First thanks to all for the feedback/suggestions.
Here's a proposal for a stricter territory list. I read up on the history of many of these cultures and turns out it seems justifiable to grant most of them just 1-2 territories. I added short notes to explain the choice where it seemed appropriate.
I also noted which cultures would be suitable for the noCapitalTerritory and nomadCultures lists.
Many early cultures with multiple territories are marked for the noCapitalTerritory list. My assumption is that you don't inherit all those territories or that you receive some penalty, otherwise these cultures would be overpowered. The Celts and Huns in particular are problematic in this respect, since their historical "core regions" are unclear or just very widespread. If something like that is not doable code-wise, I 'd recommend restricting them to just 1-2 core territories too. These are always at the top of the list.
Some cultures do have multiple territories, like the Byzantines, which would be just a perk of choosing that particular culture.
If this list is acceptable, I could post a version in the right code format.
Side note, the "nomadCultures" table in my code is just a helper to ID the game's Cultures that can't build city (so they can unlock other Culture without requiring a city on that Territory), it doesn't have other effects
"noCapitalTerritory" actually means the Culture can be picked by multiple Empires, could you precise how you'd like to expand its use ?
Also note that a small list means less AI will be able to evolve, which may not be an issue with some of the planned spawning mechanism, but maybe to keep in mind.
While if there are 2 list I can use one for unlocking/keeping and one for stability bonus/penalties, I don't plan to use 1 for unlocking (large) and one for keeping (smaller), I don't see how to handle the cases where you unlock from the large list without having territories from the small list.
I'll let you guys discuss/build the content of the lists, that's not my area of knowledge.
First off, so glad you're working on this, Gedemon!
Running the alpha on Mac/Fabius Maximus: game won't load map, produces following exception for which I have attached the diagnostic file:
Yep it doesn't work on the beta, may have to compile using the new DLLs, will try that once finished with my current tests. The mod.io version seems to at least load with the beta patch, but I've not tested it further.
Looks like it's time to start working on the town auto-naming. The question though - how immerse we want it to be? As much as "place the administrative center in exact spot to have that name"? Or maybe "if administrative center is in that part of a region, it will take that name"?
I declare help at least in case of some regions
Don't rush, we've already a large list of names with positions already defined from YnAMP from which I could be able to extract a (quite large) list for Roman/Greece and some of the common Civilizations/Cultures that we could build upon.
I think it'll be same or one of the adjacent tiles, meaning 1 name could cover 7 tiles, with possible overlaps (in that case first listed could be used)
I'd prioritize the location of the ~600 existing names in the game (that's 10 names for most Cultures, a bit less for Mongols and Huns)
The YnAMP DB has all modern names, I ponder a switch on era (medieval, early modern ?) to use them instead of per Culture name and maybe we could "simply" use latin name before.
My personal preference is a scenario where you start with the bare minimum of historically accurate core territories where the culture originated from (in the case of the Umayyads I took that to be Damascus, though with a broader interpetation of Umayyads as "medieval Arabs" Hidiazum (Mecca) would be more fitting) and then have ingame mechanisms/incentives for the player to conquer historically accurate territories. For the Umayyads, Andalusia should then be made a very attractive territory to conquer. But of course that all depends on the kind of mod Gedemon wants to make - this list is just my take assuming a certain design philosophy.
The nice features of having 2 lists is that it would allow very different gameplay types by setting options and not that much lines of code (except for the relation with Stability, but I already plan to do that)
This idea may be a little out there: Say that "obsolete" empires have diminished influence, causing them to fall under the cultural influence of other cultures. For example, the Aegyptus falls under the Greek sphere of influence, or they are vassalised by the Greeks. What if this allows you to become that culture too - so the Egyptians can adopt the Greek culture of their overlords?
That would kind of break the TCL concept. But I have other possible plans for "obsolete" Cultures.
Maybe even being at war should lock era transitions then?
Could see that as an option as it can put a relatively big constraint on human players choices, but I'd still need a fix for the other cases. One being Minor Factions evolving into Major Empires if their territory allows it, and after they've reached their mid-life (what I'm currently coding and raised the issue when a Minor spawned a Major while I was besieging the city of that territory - but for Minors I can just lock the evolution, which is coded already)
- The classical/medieval world feels a bit light on iron, in relation to the starting positions. Aksumites will have a hard time getting access to it if they stay in their historical area. Many European cultures need 2 iron for their unique units. There's three iron in the far north, making these regions strategically much more important than they should be. Iron ore was pretty abundant for pre-industrial production levels, so maybe for gameplay purposes it's better to just ensure access to iron for cultures that need and give certain territories a boost in strategic importance to create interesting conflict situations. For example, maybe Northern Italy, (Southern) Germany or Danubia could have iron, making it a natural place of competition between Romans, Goths, Franks and Teutons.
let's try to summon
@Boris Gudenuf for possible source of irons for those people (Spain is already one)
If I start implementing economic features from my civ6 overhaul, this would not be an issue as Iron would stockpile from simply working some tiles, deposit just being "boost" for a strategic resource. (I'm still testing the water here, I can't say yet if HK is the platform I want to mod on the next few years, but it looks good)
But that would also be in a separate gameplay mod, I'm fine with balancing the map for the current game rules.
- I still feel the Science compensation is not on par with the others. Maybe excess Science isn't stored (like production before the previous update)?
I'd like to see the log from a change then, mine showed no loss of the calculated compensation.
Maybe with a screen of the progress bar of the next chosen techs, and its cost.
Also maybe the compensations need separate factors for science, influence and production.
- Small territories probably need some balancing to prevent filling up territories, like Batavia. Maybe boost the Main Plaza or FIMS yields in general inversely proportional to number of tiles? And then to compensate, maybe scale the stability penalty the same way , to discourage placing too many districts?
Outside the scope of this mode, but inside the scope of the mod with gameplay changes I want to make that I mentioned before.
Like forcing placements adjacent to the main district (and harbors) until later techs.
Stability scaling with number of tiles in a territory is a possibility, yes, but one that could mess with the AI decisions.
- Maybe when picking a new culture, the remnants should also immediately get to pick a new culture, or at least keep all the era stars, so they can do so the next turn. In this game, after I went from Mycenaeans > Celts, the remnant Mycenaeans only had 5 stars left. After a while they became Greeks, while leaving another remnant in control of Italy, which eventually became the Romans. All of this was very cool, but it also took very long. By the time the Romans were there, I had either already become the Norsemen or I was just about to.
Currently implementing that, well not exactly that, but with intermediate independent people with a lower life span as a kind of "buffer" before spawning a new major Empire.
- Maybe remnant cultures should not always remain major empires at all, even if there are still slots left. For example, I would have been fine with the Harappans becoming a minor empire after the core territories became the Mauryan empire. Ties in with the previous two points: maybe remnants should either (edited for clarity) switch cultures immediately, or go into decline as independents.
Agree to, my next plan when the above is coded is to keep only the core territory of the previous Culture to the new spanned Empire, which mean moving from Mycenaeans to Greece would not spawn a new major Empire (as the core would not be free for it), but minor Factions on the outside territories, 1 per city with an average life span, and one for territories without city with a low life span.
That mean rewriting a lot of the spawning code, which means staying longer in "alpha", next "public" version will be after the next patch.
Your move from Mycenaeans to Celts would result in the Mycenaeans becoming a Major empire that could evolve into Greece, Italy becoming a minor who could evolve into Romans.
I've not looked at era stars code yet, but they should gain some when getting the extra techs from the pervious Empire (that's already coded). They also should gain some when they get the population/infrastructures from the territories they acquire, not checked.
Some logging and balance may be needed there.
- I like the idea of allowing duplicates for some cultures, but I think it works better if these are somehow restricted. Perhaps based on historical subdivisions. E.g. the Greek city states and Diadochi; Celtic cultures like Gauls, Britons, etc; different groups of Huns (Xiongnu, Iranian Huns, White Huns, Attila the Hun-Huns); Mongols (e.g. Yuan dynasty in China, Ilkhanate in Mid-East). If that's too complicated, I think I prefer having just one of each culture, to encourage more diversity.
too complex. let me know how it feels with AOM's mod
- Independent territories should probably break up into single territory entities, to prevent weird situations where one can simply annex an entire empire by assimilating them.
yes, planned
- In many cases, I really don't want the remnant empire to be my vassal. It leads to awkward situations. E.g. going from Huns to Mongols, I'd prefer starting with 100 war support against the remnant Huns and have a good old fight over the steppe empire. If the Soviets start with a few core territories within the Russian empire - they should probably already be at war with the remaining Russians, with claims on every Russian territory.
Agree, vassals is a placeholder here, plan is to have the initial relation to be stability related.
I'll try to have a look at the war support to allow the master to start with it, but I've not be successful with manipulating diplomacy outside the allied/vassals/peace/war states yet.
Once I'll manage to have Major spawning from Minors to adopt the previous minor-major relation (Non Agression, Trading resources, that I get correctly) into the major-major relation (setting no skirmish allowed, all resources traded, that doesn't work yet, it seems to be set then reset), I'll look at that.
ATM major Empire spawning from minors do get the Allied status with majors that were at the maximum relation value with the previous minor, the others start at "peace" or "unknown".
AOM made a mode to improve AI culture picks, which (partially?) removes that factor, so that the AI picks cultures mainly based on personality traits. For example, the "Cool headed" trait gives a preference for Science cultures. Maybe that mod could help here too?
I'm already using it and was about to suggest you try it too before you posted this. I'll add it as a suggested mod to use I think.
