Modmodding- Adding Civilizations and Religions

[Simon_Jester]

Hi. I was talking to a friend last night and had the idea of modding a new entirely fictitious civilization into my own copy of HR. Since I suspect there are others who may be interested in modmodding, or in trying their own hand at modding themselves, and since I have no knowledge of it myself...

I have a few questions.

1) If I wanted to add a new civilization to the game, what would I do? Where would I need to put the files for that civilization's unit art, leaderheads, and so on?

2) If I wanted to add a new religion, would it be possible to just add it, or would I have to delete an existing religion to make room? And where would the art for that go?

Note that I'd be planning to, more or less, take art from various other mods and throw it in as kind of a kludge. I'd also need to know where to go to put in the .xml files (I think they're .xml) for unique units, buildings, and wonders; I can probably work out how to edit those in a text editor for myself.

Does anyone know where I can look these things up?

 

[Skidizzle]

2) If I wanted to add a new religion, would it be possible to just add it, or would I have to delete an existing religion to make room? And where would the art for that go?

If you go adding religions, one thing you may not think of is examining the random events folder. The religious quest events are ran from a list of current religions so you'll have to add your new ones to this list.

(Speaking of random events, since many of the civic names and categories have been changed this have have broken some random events.)

 

[Simon_Jester]

Thanks for making that point, although if the only consequence of that is that the random events don't randomly apply to my new religion, it won't bother me very much.

I just don't want the mod to be broken in the sense that if you try to play my new civilization or adopt my new religion, it crashes.

 

[Xyth]

The first thing you'll need to do is unpack the art files, so that you can see how it is structured and where you'll need to place things. You'll need PakBuild (Windows) or Macapaka (OS X) for this. To add new civs and leaders, the key XML files to edit are found in Assets/XML/Civilizations/ and Assets/XML/Art/.

Adding a new religion is much trickier. There is a soft-limit of 18 for religions; it can be overcome but it's a lot of work, which is why I haven't attempted to yet. It would be easier to replace one of the existing religions, but its still not an easy task in comparison to adding a new civ.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I am entirely open to replacing one of the existing religions; I haven't picked one but have already concluded that I would need to.

It would be Asatru almost for sure except for the guy yelling "OOOODIIINNN!"

 

[Simon_Jester]

Question: is it possible to give a unique building a bonus associated with the number of Orchards in the city radius?

 

[Xyth]

Question: is it possible to give a unique building a bonus associated with the number of Orchards in the city radius?

You can set a building to grant a free specialist for every Orchard, like the National Park does for Nature/Marine Reserves. Anything else would require custom Python code. It would be performance taxing though, needing to check every tile in the city's radius every turn. I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Shoot. Because that would be more than a little overpowered for the building I have in mind. Probably. Would have to think about it.

Is there any other way to create a correlation between the presence or absence of a building in a city, and the presence or absence of improvements in the surrounding tiles? Could I do it the other way around and have the building improve tile yields?

[In all cases I am saying "without custom Python code," as that is out of the question for this purpose.]

[Hm... goes back to drawing board]

 

[Xyth]

Shoot. Because that would be more than a little overpowered for the building I have in mind. Probably. Would have to think about it.

Is there any other way to create a correlation between the presence or absence of a building in a city, and the presence or absence of improvements in the surrounding tiles? Could I do it the other way around and have the building improve tile yields?

[In all cases I am saying "without custom Python code," as that is out of the question for this purpose.]

[Hm... goes back to drawing board]

Have you seen the Modiki yet? It details what all the XML settings do, i.e., everything you can do without Python code. Have a look at the building page: http://modiki.civfanatics.com/index.php?title=Civ4BuildingInfos