Silly's First Civilization (Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale)

[averysillyman]

Mod is complete and out on Steam.

Download Link | Steam Workshop

Civilization Details

Spoiler :

Recette Lemongrass - The City of Pensee

Focus - Gold, Tourism
Unique Ability: Capitalism - May purchase certain Great People with Gold.

Unique Unit: Adventurer - The Adventurer is a Penseean Unique Unit, replacing the Archaeologist. Unlike the standard Archaeologist, the Adventurer can protect itself. It counts as a combat unit and fights with the same strength as a Knight. It also does not require a University to be built, and can be bought with Gold.

Unique Building: Storefront - The Storefront is a Penseean Unique Building, replacing the Market. In addition to the standard Market bonuses, the Storefront also provides +1 Culture. Instead of a Specialist slot, the Storefront has 2 Great Work slots for Art or Artifacts. If you achieve the theming bonus of two Artifacts from different civilizations other than your own, the bonus Gold that the Storefront provides is increased from 25% to 100%.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

I very much like the synergy between the uniques. The UB in particular has an awesome effect which fits quite well with this leader.

I'm a bit concerned that 3500 Gold to buy a GP may be a bit too low. Unfortunately, upping it will make the UA practically unusable until at least Industrial (and more likely Modern). And using Lua to implement a scaling cost (such as with Faith buying) would probably be pretty buggy, based on my experience trying to implement something like that. So, I suppose keeping it as it is for the time being would be the best call.

 

[averysillyman]

I very much like the synergy between the uniques. The UB in particular has an awesome effect which fits quite well with this leader.

I'm a bit concerned that 3500 Gold to buy a GP may be a bit too low. Unfortunately, upping it will make the UA practically unusable until at least Industrial (and more likely Modern). And using Lua to implement a scaling cost (such as with Faith buying) would probably be pretty buggy, based on my experience trying to implement something like that. So, I suppose keeping it as it is for the time being would be the best call.

I tried to do scaling gold costs, but couldn't figure out how to do it nicely. I also toyed with only allowing the civ to gold buy GAWM and compensating it with a buff in some other area. A third idea was changing the cost of great people to different amounts. Great Merchants are probably the most useless of the bunch (the gold they give you is less than what you spend on them, and you would get more influence just spending that gold on a city state directly), whereas being able to rush any wonder for ~3k gold may be too strong. I don't know.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

Scaling gold costs would involve some ugly stuff, including:

• Making several copies of each Great Person, each with different Gold costs, AND making them a UU for the Civ
• Lua scripting to check when one of them is bought, incrementing a counter by one, and using the counter to determine which of the Great Person copies should be available to buy
• A persistent data saving script like SaveUtils.lua or TableSaverLoader.lua to keep the number of bought GPs stored for game saves

It would be an unfortunate amount of work.


Making it only for GWAMs sounds good, with the benefit of being significantly easier. So does changing the cost based on the type of GP. Scientists and Engineers should be at least 5k.

 

[bouncymischa]

So does changing the cost based on the type of GP. Scientists and Engineers should be at least 5k.

I find the concept of having different costs for different GPs to be quite amusingly appropriate -- it's obviously a product of supply and demand (certain GP's are in high demand! Others... less so), and hence... it's capitalism!

That said, it does look like a really cool mod, and nicely done. Looking forwards to the finished version!

 

[DarkScythe]

Haha!

This is amazing. I love Recettear; poured over a hundred hours into that game!
It never occurred to me to make a Civ out of it..

As for the art, it looks fine to me since the game didn't have all too much to begin with.
At best I'd saturate the colors a bit more and increase the contrast, since these icons would get fairly small.
Also, to me, the empty Recettear sign looks weird.
What about a silhouette of Tear? Would that make sense?

 

[averysillyman]

Scaling gold costs would involve some ugly stuff, including:

• Making several copies of each Great Person, each with different Gold costs, AND making them a UU for the Civ
• Lua scripting to check when one of them is bought, incrementing a counter by one, and using the counter to determine which of the Great Person copies should be available to buy
• A persistent data saving script like SaveUtils.lua or TableSaverLoader.lua to keep the number of bought GPs stored for game saves

It would be an unfortunate amount of work.


Making it only for GWAMs sounds good, with the benefit of being significantly easier. So does changing the cost based on the type of GP. Scientists and Engineers should be at least 5k.

After looking more into what is and isn't possible with lua scripts, what about making great people cost more with era? I know you could intentionally delay your entry into the next era to make great people stay cheaper, but it would solve the problem of great people being prohibitively expensive early game and too cheap late game. I feel like this would probably be the least annoying to code way of implementing scaling costs.

I don't know what would be more balanced numbers though. Something like 500 per era for GAWM and 750 per era for scientists and engineers?

I'm also considering removing the capability to gold buy great merchants, prophets, generals, and admirals. They're not very useful overall (unless you want to citadel bomb with a general and can't spawn one normally, but that could get abusive), so they just sort of take up space and require extra code.

Haha!

This is amazing. I love Recettear; poured over a hundred hours into that game!
It never occurred to me to make a Civ out of it..

As for the art, it looks fine to me since the game didn't have all too much to begin with.
At best I'd saturate the colors a bit more and increase the contrast, since these icons would get fairly small.
Also, to me, the empty Recettear sign looks weird.
What about a silhouette of Tear? Would that make sense?

I considered doing fairy wings for the icon as well, but I would have to draw them myself, and it's definitely much harder to do than simply sticking the sign on a circle, filling it with pink, and adding some shadows.

 

[DarkScythe]

Ah, yeah, that would be a little more difficult.
I suppose one could try to trace a vector over an image of her, but I'm pretty bad at that, if my attempt with my own Civ's icon was any indication.

Random idea: What about an icon featuring their "pix" currency?
I believe on the main game screen it was a little bag with a 'p' on it, and when you paid off a week's debt, it was a 'p' with a small dash through it.

As far as making UU's of all the Great People.. It indeed would be very annoying, although at the very least you don't have to do any "real" work besides finding every reference in the stock files and copy/pasting them. I did this for my Civ's Great Merchant UU, and probably the most annoying thing was copying over all of their unique names.

I like the sound of varying cost based on type of GP though, Scientists and Engineers are crazy good.

 

[averysillyman]

Also, to me, the empty Recettear sign looks weird.
What about a silhouette of Tear? Would that make sense?

Alright, I decided to throw together something really quick. I haven't added any real fancy stuff to the icon yet, so it's just two simple colors. Let me know if you like this design better than the other one.

Spoiler :

 

[averysillyman]

Another icon based on DarkScythe's suggestion. I kind of like this once actually.

Spoiler :

 

[DarkScythe]

Looking great so far!
Tear, and to some extent, the pix currency symbol are better representations for her, since the empty Recettear sign seems hard to recognize if it's really small.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

Good base for the icon. Check out this tutorial so you can apply the sheen and shading to the icon such that it looks closer to the icons of the default Civs, and it should be perfect.

 

[averysillyman]

Good base for the icon. Check out this tutorial so you can apply the sheen and shading to the icon such that it looks closer to the icons of the default Civs, and it should be perfect.

Followed the guide. I had to improvise a few steps because I don't have photoshop, but overall it wasn't too much of a problem. Here's the result.

Spoiler :

Also, what do people think of making GAWM cost 500 gold per era, and Great Scientists/Engineers cost 750 per era, instead of a flat 3500 gold? Could these numbers be better? I'm honestly just throwing stuff out there to see if it sticks.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

Spoiler :

Change your shadow layer to be of the "Overlay" blending type, so it will become a darker shade of the icon's background color instead of black. Also, it does look like the icon is slightly off-center vertically; perhaps move it up a few pixels, maybe even enlarge it some. Do that and it should be great.

Also, what do people think of making GAWM cost 500 gold per era, and Great Scientists/Engineers cost 750 per era, instead of a flat 3500 gold? Could these numbers be better? I'm honestly just throwing stuff out there to see if it sticks.

That does sound a lot better. This will put GSEs at 3750 in Industrial; about where they are now at about the point where it starts becoming more feasible to buy them. But then it will keep them climbing up at later eras, where you can start climbing far past 500 GPT and the high costs become necessary.

Of course, we can always guess about how the balance is from the numbers, but the only surefire way to get good balance feedback is to have users play games with the changes active.

 

[averysillyman]

Updated to version 2.0.

DOWNLOAD LINK.

Changes

Spoiler :

• Art: Updated civilization icon. View the new icon here. Also did some minor touch ups to some of the other art assets.
• UA: Can no longer purchase Great Merchants, Generals, Admirals, or Prophets with gold.
• UA: Great AWM now have a base cost of 1000 gold and cost 1000 more gold for each two eras you've passed. Great Engineers and Scientists now have a base cost of 1500 gold and cost 1500 more gold for each two eras you've passed.

 

[averysillyman]

Change your shadow layer to be of the "Overlay" blending type, so it will become a darker shade of the icon's background color instead of black. Also, it does look like the icon is slightly off-center vertically; perhaps move it up a few pixels, maybe even enlarge it some. Do that and it should be great.

To be completely honest, I didn't know that the overlay option existed for layers until now. >.>

Anyways, now all I need is a model for the UU and I can basically call this done. That, plus some minor balance changes if this civ turns out to be too weak/strong.

 

[bouncymischa]

Anyways, now all I need is a model for the UU and I can basically call this done. That, plus some minor balance changes if this civ turns out to be too weak/strong.

What sort of look were you wanting for your Adventurer? I haven't played Recetter myself, so I'm not sure what kind of era/period it's set in, but if it's the typical sort of fantasy genre, you could maybe use Danrell's French or German swordsman? They have a fairly generic "fantasy swordsman" look to them.

 

[averysillyman]

What sort of look were you wanting for your Adventurer? I haven't played Recetter myself, so I'm not sure what kind of era/period it's set in, but if it's the typical sort of fantasy genre, you could maybe use Danrell's French or German swordsman? They have a fairly generic "fantasy swordsman" look to them.

Here are some sprites from the game. I'll take a look at Danrell's stuff.

EDIT: Do you know if I can edit the textures of the models just by replacing their DDS files? Or is it a little more complicated than that?

 

[DarkScythe]

Louie was okay, but I loved using Tielle, personally.

Loving the new icon, though! Great work!

Kind of jealous you finished your first Civ so quickly while I'm still here drowning in Lua, haha.

 

[bouncymischa]

Here are some sprites from the game. I'll take a look at Danrell's stuff.

EDIT: Do you know if I can edit the textures of the models just by replacing their DDS files? Or is it a little more complicated than that?

I think you can edit the textures of models by replacing their DDS files... but I'm entirely sure how much you can change before making it go weird. I did meddle with the .dds file for an improvement image I was experimenting with once, shifting the color shades around a bit and it worked fine. I think if you just want to change colors, you can edit the DDS file directly.

Best bet might be to ask someone like Civitar or Nutty about it... I know they've been doing some reskinning and such with unit models, so they'd be good people to ask.

Louie was okay, but I loved using Tielle, personally.

Loving the new icon, though! Great work!

Kind of jealous you finished your first Civ so quickly while I'm still here drowning in Lua, haha.

That's because you decided to do something enormously complex in terms of Lua for your first civ...

(Honestly, considering it took me a few months to actually try dabbling with Lua, you're both being a lot more ambitious than I was...!)