Progenitor Civs (Revisited)

[Rmi]

I have to draw lines somewhere. All homo sapiens came from Africa. And almost all eurasian culture will find its way back to Mesopotamia one way or another.

I think this is the right starting point for the first pick in game. But if you want to start the tree 1 tier earlier that's all fine with me.

 

[Rmi]

Never trust textbooks from highschool

We're dealing with ethnogenesis, this stuff can be highly political and it's almost all based on tiny amounts of prehistoric finds by starving archaeologists desperate for funding. In the post-modern academic world everything is hypothetical.
I do NOT miss those discussions...

Older academic information likely finds it's way back to the 19th century Germany. Where nationalistic ideals heavily influenced archaeology and early social sciences. It was popular and amazing discoveries have been mind, but conclusions made in that time are highly suspect.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I have to draw lines somewhere. All homo sapiens came from Africa. And almost all eurasian culture will find its way back to Mesopotamia one way or another.

I think this is the right starting point for the first pick in game. But if you want to start the tree 1 tier earlier that's all fine with me.

Well put. Do archaeologists even try to designate a name for the people that first showed up in Northern Europe though? If we can try to go back a little further so that it just sounds more prehistoric that would be cool. In some cases other areas seem to have that quality in your chart.

 

[Noriad2]

Hmm there were peoples living in Europe long before Sumeria. Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe 43,000-45,000 years before present.

Also, the Danube/Vinca civilization (5700–4500 BC in Eastern Europe) is older than Sumeria and is the first one known to use copper working, and used symbols that are probably a form of proto writing (including the infamous swastika, the original meaning of which is unknown). Some archeologists even speculate that the real "cradle of civilization" was in Eastern Europe, and its influence moved south through Greece towards the Middle East. Other archeologists claim that the real cradle of civilization was in Sudan.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Hmm there were peoples living in Europe long before Sumeria. Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe 43,000-45,000 years before present.

Also, the Danube/Vinca civilization (5700–4500 BC in Eastern Europe) is older than Sumeria and is the first one known to use copper working, and used symbols that are probably a form of proto writing (including the infamous swastika, the original meaning of which is unknown). Some archeologists even speculate that the real "cradle of civilization" was in Eastern Europe, and its influence moved south through Greece towards the Middle East. Other archeologists claim that the real cradle of civilization was in Sudan.

All quite possible. The culture was modified greatly by the exodus of the Black Wind is all I'm pointing out. I'm sure there were people there already, quite a few. You'd think we'd want to use those people, rather than Celts, as the original regional culture. That's the point I'm trying to make really.

 

[Rmi]

Allright, let's go with the original plan then. First hominid activity in the region.
We need to change neanderthals and add cro magnon and a few other human races as well then.


Google scholar is nice. Most academic research is locked up behind big pay barriers though. Without university access those sources are a lot harder to get. That's something i do miss.

 

[Thunderbrd]

First hominid activity in the region

Well I'd love to see more hominid groups but that might be going tooooo far. First homo sapien activity would be more apropriate.

 

[Praetyre]

I recently had an idea for reworking the cultures that is something of a compromise between my more far-back ideas and the more recent ideas of others. I was considering whether to start a thread for it, but given this thread's been revived I might as well take the opportunity to propose my idea:

Basically, you start with no culture at all. Then, once you research Cultural Identity, you can pick one of the following regional cultures:

• Africa
• Asia
• Europe
• Middle East
• North America
• South America

Then, upon researching another tech (not sure which one, but it would likely be somewhere in the range of the late Prehistoric-early Ancient (assuming the era currently called Ancient is meant to encompass the Neolithic. We could say Sedentary Lifestyle, at least as a placeholder.), you get a second choice, depending on your first pick;

• Africa gets Central Africa, East Africa, Sahel, Southern Africa, and Western Africa.
• Asia gets Central+North Asia, East Asia, Polynesia (folding in a lot of the cultures currently assigned to Oceania), South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
• Europe gets Celtic, Germanic, Isolate (an "Other" category encompassing the likes of the Basque, Finns, Magyars, and others), Mediterranean, and Slavic.
• Middle East gets Anatolian, Arabian, Levantine, Mesopotamian, and North African.
• North America gets Aboriginal Canadians+Inuit, East Coast, Mesoamerica, Plains, and West Coast.
• South America gets Amazonian+Caribbean, Andean, Central American, Gran Chaco, and Patagonian.

All of these are quite tentative, and they wouldn't necessarily all have to have the exact same number of subgroups or cultures. But I think a system of this scope and complexity would aid a great deal in cutting down on culture hoarding (along with the Ideas system), and would give more emphasis to the unique character of the various peoples grouped under these "banners".

 

[Toffer90]

Some thoughts on the matter of base culture:
I think it would be best if we found a way to give the first cultural category in the form of a trait.
What trait you get would somehow be based on what kind of animals you subdue, terrains/features that are around your capital and perhaps we could also tie it to what kind of cave wonder you build.
It could be done through an event that triggers when you get the "Cultural Identity" tech, the event will let you choose between the base culture traits that you have reached the prerequisites for.
The trait event will have a delayed trigger if you have not reached the requirements of any base culture, meaning it will trigger the moment you can actually pick a trait after inventing cultural identity.

The advantage of having the base culture be a trait is that it can not be lost the way a wonder or other type of building is when you lose a city.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The advantage of having the base culture be a trait is that it can not be lost the way a wonder or other type of building is when you lose a city.

I don't know how Hydro did it but even though they are buildings I have not lost my base culture even when losing my capital or first city.

 

[Toffer90]

I don't know how Hydro did it but even though they are buildings I have not lost my base culture even when losing my capital or first city.

I'm looking to the future and the way it is now won't work the day we remove building-classes. Though it might be possible, with some dll changes, to make the building solution work without building-classes.

My suggestion was also based on the talk lately, to make the base culture a choice that is not defined by what civ you choose. currently it is not.

It is fully possible to loose the wonder cultures when a city is razed, so we can't use the same solution for the base culture as we currently do with wonder cultures,

Right now the system is like this:

1. Each base culture is a unique building of the BUILDINGCLASS_CULTURE_HUMAN.
   • They are autobuilt in all cities with no requirements whatsoever.
2. Each Civ have been assigned to one of the unique buildings within the building class BUILDINGCLASS_CULTURE_HUMAN.
   • The one they are assigned to is available to that civ, while no other building within the building class is.

We could probably do something similar without building classes, but when we first have to change it we might want to discuss alternate solutions first.

P.S. Base cultures use the "unique building and units per civilization" system from vanilla Civ4 to work.

 

[RaTeedus]

I know modding takes a lot of time and work, so I can understand if this will take a long time. I am curious though, so I have 2 questions. One, when can we expect these updates/changes? Two, when will these changes be a submod, or integrated into the main mod via patch?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I know modding takes a lot of time and work, so I can understand if this will take a long time. I am curious though, so I have 2 questions. One, when can we expect these updates/changes? Two, when will these changes be a submod, or integrated into the main mod via patch?

I've been wondering, myself, how much to prioritize this project. So its hard to say at the moment.

I'm looking to get a new release version out soon. What we're discussing here would not be a part of that release but may come into development fairly soon thereafter.

 

[Rmi]

What for projects are we still waiting for to finish for version37,5?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm hoping @Toffer90 will have his UI/Pedia project finished soon and I'd like to address most of the points on this list through the A priority ratings. Some, like my traits, may be best to wait until just after release. I want to see v38 released prior to Christmas so again, like last year, folks have a new release for the holidays when they have a bit more time off work or school to play.

 

[RaTeedus]

I'm hoping @Toffer90 will have his UI/Pedia project finished soon and I'd like to address most of the points on this list through the A priority ratings. Some, like my traits, may be best to wait until just after release. I want to see v38 released prior to Christmas so again, like last year, folks have a new release for the holidays when they have a bit more time off work or school to play.

Bit of an unrelated question... will there be a way to disable all the animals or severely cut down the numbers? They're everywhere and filled out the whole map and they are so annoying to deal with. I love the animal mechanics, but there are just too damn many lol!

 

[Thunderbrd]

Bit of an unrelated question... will there be a way to disable all the animals or severely cut down the numbers? They're everywhere and filled out the whole map and they are so annoying to deal with. I love the animal mechanics, but there are just too damn many lol!

What animal options are you using? This is something to bring up in bugs&crashes. I know some option settings are experiencing too many and need to be turned down quite a bit.

 

[RaTeedus]

I

What animal options are you using? This is something to bring up in bugs&crashes. I know some option settings are experiencing too many and need to be turned down quite a bit.

Only thing I'm using is Animals stay out! Setting on the v 37 release. If I didn't use it, all the animals would take up my city tiles too!

 

[Thunderbrd]

oh you're on v37 stock... that's been adjusted a bit. Too bad. I need feedback on current SVN animal spawn rates.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Bit of an unrelated question... will there be a way to disable all the animals or severely cut down the numbers? They're everywhere and filled out the whole map and they are so annoying to deal with. I love the animal mechanics, but there are just too damn many lol!

You can reduce the number of animals spawning by editing the file A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.XML found in Assets/XML. look for ANIMAL_SPAWN_MODIFIER and SEA_ANIMAL_SPAWN_MODIFIER. The number is a percentage of the default value.

I would suggest leaving it as it is at the start of the game so that a suitable number of animals spawn. Save and exit the game. Make the changes, start the game and load your save. New spawns will be at that rate.

I want to see v38 released prior to Christmas so again, like last year, folks have a new release for the holidays when they have a bit more time off work or school to play.

If that is your aim we need to have the freeze soon. Freeze = no new stuff at all only bug fixes. That means we need to get code into core before then so it can be tested. Especially the art into the FPKs.

This means we need to discuss the stuff in the My_Mods folder should be in core.

I'm hoping @Toffer90 will have his UI/Pedia project finished soon.

As I said on the modmod there is one change I would like to see to the pedia part of the modmod before it goes into core.

The other needs more discussion.

I'd like to address most of the points on this list through the A priority ratings.

You can remove #28 as it seems to have been caused by an overheating CPU. I was getting all sorts of strange behaviour almost everywhere that week. My new machine is almost up and running. Would have been if had not fallen on the steps yesterday - only bruises and a graze. My head was moving at almost 0kph when it hit the door frame as my wrist and arm were acting like a shock absorber

I also looked at the Tree Nursery and think I can see the bug. It looks to be a case of "IF A==X Then set A = X", but I need some uninterupted time to concentrate on it.