[MOD] Medieval: Conquests

[drjest2000]

I was having some beers on the back porch with one of the professors at the university and he put me in the right on a couple of points. He said during that period in Europe, cotton was imported from North Africa and the Levant (fancy professor talk for the Middle East). The French and Venetians had set up home silk industries by about the 1200s, certainly they were producing quantities of inferior silk by the Renaissance period. Of the two, he would guess that to the Medieval mind, cotton was more difficult to obtain, thus more valuable, because it came places controlled by the dreaded enemies of Christ. Even though high quality silk came from farther away. The term "muslin" (e.g., fine cotton cloth) derives from the same word as "Muslim" because most cotton fabric came from Muslim controlled areas, sometimes it only passed through the hands of Muslim traders who were bringing indigo dyed cloth from India.

As for the wool being the king of cloths, he said that wasn't true. Wool was costly because it went through a very long process to make it pretty. He was saying that there was a major wool bleaching industry in the Lowlands (Netherlands/Belgium) region since not long after Roman times. The English wool was spun and woven into cloth in England, then sent to the Lowlands to be bleached, then it would be dyed and the color made fast by boiling in human urine. He wasn't sure what they used as a process to kick-start the bleaching, but he was pretty certain it was something mildly acidic like vinegar or soured milk. Generally, he said, if they wanted it to be very white, they would rub it with chalk or fuller's earth, hence the medieval occupation "fuller".

I had to look up fuller in the unabridged dictionary to find out what that was: "a worker who cleanses or bleaches wool or other cloth through the process of fulling".

Which sent me to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulling

Anyway back to the Way-Back Machine with Dr. Peabody (name changed to protect the innocent), he said that linen was much cheaper and easier to get, for the most part, so unless you were a high level lord, you never owned a woolen garment. Linen was the "cheap" end cloth for the mid-level lord. The low end of the ladder wore leather and patch-work of rags.

He went on a long tear about the manufacture of linen and that letting it soak too long, left it brown and stinking like a dead cat, but he wasn't all that sure that most rural peasants would notice the smell over their own stink....

He also said a bit about there being a tapestry industry in Medieval France that turned out some of the most expensive luxury items on the European market.

Then he asked me about pottery and wondered why there wasn't clay and potters in "that game".

I told him they weren't yet...

I may end up creating a red clay terrain that yield clay with a clay bonus just to get Dr. Peabody off my back.

 

[Nightinggale]

I was having some beers on the back porch with one of the professors at the university and he put me in the right on a couple of points.

That's always a good start on anything serious

He went on a long tear about the manufacture of linen and that letting it soak too long, left it brown and stinking like a dead cat, but he wasn't all that sure that most rural peasants would notice the smell over their own stink....

The medieval times were smelly times. Vikings washed themselves often. In fact the norse name for saturday is "washing day" or "bathing day". The christians came and told people they shouldn't wash themselves anymore because exposing the body would be sinful. Those savage vikings didn't mind public nudity and explained it with the excuse that it was needed to get rid of smell... imagine that.

A similar conflict appeared when missionaries came to Japan around 1500. The warm and humid climate is ideal for bad smell. People had the tradition to bath daily in hot springs. The missionaries were outraged by the savage mixed gender public bathing while the Japanese wrote about the smelly barbarians coming in black ships, who refused to bath.

Japan then kicked out the missionaries, then all foreigners, then all converts, but that had to do with public order and that the converts were rioting and conquered a castle. A quite interesting, but completely off topic story. Japan still used mixed bathing when the Americans took over after WW2, but they managed to kill that concept and it's only used in rural areas today (rumors says by old people only).

The vikings of Iceland also still uses their hot springs for bathing regularly, but they too have added bathing cloth. We know they dug "bath tubs" and let hot springs replace the water in them continuously for more than 1000 years ago and basically that's how public baths work today. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the vikings used stones or something to adjust the flow to control the temperature. Must have been wonderful with 25-35°C water on a cold winter night.

Then he asked me about pottery and wondered why there wasn't clay and potters in "that game".

I told him they weren't yet...

I may end up creating a red clay terrain that yield clay with a clay bonus just to get Dr. Peabody off my back.

That would be a nice addition.

Speaking of adding yields I would like to see the two row yields in M:C. It's a nice concept with the raw material in the top row and then the goods made out of it in the bottom row.

The problem with reordering yields to have the finished goods right under the raw material for that goods is that reordering will break savegames. Ideally such a reorder should be done together with adding more yields, which will break savegames anyway.

 

[Kailric]

As for the wool being the king of cloths, he said that wasn't true. Wool was costly because it went through a very long process to make it pretty. He was saying that there was a major wool bleaching industry in the Lowlands (Netherlands/Belgium) region since not long after Roman times. The English wool was spun and woven into cloth in England, then sent to the Lowlands to be bleached, then it would be dyed and the color made fast by boiling in human urine. He wasn't sure what they used as a process to kick-start the bleaching, but he was pretty certain it was something mildly acidic like vinegar or soured milk. Generally, he said, if they wanted it to be very white, they would rub it with chalk or fuller's earth, hence the medieval occupation "fuller".

Well, the book (Life in a Medieval City) I am reading from states that the "king of textiles is wool". While it may not be the most common it is the best money maker, according to these guys anyhow. A walker is also another name for Fuller, hence the last name Walker

Then he asked me about pottery and wondered why there wasn't clay and potters in "that game".
I told him they weren't yet...
I may end up creating a red clay terrain that yield clay with a clay bonus just to get Dr. Peabody off my back.

Mare Nostrum has a whole pottery line from workers to buildings, but the one thing about pottery is that it is really common right? And its probably really really cheap? In my research I haven't come across any hype about the production of pottery so I just assumed it was common enough not to warrant mentioning. I would class it under Tools or Trade Goods. However, I do have one idea. Just like with having to research Cotton, you could have to research Porcelain and Porcelain would take the place of Pottery if we had a pottery production line.

For Example, on the tech tree you have a few Trade Tech Options say Cotton, Porcelain, and Silk. When researched each would replace another Yield in your cities, Linen, Pottery, and Wool respectively. Potters would then make Porcelain, Weavers make Fine Cloth, and Tailors could make Silk Robes. You could only choose one of the Trade Techs and depending on your environment you would choose the best one.

Right now there is like only 4 main Money Making trade productions that being Barley/Ale, Wool/Coats, Cotton/Cloth, Grapes/Wine so the game could stand a couple more perhaps. The rest are either weapons, armor, tools, material, or food stuff which are needed for your Realm.

Some suggestions:
-Add a Silversmith to make silver ornaments
-Hemp to make Rope (possibly required to build ships)
-Flax to make Course Cloth
-Indigo makes Dye
-Luxury Goods
-Incense

And another thing I have thought of is how in Civ4 if you had access to certain goods it makes your population happy. Some kind of system like that could be added where the more exotic or rare goods you have for sale at local markets it would add bonuses. Perhaps increase Immigration or Fealty.

One day I'm a great coder, the next I'm a history professor. Can I be the Indian or the sailor tomorrow please
Or maybe the cowboy

Ok, cowboy, how's about rounding up some code!

 

[Nightinggale]

The Welsh? The original Britons? They were the guys selling Christianity and Roman ideas to the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons. It's ironic and even down right funny, that St. Patric, the patron saint of the Irish, is in all truth a Roman Briton... A Welshman... that Irish pirates kidnapped and put into slavery. I laugh darkly every March 17th over that one.

Do you have a source to that claim or is it unionist propaganda?

I don't remember the date, but it was a good 200 years after the Welsh had converted the pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, there was an Anglo-Saxon king who had a Roman Catholic Bishop and a Welsh Abbot argue it out, from this exchange, he decided to go with the guy from Rome's version of Christianity. Why? Because the Welsh had done too good a job of convincing the Anglo-Saxons that all things Roman were shiny and golden, I guess.

You are talking about the elite. I'm talking about the common man working the field. Those are two entirely different people and history books are about the elite. It's rare that we have information about the non-elite, but we do know that there can be a mismatch. For instance once Norway turned to Christianity, in history books everybody turned christian. However we do have one source, which tells of a problem the army had. They were ordered to ensure people had turned christian and they had. That's what they could see. However they noticed they had a problem. They were in town A, which were christian, but town B was not. They went to B and it was christian when they arrived, but then A was no longer christian. This made them go back and arrived at christian A, but then B was no longer christian. It's something like that and it really shows that the minds of who wrote the history books at the time had a great mismatch with the minds of the people.

Ok, cowboy, how's about rounding up some code!

Cool. Now I'm a code herder. GET BACK INLINE

I am actually looking at coding. I just looked at how my cache works in RaR to make sure it survived the transfer. I will get back to M:C soon.

 

[Nightinggale]

OK - seriously on topic for a change - I think I have isolated the source of the crashes that I have been experiencing. The last ten times that the game has crashed, there have been no messages or any sign that there might be a problem, but here's the thing. Every time, it has crashed it was right after I had issued a Go To command for a Wily Trader functioning as a Peddler. I mean every time.

I have been thinking. Lack of space to allocate memory is the most likely cause of 32 bit problems. I figure if the game uses less memory, then it would work. I decided to reduce memory usage for plots because there are a lot of plots. I managed to find 128 bytes to save, but at the price that the current 32 player limit can't be raised. That would save half a megabyte on a 50x80 map. That's not really doing anything. Clearly the memory goes elsewhere.

I think it would be good to make a no movie version to see if that helps.

I can always restart the game from the last auto-save and there is nothing in the logs that indicate a problem or error occurred. The game simply black screens and I get a Windows System pop-up saying that there was a problem with Civilization.exe -- It offer the debug option, but I am not running a debug install of XP, so the files that it creates are largely useless, even to the guys at Microsoft.

You don't need a debug version of windows, just a debug version of the crashing application, or in this case the crashing dll. If you follow the Modwiki guide you can get a debugger running and see where it crashes. If you install visual c++ 2010, you can just use the project file at git and you only need to do step 1 and you don't even need the makefile in that step. Step 6 tells how to get it to tell you what happened when it crashed.

The only thing in git, which will not work out of the box is the makefile. At the top of the file it has

TOOLKIT=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
PSDK=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A

Correct the path, which is presumably removing (x86)

If you run the game with the debugger attached, it will tell you what went wrong when it goes wrong.

I will be offline for a few days and that will explain a lack of answers in the near future. However somebody else might answer in the meantime

 

[drjest2000]

Well, the book (Life in a Medieval City) I am reading from states that the "king of textiles is wool". While it may not be the most common it is the best money maker, according to these guys anyhow.

I'm familiar with the book. It's a fairly good book, but it tends to over generalize and not clearly define things as exclusive or rare instances. They made a TV series of it, I think, but it got rather poor reviews from historians, which may or may not reflect badly on the series.

Mare Nostrum has a whole pottery line from workers to buildings, but the one thing about pottery is that it is really common right? And its probably really really cheap? In my research I haven't come across any hype about the production of pottery so I just assumed it was common enough not to warrant mentioning. I would class it under Tools or Trade Goods. However, I do have one idea. Just like with having to research Cotton, you could have to research Porcelain and Porcelain would take the place of Pottery if we had a pottery production line.

I fear, dear Kailric, (he said in his best beadle) that you're thinking like a modern man in the age of consumerism. Truth be told, pottery is only cheap nowadays because we have natural gas and petroleum. Back in ye olden days, they had to chop down half a forest to make a batch of pottery. One run of a kiln represented the full year's work of about 20 people and would require the unbroken vigilance of two or three skilled workers to keep the kiln fire at exactly the right level, usually the master potter would go for three or more days without sleep. Then they had to let it cool for a week.

It was a miserable process where anything done slightly wrong resulted in the whole contents of the kiln shattering and the effort being wasted. So I assure you, no, they didn't think of pottery as cheap or throw-away goods. They thought it was so precious that they would save the broken pots and use the shards to scratch out notes or receipts. Often repairing an item several times before they consigned the item to the dung heap.

I highly recommend you search for "Living Treasures of Japan" and "Secrets of the Samurai Sword" on YouTube, even though they're about Japan, the methods are nearly identical as those used in Europe during the medieval period. After viewing those, you'll have a better idea of how labor-intensive these things could be.

Also of high luster (IMHO) is "Secrets of the Viking Sword", also on YouTube.

For Example, on the tech tree you have a few Trade Tech Options say Cotton, Porcelain, and Silk. When researched each would replace another Yield in your cities, Linen, Pottery, and Wool respectively. Potters would then make Porcelain, Weavers make Fine Cloth, and Tailors could make Silk Robes. You could only choose one of the Trade Techs and depending on your environment you would choose the best one.

Right now there is like only 4 main Money Making trade productions that being Barley/Ale, Wool/Coats, Cotton/Cloth, Grapes/Wine so the game could stand a couple more perhaps. The rest are either weapons, armor, tools, material, or food stuff which are needed for your Realm.

Some suggestions:
-Add a Silversmith to make silver ornaments
-Hemp to make Rope (possibly required to build ships)
-Flax to make Course Cloth
-Indigo makes Dye
-Luxury Goods
-Incense

And another thing I have thought of is how in Civ4 if you had access to certain goods it makes your population happy. Some kind of system like that could be added where the more exotic or rare goods you have for sale at local markets it would add bonuses. Perhaps increase Immigration or Fealty.

I'm thinking indigo wasn't a big player during Medieval times in Europe (at least in a "grown in Europe and North Africa" context) - but I certainly think dyes were important luxury goods that fetched a high price at the market. I'm pretty sure that indigo is an east Asian commodity, but the game's economy and industry is "symbolic" not "factual" in its representation, so I'd be willing to go with the indigo as long as we called it "woad"

I am toally on board with the idea of a silversmith.

One thing to consider is:

Silver + Silversmith = Silverware

but:

Silver + Silversmith + Porcelain-making tech = Limoges-style enamelware

Which was a very high-end luxury good in medieval times.

Porcelain is pretty much nothing more than "china" made outside China, there's no great secret to the making of it, it is just fired clay and glaze after all. It is more a matter of having skilled craftsmen with artistic talent. The bisque-ware of Dresden fame is a different beast, but from the same genus. I'm fairly certain that I remember seeing some very fine things in the medieval collection at the Louvre, but like any slap-dash sort of tour, I can't remember a damned thing I saw.

The way I see the economic mechanics in M:C is that they are a little confused.

I think furs (a forest good) to coats, and the hides (gained from cattle) to leather makes more sense. Two things with two different uses. Furs are luxury goods, leather goods (unless armor) are (as you say) just common trade goods.

BUT Hides + Dye + Monastery = Illuminated Manuscipts! A huge money-maker in medieval times.

I am all for adding more yields, but adding yields does rather create the need to give them a purpose.

So I propose:

1 Fur : 1 Coats (Although I have to point out that furs were usually traded as a raw resource, like silver; finished goods of fur and silver were almost always locally manufactured on demand for a specific client, at least until the age of mass production)
1 Hides : 1 Leather Armor
1 Flax : 1 Linen/Coarse Cloth (sold at the market to 1 generate culture)
1 Wool : 1 Cloth
1 Indigo/Woad : 1 Dye
1 Dye + 1 Wool = 1 Tapestries (sold at the market to 9 generate culture)
1 Dye + 1 Cloth : 1 Luxury Cloth (sold at the market to generate 3 culture)
1 Luxury Cloth + 1 Coat : 1 Luxury Clothing (sold at the market to generate 9 culture)
1 Hemp : 1 Rope
1 Rope + 1 Cloth : 2 Sail cloth
1 Silver : 1 Silverware (sold at the market to generate 3 culture)
1 Clay + 10 Wood : 1 Porcelain (sold at the market to generate 9 culture)
1 Silverware + 1 Porcelain : 1 Luxury Silverware (sold at the market to generate 9 culture)

I suggest that there be a choke of some kind to keep the culture from exploding out of control, such as: a common peasant worker cannot manufacture luxury goods, and a specialized unit can only produce 3 per turn (not 6) of the luxury item.

Of course, all that creates the need for new buildings:

An ENAMELLER'S HOUSE to make Enamelware/Luxury Silverware
A FULLERY to make Luxury Cloth
A HECKLING SHOP to make Linen
A KILN (requiring a Master Potter) to make Porcelain
A ROPEWALK to make Rope
A RUGMAKER'S HOUSE to make Tapestries
A TAILOR'S HOUSE to make Luxury Clothing
A SAIL-MAKER'S HOUSE to make Sail Cloth
A SILVERSMITH'S HOUSE to make Silverware

The city screen is already approaching maximum density, so let's discuss how we can avoid having it becoming overly confusing. I don't have a strong belief in the usefulness of democracy in instances like this. A two-tiered resource bar would solve a fraction of the problem, but the real issue is the fixed positions of the building icons in the city screen.

So, if it is doable, I'm suggesting that certain buildings only be available in certain types of city and that each city type have its own specific city-screen.

So let's theorize that luxury goods can only be produced in the capital city, so that makes these items all "late game" items. Which may be a good thing.

Do you have a source to that claim or is it unionist propaganda?

*** begin performance ***

Sir, he said with mock sincerity, you injure me... me? A Unionist? Never! My people are descended from Hywel Dda! We Vycchani have a long, honorable history of being contrary to English ideas. Although, I must confess that my line is tainted by relation to that great liar Geoffrey of Monmouth. Oh, the shame...

***end performance***

Actually I have two sources that I use for most medieval period religious topics: The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (pub. 1997) by Richard Fletcher and The Catholic Encyclopedia (pub. 1907-1912) by divers hands. If those sources fail me, I reach for Who's Who of World Religions (pub. 1991) by John R. Hinnells (ed.). But when I really want to get an argument going, I reach for The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (pub. 1994) by John Boswell or James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (pub. 1997) by Robert H. Eisenman. Oh, the hours of misery I have caused my religious-minded friends....

You are talking about the elite. I'm talking about the common man working the field. Those are two entirely different people and history books are about the elite. It's rare that we have information about the non-elite, but we do know that there can be a mismatch. For instance once Norway turned to Christianity, in history books everybody turned christian. However we do have one source, which tells of a problem the army had. They were ordered to ensure people had turned christian and they had. That's what they could see. However they noticed they had a problem. They were in town A, which were christian, but town B was not. They went to B and it was christian when they arrived, but then A was no longer christian. This made them go back and arrived at christian A, but then B was no longer christian. It's something like that and it really shows that the minds of who wrote the history books at the time had a great mismatch with the minds of the people.

You're totally right, or course. The early church didn't concern itself with the peasants. In fact--although I have never seen an offical document stating it--I am convinced that in early times the Church held that peasants, like all livestock, did not have souls. I recommend A History of Heaven (pub. 1998) by Jeffrey Burton Russell if you're really interested in how the early Church viewed Heaven and who would be going there.

There were several forces that changed the policies of the Church regarding peasantry, one of the biggest being Millennialism. Starting about 900, there was a sort of panic that began to spread as a number of "signs" seemed to indicate the "end times" were starting. The Muslim expansion into Europe, the Vikings, and more. It built to a fevered pitch that resulted in the unofficial schism of the Catholic Church into a "high church"--which concerned itself with kings (corrected from kinds in edit) and the like--and a "low church"--which was run by crack-pot lay preachers that roamed the land like a pestilence of locust stirring up the peasants causing all manner of mischief (including the so-called "Albigensian Heresy"). Aggravated by things like the failure of the Crusades, the Anni Pluvii (1201-1203) and the Black Death (1348-50), it results in all sorts of weirdness, like the Inquisition, witch hunts, Malleus Maleficarum, and numerous other crimes agains humanity....

You don't need a debug version of windows, just a debug version of the crashing application, or in this case the crashing dll. If you follow the Modwiki guide you can get a debugger running and see where it crashes. If you install visual c++ 2010, you can just use the project file at git and you only need to do step 1 and you don't even need the makefile in that step. Step 6 tells how to get it to tell you what happened when it crashed.

The only thing in git, which will not work out of the box is the makefile. At the top of the file it has

TOOLKIT=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
PSDK=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A

Correct the path, which is presumably removing (x86)

If you run the game with the debugger attached, it will tell you what went wrong when it goes wrong.

The problem is that the version of Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition that is currently available is the 2012 version, not the 2003, 2005, 2008 or 2010 version... and it's a 3.4 GB download >_<

So I am hesitant to install it as it may be incompatible with the 2003 Toolkit.

I will be offline for a few days and that will explain a lack of answers in the near future. However somebody else might answer in the meantime

I can wait... I have a year to burn....

 

[drjest2000]

As a complete afterthought, if the Tech Tree gets larger, the year-count of the turns will have to be re-evaluated. 6 years at a turn may result in things coming into play much later than they should in a historical setting. I'm thinking of the Alfred Jewel, which is enamel-ware. That was made sometime in the 800s, so if porcelain is linked to a long chain of techs, it may result in porcelain/enameling not coming in "on time".

 

[Nightinggale]

You're totally right, or course.

I don't really have anything to reply to this one. I just wanted to frame it for some reason

The problem is that the version of Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition that is currently available is the 2012 version, not the 2003, 2005, 2008 or 2010 version... and it's a 3.4 GB download >_<

So I am hesitant to install it as it may be incompatible with the 2003 Toolkit.

Microsoft does a good job at convincing people to get the newest and biggest version. All you need is visual c++ 2010, which is MUCH smaller. It's way better hidden, but I found it here.
It is incompatible with the 2003 edition, but the modwiki tells how to get rid of that issue.

 

[orlanth]

Well, the book (Life in a Medieval City) I am reading from states that the "king of textiles is wool".

Bah! This is the real King of Textiles!

And another thing I have thought of is how in Civ4 if you had access to certain goods it makes your population happy. Some kind of system like that could be added where the more exotic or rare goods you have for sale at local markets it would add bonuses.

Yeah would be cool to get some bonus for keeping your citizens demand well satisfied. Maybe some bonus trade points, fealty, or Prosperity depending on the yield? (tho I still don't rly get what Prosperity does.)

(still dancin to that Textile King soundtrack.. u can't see me so can be as goofy as I want )

 

[drjest2000]

I had a brainstorm about "furs" so they would not be generated inside the city screen... Hunters... when they kill something, they get luxury food AND furs. since they would accumulate pretty slowly (I'm thinking 1 fur per kill), they could pile up until the late game and then be put to use manufacturing luxury goods

 

[Kailric]

I think it would be good to make a no movie version to see if that helps.

Yes, I'll work on this soon.

I had a brainstorm about "furs" so they would not be generated inside the city screen... Hunters... when they kill something, they get luxury food AND furs. since they would accumulate pretty slowly (I'm thinking 1 fur per kill), they could pile up until the late game and then be put to use manufacturing luxury goods

I had the same idea almost. But I'd still like "furs" to be generated inside city screens that way you could set up those fur trading post cities in tundra plots. Hunting for furs would be an extracurricular activity

About Indigo, again my book says Indigo has the "greatest demand" in dyes during 1250 at the Champagne Fairs. But thanks for the work up for new yields all good suggestions. As far as new yields go I'd suggest adding one at a time and see how it plays out instead of one big multi yield update.

Speaking of updates I have one uploaded..

2.0b Change Log

Known Issues
-Exiting to Main Menu will crash the game, this will be fixed in a update soon

Fixes
-Lodges auto kill Animals out to 1 space, nearby city gains Luxury Food
-Strongholds and Towers kill Animals, Bandits, and Marauders out to one space
-fixed Squire graduating to Noble bug. Squires only graduate if they are working as Stewards
-Adjusted Route prices to be more strategic
-Bandits and Animals no longer kill units but instead damage them and send them home crying. They will steal gold and cargo however.
-added Escape city to Scouts, Huntsman, and all None Military Peasantry if attacked by Bandits or Animals
-Armorsmith now requires Hides and Tools and Weaponsmiths now require Ore
-Yield Units now show Trade Route prices in help text while loaded in ships this way you can see what route to take for best price
-Fixed the Trading League's gross exaggeration of gold earned: Now when You Finished Trading League the Trade Points show up as the points you earn each turn. This points are converted to gold each turn minus the Tithe Rate.
-Fixed minor issue in the Immigration Screen.
-Silk Road is now a sea route starting in the North or South seas, Spice Route is East and West
-Spice Route and Silk Road now have different colored plots
-New Training Level for Professions: certain Professions now require an experienced Unit such as Archers and Longbowmen
-Infantry and Archers now require Tools
-Each Trade Screen can now have its own array of units
-Adjusted JAnimals mod to have fewer animals
-added orlanth's Trade Route videos
-Ships no loner move through improvements
-Animals/Bandits shouldn't break workers automation
-Animals will hopefully wonder closer to their favored terrain. No more Polar Bears in desert
-the amount of Trading Post Trade Points given are modified by World Size
-Establishing Trading Post now gives a sound and message
-Added New Flags and Civ Buttons thanks to drjest2000!!

Update Here
http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=104974

Edit: and here is the DLL for 2.0b View attachment 355888

 

[drjest2000]

Thanks for the hard work in making the new update! I'm going to fire it up and try to break it >_<

@Kailric - I was talking to one of the guys in the Biology Department this afternoon, he's more of a bug and spider man than a botanist, but he pointed out that the indigo plant grows just about everywhere as a common weed nowadays. He was able to show me a mile-long swath of it growing next to the Interstate outside town. (I had always called it "vetch", but I squeezed one of the plants and got blue fingers, so yeah, it was indigo alright)

He's pretty sure that the woad plant and the indigo plant both produce the same chemical dye, so in his (not so humble) opinion, if the Greeks and Romans were trading it in the BC era, then it was very likely grown in the Mediterranean basin. He also speculated that one of the factors that made Britain attractive to the Romans was the abundance of woad in Britannia, which would make the province something of a cash cow.

So again, in his (not so humble) opinion, it doesn't matter if it is called woad or indigo, the two plants produce the same dye and grow in different climate conditions, so if they called the dye "indigo" in Champagne, there's no telling if it was one or the other, or even a mix of the two, because the Romans, Greeks, and their successor states were notorious for naming things with words already in use. As an example, he pointed out that the Romans were in the habit of naming the biggest tree in any new region an "oak" whether it produced acorns or not, the next biggest they habitually called a "maple" (even if it produced acorns), and so on.

He also pointed out that "word recycling" is not a habit exclusive to any time or any place. In modern English, people say "English walnut" to differentiate it from "Black walnut" (which is a native North American species), but the word "walnut" derives from Anglo-Saxon "wealh-hnutu" ("foreign nut"), so-called by them because it came from someplace else--in remote antiquity near modern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran--and did not grow well in rainy England.

So if they were calling a dark blue dye "indigo" in a Latin or Latin derived language, it could have been real indigo-derived dye or it might have been woad-derived, but the difference is purely semantic.

Short version: I yield to YE GREAT KENNING BOOKE and admit that my belief was in error. Mea cupla, mea culpa!

This is what I get for being an ancient history specialist trying to operate in the "modern world" of the Middle Ages >_<

 

[Kailric]

So if they were calling a dark blue dye "indigo" in a Latin or Latin derived language, it could have been real indigo-derived dye or it might have been woad-derived, but the difference is purely semantic.

Short version: I yield to YE GREAT KENNING BOOKE and admit that my belief was in error. Mea cupla, mea culpa!

This is what I get for being an ancient history specialist trying to operate in the "modern world" of the Middle Ages >_<

Did you break it yet? Yeah, it would stand to reason that from anything written at that time that referenced "indigo" there is no telling what plant it actually was. They could have just seen "blue" die and thought "yo, indigo!". There was a whole lot of fraud going on back then too, especially outside of guilds, and for all they know it could have been smurfs blood.

 

[millansoft]

Hello,

I tried to download the 2.0 version but Moddb site, keeps telling me that isn't available mirrors, is there another link to download it?

Thanks!

 

[Kailric]

Hello,

I tried to download the 2.0 version but Moddb site, keeps telling me that isn't available mirrors, is there another link to download it?

Thanks!

Actually yes, find it here http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=104684

Make sure you get the patch too.. http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=104974

 

[drjest2000]

@ Kailric, I am pleased to say that I did manage to break it because I had neglected to remark out the entries for the new terrains I had been testing in the BonusInfos XML

I have the new Clay Resource at a stage I like. I decided to go with a red clay model rather than grey (the grey was too boogery looking) or brown (the brown looked like piles of cow poo). I figured it needed to stand out against the green and yellow of the terrain graphics, so orange-red like a brick, rather than snotty grey. I will work up some 2D graphics and do recolors of the pottery related buildings in Mare Nostrum, then IM you with a link to the files for review and testing.

I am going to blow my own horn a little here and say I can make 3D models if I absolutely have to and I can texture them pretty well, I just have no idea how to make the Blender NIF plug-in install properly. There's a whole Bash/Python part that I sit and stare at blankly and think "I need more beer for this."

 

[drjest2000]

I just had Rollo of the Norwegian Vikings offer to become a Vassal, or maybe I just became his Vassal, I'm not sure. This never happened before, so I'm not sure what I just agreed to, but I can see around his cities as if they were mine, but I can't see "inside" his cities.

I have to be honest, in all the times I've ever played, I've never had an AI player ever offer me a permanent alliance. Nor in Civ4 have I ever had an AI player offer to become my Vassal, although I have had AI player make me his vassal... as I recall, Alexander the Great before one of the patches was a little more than imbalanced and kicked my butt many times.

Anyway, what precisely is Vassalage in M:C? How does it differ from Vassalage in Civ4? It's a feature I haven't had a lot of experience with.

 

[Kailric]

I just had Rollo of the Norwegian Vikings offer to become a Vassal, or maybe I just became his Vassal, I'm not sure. This never happened before, so I'm not sure what I just agreed to, but I can see around his cities as if they were mine, but I can't see "inside" his cities.

I have to be honest, in all the times I've ever played, I've never had an AI player ever offer me a permanent alliance. Nor in Civ4 have I ever had an AI player offer to become my Vassal, although I have had AI player make me his vassal... as I recall, Alexander the Great before one of the patches was a little more than imbalanced and kicked my butt many times.

Anyway, what precisely is Vassalage in M:C? How does it differ from Vassalage in Civ4? It's a feature I haven't had a lot of experience with.

When a minor Civ (I am going to call them minor Civs instead of "natives") stands in awe of your magnificence you can ask them to become your Vassal or they may swear Fealty to you. You can then benefit from this in several ways. One is you form an Alliance that can not be broken. The Vassal is on your team. When you war they war and the Pope will even send forces to attack your Vassal during your Conquest. You can also continue trade as normal with the Civ and Trading Post still gather Trade Points (at the moment this may be not true but it should be and I'll fix it soon enough. When you have a Vassal you gain a new Profession, Tax Collector. Tax Collectors can be sent to your Vassals city and commanded to Collect Tax each turn. Your Vassals are more than happy to do so because of the protection you give them. Also, if you send a Peddler to a Vassal City you can ask for as many goods as you can carry in Vassal Dues. You can do this every ten turns.

That's pretty much it for the moment but I plan to add in option to "call your banners" to summon units from your Vassal that you can actually control for a Time.

Edit: And I look forward to seeing your pottery work

 

[mastrude]

This is just the God-damnedest conversation I ever remember reading!

 

[Kailric]

This is just the &@$@?$ conversation I ever remember reading!

Heh, I know the feeling, while playing your like "well, I'll just be &@"
I need to upload a quick fix as I noticed something in the code that would prevent vassals from generating Trade Points.