[Mod] True Culture Location and Territory Naming for the Giant Earth Map

[Siptah]

ah ok, then. I don't think I have any option to use it on GeForce Now then for the time being.

 

[Gedemon]

ah ok, then. I don't think I have any option to use it on GeForce Now then for the time being.

I really hope we'll have a way to release some DLL mods with the official framework for most platforms, but I'm afraid it may not be possible. I suppose we'll see once the planned AI modding become possible.

 

[Jkchart]

I like this a lot, and am going to have to try it after I just play the map first (which I have just downloaded).

However, I am a little concerned by the inability to play Olmecs in the entirety because there are no start positions over in America? I get that giving a player two free continents is...not great for gameplay, but I would like a ten-player map at some point too, not sure your thoughts

 

[Gedemon]

I like this a lot, and am going to have to try it after I just play the map first (which I have just downloaded).

However, I am a little concerned by the inability to play Olmecs in the entirety because there are no start positions over in America? I get that giving a player two free continents is...not great for gameplay, but I would like a ten-player map at some point too, not sure your thoughts

I'd like 2 players in the new world, once we can set 10 players on custom maps, but they'll have to share cultures, or one will have to spawn later than the first.

 

[Jkchart]

I'd like 2 players in the new world, once we can set 10 players on custom maps, but they'll have to share cultures, or one will have to spawn later than the first.

Yeah that's part of the issue isn't it? The variety of New World cultures is...lacking at this point so it makes it difficult until later

 

[Gedemon]

Alpha 2 added to OP

Changelog:

- Build for patch [1.2.139]
- Add a check for the Giant Earth Map, the code will not run on other maps, no need to swap the DLL
- Unlock Assyria for slots 7 and 8 when using the 8 players version of the map

 

[Gedemon]

Testing alpha3...

Medieval Era, Teutons Empire and world relations.

8 players, the Assyrians are the backup Culture used by both player 7 and 8 (me for this session) who are too far from the available ancient Cultures territories for spread out starting locations.

 

[Siptah]

Two cities with the same name does not lead to an error of some kind?

 

[Gedemon]

Two cities with the same name does not lead to an error of some kind?

except leading to confusion for the human, the game (and so the AI) handle them as 2 different objects AFAIK.

for the confusion part, I'll wait to see what we can add in XML/Database with the modding tools (and then access from the DLL) to begin to ponder using the large DB of city names by location we have for this map.

 

[brick623]

@Gedemon this is a fantastic idea and creative way to deal with the weirdness of hopping between far eastern cultures and European ones

 

[Gedemon]

what about a fame bonus for every territory/city you lose on Culture change ?

Is fame much of an incentive for players? I know I don't really care about it any more than trying to be just ahead when the game ends.

Another idea, what about getting back an amount of influence and gold based on the number (and development) of the territories you're giving up?

 

[Gedemon]

Still testing alpha3 (and the later game on the Giant Earth Map while I'm at it), things evolved nicely...

Spoiler :

 

[Tigranes]

Do the names for the territory/outpost created by AI and human match actual geographical names?
And also, is there any way to mod an ability for human player to rename outposts, generally speaking?

 

[Gedemon]

I'll wait to know how the modding framework will handle naming localization before coding anything in relation but yes, planned.

I've no idea how much time UI modding would require at this moment.

 

[brick623]

Completed a full playthrough (300 turns), the only problem was that Player 8 could not choose a culture, so remained a Neolithic tribe until the end (player 7 had chosen Assyrians). Their territory was just some outposts around the Baltic + Western Russia. Your mod did not cause any crashes.

Spawned around the upper Nile and explored then settled in Egypt and made the Lower Nile and Hejaz regions my powerbase, so the natural progression was from Ancient Egyptian to Umayyad Arabs. I really liked the fact you needed to "earn" a wider variety of cultures with aggressive expansion, and also the fact that it excluded other players from getting to another era first and choosing the culture I wanted.

The path I took was:
Neolithic Tribe > Ancient Egyptians > Ancient Egyptians > Umayyads > Spanish > French

Spoiler Nile :

Spoiler Arabia :

Spoiler Western Europe :

If you need any help with naming regions, I can probably make time to help and this seems like a much smaller job than the thousands of names we did for individual tiles for Civ YNAEMP.

If it is at all possible, another layer could be exonyms i.e. region names dependant on controlling Culture and re-naming cities and regions when a new culture is chosen. In the screenshots above I just manually renamed my own cities.

 

[Gedemon]

thanks for the feedback.

there was a bug in the code allowing 2 Empires to use the same culture that was preventing either slot 7 or 8 to use the backup culture, depending on who took it first. Should be fixed in alpha3, still working on it.

and yes, I'd like to have culture-related naming when we get to that point.

 

[Gedemon]

I'm setting a few other Cultures to be able to be picked by multiple players, with multiple possible "starting territory".

So far I have:

• Assyria, not locked by any territory, backup Culture for the first Era if a player/AI still hasn't controlled an "unlocking territory" after collecting 50 knowledge Stars (will need to scale that with game speed)
• Celts (British Islands, France, NW Spain)
• Norse (Scandinavia, except Denmark which is attached to "Germany" territory)
• Goths (SE Sweden, "Poland", "Ukraine")

Should there be others ?
Changes to the territories list ?

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I'm setting a few other Cultures to be able to be picked by multiple players, with multiple possible "starting territory".

So far I have:

• Assyria, not locked by any territory, backup Culture for the first Era if a player/AI still hasn't controlled an "unlocking territory" after collecting 50 knowledge Stars (will need to scale that with game speed)
• Celts (British Islands, France, NW Spain)
• Norse (Scandinavia, except Denmark which is attached to "Germany" territory)
• Goths (SE Sweden, "Poland", "Ukraine")

Should there be others ?
Changes to the territories list ?

Is it possible to have all territories unlock a few ancient cultures? This way all players will be guaranteed a starting culture. At least everyone will be within the real world vicinity of their origin. It won't be perfect but it could be a compromise until more cultures are introduced.

 

[Gedemon]

I'm not sure I understand the question, Assyria is guaranteed to be available (until more cultures are introduced), it's just a bug in alpha2 that it isn't the case already.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Oh, my savior! And I thought that real Earth maps would be pretty useless to me in this game.

From your modding experience and perspective - is it possible to make AI change city names when new culture is adopted? I'm asking not specifically here, on GEM, but on generated maps.