Setting a Player to start on the western side of the map?

[drjest2000]

I have been thinking and I know I can recall having played a mod that had play start from the western edge of the map. I'm thinking it was possibly CivLucas & Aymerick's "The East Indies" or Buddy3101's "Ein Platz an der Sonne".

I remember looking into it before, but can't remember what I read about it. I'm vaguely recalling that it has something to do with the map script. If I am remembering right, I think it was Buddy1301 that mentioned that to me.

Any of you Civ Gods care to re-tell me how I can get China or Polynesians to start in the west and spread east? Or Imperial Japan to start in the north for a jab southwards into Formosa/Taiwan and the South Pacific?

 

[Commander Bello]

There is an entry in CIV4EuropeInfo.xml:

		<EuropeInfo>
			<Type>EUROPE_WEST</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_EUROPE_WEST</Description>
			<Direction>west</Direction>
			[B][COLOR="Red"]<bStart>0</bStart>[/COLOR][/B]
			<iTripLength>4</iTripLength>
			<iMinLandDistance>4</iMinLandDistance>
			<iWidthPercent>20</iWidthPercent>
		</EuropeInfo>

How to make use of that, I don't know.

 

[Kailric]

Any of you Civ Gods care to re-tell me how I can get China or Polynesians to start in the west and spread east? Or Imperial Japan to start in the north for a jab southwards into Formosa/Taiwan and the South Pacific?

It has been a while sense I mess around with the starting plots but I had to do this in the Medieval mod. Starting plots are assigned in the DLL with the function CvPlot* CvPlayer::findStartingPlot(bool bRandomize)

Just the other day I was checking out Age of Discovery II and the Chinese start in the west. You can check out their code maybe and see exactly what they did. Setting the EUROPE_WEST <bStart>0</bStart> to 1 would probably just make it so that civs will randomly start in the west or the east. There would need to be code somewhere that stated what hemisphere a Civ started in.

 

[drjest2000]

Commander Bello, thanks for replying! I would never have found that without your help.

Kailric, Thank you! It was AoDII that I was remember as playing with China starting in the west and the others in the east.

And you're right. I just ran several test games with EUROPE_WEST set as <bStart>1</bStart>. The positions seem to be random but balanced, with half the teams starting on the east and half on the west.

I looked at AoDII and saw <bFromWest>1</bFromWest> as a tag in the CIVILIZATION_CHINA entry of CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml

There's also <bPirates>1</bPirates> in the CIVILIZATION_PIRATES entry, but no <bFromWest>1</bFromWest>.

The rest of the entries have neither tag.

In the CIV4CivilizationsSchema.xml of AoDII, there are additions for both. I don't believe it could as simple as adding them definitions of the tags in the Schema.

Vanilla Schema

<ElementType name="bWaterWorks" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bEurope" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bNative" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="iAdvancedStartPoints" content="textOnly" dt:type="int"/>

Dale's Schema

<ElementType name="bWaterWorks" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bEurope" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bNative" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bPirates" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bFromWest" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bAsianNative" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bNAmericanNative" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bSAmericanNative" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bAfricanNative" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="bPacificNative" content="textOnly" dt:type="boolean"/>
<ElementType name="iAdvancedStartPoints" content="textOnly" dt:type="int"/>

There is a CvGameCoreDLL folder, so I have to believe that Dale re-compiled the DLL to handle instructions in the new tags.

 

[Kailric]

Yep, as suspected. I could compile you a dll that would do what you are wanting in a couple days if you like?

 

[drjest2000]

Thanks Kailric! If you can set the code to allow binary values for <bFromWest>, <bFromNorth> and <bFromSouth>.

I am thinking to do a number of thematic mods and like Sauron says, one ring to rule them all.

My ultimate goal is to make playable natives so that games can be Natives vs Other Natives vs Europeans vs Other Europeans vs Kings.

Why? History, that's why.

Historically, the Inca and the Aztec were in mid-process of conquest and colonization when the Spanish arrived. And in the distant past, the Proto-Polynesians colonized everything in the South Pacific from Taiwan to Easter Island, maybe (big maybe) even as far as the western coast of South America. And in Hawai'i, when Cook arrived, the Hawai'ians were on the verge of an epic battle that would ultimately lead to unification of the islands under a single ruler. And way far back in prehistory, three waves of migration went east over the Bering Straight into the Americas, there had to be some conflict with the guys who got there first.

Then there's the laughs to be had from setting things up for the Noldori to sail east into Middle Earth and muck about with the Sindar, the Humans, the Dwarves, and my personal favourite, Sauron and his band of merry bad men. And the Numenorians, we can't forget those guys...

But all of that is a long way off....

 

[Kailric]

Thanks Kailric! If you can set the code to allow binary values for <bFromWest>, <bFromNorth> and <bFromSouth>.

I am thinking to do a number of thematic mods and like Sauron says, one ring to rule them all.

My ultimate goal is to make playable natives so that games can be Natives vs Other Natives vs Europeans vs Other Europeans vs Kings.

Why? History, that's why.

Historically, the Inca and the Aztec were in mid-process of conquest and colonization when the Spanish arrived. And in the distant past, the Proto-Polynesians colonized everything in the South Pacific from Taiwan to Easter Island, maybe (big maybe) even as far as the western coast of South America. And in Hawai'i, when Cook arrived, the Hawai'ians were on the verge of an epic battle that would ultimately lead to unification of the islands under a single ruler. And way far back in prehistory, three waves of migration went east over the Bering Straight into the Americas, there had to be some conflict with the guys who got there first.

Then there's the laughs to be had from setting things up for the Noldori to sail east into Middle Earth and muck about with the Sindar, the Humans, the Dwarves, and my personal favourite, Sauron and his band of merry bad men. And the Numenorians, we can't forget those guys...

But all of that is a long way off....

All, good stuff. Are you looking to mod a mod or are you working with the Vanilla mod? As in Highlander, there can only be one DLL, one brain that runs the game so If I mod the vanilla DLL any other modifications have to be made to that DLL.

Edit: And I'd love to see a lord of the rings Mod, and also a World of Warcraft mod... WoW already has similar aspects with Professions and Classes. I'd love to work on that.. but that would be a bagillion years down the road

 

[drjest2000]

I'm thinking of vanilla, because that's as far into it as I am at the moment.

I guess it will help if I explain what I'm working on and where I see this going.

The rough list of Old World colonists:

From the East:
Ausburg AKA Klein-Venedig (America)
Brandenburg-Prussia (America, although technically this one is just a lease from the Danish)
China (India)
Courland (America)
Denmark (America)
England (New England)
France (New France)
Jesuits (yes, the Jesuits)
Netherlands (New Holland)
Norway (Vikings: Thorfinn Karlsefni and Leifr Eiriksson)
Portugal (Brazil)
Scotland (Nova Scotia)
Spain (America)
Sweden (New Sweden)


From the West:
British East India Company
Belgium (Africa)
Courland (Africa)
China (America)
Danish East India Company (Dansk Østindisk Kompagni)
Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie)
French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales)
Germany (post 1880 Africa)
Portuguese East India Company (Companhia do commércio da Índia)
Russia (America)
Polynesia
Sweden (Africa)


From the North:
Japanese Empire
Mughal Empire
Tibetan Empire (land-started? And, yes, there really was a Tibetan Empire, 618 - 841)


And a whole pack of new Natives


Now for the "pick up your crack pipe" part...

Land-started playable Natives. Examples:
Arawak
Aztec Triple Alliance (Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan)
Guarani
Huastecs
Hurons
Iroquois
Inca
Maya
Mixe
Nahua (Huexotzinco?)
Otomies
Skrælings (Which I'm guessing were a mish-mash of the Dorset, Innu, and Beothuk)
Tarascans
Totonacs
Zapotecs
Zulu

Land started playable natives with boats:
Haida
Hawaiians
Malagasy
Polynesians


Extra crack pipe ideas:

New game mechanics:
Abandon colony
Switch loyalty/nation


New Resources:
Cocoa
Coffee
Gems (generic, including pearls, one terrain bonus for land, a different one for water)
Gold (1 GOLD = 21 SILVER)
Incense (generic)
Luxury goods (includes dye, perfume, soap, etc)
Obsidian (although the vanilla iron ore might serve the mechanic just as well)
Opium/Medicine
Salt
Spice (generic)
Tea


New Terrain:
Volcanic soil (a tropical soil that appears near volcanos, +3 food)


New Terrain Bonuses:
Lava bed (+4 obsidian, appears only on volcanic soil)
Spice bush (+3 spice, appears only on desert)
Gems (generic, including coral and pearls, one terrain bonus for land, a different one for water, max yield per turn +1, land version appears only on mountains and Volcanic soil, water version appears only in Coastal water)
Gold (appears only by rivers, number appearing limited by map size, max yield per turn +1)
Coffee tree (appears only on hills)
Cocoa tree (appears only in jungles)
Opium poppies (appears only on mid latitude hills with tundra)
Salt pan (appears only in desert)
Tea bush (appears only on hills with grass)


New Buildings:
Silversmith's shop - creates LUXURY GOODS from gems and silver and/or gold


Smokehouse - 1 FOOD + 1 SALT + 1 LUMBER = 1 TRADE GOOD
Market - turns 1 TRADE GOOD into 3 FOOD
Workhouse - 1 LUMBER + 1 TOOL = 1 TRADE GOOD


Slaves and plantations... sigh... I'd rather avoid them. But, yeah, history. Existing mods already deal with this and I'd rather not incorporate it into my mod.

 

[Kailric]

Wow, that's a lot of leaderheads Ok, well starting units from the west is an easy fix really sense the game already has a east and west. I haven't added a north and south though but I know it would take a bit more programming. If you're just wanting to play around with starting from the west I'll put that together for ya when I get the chance next few days. I want to add North and South access myself at some point so maybe when I get around to that I can add those as well.

 

[orlanth]

I am thinking to do a number of thematic mods and like Sauron says, one ring to rule them all.

My ultimate goal is to make playable natives so that games can be Natives vs Other Natives vs Europeans vs Other Europeans vs Kings.

Wow sounds ambitious.. rather than the vanilla DLL which is kind of flawed, you should consider using an already existing mod as a base, such as TAC/RaR or maybe Medieval Conquests to take advantage of their already developed features.

There are so many mods out there that add more civs/LHs/resources/stuff onto the vanilla game that I'd rather see a really unique new total-conversion idea like your LOTR concept but anything with playable natives would be very welcome, no one's really focused on those although there's plenty of interest out there. I think I have a set somewhere on my pc of collected nif graphics of native buildings / Aztec pyramids etc if you'd want to use them. The RaR mod already contains tons of great native unit nifs by Schmiddie.

 

[Kailric]

Yeah, I agree with orlanth, it will be more convenient to use an existing mod. You say you want "Abandon colony and Switch loyalty/nation" I think there are mods out there that do that already. You could use those as a base?

 

[drjest2000]

In fact, I agree with both of you. But the crazy thing is I want to understand how it works before I get in too deep. I haven't played TAC/RaR enough to have a "feel" for it.

As embarrassing as it is to admit it, I'm having to re-learn all the things I've forgotten about the XML files and how all the parts fit together. The plain, sad truth is that I'm not up to the level of making the mod I want to make. Not yet, at least.

I'll tell you up front, I'm no boy genius. I'm over fifty and I did most of my coding back in Ye Olden Days of IBM and VAX mainframes. I'm not completely useless with Python, but I'm not far from it. It's humbling to discover that I'm getting old and slow.

Right now, the skills I have are noob level modding. Both of you are way above my level. So you guys pick one, I'll go with the flow. It's not about me, it's all about making a mod people want to play. If you lead, I'll follow. Just give me the ability to start civs on the west side of the map and I'll be happy.

I spent a few hours last night looking through the code of the vanilla core. After a while, I heard a deep, bubbling voice chanting ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, the walls started dripping blood, a unicorn farted a rainbow that destroyed the Klingon moon Praxis, and I developed white-nose syndrome.

That's when I considered hiring some cash-starved college kid to write the code I want. >_>

That kind of thinking, my friends, is the result of being in university administration for 25+ years. That and doing too much Orange Sunshine in my college days.

 

[orlanth]

Don't worry, I'm sure I at least am definitely not way above your level Like you, I am not a programmer in daily life & know only a little coding (mostly Perl which is not used in Civ4), but I was able to pick up enough from tutorials to put together a functioning mod using mainly just XML, along with some extremely valuable assistance from many helpful members of the modding community like Kailric, TC01 and Androrc (and maybe a little help from my secret alien overlords ).

Some helpful references to look over & get your feet wet include the Civ4 Modiki and XML reference are valuable as well as Civ4Col-specific tutorials here. You could also download & play around with mods such as RaR & Medieval & 2071 for a few days to get a feel for how they work and take a look over their xml.

As mentioned RaR has a lot of great features and was intended to be used as a good base for modmods so in many ways it could be an ideal starting point. OTOH it has a number of DLL changes "stirring up natives" etc that might interfere with playable natives modmods; I don't know how easy it could be to inactivate or change some of these to allow a RaR natives modmod but maybe Ray could comment on it?

Alternately a great mod to use might be Kailric's Medieval, since it already contains his Tech modcomp plus other nice features, and IMO playable Natives work well with this so they don't immediately have access to all standard units/buildings etc from the start. It may be possible to integrate that with RaR also, but I don't really know how easy that would be.

 

[raystuttgart]

As mentioned RaR has a lot of great features and was intended to be used as a good base for modmods so in many ways it could be an ideal starting point. OTOH it has a number of DLL changes "stirring up natives" etc that might interfere with playable natives modmods; I don't know how easy it could be to inactivate or change some of these to allow a RaR natives modmod but maybe Ray could comment on it?

It is a matter of taste.

RaR is really huge and complex. So if you don't like many of its base features (Multiple Yields Consumed / Produced, Multiple Profession Per Building, Domestic Markets, New Storage System, New System for Culture and 2-Plot-City-Radius, Wild Animals...) you better not use it as a base for your own project because it would be a lot of work to remove all the distribute pieces of code for those.

The "small featurs" (Abandoning Cities, New Bargaining, The many DLL-Diplo-Events, ...") are not that problematic.
But even though it is possible to deactivate many features by XML-Balancing is also really a good idea to know DLL-Modding, when creating a complex project based on RaR.
(Or at least have somebody with that skill to support you.)

RaR also has massive amount of "under the hood" improvements (performance, AI) you might not notice at first, but I can assure you that they are worth taking a look at, if you create a Civ4Col mod.

RaR was designed to be used as a base for other projects, e.g. a Fantasy or SciFi Total Conversion.
(Careful selection of major features, exposing a lot of configuration to XML, ...)

But to be honest, those "other projects" I had in mind, were of course heavily influenced by my own visions.
So not everybody might agree about single features being useful or convertable to another project.

To get a first impression, simply read our Overview.
(Although most "under the hood improvements" and bugfixes are not listed there in detail.)

Simply take a look at RaR and the other mods and see which one you like best.
That one is probably the one you would like to base your project on.

 

[drjest2000]

orlanth, you put into words what I have been thinking. It seems to me that aggressive natives and playable natives might prove to be mutually exclusive without a major overhaul of the code. I like the tech tree idea, but I would want it to be easier for the natives to catch up than the grinding monotony of regular civ. The natives would have the advantage of seeing it done by the Europeans and that would reduce the research time exponentially. The Cherokee literally went from not having writing, to having writing in about 5-10% of the time it took Europeans to achieve the same. The French for instance had the Huron approaching 50% literacy and making gunpowder within a generation. While in the south the Jesuits had natives speaking and writing in Latin within 25 years of arrival.

And then there's tech trading between the natives to consider, that makes me worrisome over game balance. Natives in real life have a hate on for their nearest neighbors, so there's very little tech trading in the real world. But unless it's carefully coded, it's possible that the AI will be running a tech market in the background and the playable natives will be shut out.

Then there's deciding which techs native civs start with. Obviously all of them had hunting, but not all of them had agriculture, some even had copper and bronze-working, while yet other were decidedly paleolithic. I certainly wouldn't want to be playing as Ishi of the Yahi when the Spanish roll onto the scene with gunpowder weapons, but I'd take my chances as a Tangaxuan II of the Purépecha.

Some of the tech tree stuff in regular Civ is just sad, silly, or stupid. So I would want to not have the poor blighters start with nothing. But I don't want it to be so "realistic" that they need 10,000 years to catch up to the Europeans.

 

[orlanth]

Yeah I generally agree. What I was aiming for in 2071 was simply to have natives able to behave at least somewhat more like normal players. For balance, the natives (alien empires ) start out with a set of special native techs allowing them to harvest native resources, and the colonial powers start out with some of the basic industrial techs. Tech trading is allowed through Kailric's code which has seemed to work fairly well. The colonists need to learn the secrets of harvesting unfamiliar new resources either by trading for native knowledge or researching themselves; while the natives need to learn the unfamiliar secrets of industrial production technologies etc. Kailric's feature of using certain goods to perform research really makes research a lot more fun and strategic process than techs in basic Civ4.

Also keep in mind that natives get a big "head start" in terms of population and territory that the colonists take a long time to catch up with, and to offset this they need to realistically start out more "behind" than the colonial powers in terms of technology and production capacity. To try for an interesting balance, I required the natives build a basic building (the Ziggurat) that effectively gives the colonial players a 50-turn head start before natives can begin the development process in earnest. This and other market buildings allow them to generate some money from sale of goods in their internal economy; they can eventually start to pursue direct trade with the colonists or with Europe ("Earth" in the mod) for greater profits, though this is much harder for them than the colonial powers. Also, the basic native units have slightly higher production of goods and less production of industrial/processed goods; they can eventually lure some productive specialists to their side from Europe/Earth but this is also much more challenging for them than the colonial powers.

Anyway if you're interested in how playable natives and techs could work, try out a few games of 2071 playing as both the "native" Alien Empires or "colonial" Earthlings and let me know what you think of the overall playable-native system. I spent a lot of thought planning/balancing it and got some good positive feedback from players about it, but I'm sure there are still plenty of ways it could be improved upon. There are a few old bugs I was unable to stamp out due to limited c++ knowledge but these would be gone if a more updated DLL was used. It's definitely worth playing RaR and Medieval for awhile to get familiar with their many great features. As Ray said RaR also has many performance enhancement and seems to run better - Nightingale has been working on some more performance and interface enhancements RaR Extended. My ideal DLL to use for Civ4Col modmodding would be some combination or RaR (or RaRE) plus added features from Kailric's mods such as Research and improved King/Pope diplomacy.

 

[drjest2000]

I'm following the advice you're giving me and checking things out in RAR, TAC and 2071. This may take a few days to do, so bear with me.

So far I am kind of blow away by the level of detail in the economy of TAC. That by itself will need a few days to figure out how to play.

I'm beginning to get that drowning man feeling as I look at all the options. >_<

 

[raystuttgart]

So far I am kind of blow away by the level of detail in the economy of TAC. That by itself will need a few days to figure out how to play.

Then I really wonder, what you will say about RaR.

 

[Kailric]

I'm following the advice you're giving me and checking things out in RAR, TAC and 2071. This may take a few days to do, so bear with me.

So far I am kind of blow away by the level of detail in the economy of TAC. That by itself will need a few days to figure out how to play.

I'm beginning to get that drowning man feeling as I look at all the options. >_<

I myself like things simpler, others like it complex. In RAR just the sheer number of yields blows my mind. But, you can still mod it all to more simpler terms.

I just figured out that the game already recognizes east, west, north, and south Europe tiles so all I have to do is add in starting locations code for each Civilization.

At the moment I am getting ready to upload my next version of Medieval, prolly in a couple hours.

 

[drjest2000]

@Kailric - I assumed that was the case. There will probably need to be a routine inserted into the map script to paint north and south starting tiles, maybe. I'm having a harder time believing that the boys at Firaxis did a thorough job of coding all the infrastructure.

I just waded into RaR... ...it's ...well ...I'll have to get back to you on that. But on first impression, the phrase "it's complicated" comes to mind. This may take more than a few days to figure out.

On a related topic, how do you red rid of the big red bubble around regular Civ4's building models? I was trying to "flavour" the Mughal, Chinese and Russians with cultural-style Churches and Cathedrals and, well, it did not go well. The Chinese church attempt crashed the game, so I mucked that up pretty badly, although I'm sure I did all the steps right for the insertion.