the AI will be able to agressively expand early in the game. I dont know how often the Akansea will be able to get settlers, but im willing to bet that by the time the old world civs reach the age of discovery they will still have lots of room to build cities in N. America

Spoiler :

The Tamoanchan: Level 3
Not much to say, they're the closest civ to the Atlanteans, wheter thats good or bad I dont know, the Atlanteans are not really hostile. Im considering removing the Copper resource near the Atlantean city of Aira and force the Atlanteans to get it either by trading for it with the Aymara or getting it by force. Problem is they can only trade for it once the other civ reaches the technological level required to reveal it, and they have a source for it in their mining colony in Crete, as long as the ocean route is not blocked.

Spoiler :

The Aymara Level 3
An interesting civ, with the fictional Amazon sea they have access to the Atlantic, and the Andes mountains were done in a way that we will probably see the AI building roads through them in order to build colonies to get all those metals. Although the civ's starting cities are located near mountainous terrain, they have lots of fertile ground around the amazon sea to expand to and if they make good use of the precious metal resources they'll have the economy to expand faster and maintain a large empire.

Spoiler :

Remember to check out the website to take a look at these civs unit lineup for the Ancient age, most of their units are unique to each civ. I have to finish a couple of things then I'll start to work on city improvements and wonders for the ancient age, but most of them for the American group are done allready.
The link to the website is in the first post, but I allready have a new one, I'll update it once I do one of the couple of things I mentioned.

 

[againsttheflow]

Looks very interesting Madeira.

Just a couple thoughts, have you considered not placing any horses in N. America and simply giving them a high appearance ratio? Looking at the screenshots it looks as though you've used the small pedia icons for the units on the unit_32 sheet, you're aware that another unit_32 file is usually included with units so you won't have the white boxes?

 

[Madeira]

Thanks againsttheflow.
Well I choose not to use the appearance feature for resources, but the reason I placed horses in N. America is because they existed there around 10.000BC, they were one of the large mamal species that was wiped out by the Clovis event (the comet possibly).

Yea you noticed that! Im aware most units include a unit_32 file, but I've made a decision to use the pedia icon instead long ago, because the quality is way much better if we just resize the larger one to 32x32 with 16bit color and keeping the white background instead of magenta. Then if the city screen graphics use white background as well, it looks way much better! I'll take some screen shots showing that soon.

 

[Blue Monkey]

 

[Ogedei_the_Mad]

If you're going with really primeaval, quasi-mythical precursor states, then I'd suggest having the Chinese be called the "Xia." Joseon would have its leader Dan'gun (his title would be "Wang-geom"). Both supposedly stretched far back 5000 years. There's archeological evidence of *something* but not enough to say what exactly the precursors were like.

 

[Madeira]

Ogedei: Yes im using Dan'gun as the Joseon leader, thanks for the title. Using Shinshi as the capital. As for the Chinese, I was using Zhongguo, which I believe translates to Middle Kingdom, do you think Xia is more proper? Im using Huangdi as their leader, the Yellow Emperor.

Waiting on another Sandris oriental pack before I update the oriental civs and unit lineups on the webpage.

Here's the screenshot I promissed showing the white background in unit_32 icons, the only problem is with the smile icons for units giving the military police bonus, I really think its a small price to pay in exchange for the extra quality.

Spoiler :

Also note that before I resize the larger icons to 32x32, I also change the civ colors to red since they're usually blue, so in-game in the city screen the icons will be displayed with correct civ colors, usually

 

[Ogedei_the_Mad]

Since you're using names of precursors, "Xia" probably would fit the mold better.

 

[Madeira]

But would Xia make sense when you're playing in the medieval or industrial periods?

 

[Ogedei_the_Mad]

Good point. But would Akkadians and Sumerians make sense in the Industrial Age as well? It depends on what theme you're going for. It seems like your mod is based on the premise of ancient precursor civilizations surviving and maturing into later eras.