[modmodmod] The Sword of Islam Reborn

[GregFred187]

I updated the GitHub version to my current status.
I fixed the settler maps. Now the Khazars do what they are supposed to do, and Indians use whole map. I also removed the mountains in south India, but I think I will do a bigger rework of India, the geography and the civs there. E.g. for me there is much too less jungle in eastern India.

I think I merged everything I want to merge. Only at Loboto's re-spawned civs I have to look a little closer. In his mod, between mongol collapse and safavid spawn, there are a white (in the buyid area, Muzzafarid i think) and a orange/brown civ (in the ghaznavid area, don' remember name). Both I haven't seen in the merge yet. Others I have already seen (Circassia, Khazars, Jalayirids, Crimean).

Now I will spend some time rebalancing all the civs. I already gave Byzantium and Alans a huge nerf, because they conquered all of Iran.

About the Mongols/Golden I have a plan to make them both historical and playable: I plan to make them just a little stronger than regular AI Abbasids/Seljuks/Khwarezm/Kypchak. So that the human player or a very strong AI empire should have a chance to survive, or at least to loose and reconquer again only 1-3 cities. The Mongols/Golden should be able to conquer (most) of their land, without erasing mighty empires. In my opinion, when AI/human creates a very strong empire, then it should be able to withstand the mongol storm, but sure become weakend, while smaller empires will fall. (Can also be seen historical in some way).

Has someone a different opinion? Should the mongols, like in Histroy/DrLobots version, erase all of Middle East and bring chaos to the world?

 

[SomethingAboutBears]

Maybe their starting army could remain somewhat smaller, but their UP gives them units on city capture. This way they can reliably become very strong played by the humans, but can also reliably be stopped by a human player. This might also make them feel more rewarding to play while not losing historicity. Maybe something like "Upon capturing a city, gain a horse archer unit per population captured" in addition to their great general emergence bonus.

 

[SomethingAboutBears]

Also, while I understand why Western Khorasan was chosen as the flip province, I do find it a bit strange to have a massive army in Takla Makan while my only cities are weakly defended Persian cities. I think it might make more sense gameplay-wise to make Takla Makan and Farghana the flip provinces, while keeping the cores as they are now.

 

[DrLoboto]

I updated the GitHub version to my current status.
I fixed the settler maps. Now the Khazars do what they are supposed to do, and Indians use whole map. I also removed the mountains in south India, but I think I will do a bigger rework of India, the geography and the civs there. E.g. for me there is much too less jungle in eastern India.

I think I merged everything I want to merge. Only at Loboto's re-spawned civs I have to look a little closer. In his mod, between mongol collapse and safavid spawn, there are a white (in the buyid area, Muzzafarid i think) and a orange/brown civ (in the ghaznavid area, don' remember name). Both I haven't seen in the merge yet. Others I have already seen (Circassia, Khazars, Jalayirids, Crimean).

Now I will spend some time rebalancing all the civs. I already gave Byzantium and Alans a huge nerf, because they conquered all of Iran.

About the Mongols/Golden I have a plan to make them both historical and playable: I plan to make them just a little stronger than regular AI Abbasids/Seljuks/Khwarezm/Kypchak. So that the human player or a very strong AI empire should have a chance to survive, or at least to loose and reconquer again only 1-3 cities. The Mongols/Golden should be able to conquer (most) of their land, without erasing mighty empires. In my opinion, when AI/human creates a very strong empire, then it should be able to withstand the mongol storm, but sure become weakend, while smaller empires will fall. (Can also be seen historical in some way).

Has someone a different opinion? Should the mongols, like in Histroy/DrLobots version, erase all of Middle East and bring chaos to the world?

I'll leave this one up to you guys. My personal route for player Mongol civs was this. For Mongols/Ilkhanate, flip nothing. Give them a spawn stack in Tarim and some scripted stacks in Zhetsyu, pump 'em with some stability bonuses that get removed over time, and let the player rampage throughout central asia and the middle east while just barely staving off collapse. Had some fun runs with this. For Golden Horde, give them most of their historical regions as flips and some small stability and starting unit buffs. Decent starting position, but you still need to build up units and infrastructure (post barb Mongol spawns in the Caucasus and Ukraine) and focus on spreading Islam and later terrorizing your neighbors. In my own game, I'm on the verge of splitting them into the Blue Horde and White Horde, with renaming to the Golden Horde if one vassalizes the other. For Chagatai...yeah, they're just kinda there.

 

[HNation]

@GregFred187 My game crashes when I win the Byzantine UHV. I have attached a save game from the turn before the win (this is an older version, though)

 

[GregFred187]

I was able to load your save, through it is from an older version.
Everything went fine for me, I even played some turns on after the victory, but game remained stable.

Did you try reload it yourself? I made the experience that the game sometimes crashes without any reason, eg while Mughal load-screen, but on immediately next try, it works. This might come from the quite big map. Maybe the mod with the bigger map exploits the civ engine to its maximum. This happens to me sometimes also with other complex mods, like DoC or PAE (but maybe its device-related, my computer is not the strongest, even though it is not old.)

 

[GregFred187]

I updated GitHub version.
The respawns should now occur correctly. (But still I haven't seen the orange respawn Ghaznavids, because every time they were still alive, but most of the others seem to have correct time and provinces.)
I also made some balance changes, mostly nerfing the northern civs and the indians. Also I think the mongols are going right direction, just saw a case where they didn't get further than khorasan, though strong Seljuks.

 

[Triquetra]

I updated GitHub version.
The respawns should now occur correctly. (But still I haven't seen the orange respawn Ghaznavids, because every time they were still alive, but most of the others seem to have correct time and provinces.)
I also made some balance changes, mostly nerfing the northern civs and the indians. Also I think the mongols are going right direction, just saw a case where they didn't get further than khorasan, though strong Seljuks.

Just wanted to ask, what is the current roadmap for the mod right now?

 

[GregFred187]

Just wanted to ask, what is the current roadmap for the mod right now?

1. Rebalancing Loboto's civs, (~next days) and other not that important adjustments
2. Adding the "european" civs
3. Balancing "europeans"
4. Talking about UHV, UB, UU, other changes for "european" civs and "lobotos" which don't have them yet, which should slowly lead to a finished game
5. Maybe some time left to actually play the game

I think I could reach this state around Christmas.

 

[Triquetra]

1. Rebalancing Loboto's civs, (~next days) and other not that important adjustments
2. Adding the "european" civs
3. Balancing "europeans"
4. Talking about UHV, UB, UU, other changes for "european" civs and "lobotos" which don't have them yet, which should slowly lead to a finished game
5. Maybe some time left to actually play the game

I think I could reach this state around Christmas.

Sounds great! Though I'm still waiting for maybe a non-playable Zoroastrian civ in Tabaristan

Thanks for all your hard work by the way. Hope it goes well!

 

[GregFred187]

Sounds great! Though I'm still waiting for maybe a non-playable Zoroastrian civ in Tabaristan

Maybe I can place it on the back of the list

I just tried to get a feeling for the "europeans", by placing cities in their expected region:

Spoiler Bulgars :

Spoiler Serbians :

With already flipped Bulgarian city

Spoiler Hungary/Wallachia :

Spoiler Moldavia :

With flipped Bulgarian city

Spoiler Poland :

Already talked about a southward expansion (towards Moldavia) in late game as Poland-Lithuania

Spoiler Venetians :

I think now it is much more clearer, what the map would look like with all of the civs mentioned. I think it could be possible to play all of them, although they would have less cites than the big empires (Abbasids, Kypchaks, Seljuks). But Yemen/Crusaders are not bigger either.
But they will definitely make the game more interesting for Byzantium, Kiev and Ottomans, because they have to deal with enemies on both sides of their empire.

Maybe I should also mention that it is likely not to have all civs "at the same time", due to historical time/collapsing. Historically, Moldavia and Wallachia first appear when the Bulgarians were already gone, which also gives them more space. And don't forget the Kypchak and Golden, which forces can also play a certain role in this area.

 

[DC123456789]

What are the pink-purple cities in the Hungary/Wallachia supposed to represent?

 

[GregFred187]

The turquoise one (khazars) in the west represents Hungary.
The "pink-purple" (byzantine) in the carpathians represent Wallachia.

Search for "principality of Wallachia", or Vlad Dracula, if you haven't heared of them yet

PS: The pictures are not supposed to settle the city placement. They should just give you an impression

 

[DC123456789]

It looks like that's all Transylvania though? Doesn't look like there are actually any cities in Wallachia.

 

[GregFred187]

Thanks for you paying attention!

Yes, I get wrong with what I thought historical Wallachia actually was like.
I fought it is southern Carpathians, but actually it is southern of southern Carpathians.

Spoiler New Hungary-Wallachia :

That should be better. But again: nothing is certain yet

So Wallachia is more or less a respawned Bulgaria, but as I said, there are some centuries between them, so nothing to care about (historically).

 

[HNation]

Not sure how I feel about Poland (most of core territory not on map) or Venetia (all of core territory not on map), but the others look good.

 

[GregFred187]

I know, Poland feels kind of weird.
With Venetia I am quite confident. They shouldn't be treated like a full civ with core. I want them to simulate 4. Crusade, just like Jerusalem/Antioch Crusaders the 1.Crusade. Their core (France, Norway) is also not part of the map, although they had quite big impact on the area. The Venetians separated Byzantium into several smaller empires, which shouldn't be left out in our mod. That's also one of the reasons why Greece was added to the map. Also a Byzantium game would get more interesting, because you also have to protect your islands from the crusaders.

 

[Tigranes]

Current git version has Mongol initial cities looking like city ruins. But when I capture new cities their art is correct, so I am confused here. The problem cannot be about Mongols lacking city assets.

 

[GregFred187]

Current git version has Mongol initial cities looking like city ruins. But when I capture new cities their art is correct, so I am confused here. The problem cannot be about Mongols lacking city assets.

Saw the same, but only in Gandhara, in Tarim city art was correct. So I removed Gandhara from spawn provinces, because I think adding it was just by accident. Don't know what happened there, but on my local version it seems fine now.

I think balancing goes well.

Other question to DrLoboto:
How did you secure the Keshiks/MongolHorseArcher not to autopillage their own improvements?

 

[DrLoboto]

Saw the same, but only in Gandhara, in Tarim city art was correct. So I removed Gandhara from spawn provinces, because I think adding it was just by accident. Don't know what happened there, but on my local version it seems fine now.

I think balancing goes well.

Other question to DrLoboto:
How did you secure the Keshiks/MongolHorseArcher not to autopillage their own improvements?

I think it was this in CIv4unitinfos.xml -
<iAutoPillageProb>0</iAutoPillageProb>