T_F
Reynardine the Great
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2007
- Messages
- 1,163
Due to my lack of any mod skills whatsoever, I have no idea if any of this is possible at all, and if it is, if it's viable. But still, here are a few mod ideas I've had - just wanted to throw them out there for discussion.
These are all individual modcomps, sort of working towards the goal of eliminating the 4000bc Americans without guaranteeing 1776 AD Americans (like RFC does). Combined, they would end up creating an environment where civilizations are almost as dynamic as they are in reality (though without implementing RFC's stability or the Revolutions mod you couldn't get them fully as dynamic) - so that you can start the game as a prehistoric culture with little identity and gain it as the game goes on.
The first one is would be Dynamic Architectural Styles. The idea being this: before you discover Masonry (or perhaps something else) city graphics look something like African flavor cottages - just a bunch of huts. If you're the first person you know to discover Masonry, you found an architectural style (like Roman or Chinese or something). If someone you know then researches it, they adopt your style. (This'll help eliminate Romans and Chinese starting next to each other and having completely different city graphics because in reality they started very far apart.) It'd be awesome if at some point a few buildings from other city styles pop up in yours after you've known people with other city styles for long enough.
The second is Dynamic Unique Units (and maybe Buildings, if that's possible with along the lines of this idea). Rather than being assigned a unique unit at the beginning, you would get unique units over time based on your actions. For example, if you had a large overseas colonial empire you would get a faster Galleon, or if you used cannons extensively in sieges you would get a stronger Cannon. You'd probably have to get one unique unit per age rather than one for the whole game so that you can't play with the intent of getting a unique Bomber and end up getting a unique Swordsman. Naming the units would probably get pretty mundane, but you could come up with lists for each civ, or tie it in with the next modcomp I've got.
The biggest would be Languages. Languages would act kind of like culture, with a couple of modifications. You'd start off with a language at the beginning of the game (probably based off what civ you pick - the Japanese start with Japanese (and this may end up being their one defining factor at start)), and with your settlers it spreads around your empire. When you conquer a city, its language stays in it, and can cause some effects (probably +unhappiness, you can probably half the cultural unhappiness since that probably already simulates this) based on a set of Language civics. Whatever language has the majority in the highest number of cities in your empire starts reducing the percentage in other cities (possibly also affected by culture somehow, i.e. language is more likely to spread from cities with more culture and harder to spread in them - but you'd have to take into account the culture wipe on conquest and somehow wrangle that into not messing with the spread mechanics).
Language civics would be things such as 'assimilation' (faster spread of state religion at the cost of more unhappiness and higher upkeep), 'tolerance' (slower spread of languages with less unhappiness, at the cost of culture/commerce/something); and you would be able to pick which languages you publish government documents in - no unhappiness generated by the language, but doing more than one is fairly expensive before Printing Press (and of course still costs some). A corollary to this would be replacing the Alphabet tech with a tech called something like 'Optimized Writing System' - a system that works for the language, but not necessarily an alphabet (this has always annoyed me, alphabets aren't somehow better than everything else) - this would also help reduce publication costs in every language. (Note that having the same official language as someone else would have no effect on diplomacy with them.)
You could change the way city names are decided with this too - a settler built in a given city would have a percent chance of starting with any language in that city (so if a city was 70% Dutch and 30% German, it would have a 70% chance of starting with Dutch and a 30% chance of starting with German). When it founds, the game would take a city name from a list associated with the settler's language, rather than from a list for that civ.
A couple of other modcomps could tie into this one - especially Dynamic Civ Names and an idea I had for Dynamic Leader Names (IDK if anyone else has done that already). Both would also take from lists associated with languages - so you would be the Imperium Romanum running Hereditary Rule with Latin as your state language, but you wouldn't if French began overtaking Latin and you eventually switched to it (the name change would happen on language switch - even if Latin died, you would still be the Imperium Romanum if you refused to switch). Dynamic Leader Names would give your leader titles based on the civics you're running (like 'king', 'emperor', 'president', 'prime minister'), and could also pull from a language-related list - if English is your state language and you're running HR, you'd be 'King', if Persian is, you'd be 'Shah'. (You could even do this with the names of the leaders themselves - so if Persian spread throughout the British Empire you wouldn't have 'Shah Churchill', you would have a more appropriate Persian name.)
I think added to the Revolutions mod, this could make gameplay a lot more realistic - you don't have the Vikings revolting out of the Chinese, and the Spanish revolting out of the Vikings later. With Revolutions there would have to be a list of basic civ names associated with each language (instead of modifications of the same basic name), but other than that, everything else could run just fine. It would be fun to see an empire collapse realistically, into a bunch of successor states that obviously have ties to the original but slowly diverge over time. (Though I have to admit I like the way RFC handles stability itself a little better, probably because I find it a whole lot easier to not collapse with.)
The one question is language change. In the remnants of a collapsed large empire (like Rome), how would you simulate the divergence of the languages of each successor state (like Latin > French, Spanish, etc.)? Either we ignore it (for some very very unrealistic endgame linguistic situations), or we get creative with the later languages. There's something I could do - come up with descendant languages for every language the game starts with, and lists associated with them. Would be a lot of work though.
So, what do people think? Am I horribly overambitious? I have no knowledge whatsoever of Python and minimal of XML so I would never be able to implement this on my own - it's just a bunch of ideas thrown out there. I would like to see people's comments on it.
These are all individual modcomps, sort of working towards the goal of eliminating the 4000bc Americans without guaranteeing 1776 AD Americans (like RFC does). Combined, they would end up creating an environment where civilizations are almost as dynamic as they are in reality (though without implementing RFC's stability or the Revolutions mod you couldn't get them fully as dynamic) - so that you can start the game as a prehistoric culture with little identity and gain it as the game goes on.
The first one is would be Dynamic Architectural Styles. The idea being this: before you discover Masonry (or perhaps something else) city graphics look something like African flavor cottages - just a bunch of huts. If you're the first person you know to discover Masonry, you found an architectural style (like Roman or Chinese or something). If someone you know then researches it, they adopt your style. (This'll help eliminate Romans and Chinese starting next to each other and having completely different city graphics because in reality they started very far apart.) It'd be awesome if at some point a few buildings from other city styles pop up in yours after you've known people with other city styles for long enough.
The second is Dynamic Unique Units (and maybe Buildings, if that's possible with along the lines of this idea). Rather than being assigned a unique unit at the beginning, you would get unique units over time based on your actions. For example, if you had a large overseas colonial empire you would get a faster Galleon, or if you used cannons extensively in sieges you would get a stronger Cannon. You'd probably have to get one unique unit per age rather than one for the whole game so that you can't play with the intent of getting a unique Bomber and end up getting a unique Swordsman. Naming the units would probably get pretty mundane, but you could come up with lists for each civ, or tie it in with the next modcomp I've got.
The biggest would be Languages. Languages would act kind of like culture, with a couple of modifications. You'd start off with a language at the beginning of the game (probably based off what civ you pick - the Japanese start with Japanese (and this may end up being their one defining factor at start)), and with your settlers it spreads around your empire. When you conquer a city, its language stays in it, and can cause some effects (probably +unhappiness, you can probably half the cultural unhappiness since that probably already simulates this) based on a set of Language civics. Whatever language has the majority in the highest number of cities in your empire starts reducing the percentage in other cities (possibly also affected by culture somehow, i.e. language is more likely to spread from cities with more culture and harder to spread in them - but you'd have to take into account the culture wipe on conquest and somehow wrangle that into not messing with the spread mechanics).
Language civics would be things such as 'assimilation' (faster spread of state religion at the cost of more unhappiness and higher upkeep), 'tolerance' (slower spread of languages with less unhappiness, at the cost of culture/commerce/something); and you would be able to pick which languages you publish government documents in - no unhappiness generated by the language, but doing more than one is fairly expensive before Printing Press (and of course still costs some). A corollary to this would be replacing the Alphabet tech with a tech called something like 'Optimized Writing System' - a system that works for the language, but not necessarily an alphabet (this has always annoyed me, alphabets aren't somehow better than everything else) - this would also help reduce publication costs in every language. (Note that having the same official language as someone else would have no effect on diplomacy with them.)
You could change the way city names are decided with this too - a settler built in a given city would have a percent chance of starting with any language in that city (so if a city was 70% Dutch and 30% German, it would have a 70% chance of starting with Dutch and a 30% chance of starting with German). When it founds, the game would take a city name from a list associated with the settler's language, rather than from a list for that civ.
A couple of other modcomps could tie into this one - especially Dynamic Civ Names and an idea I had for Dynamic Leader Names (IDK if anyone else has done that already). Both would also take from lists associated with languages - so you would be the Imperium Romanum running Hereditary Rule with Latin as your state language, but you wouldn't if French began overtaking Latin and you eventually switched to it (the name change would happen on language switch - even if Latin died, you would still be the Imperium Romanum if you refused to switch). Dynamic Leader Names would give your leader titles based on the civics you're running (like 'king', 'emperor', 'president', 'prime minister'), and could also pull from a language-related list - if English is your state language and you're running HR, you'd be 'King', if Persian is, you'd be 'Shah'. (You could even do this with the names of the leaders themselves - so if Persian spread throughout the British Empire you wouldn't have 'Shah Churchill', you would have a more appropriate Persian name.)
I think added to the Revolutions mod, this could make gameplay a lot more realistic - you don't have the Vikings revolting out of the Chinese, and the Spanish revolting out of the Vikings later. With Revolutions there would have to be a list of basic civ names associated with each language (instead of modifications of the same basic name), but other than that, everything else could run just fine. It would be fun to see an empire collapse realistically, into a bunch of successor states that obviously have ties to the original but slowly diverge over time. (Though I have to admit I like the way RFC handles stability itself a little better, probably because I find it a whole lot easier to not collapse with.)
The one question is language change. In the remnants of a collapsed large empire (like Rome), how would you simulate the divergence of the languages of each successor state (like Latin > French, Spanish, etc.)? Either we ignore it (for some very very unrealistic endgame linguistic situations), or we get creative with the later languages. There's something I could do - come up with descendant languages for every language the game starts with, and lists associated with them. Would be a lot of work though.
So, what do people think? Am I horribly overambitious? I have no knowledge whatsoever of Python and minimal of XML so I would never be able to implement this on my own - it's just a bunch of ideas thrown out there. I would like to see people's comments on it.
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