Prehistoric mod idea

[Baldyr]

I noticed that the Cavemen2Cosmos mod included a Neanderthal civilization. This got me thinking - and I have no idea if this idea is new or already done to death - what if a game starting in the Stone Age could have human races like Homo Sapiens, Homo Erectus and Homo Neanderthal as the only available "civs"?

This is before city founding is even available, so it would only be units roaming the map. There would however be one single city in the game (it could just be a terrain feature or a over-powered goody hut - or simply a undefended barbarian city), and either by finding this prehistoric metropolis, or by unlocking the City Dwelling Tech by other means (huts? quests?), would the first Settler unit be presented to the player.

Only once a player has settled his first city would he get to choose a "proper" CivilizationType, like Sumeria. The human player would get to choose but the AI would simply get whatever makes sense geographically. The twist, however, would be that not all "civilizations" would be homo sapien in origin, at least not every time. The sapien units would however be more powerful than the basic Nomad units of the other races, so there would probably mostly be sapien players left once the first city states are formed. But the possibility would be there, at least for the human player. (The Barbarian civilization could by default be Neandertal/Erectus in the early stone age.)

So, a human controlled civilization based on something like a Neanderthal origin would have some form of advantages/disadvantages. Perhaps they would be something like a Orc civilization in a fantasy type mod? Maybe a free Promotion?

What do you guys think? Would this add something to a early-early game?

 

[The_J]

The idea itself has potential, but the part before founding a city would imho be relatively boring, because there's just not really anything to do :/.

 

[Baldyr]

I don't know how other mods that pre-date city building solve this, actually.

But I guess there would have to be something to do, like kill animal units, finding goody huts (or perhaps wandering nomad thingies that pre-date huts), do quests ("Find the Golden Forest beneath the Sacred Mountain", "Make contact with x number of rival players", "Find the first urban settlement", "Make a way to the Ocean") or something. Discovering 90% of the world map before the Copper Stone Age doesn't have any appeal to me personally though...

I know of a mod that involved units collecting yields from terrain pre-settling. So you'd have to accumulate some number of some YieldType in order to get something else, like a early Tech or a unit. This resulted in roaming around, finding the good plots with the best yields, but staying there once you're confident there aren't any better ones abound. Or something.

I guess we as game designers would have to solve the issue of "what-to-do-before-the- actual-game-starts".

 

[Voyhkah]

You mean like this?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=351873

I agree about Caveman civs, Civilization mods should only go back to the dawn of civilization. Total conversion caveman mods, on the other hand...

I think it's just silly to have a Neanderthal civ. They were never more than hunter-gatherers. Never a civilization.

 

[Asaf]

Sounds a bit like Spore

 

[stolenrays]

To simulate their nomadic life you could use the mongolian ger unit to spawn units. Maybe somehow that could be a movable pseudo city that allows buildings?

 

[Voyhkah]

That was in Rise of Homos.

 

[stolenrays]

That was in Rise of Homos.

Oh. Did they ever release it?

 

[Voyhkah]

Sadly, no, and what they did have is most likely lost forever. Johnny Smith hasn't been heard from since last November (Nov 05, 2010).

 

[johny smith]

Life is too busy now for me, and real lack of interest in modding civilization any more.

I did get the camp in a file there, but no one ever gave me feedback. I don't think anyone even tested it out. It is no where near complete but you can select things from it to build. It is a unit that can build things. faichelle is the one who did the SDK work on the camp. I hope that helps some. Here is the link for file. I would need to look around more if there is a later file.

https://worldofciv.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wocrapture/Installer/RoH0.2.rar

And you guys can read where I was going with it in the thread, Civ5 looks like a complete no show for this now.

 

[The_J]

johny is back .
Nice to have you here again .

 

[johny smith]

johny is back .
Nice to have you here again .

I am still in a zombie stage at best. Just don't see a lot happening to bother putting my hand at putting mods into an undead state of affairs.

Let me spell out the camp idea though before I return to my grave. The camp unit was in the beginning stages of making units. The other idea was to use something like promotions to represent what was in the camp. The camp would gather yields from the surrounding terrain was the plan. So basically a moving city. I wish someone would take up the mantle and work more on it, but it does not seem like there is much interest.

The techs I split up into actually lithic technology time frames. Lithic meaning stone tools in this case. Like large axes to eventually microliths in the neotlithic periods. I am an Anthropology major so I am a little picky about just having some stone age man running around that has nothing to do with reality. I wish someone would care about this, but doubt anyone here does.

Well if anyone has any interest into going into a real prehistorical mod let me know. I would rise back to some form that is capable to mod otherwise I am going back to sleep.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Zeleniy has released a mod which has nomadic cities.

 

[johny smith]

Zeleniy has released a mod which has nomadic cities.

Not that I want to knock Zeleniy's work, but the cities buildings are destroyed when the settler abandons the city right? So there is no improvements on the moving city itself right? What is the point of destroying the city at all. Is this just to try and make more cities?

 

[johny smith]

My point was of course it would be boring to just have a very slow start with nothing unique done until you have cities. That is not what my aim was.

I wanted to have different sources of stone for one that could be equipped. So you improve on your weaponry and tools. Different ones are better served for different purposes.

Another thing was the actually domestication process. I wanted to remove food resources from being static on the map. Instead you domestic plants and animals along the way and could trade them.

Some fantasy elements I thought brought in as well. Like you find a cave with spiritual power for example. Your shamans can bless your weapons, or for example you have a better toolmaker in the camp that could increase your weapons.

Each era would make different animals obsolete. So different sets for each, and different bonuses. Then as well like Fall from Heaven you have the large amount animals that you have to overcome to survive, and perhaps some unique critters. For example some killer sabre tooth that hunts people wanders around destroying everything.

At the time you would build a city then the settler would not be something cheap to make from the camp, and you would need some degree of farming. All of the fantasy elements would not be as powerful as later non-nomadic civs. Anyway the idea was to spice it up. But no was particularly interested so not much sense me putting a lot of time in it. Back to the grave now.