There is a "slave revolt" event in vanilla BtS that appears in this mod as well (and happens to the AI as well!), giving you option to pay gold, suffer unhapiness etc. Maybe use it as a basis? With spawning troops as only one of the possible outcomes.
Honestly, I'd prefer frequent happiness and gold hits than frequent revolts. Revolts are IMO worse for AI, and also either swiftly crushed and therefore no threat at all (if they happen near where your army is) or you lose a city and it sucks. Slave revolts like now should happen rarely, be a bit stronger, and give you a bit of advance warning.
I will see what I can do; my own python skill are very limited, and I mostly cannibalize pieces of other code I find then tweak it until it works more or less how I want. I can't promise anything, but indeed player agency is a good thing and I'd also like players to have more options when dealing with revolts.
And related to this: I know it is probably a deliberate design choice and all, but I really do not like separate mechanised and slave farm improvements. From pure gameplay standpoint, I had hundred turns of crappy growth in my conquered cities because I didn't realise that their farms are slave farm and not normal farms and therefore do not get many production bonuses. Secondly, it is tedious to order workers to manually change every single farm in your empire once you get mechanised farms, especially because they are visually the same and you can't tell at glance which city needs to be improved. And from roleplay standpoint, why wouldn't they simply improve farms with mechanisation once you get tech? That is exactly what food production bonus on techs represents. You don't improve farms to "fertilised farms" with fertiliser etc. What do separate mechanised farms add to the game that can't be achived with simple food bonus to existing farms?
It's more of a technical choice. This way we can make slavery and then serfdom food production bonuses go obsolete with time. I understand that rebuilding farms is a hassle, and I actually tried ensuring that all kinds of farms look different. I may try for a more stark difference though. Also, a great thing to have would be a new automation type for workers "Improve farms", but that is definitely beyond my skills - so only if someone else does that.
Thing is, it is not really "better in every aspect", as republic provides a bit more happiness if you are small. But more importantly, democracy is actually better than monarchy in every way. Meaning that if you are a monarchy, you WILL want to switch to democracy... making democracy seem like a better type of monarchy, and not a bettery type of republic. And it's not like in real world every monarchy immediately switched to democracy without struggle.
I will look into that. Civic balancing is an always ongoing process. Though the "without struggle" part generally applies to all civics in Civ 4; the struggle and violence of social change is significantly downplayed by mere several turns of "Anarchy" that doesn't actually carry any losses except for opportunity costs.
Ideally, republic, democracy and federalism would get some kind of "player restriction" mechanic, like in civ2. And/or a "senate" mechanic (I saw it in some other mods) that have periodic election events that give you stuff like bonus traits or great people, depending of which "faction" wins the elections. OR BtS crappy quest system could be repurposed to fit Senate mandates and election promises (build x ships, build x schools...). But it's probably too much work.... In the short run, I'd like to at least keep consistency in this way:
autocratic governments- playing wide; decreased number of cities maintenance, decreased hapiness, no bonus to distance maintenance (that is left unique to federation, and autocracies are generally centralistic), less war weariness
democratic- playing tall (except federation, but ideally federation would be moved to legal); increased no. of cities maintenance, increased war weariness, increased happiness and commerce, later form (federation) decreases distance maintenance (decentralisation) and has no number of cities penatly
I am not a fan of player restriction. I actually remember how frustrating these mechanics were in Civ 2. I've been long dreaming of some kind of parliamentarianism mechanics with changing parties for democratic civics, but this, again, is definitely beyond my own skills.
Also, would it be possible to merge senate, pairlament and federal pairlament in one building (or two, leaving senate separate)? So that if you are already democratic, get to keep previous building? Is it possible to set OR requirement to civics?
No, and that is exactly why they are separate.
AND speaking of which, it would be cool if some political unique buildings, like enlightened absolutism, would be moved to projects - since that's what they are, they are not buildings really. Advantage would be that 1) we would get more projects, not only the Internet and spaceships, and 2) they can't be captured if you lose a city.
Also, health buildings like antibiotics should also be projects!
Again, technical restrictions. Projects are much more limited in what they are able to do compared to buildings. And adding new XML tags requires dll work, which is beyond me.
Fair. I thought cities spread irrigation automatically with some tech, just like farms do? At least in some version of civ4 they did... Still, it'd be nice to add this to description
They do, but irrigation is never spread through hills, including when cities are build on them.
Well speaking of "period specific", you have Mussolini leading Rome
Just picking any period specific name would be better than South China. (Also, while I can understand Mussolini leading Rome, I still hate spanish conquerors rulling over Incan and Mayan civs. They are not a continuity of the same civ, they represent conquest of one civilisation by another- like what happens in a game when one civilisation gets conquered by another. Two different civilisations that share same space in different time periods. I do know your disclaimer about what a civ represents, so I'm not really trying to force this on you. But I just want to say that it's really weird and not consistent. By the same logic, Suleiman should be a leader of Greek empire, Saladin should be leader of Sumeria, and most European leaders should be leaders of Celts... or am I getting it wrong?)
Oh, I am always happy to elaborate on decision I'm making. From this paragraph:
0) General comment: for all civs, I try hard to choose a selection of leaders from different time periods. It is never an easy choice where the civ in question has indeed experienced many cultural shifts. Generally, a choice of whether a leader fits within this continuum stems from their self-identification. For instance, this makes both Ptolemy and Baibars rather fitting leaders for Egypt, as despite being ethnically foreign, they administered what was very definitely a Egyptian state (for the definition of "Egyptian" contemporary to them) and made no pretense otherwise; Mehmed II OTOH would deconstruct Byzantine institutions, and the state he built was very much a Turkic one in character - even after moving the capital to Constantinople, he was first and foremost the ruler of Ottoman Turks.
1) Mussolini is probably the most fitting leader for a Roman civ past actual Roman times. In his own view, he was actually restoring the Roman empire, and much of his ideology revolved around this "Neo-Roman" concept.
2) As far as Aztecs, Mayans and Incas are concerned, I made an effort to only choose leaders culturally linked to the indigenous peoples:
2.1) Juarez is the easiest one, as he's not only the most beloved Mexican president, but actually ethnically Zapotec.
2.2) Santa Cruz is also half-Incan in his heritage. In general, colonial and post-independence Peru, unique among all the former Spanish colonies, has retained a lot of original native nobility as powerful landholders. Around the time of independence, they even seriously considered restoring Incan monarchy, and several of their presidents are direct descendants of Incan royal house or nobility.
2.3) Morazan is the most contentious one of the three, yet he also comes from a criollo family. Also, I found him quite fitting, as his policies served to weaken the traditional Hispanic elites and Catholic church of Central America.
3) Thinking of Suleiman/Greek civ, you're narrowing down Turkish civ too much. While Ottomans are definitely a part of it, they are only a part of the greater Turkic civ that for several hundred years "swallowed" some other civs represented in RI. Were Greece not to regain independence in XIX century, Greek and Turkish civs might very well have been represented by the combined leader pool today. As it stands now, the "merger" provided to be lengthy, yet ultimately temporary, which is actually a rather important sorting factor here - if there is an obvious "successor state" for a certain civ in the modern world, it will be treated as (mostly) separate from its historic conquerors.
4) Sumeria is not currently a part of any civ, and is not a civ in RI either. Mostly because I'm lazy and not adding them...
5) Celts I had to treat as a bit of a special case. Firstly, due to the above-mentioned "successor state" criterion, which actually allows us to retain them as a separate civ traceable up to modern age (even though at certain points in history no independent Celtic-cultured polities existed). Secondly, I chose to "start" several civs a bit later in their history, mostly due to aesthetic reasons of not having several civs' early rosters look virtually identical. Hence England starts with Anglo-Saxons and France starts with Franks. In these cases, having a more diverse early lineup seemed more important to me.
Yeah, both problems would probably be fixed if federalism was put in legal category and replaced social justice or something. Then you'd be able to have federal democracies, unitary democracies, and also federal monarchies, dictatorships... My idea for replacement for federalism would be Autocracy. It would represent an "
illiberal democracy", ala Russia & Turkey (and increasingly, Hungary & Poland), as some kind of cross between democracy and dictatorship. It represents a regime that is nominally a democracy, which does have elections, legal opposition, right of assembly and so on, and whose legitimacy is based on the will of people, but also has no real separation of powers, no judicial independence, no media freedom, and has strong, all-powerful executive with no real limits. Bonuses would be something between democracy and dictatorship... Honestly, I do think that we should be able to model this kind of regime somehow. It would allow dictatorships to liberalise their regime later on, to provide additional legitimacy and get rid of happiness penalities without suffering maintenance increases, and also allow democracies to get rid of maintenance/war weariness penalites without going full dictatorship.
I have several separate considerations against this. Firstly, from gameplay point, it is an "in-between" choice that does not actually offer a meaningful choice - in any given situation, you are probably better off as a full Democracy or Dictatorship. Secondly, the flawed character of democracy in cites cases isn't, in my view, relevant to the civic in question, as from legal perspective, all mentioned countries are definitely democracies. The quality of actual institutions has no real bearing on that. Thirdly, this leads to another question of that being a "continuum" option instead of a clear distinction. It is very clear, for example, what separates a Monarchy from a Democracy (non-elected vs elected leadership); yet, in case of the vague "illiberal democracy" term, its boundary with "true democracy" can be arbitrarily drawn at any point. Lastly, RI is a historical mod first and foremost. While we didn't get rid of the futuristic fictional "spaceship" stuff that was originally there, we're trying not to add stuff "younger" than 15-20 years from now, and while flawed democracies are of course not a modern invention, their relevance and juxtaposition against liberal democracies is very definitely modern. In mid-XX century, for instance, they would definitely be lumped with the rest of the "free world" to be juxtaposed against Fascist and Communist dictatorships.
While this "regional" definition is not a definition of a "civilization" that I would use, and as far as I know, not one that historians use, I do not mind it in itself. I mind that it is not used
consistently. I'm sure it was debated hundreds of times, and that this is discussion not really worth having, but I actually do not mind having this left as it is. I just want to hear the line of thought behind this, so that I can wrap my head around it and accept it.
I am trying to apply it as consistently as I can, as I tried to show above. I also dislike the fact that the game uses "civilization" term to call various playable factions, but the sin of misusing the term is not mine. It is already being grossly misused since Civ 2 at least, where the granularity of what constituted a civ began to rise. In context of Civ games, it was always treated as a synonym for "culture" or "nation". I might even argue that at times I'm using it closer to its intended purpose, by, say, refusing to split HRE and Germany into different civs.
But in the game, it is NOT consistent. In game, USA and Native American tribes are separate. All American leaders are US presidents; no Native American chiefs. All Native American tribes are lead by native chiefs; not by US presidents. It is very clear, in game, that they are two different civs, and that American civilization is separate from both England and Native American civilization.
USA has always been the "special" case in Civ series. Definitely extremely important for the last 200 years of World history, yet non-existent or irrelevant before that. That makes it extremely hard to either throw it away OR make it into a fully workable civ. But I did apply our principles consistently in their case, I just decided to "derive" them not from Native Americans, but rather from Vinland colonies. While they were very temporary in terms of lasting impact on the area, Viking settlers do provide exactly enough historical material to shape an early colonial American civ. The actual reason I don't have Eric the Red as their early leader is that I'm at a total loss for city names. Also, Americans already have a giant list of presidents to choose from.
This alone would be a reason enough not to have Spanish colonial rulers as leaders of South American civilizations, if we want to be consistent. That is, either stick to the original definition of "continuum of cultures, influences and nations that were centered around a particular geographic region from ancient times till modern age" and have US presidents and Native Americans part of the same civilization (as South America and Spanish colonials are), or keep to different (IMO better) definition that you use for north America and separate South American civs.
Another angle of looking at it, apart from the stuff I've already addressed above, is that in game terms, we don't have to assume that actual "conquest" is going on. Think of it as a different way of constructing a hypothetical "what-if" civ, one that doesn't exist in isolation, but rather incorporates elements from different cultures as it evolves through the ages.
If, say, Incas or Aztecs would have managed to keep their independence from Spanish colonists, they would still have not existed in a cultural vacuum. For a mental exercise, try "constructing" a "what-if future Russia of XVIII-XIX century" from Ancient Rus based solely on their own cultural motifs, and you will end up with something that looks wildly different from actual XVIII-XIX century Russia. Despite never having been conquered by any of them, Russia in XIX century looks very similar to Western European countries, rather than "ancient Slavs in XIX century". Treat the visual shift of Aztecs, Mayans and Incas to Hispanic looks as an inevitable cultural diffusion that would have happened even if political independence were preserved. I even threw a couple of "transitional" unit designs (also with actual plausible basis in history, most in early anti-colonial rebellions) here and there to reinforce that notion.
Arabia and Babylon are separate civilizations, even though they inhabit the same area.
Hence Babylon isn't a playable civ and isn't likely to become one. Though one might argue that they are still somewhat separate, at least early on, with Arabian civ representing peninsular tribes, while Babylon focuses on Mesopotamia territorially. Arabian civ even "returns" to the Arabian peninsula in its modern Saudi incarnation.
Turkey and Greece are separate.
As I pointed out above, "Turkish civ" should not be equaled to modern Turkey. Modern "Turkish civilization" stretches all the way to China, and earlier, it incorporates Seljuk and even earlier Turkic entities whose territorial heartlands also lay far away from those of Greeks. They only intersected for a historically rather brief moment of 400 years in Ottoman times.
Celts and European nations are separate; except Scotland which indeed ARE of Celtic culture. But if you stick to the regional definition and not cultural, both English and French leaders would also be Celtic leaders.
The "Celtic question" is also addressed above. Though I must also add that were they not originally a part of Civ 4, RI would probably not have added Celts as a separate civ either. Gaels maybe, as a more clear-cut subdivision. But as is the case with USA, this one is somewhat of an artifact we have to live with.
Hungary does not have any single leader that is not culturally Hungarian. If we would stick to the "regional" definition, Hungarian civ would also represent everyone who ever lived in p
Pannonian basin, including Slavic pre-Magyar tribes, and pre-Roman Celtic and Illyrian leaders. However, it is not the case; to any player, regardless of the modders intent, it is intuitive and logical that cultural and not regional definition of civilization is used (which again, I do prefer).
Actually, they don't have anything pre-Magyar through simple fact of almost no material being available on those entities. I can't have decent leader portraits, city lists etc. I would have probably included at least Avars if I had anything decent on them.
Only South America has this immersion breaking leader choice, as far as I noted.
I tried explaining why this isn't the case above. Though of course there are always "border cases" that stretch the limits of normal selection process. I will even go on and tell you another such case which you do not mention, but I actually feel rather conflicted about - the inclusion of Seleucids into Persian civ. The decision was somewhat arbitrary and it could also be disputed. Some things, after all, come down to personal taste.
What bothers me, again, with this "regional" approach to civilization, is that it is not even consistent with gameplay rules. If you expand and conquer cities of another civilization, you have sort of cultural competition in an area. You have to build up your own culture, and old culture works against you, increasing unhappiness and causing revolt, until you eventually push old culture out.
It is fully possible to, say, play as Spain, discover new continent, find out that Incas are on it, conquer Incas, and spread Spanish culture over Incan cities (while having Incan culture still present), and eventually release new colonial civilization, with new culture, but one that takes over initial Spanish cultural points present in their cities as a base (but has different culture from that point on).
If you apply "regional" definition to a civ game, conquered Incan cities would still keep producing Incan culture points; whatever you do to a territory, it just adds to the origininal culture. It would not ever be possible to displace a civilization from a region, because the region IS a civilization, and no matter who rules over region, the civilization wouldn't change...
But maybe I'm misunderstanding the logic?
I tried explaining this approach in more detail above. A civilization adopting external cultural elements as it evolves is, in my opinion, a rather normal part of history. When I am trying to picture how an "Incan line infantry of XVIII century" would have looked had Incas not been conquered by Spain, I see no reason in creating an elaborate "what-if" unit based on their earlier eras. Instead, I might as well use a Spanish uniform that was used in the region in XVIII century, because I see no compelling reasons to believe a surviving Incan state couldn't have used something pretty similar save for minor details. For me personally, it feels less immersion-breaking.
