Savage Lands

[Szpilman]

Now online on Mod Browser!

Finally some raging barbarians! Experience a more challenging early game by making your surroundings more dangerous and barbarian units more aggressive. Features: Brutes and pirate ships will scout looking for the player. Barbarians get a combat bonus when attacking (and now love to do so!), and you no longer get experience from defending, so you must take the offensive if you want to thrive against the savages! Balance tweaks: Pirate ship spawn has been increased to make Ottomans, England and overal navies more meaningful. Honor now gives a bonus to producing military units instead of a bonus fighting against barbarians (still notifies of nearby Encampments). This means they will pose a tougher challenge, but you can always overwhelm them with numbers. Aztecs get more culture per kill, but their ability must be taken advantage of early, because it now obsoletes with Theology.

 

[Szpilman]

Next up

• Scouts will have +50% str when defending, to make them more durable while exploring about.
• Improve barbarian AI to better capture workers and attack cities when it has a chance.

Please offer any feedback! I haven't tested the various game speed and map size combinations.

Version history

v0.2 (9/30/2010)
	- Added offensive-oriented flavor for Brute and increased offensive 
	flavor of other barbarian units relative to their defensive flavor.
	- Added +25% combat bonus to Brute and Barbarian Swordsman, 
	when attacking.
	- Raging Pirates module.
		- +25% combat bonus to Galley, when attacking.
		- Added recon-oriented flavor for Galley, so they spread across 
		the seas.
		- Increased chance that a barbarian camp will spawn on coast 
		from 6 to 10 (needed for Galleys to spawn).
	- Aztec Rush module.
		- Culture gained from kills increased by 50%.
		- Sacrificial Captives now obsoletes with Theology.
v0.1 (9/29/2010)
- Original release.
	- Reduced miminum distances (from Capitals and from each other) needed 
	for barbarian camps to spawn. This allows for even crowded maps to have
	a steady spawn of barbs.
	- Increased from 2 to 5 the maximum amount of barbarian units that can 
	be nearby a player at any given time.
	- Increased chance of extra raging unit spawn from 10 to 33.
	- Replaced Honor's +25% bonus against barbarians with +15% military unit
	production.
	- No XP at all gained from defending.

 

[Szpilman]

Could a mod please change the thread to the full name "Savage Lands: Increased Barbarian Activity"?

I realize the current is a bit vague. Thanks!

 

[Danei]

One piece of feedback:

Please note that this is just my personal opinion, but I don't like the way the aztec unique ability obsoletes in your mod. It feels like a discrepancy between it and the other abilities.

Also, regarding

Scouts will have +50% str when defending, to make them more durable while exploring about.

Because that will make them as strong as warriors (when defending), don't you think that's a little strange that it will be cheaper and easier to defend hexes with scouts?

Personally, I'd just give them a bonus to combat vs. brutes.

 

[Szpilman]

One piece of feedback:

Please note that this is just my personal opinion, but I don't like the way the aztec unique ability obsoletes in your mod. It feels like a discrepancy between it and the other abilities.

Also, regarding


Because that will make them as strong as warriors (when defending), don't you think that's a little strange that it will be cheaper and easier to defend hexes with scouts?

Personally, I'd just give them a bonus to combat vs. brutes.

Thanks for your feedback! The only other culture UA, the French, also obsoletes with tech. This is isn't actually so significant a limitation because the culture point does become meager as eras go by.
The base idea is that the Aztec should go for early warfare, be it with barbs (much more plentiful now) or with other civs. So now they actually get 50% more culture per kill, but Theology limits (exactly because it's a culture-flavored tech and a quite good one--I didn't want a tech that could just be ignored).

I'm very open to suggestions, though. What I want to prevent is Aztecs from keeping a dark patch of land around to farm culture for ever and ever from the barbs. So I try to give incentive for them to go all out busting barbs on a rush in the early game.

Regarding the Scout, it's tied to another change I make: no more defensive XP. So actually, at +50% defense the Scout is just as strong as the Warrior (6), but doesn't get experience for defending. Plus defending against barbs is not a good strategy, because they now get +25% combat bonus when attacking, so it's best to build Warriors and take the offensive. Bulding scouts for defending is a bad idea in this mod, the intent of the bonus is so they don't get slaughtered by barbs in a single turn if you make a bad move. I think Scouts lend themselves well to the bonus, I'm thinking to name the promotion "Alertness", because scouts are always aware of their surroundings and in a ready state, and can use the environment to their advantage when attacked. Hence the bonus.

 

[Thalassicus]

I really, really like the concept of this mod, downloaded right away. I'm curious, is it possible to get barbarian ships to pillage sea improvements? That might require a change to the c++ though. The lack of this lets me basically just ignore them in most games, which is a shame. I like that you gave Barbarians an attacking bonus, encourages taking the initiative.

Oddly, when I downloaded through the mod browser the folder was empty, probably a browser bug though, not a problem with the mod. You might try moving your copies out of the Firaxis ModBuddy and MODS folders, downloading it, and checking if this is the case for you too.

The Aztec leader change does feel a little out of place in a mod focusing primarily on Barbarians. Since it's included as a separate folder though, it's easy to remove if someone doesn't want it, so I don't think it's a big deal. A 15% increase in military production speed across the board feels a little strong for something available so early, and might overshadow the Tradition and Liberty trees. The Honor tree is already very powerful, so possibly just reducing the anti-Barbarian combat bonus to 10% would be sufficient.

Also, here's a tip: in your mod description you can use [NEWLINE] to create line breaks, and [ICON_BULLET] to present a bulleted list.

 

[CraigM]

hi there i'm new to civ modding and i have created a mod using most of Thalasicuses balance mods and the social policy update from your savage lands mod, You have been credited in the mod description and i would appreciate your feedback on my efforts i have posted it on mod browser and it is called Big Balance Economy Mod, If you object me using your mod please let me know.

CraigM

 

[Dragonlord]

I can't install this through the online browser! It appears in the online list, all right, and I can download it - but once downloaded it isn't avaliable for installation!

Tried it several times and it consistently fails.

Probably the issue Thalassicus described, where the folder was empty. I'll try manually downloading when I get around to it... the mod sounds good!

 

[Szpilman]

I really, really like the concept of this mod, downloaded right away. I'm curious, is it possible to get barbarian ships to pillage sea improvements? That might require a change to the c++ though. The lack of this lets me basically just ignore them in most games, which is a shame. I like that you gave Barbarians an attacking bonus, encourages taking the initiative.

Oddly, when I downloaded through the mod browser the folder was empty, probably a browser bug though, not a problem with the mod. You might try moving your copies out of the Firaxis ModBuddy and MODS folders, downloading it, and checking if this is the case for you too.

The Aztec leader change does feel a little out of place in a mod focusing primarily on Barbarians. Since it's included as a separate folder though, it's easy to remove if someone doesn't want it, so I don't think it's a big deal. A 15% increase in military production speed across the board feels a little strong for something available so early, and might overshadow the Tradition and Liberty trees. The Honor tree is already very powerful, so possibly just reducing the anti-Barbarian combat bonus to 10% would be sufficient.

Also, here's a tip: in your mod description you can use [NEWLINE] to create line breaks, and [ICON_BULLET] to present a bulleted list.

Thanks for all the feedback, Thalassicus, it is really appreciated! I'm actually in the process of integrating the mod into a bigger one where the superbarbarians will actually be an option in the Advanced Setup menu, so you can turn it on only if you want. I'm also dropping the changes to the social policy and UA as you suggested, I realize they are really out of the scope of the mod and unnecessary (upon thinking I came to the conclusion I prefer my mods to have an specific purpose and not try to change stuff across the board).

I'll be following your tip on installing my own mod from the browser to see if I track down that weird issue.

hi there i'm new to civ modding and i have created a mod using most of Thalasicuses balance mods and the social policy update from your savage lands mod, You have been credited in the mod description and i would appreciate your feedback on my efforts i have posted it on mod browser and it is called Big Balance Economy Mod, If you object me using your mod please let me know.

CraigM

Hey CraigM! No problem at all I'll check up your mod asap, I've actually seen the listing Big Balance Economy Mod online, it drew my attention

I can't install this through the online browser! It appears in the online list, all right, and I can download it - but once downloaded it isn't avaliable for installation!

Tried it several times and it consistently fails.

Probably the issue Thalassicus described, where the folder was empty. I'll try manually downloading when I get around to it... the mod sounds good!

Yeah, thanks for reporting also! I'll really check into what is going on, within the next few days I expect to actually replace this one mod with a more encompassing and democratic one where the barbarian part will be just a toggle.

 

[14koder]

Can you make it so they build seige units? 'Cause I haven't seen a single barbarian seige unit in the game, and they are now very important when taking cities