S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod is Moving

After much deliberation, the WoTMod team has decided to move development over to Civilization VI. We're taking a short hiatus and will be resuming work on WoTMod in Civ6 - converting our ideas from here - in October 2017. Details on that decision and how we arrived at it can be found in the Civ6 Creation & Customization thread.

Thank you everyone for all your contributions here with Civ5 and we hope to see you in Civ6!

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S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod (WoTMod for short) is a mod I'm currently working on and have been working on on and off for a good while. I figure with BNW out and the fall patch looking to be the last set of additions to the modding suite available to CiV, now seems like a good time to make this my active project.

So, the normal game of Civilization V lets you "play history" in a new, different way from how it actually happened. This mod's objective is to do much the same thing but instead of with our world, with the Wheel of Time universe. So this is a total conversion mod, and I aim to have it overhaul basically everything you can think of. Completely new tech tree that's at least as big as the one in normal CiV. A host of new wonders numbering equal to the wonders in the base game. New units, unique to Wheel of Time, with new 3D models (that part should be fun). New buildings. A host of new civilizations. (Starting with 14) New resources. New victory conditions. Scenarios that capture key moments in the known Wheel of Time canon (Tarmon Gai'Don, the War of Power, the Consolidation, the founding of Artur Hawkwing's Empire, you name it.) New gameplay mechanics. Adapted (and possibly just straight up improved) AI. This is a huge project and is still in the early stages of development. Anyone skilled at 3D art would be the most useful straight off. I'm willing to learn to work on 3D artwork (and its associated 2D textures and the like) and I definitely will do a lot of artwork for this mod, but I'm a programmer underneath it all, and I'm much more efficient writing C++ and Lua than creating icons and meshes.

I'm also modding with modmodding in mind, so hopefully it should be possible for other modders to make offshoot or subsidiary modmods which do something unique for their own Wheel of Time-based intents. And if I do make any improvements to the AI, I'll try to do it in a way that can be extracted and used without the Wheel of Time content. I know an AI mod has been a heavily requested mod on CivFanatics. A key mandate of this mod is none of these new features should be usable only by humans. Everything that gets added must also be integrated into the AI. We'll see how long that plan lasts.

First thing's first, the Wheel of Time is a series of books written by Robert Jordan. It's my personal favorite series and I think it's got the depth to host a game like CiV in its universe. Any input from fans of Wheel of Time is greatly appreciated! Obvious spoiler warning, the series' 14th and final book was released in January 2013, so this post/mod contains spoilers for the whole series.

This project has evolved significantly since I first started off and I'm very happy to say that counterpoint is officially a member of the WoTMod team. (Currently that team consists of him and myself.)

We've been going over the original ideas for what this mod will entail with a fine-toothed comb and have also come up with countless new systems that will make this mod more fun for CiV players and WoT enthusiasts alike.

Here, you can find an index of the up-to-date summaries of various gameplay systems we're developing for WoTMod.

• The Last Battle
• Alignment
• Channeling
• The White Tower
• The Science Victory
• The Cultural Victory
• Miscellaneous Concepts
• Domination Victory
• Paths to the Light
• Great People and Governors
• Tel'aran'rhiod
• Social Policies and Philosophies
• The Technology Tree
• Diplomacy

If you're looking for a jumping on point for contributing and don't want to read the whole thread (understandable), the following is a live updated list of the topics currently being discussed (in very broad terms):

• Civilizations and uniques

Below, you'll find the original contents of this post, preserved for posterity and future reference.

Spoiler :

Now, above I mentioned new gameplay mechanics. Let's take a look at those, shall we? In no particular order:

The Horn of Valere
I lead with this one even though it doesn't change that much in the game because it's basically already implemented! As people who've read the books know, the Horn of Valere is a magical item that allows its bearer (and only its bearer) to summon the Heroes of the Horn from outside the Pattern to fight for them. How does this translate to CiV? The Horn is located somewhere on the map and cannot be seen. It can be discovered by units with the Horn Hunter promotion (yes Hunters of the Horn have it by default) ending their turn near it. A unit possessing the Horn can sound it (with a cooldown) to summon the Heroes, which are extremely powerful units. But the Heroes can't stay within the Pattern permanently, so they take damage every turn (and don't heal) so they only stick around for a short time. If a melee unit kills the Hornblower, that unit becomes the new Hornblower. If a Hornblower unit is killed at range, it drops the Horn onto the square it died on.

The Council of the Tower
Reinventing the World Congress (which is helpfully similar to what I'd been planning for this since G&K), the Council of the Tower is hosted in Tar Valon, which is a city-state with a new, unique trait type. If Tar Valon is captured (not easy, they get a lot of cool bonuses, but doable by the end of the game), then the diplomatic victory is locked out until they're liberated again.

Unlike the World Congress, the players don't actually vote for the mandates given by the Tower. Instead, the players aid individual (or multiple) Aes Sedai Ajahs in obtaining influence and Sitters on the Council. Each Ajah is more likely to vote and propose specific types of mandates, which can affect basically any part of the game.

Also unlike the World Congress (and something that I think should be in the World Congress), when there is a resolution you seriously disagree with, you can refuse to co-operate, avoiding the effects of the resolution in exchange for a massive diplo penalty with civs that like the idea and penalizing your possibility to win a diplo victory at all. (Embrace your inner Tairen, don't let the White Tower tell you what to do!)

Channelers
Channelers! What would Wheel of Time be without people who can wield the One Power? Channelers present a lot of interesting gameplay possibilities as a new unit classification, from losing combat powers inside Stedding (and near the Guardian Ter'Angreal), to Aes Sedai-like restrictions on only being able to attack when their "life is threatened". We're early in development, so the extent of how Channelers are different from normal units will develop as we go on.

Governors
A lot of Wheel of Time is also about the capabilities of various monarchs and stewards to govern their kingdoms. Governors (or Great Leaders, text still pending) are great people that can be stationed (maybe expended?) in cities to provide massive yield bonuses/abilities to that individual city. Think Berelain and Morgase.

Shadowspawn
A second Barbarian-like faction (the actual Barbarians are now Dragonsworn) that spawns in the Blight, which is distributed around the poles of the map. They have unique units no other civs do and will constantly assault any nation unlucky enough to have cities near the Blight.

I'm mulling over several other major gameplay additions, but let's start with those, shall we? Now then, I also mentioned new victory conditions.

Diplomatic
This was sort of covered above, in the Council of the Tower section.

Cultural
I quite like the way the base game (BNW) cultural victory fits with Wheel of Time, though tourism will obviously need to be renamed and re-flavored a bit. This victory also brings up the topic of ideologies, and that seems to be a great way to incorporate the different nations' views on channelers in the Wheel of Time universe. There are even three handy categories. Do you want channelers to be rulers and owners of society? You'll attract a lot of powerful channeling units this way, but more cautious, normal-people-oriented civs won't like your attempts to reform the Kingdom of the Dragon. How about a more measured approach, channelers are free to go about their lives, but within the confines of some central authority? The White Tower likes that, because clearly they're the authority. You'll get Aes Sedai and Warder units and diplo bonuses with the Tower. Or do you think channelers are unnatural, abominations that must be contained lest they kill us all? Side with the Seanchan and shackle your channelers, locking yourself out of the diplomatic victory, but trading that for a guaranteed fighting force of powerful channelers.

Science
Science in the world of the Wheel of Time is obviously not as advanced as our own, so the tech tree will be stretched to go into more detail on the technologies that are foundational to human civilization, as well as incorporating the different facets of the One Power and its various produced substances (i.e. cuendillar). If you want to win a science victory, you'll need to forge all of the seals of the Dark One's prison and take them to Shayol Ghul, wherever that may be on the map you're playing on!

The Last Battle
A completely new victory condition. When the Last Battle rolls around (after a certain number of turns, varying with game speed) you've got an important choice to make. Do you side with the Light or the Shadow? If you side with the Light, you've got to band together with the others on your side to fend off waves of Shadowspawn. You can betray your friends if you wish, but do you want to be directing resources away from fighting the Shadow when they've already got huge advantages in numbers and units spawning everywhere? Or you can choose to join the Shadow. You make (uneasy) peace with the Shadowspawn and try to kill the foolish Light-sworn nations.

You may look at the above and wonder, from a gameplay perspective, what sort of choice is that? Choosing to side with the Shadow is the objectively better option! Ah, but there's a balance to that. If the Light wins the Last Battle, all civilizations of the Light win the game. But there can be only one first among the Dark One's chosen. Siding with the Shadow may make peace with the Shadowspawn, but it locks you into war with the other Shadow-aligned nations as well. Even when all the followers of the Light are dead, the Dark One accepts only the strongest of civilization to be a part of his new world.

But what if you want to play a more traditional game of Civ that's still Wheel of Time based, but isn't bookended by this massive military slaughterfest? Then you can disable the Last Battle for any individual game of course.

Domination
The same as the base game! If you can get it done before the Last Battle you can either claim victory right away and stand against the Shadow alone. (Or side with them, and the Dark One wins, but so do you, right?) Partially surviving nations (you've got their capital but not all of their cities) may choose the opposite side in an attempt to recapture their lands from you. You never know, it might all fall apart around you like it did for Hawkwing!

Civilizations
I mentioned the number 14 in reference to the number of Civs I'm planning for the first release of WoTMod (which, looking at this feature list, is oh so far away). I haven't decided on unique abilities/units/buildings/improvements for most of them, so suggestions are very welcome. Even if you haven't read the books, just suggest what you think would be cool for a civ. The sky's the limit, WoTMod will clearly be a DLL mod so I can add in basically anything we can think of. (We'll still try to keep it looking like a game of CiV though)

So, in no particular order, here's the list of Civs (with icons attached to this post!):

• Illian
• Andor
• Cairhien
• Tear
• Amadicia
• Tarabon
• Seanchan
• The Aiel
• Sea Folk (Atha'an Miere)
• Arad Doman
• Ghealdan
• Altara (icon will be changed to use only 2 colors)
• Manetheren
• Shienar

There will be city-states to fill in the few missing nations from the current era of the books (i.e. the rest of the Borderlands). The rest of the city-states will be filled by the various Ogier Stedding. The current era nations that are currently city-states are likely to be promoted to full civs in later versions of this mod (oh so very, very far away) as well as some other 'new old civs' from other times, like Manetheren is from well before the events of the books.

Wonders
New wonders that do strange and undecided things!

• The Black Tower
• The Crystal Throne
• Seven Towers of Malkier
• Tower of Ghenjei
• Illuminators' Guild
• Topless Towers
• Foregate
• The Stone
• Callandor
• Male Choedan Kal
• Female Choedan Kal
• Whitebridge
• The Ways
• Avendesora
• Guardian
• The Eye of the World
• Towers of Midnight
• Great Square of Hammaz

And more, as I comb through the books and sources.

Projects
A couple of new projects for Civs to complete!

• The Great Stump
• Cleansing Saidin
• The Bore
• The Hunt for the Horn

Units and Buildings
A whole host of new units and buildings, too many to list here (though will be listed eventually once they've all been enumerated and assigned abilities).

Technologies
As I noted at the beginning of this post, I'll be remaking the tech tree, covering more of the technologies from early human civilization that line up with the Wheel of Time universe as well as technologies related to the One Power. (The plan is to have the equivalent of the Ancient era be After Breaking, when the Age of Legends has ended in cataclysm and the Dark One's touch has returned to the world, so human society needs to rediscover everything from the ground up.)

If you've gotten this far and are still interested in learning more about what I'm working on with this, check out my WoTMod repositories on Github, for the DLL-side and XML and Lua side. You're welcome to clone the repositories, build the custom DLL and attempt to play a game, but be warned that until I get this mod into some kind of Alpha state (long way off) it will be all kinds of unstable.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my plan. It's going to take a very long time and, as a modder, I've gotta disclaimer it's time and motivation permitting. But it's a project I've been tinkering with for going on two years now, (very on and off, work on it a bit, leave it for 6 months, repeat) so I think it's got legs long term.

Plus, announcing it to other people like this should make me work on it more to back up everything I've said.

Right?

 

Interesting, I only just started the series a week ago, and only just started the 4th book. I'll be looking forward to how this turns out.

 

Awesome, I hope you enjoy the books! 3 WoT books in a week is also blindingly fast!

 

Sounds badass! Looking forward to it.

 

This. Is. Awesome!!!

I love WOT and your project looks fun.

 

I've had a good amount of free time, and I've always been a fast reader.

I see you already have some icons for the civs, but if you'd like I could try my hand at making maps for some of the civs/nations.

 

That would be amazing! I'm a big fan of the work you've done on CivFanatics, your maps are always very impressive! Maps for any of the listed nations would be awesome. I'm sure you'll find them too, but there are some great (high res) political maps of the major Wheel of Time continent that should be good bases for Civ-style maps. Of course, whatever works best for you, go with that!

And if you keep up that pace you'll be finished the series in no time (first week in November or so?). What's been your favorite part thus far? The ending of book 2 was a particular favorite of mine.



Anyone else who's a fan can be very helpful (even if you have zero modding experience). One thing I'm always looking for are good quotes from the books/canonical materials. Searching for them takes a long time and I know a lot of people will have favorites I don't remember that they know off the top of their head.

Quotes are useful for Technologies first and foremost, but can also be dropped into the Civilopedia, and possibly some of the other text. There's always stray text lying around (scenario descriptions, in-mod tutorials, I'm sure I'll stumble on more) and it could all do with a good injection of in-universe flavor!

 

So, I've been tinkering with the Last Battle a bit. After some serious coercing of the PreGame victory selection setup code (How many victory conditions are there, you ask the Pregame setup? There are 5. No matter what you change, no matter what you want to do, there are always 5. What's this database you're talking about? No, I'm fairly sure there are only 5 victory conditions. Graaaaargh!), the Last Battle is now an actual victory condition that can be enabled/disabled when setting up a game! (UI pending to do that though)

Which side will you choose? (Images and some layout obviously pending)

Spoiler :

So, you've sided with the Shadow?

Spoiler :

Now, to work on the other effects (like Shadowspawn armies and such).

Or maybe the Civs could do with some uniques. I'm worried about making any UAs before I've pinned down all of the new mechanics in case I finish a UA for a civ and have to replace it later when a better synergy with another mechanic comes up.

At the same time, that new UA would be movable to other civs, I wouldn't need to remove its capabilities. Ah, the choices.

 

And would you look at that. UI!

Spoiler :

There are deeper issues (related to my previous post) causing the Tarmon Gai'don victory condition to be deselected by default. More coercing required for CvPreGame.

 

Sounds similar to the issues reported here and here in that the Pregame is now caching certain tables and doesn't refresh it's cache if mods change those tables

 

I've been keeping an eye on those threads. The issue I'm running into is specific to victory conditions, because:

Code:

PREGAMEVAR(int,                                s_numVictoryInfos,        GC.getNumVictoryInfos());

Despite:

Code:

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// WARNING: Do not use any of the GC.*Info tables in this file.
//			These Game Core tables are not always current to what the loaded
//			database set contains.  This is the case when setting up a multiplayer
//			game or even in a single player game if you have returned from a multiplayer game.
//			The reason the Game Core data is not kept in sync is because the caching of all the data
//			can take a significant amount of time.

So the number of valid victories is always 5 (so all new victories after the default 5 report false from CvPreGame::isVictory). I'm trying to make it refresh later on in CvPreGame because it looks like the DB hasn't loaded yet when the PreGameVars are initialized. That's probably what causes the inconsistencies with GameInfo too.

 

I've been hard at work since my last update. So here's a little teaser:

Spoiler :

This screenshot shows a city with a governor. Governors are a new concept for this mod, where cities can be managed by leaders that provide bonuses. Currently these bonuses are only yield changes, but it's very easy for me to add new effects now that I've got a whole framework in place for them.

Governors have classes and there can be unique governor overrides for specific civs (like units and buildings), so some of the final WoT civs will have UGs.

New governors can be added via XML and there will be tables/columns for all of the effects I add. (No hard coding! That is my job!) Information about governors is also queryable and changeable from Lua.

Currently I've been testing governors by manually adding them from Lua with FireTuner, but my next step is to make it so that Great People can be expended to create new governors in cities. (The relationship between which Great People give which governors should all be modifiable in XML.) I'll be hooking into my Custom Missions mod, so this shouldn't take much longer.

The endgame for this feature is for governors to gain experience and new upgrades, akin to unit promotions, as they manage a city. They'll hopefully gain attributes related to what the city does while they're governor. (City builds a wonder, they get related bonuses to construction, city fends off an invasion, they start giving bonuses to unit production/experience, etc.)

All of this stuff has been committed to the Git repositories linked in the first post, if anyone's interested in how I've done any of this.

 

I figure I'm good to keep posting if I've got new stuff to add to the topic?

Continuing on from working with Governors, progress!

Spoiler :

Oh look, Great Engineers can govern cities now!

Spoiler :

And it makes the governor in the city and everything.

Now I just need an icon for that mission. I'll take a stab at it, but I've been as of yet quite unsuccessful in imitating Firaxis' style for those icons. I was thinking something along the lines of a rolled up scroll with a seal holding it shut, to represent some form of legislation? A graphics tutorial from anyone in the know about how to make icons appear like the Firaxis action ones would be even better than providing the above icon. Until then, I'll tinker and see what I can do.

 

How about a a stamp and seal? Just so we don't have another scroll (social policy & world congress)

 

That is amazing! I'm summarily impressed, that looks perfect! Thank you so much!

Spoiler :

Can I ask how you're able to imitate Firaxis' style so well? I made a few attempts at this earlier but I could never quite get the right amount of depth into the image. Let alone the separate colors for two light sources!


With governors in a relatively stable state, I've started the revamp of the tech tree. The tech tree is probably the most important content addition for me to finish, because so many other pieces of content (units, buildings, improvements, the list goes on) are dependent on the structure of the tech tree.

Spoiler :

At first I tried to lay out the whole tree from start to finish. The mod already had a rough tech tree replacement that took the approach of inserting a load (like 20?) new techs into the existing tree and chopping off most of the industrial+ era. I found that to be a little wanting, it looked way too busy compared to the base tree and actually ended up coming up short of the number of eras we needed.

So, next I tried to lay out a whole new tree from start to finish. That stalled several times. (Btw, this is all possible because of the Visual Tech Tree Editor, hence my update in that topic a few hours ago.) With all of the above in mind, I figure I'll build up the tech tree progressively from playing through. That way I can make informed decisions about each tech based on how I've found the progression to be with its prerequisites. This led to the very initial tree you see above that provides some of the new starting technologies!

 

I use blender to model and render them. It's the easiest way to make UI icons, I find.

 

Awesome, that makes a lot of sense. Blender's something I've only really dabbled in a tiny bit, I should make another concerted attempt to get my head around it. In fact, given I've got all of Sunday, I'll take a stab at it today.

 

So after spending much of Sunday slamming my head against Blender, I now have a cursory understanding of it. (Very cursory, "Hello World on command line" kind of programming equivalent understanding.) But the program makes more sense to me now. (Though I've been working with 2.68 and most of the stuff on here uses 2.49. Looking at 2.49, zomg, what happened to the interface? I no longer know where anything is!)

I've also done a little more development on the tech tree. One very empty tree, which does have a little more stuff than last time:

Spoiler :

With most of what I think will make up the "After Breaking" era in place, I'm going to work on filling in units/buildings/builds/etc for these techs a bit before moving on to the next era. (Though there are a couple of techs in the second era already.)

I have made one new unit already, the "Madman", which is, thus far (chronologically, on the tree) is the first channeling unit. It's got some flags for being a channeler and using saidin and all that. (Those will become important later for things like the Guardian wonder that strips nearby channelers of their powers and city states which are stedding.) It's also got a promotion, "Madness", which causes it to attack itself sometimes. (Achieved by implementing a new promotion field which introduces a probability to attack oneself when performing a ranged attack.) It currently destroys the unit's 3D graphics when it attacks itself (understandable), so I'll probably change that to use quick combat all the time. (Not affecting normal combat.) Or do people think it would be less annoying if the unit just sometimes damaged itself when attacking, rather than also not hitting its target? Further, that promotion is only given to units trained before the (currently non-existent) world project "Cleanse Saidin" is completed. (Again, not hard coded, any unit can now be given a free promotion and will stop being given it once someone completes any arbitrary world project, via a new table Unit_FreePromotionsUntilProjectCompleted.) Note existing units with the promotion don't lose it, because flavor! (I like when implementation and story combine well.)

The discussing of eras leads me to one of the major design decisions I need to make for this mod. I'm starting at After Breaking, because that makes sense, it's a great starting point. But a lot of the wonders and such we see in the WoT universe were constructed during the Age of Legends. I wonder if we want to have the eras loop around the Wheel and end in the Age of Legends? (I am aware the WoT-verse timeline means that something like a single game of CiV, with persistent established civilizations, shouldn't be able to survive a full turn of the Wheel.) But then having the Last Battle at the end of the game doesn't make any sense. (And it is my favorite victory condition.) It's a bit of a quandary, and I've been leaning towards the final era being the era from the books. It would be unacceptable to not have the wonders that are in the book (e.g. the Stone) but constructed before our "After Breaking is year 0" timeline. So I figure it makes sense to have them constructable later on in the game, and really just deal with that disconnect as a gameplay necessity.

Just to clarify the above, I'm not aiming to make the random games of CiV-like-WoT accurate to the books' timeline. (That's no fun, you play it once and you've finished it. The beauty of CiV is it's different every time.) But I don't want design choices to fly in the face of canon if it can be avoided. For those people who do want to act out specific parts of the books/lore, I do plan for the scenarios to be accurate representations of the periods in WoT history they represent.

 

Hi there. This looks to be an amazing piece or work when its done.

I'm a huge fan of the series, but its been just long enough that I need to re-read the series to share my favorite parts.

Anyhow. I originally hopped on civfanatics today to see if someone who has a WoT mod on steam was on here. I found you instead. I can't wait to see where this goes.

 

Thanks! I'm very happy to see fans of the series approve of where I'm going with this! If you're rereading, keep an eye out for good quotes for this mod!


I've been tinkering away with some more stuff. I've changed the way the One Power is associated with units (previously each source had a boolean flag in the units table). This proved to be annoying to refer to elsewhere. There's now a OnePowers table (currently with three entries, ONE_POWER_SAIDAR, ONE_POWER_SAIDIN, and TRUE_POWER). Any unit can have any number of associated magic sources, via the Unit_OnePowerWielding table. This change was to facilitate the first two wonders, that I've added to the new techs on the tree.

These wonders are Natrin's Barrow (*SPOILER*the castle in Arad Doman where Graendal is hiding when Rand finds her*END SPOILER*) and the Thirteenth Depository.

The Thirteenth Depository is quite plainly the better of the two for now (all of the everything is getting cursory, flavorful balancing during development and I'll try to avoid obviously over- or under-powered stuff, but true balancing will be from playtesting, which is plainly impossible now since the new systems don't really glue together yet). The new implementation the Thirteenth Depository required was the ability to have a building give free promotions to units that wield a specific One Power source. I had done plain old buildings that give free promotions to specific unit combat types as a part of SiegeMod (shameless plug), so the checking when to give out promotions is integrated into that code and the data storage for which buildings give which promotion to which One Power type is very similar.

Here, we can see the Thirteenth Depository (and some other stuff) on the tech tree: (having stolen Stonehenge's icon)

Spoiler :

Also, we can see another new building, which seemed like a very WoT-flavorful early building:

Spoiler :

If there are any particularly motivated artists who'd like to help out, wonder splashes for Natrin's Barrow and the Thirteenth Depository would be awesome!