[submod] Cross' Overhaul (Wu, Bulgaria, Muslim-Egypt, Macedon, Iroquois, Armenia, Parthia, Minoans, Ghurids, Timurids)

[Tigranes]

In the large map? In worldbuilder, and RFC_Earth.txt, there is no resource there. Unless it spawns at a later date than 3000 BC, but I don't see Uranium anywhere in Resources.py.

Yes, I think it spawns around 1900. Supposed to represent China's effort to get Uranium from seawater!

 

[Crossphazer]

Latest changes:

• Near Eastern leaders of Antiquity (for Persia, Hittites, Assyria) are more aggressive with regards to total wars.
• Bronze Age Collapse-type barbarians (Sea Peoples, Cimmerians, Phrygians) have been tweaked and generally intensified or localized to more specific regions.
• Buffs to the Persian start, especially AI start, since its start date got moved up.
• Moved Phoenicia spawn to 1100 and gave an extra worker + advanced start points. I want them to avoid any Sea Peoples.
• Roman conquest dates moved back, generally to line up better with historical dates, but also to help give other civs a bit of a breather before the conquests happen
• "Alexander the Great" conquest now ignores the 2 topmost rows of Anatolia, like how they got ignored by Alexander in history. The invasion of Persia is delayed 15 years, so firstly the Greeks have conquerors around the Levant and Egypt, and later in Persia itself. In the future I may look at making the invasion condition of the capture of a certain number of Levant cities (or specifically Babylon).

Yes, I think it spawns around 1900. Supposed to represent China's effort to get Uranium from seawater!

If you happen upon the exact date, please do let me know. I tried looking for Uranium and 1900 in the repo and haven't come across anything about Uranium.

 

[Crossphazer]

• Rus and Celts upgraded (back) to "significant" impact rating. I don't think their eras are hitting the limit of max civ count.
• Sens replaced with Paris, such that France's capital is Paris again. The tile 1N of "old Sens" has been renamed as well. Valladolid was renamed to Madrid for similar reasons.
• Spain's start date moved into the 500s, rather than at the same time as the Moors. The 600AD start date needs to be updated to pre-place Spain's cities --> done. Spain struggles a lot less now, while still being displaced by the Moors in the earlier Middle Ages. They use an existing Visigothic adjective for the early period.
• Barbarian Germanic cities added to Germany in Late Antiquity, to give the Franks a sort of Saxon opponent.
• France doesn't flip the Mediterranean coast, which stays in Spanish hands at first.
• Button added for Yangtze China. A recolor of the vanilla civ4 China button. It has "team color" art as well, based on the Repubilc of China, because it's a simple and easily identifiable monochrome logo.
• Attica and the Peloponnese added to France's war map (post-1204 crusader states).
  Moorish war map has southern France now.
• Tweaks not worth specific mention that can be found in the git log.

 

[TwoF]

I don't think making various changes to your mod is a good idea. Firstly, many balance and immersion changes will still be made by Leoret. Secondly, there might be people who won't like your version of the changes, even though they wanted a second China.
If you'd like to create your own submod with balance changes that you personally believe are right, then make a separate submod. Allow people who are interested in having a second China to install only that, and get changes related exclusively to it.
Additionally, if you're interested in developing the Chinese gameplay, you could also add Manchuria to the mod (or make it separate).

 

[Gen1_]

I don't think making various changes to your mod is a good idea. Firstly, many balance and immersion changes will still be made by Leoret. Secondly, there might be people who won't like your version of the changes, even though they wanted a second China.
If you'd like to create your own submod with balance changes that you personally believe are right, then make a separate submod. Allow people who are interested in having a second China to install only that, and get changes related exclusively to it.
Additionally, if you're interested in developing the Chinese gameplay, you could also add Manchuria to the mod (or make it separate).

Totally agree this (Leoret is proud of you).

More seriously, it is a good idea to split changes made to DoC into Chinese ones and Mediterranean ones.
But there might also be people that like Mediterranean changes but are strictly opposed to the idea of a second China. So I don't think making a submod is the best idea.

 

[Crossphazer]

Northern China specialist UHV1 condition a bit too one dimensional. Replaced with subgoals, by 200AD:

• Defeat 30 barbs, indies (final amount TBD)
• Don't lose a city
• Pleased with a European civ (probably Rome, maybe Greece or Celts)

Persian Royal Road UHV1 trivialized by flipping eastern Anatolia on spawn, replaced with Persian Wars-inspired UHV of conquering Greece by -450. Might tune the date depending on the difficulty. Note that Greece (civ) doesn't need to be wiped out, just to take ownership of the Greece region (which includes the western coast of Anatolia). Alternatively, might change the UHV to be a long-term one, like holding on to certain provinces in Late Antiquity or in opposition to the rise of the Arabs.

North China UP also modified to be a bit less boring, instead of 3 free statesmen in the capital, it's 2 free statesmen, and +1 commerce to statesmen specialists. Synergizes with later wonders like Porcelain Tower.

 

[Crossphazer]

Lots of updates since last post:

• Ancient Near East civs have had fall dates brought back in time (Babylon, Assyria, Egypt)
• Some civs have had fall dates removed or postponed, as external pressure (other civs + barbarians) usually does a good job at collapsing or containing them: Carthage, Greece, Byzantium, Norse, China, Moors, Arabia
• Vienna made a priority settling target. The wine on that tile got switched around. Indy buda(pest) is now indy Cluj, 2 tiles east, to give Vienna some breathing room.
• France launches a crusade using the conquerors mechanic in 1090; if France doesn't hold the Levant in 1190, HRE and England get small conqueror events
• Carthage gets a "Tunisia" period (settler map, war map) if it respawns in the post-Islam world, or adopts Islam
• Persia, Assyria added to Egypt and Carthage as civs that can respawn around 870-900 to the Mongol period, as breakaway Emirates, to break up the Arabian Empire without having to fully collapse Arabia
• Better dynamic generic Islamic civ names
• Alexander & Roman conquests now mostly have "pre-requisite" conquests, so that rather than triggering arbitrarily, you can stop further conquests by holding the line at a prereq area. For example, Greece must first conquer the lower part of Anatolia before conquerors can spawn in the Levant, and likewise requires the Levant for Egypt and Mesopotamia, and so forth. Generally, the amount of conqueror stacks in total have been buffed, as it is easier to prevent further conquests from triggering.
• Roman invasion of Britain in 50AD.
• Berbers intensified during Late Antiquity / Dark Ages
• Arabian conquerors for Carthage area in 690, as setup for the Moorish spawn a few turns later.

On the technical side:

• Code for checking if a conquest was successful had to be retouched
• Modifiers replaced from a list to a dictionary; this means that order is no longer important, so that modifiers do not have to be offset when adding a civ, or changing the spawn order of one or more civs. This should be a lot less error prone.
• iNumConquests constant is no longer necessary, as the list that checks if a conquest has been triggered can be dynamically populated rather than statically created. This should prevent any errors when adding a conquest and forgetting to increment the constant.

 

[CivEnthusiast]

I love every single submod idea here, here's hoping that any of those things Leoreth would find interesting to add or improve later on such as the whole Southern China thing

 

[ChineseWarlord]

Leoreth is adamant against an officcial South China civ.

 

[Crossphazer]

I love every single submod idea here, here's hoping that any of those things Leoreth would find interesting to add or improve later on such as the whole Southern China thing

It is, of course, his call. I'm very happy with the state of his 1.18 mod, so this is mostly balancing changes, with extra civs (or respawns of existing civs) to fill up so-called "dead air" in the new map, when historically appropriate.

 

[Lokki242]

I haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but I was always partial to a second civ representing the Manchus/Qing Dynasty (as in 1SDANI's old modmodmod) rather than separate South/North China.

 

[1SDANi]

I haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but I was always partial to a second civ representing the Manchus/Qing Dynasty (as in 1SDANI's old modmodmod) rather than separate South/North China.

Credit where it's due, the Manchus were included from a modmodmod made by Merijn.

 

[Lokki242]

Credit where it's due, the Manchus were included from a modmodmod made by Merijn.

Ah of course! I knew Sweden was his for sure (and maybe the Mamluks?). I actually played through every one of your mods' UHVs quietly during a lurker phase here from like 2022-2023 (when I was waiting for the new map with little to contribute lmao). Oman was such a good game, I long for it.

 

[1SDANi]

Ah of course! I knew Sweden was his for sure (and maybe the Mamluks?). I actually played through every one of your mods' UHVs quietly during a lurker phase here from like 2022-2023 (when I was waiting for the new map with little to contribute lmao). Oman was such a good game, I long for it.

Yep! Sweden, Mamluks, Manchuria, Australia, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Swahili, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe were all Merijin's, Steb made Israel and Teotihaucan, and I made the rest, tho a lot of the ones I programmed were heavily based on outlines from the forums, usually made by Merijn IIRC. I'm glad you liked Oman's gameplay, I remember it taking a good amount of work to get to a polished state where I was happy with it. I might start a new mod after the next major update of DoC releases, but I have half a mind to wait and see what becomes of the custom exe snowern is working on before considering jumping back into modding. I have a few ideas for directions to take the RFC genre that would definitely benefit from it.

 

[Crossphazer]

I haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but I was always partial to a second civ representing the Manchus/Qing Dynasty (as in 1SDANI's old modmodmod) rather than separate South/North China.

Actually, (North, aka the one China in 1.18) China has a "Qing Period", which changes its settler/war map, and it does adopt the "Qing" name, so that's already the case somewhat. The South China civ represents the southern dynasties, often in periods where the south was ruled by Han Chinese and the north was ruled by one of the various "barbarians", depending on the time period.

The usual timeline of events in the test games I run are as such:
Disunited China.
Qin unification period.
Han China.
3 Kingdoms --> NChina becomes Wei, SChina spawns as Wu
Either China gets reunified by one or the other faction, or one or both collapse from barbarians / stability.
NChina, if dead, usually respawns in the late 500s to 700s, and reunifies China.
NChina falls prey to either barbarians, instability or the Mongols.
SChina often respawns somewhere in this period, acts as Southern Song.
Mongols either wipe out both civs or fail to unify China, leaving Southern Song alive.
Mongols collapse; either SChina reunifies China or NChina respawns.
If NChina is not yet alive, it comes back during the Manchu period to reunify China, or at least secure most of the north.
Qing period, then it goes into the Taiping / Republic of China period, which admittedly I haven't tested much (I have been working on game balance up to the Dutch spawn).

 

[Tigranes]

Just for the record, city names in Europe are messed up by one tile currently, so DoC's Lintz is actually Wien and that Wine should be Lintz, I am guessing? So update moved Austrian capital away from it's geographical location.

 

[FishFishFish]

• Better dynamic generic Islamic civ names

Perhaps Pingnan Guo could be a dynamic name for Southern China if they are Muslim?

 

[IrishDragon]

Other things I'm considering:
Time-limited resource(s) near Crete in the Bronze Age. They should disappear by 1000 BC. I might even consider having there be an indy city that gets flipped by Greece, and reducing the Greek settler count to 1 instead of 2, but I'm not sold on the need to make that change, and it might be too deterministic.

Any thoughts on adding the Minoans? Crete itself is small but a UHV could involve settling the islands of the Med

 

[Crossphazer]

Latest changes:

• Arabian conquest of Sind in 710 event
• A tile in north-eastern Egypt changed from desert to semi-desert. This is to allow for troop movements from the Levant into Egypt, even if the city culture has not reached there, for example if Egypt is wiped out by Sea Peoples.
• Babylonia aka Sumeria/Akkadia, now starts the game more south, around Ur. To compensate a time-limited wheat resource was added (up to -1500). The AI has the capital automatically relocated to Babylon when it founds a city there.
  • As a result, I have tuned the Babylonian UHV to be a bit easier, but I'm sure it will need more tuning.
• A lot of tuning for the Bronze Age Levant/Mesopotamia, as a result of playing Assyria games myself to try to achieve the UHV. I think it is currently still too difficult; I think my next move is to assign some AI-only extra units into the common spawn pool of Assyria, such that the human player has access to them as well. Defeating Babylon, Phoenicia, Egypt, likely feuding with the Hittites over Aleppo, as well as dealing with the numerous buffed barbarian stacks of Sea Peoples, Cimmerians, Indo-Iranians, Arameans, are proving too challenging to achieve by 650 BC, when the Persians spawn. Even on Epic speed, where the opportunity cost of moving units is lesser. I usually am one Egyptian city away from achieving the conquest UHV when Persia spawns, so an extra couple of units should probably make the difference.
  • However, I do find the gameplay experience of Assyria to be quite fun. There are a number of civ and barbarian opponents to face and the rush to conquest feels thematic.

Just for the record, city names in Europe are messed up by one tile currently, so DoC's Lintz is actually Wien and that Wine should be Lintz, I am guessing? So update moved Austrian capital away from it's geographical location.

Looking at the positions of Linz and Vienna in the DoC 1.18 map, and comparing to Google Earth or any world map, they seem correctly placed at the moment, in terms of the name map. I just moved the wine to Linz and upped the value of the settler map location of Vienna.

Any thoughts on adding the Minoans? Crete itself is small but a UHV could involve settling the islands of the Med

Initially I wasn't sure if there would be enough turns in the game to fit them well, because of how many years pass per turn in the earlier eras, but the Minoans could plausibly start in 3000 BC or 2500 BC, with the Myceneans as invader & pirate barbarians (I don't think -1600 to -1100 is a long enough time frame for gameplay). The Greeks could spawn in ~850 BC with a number of galleys+settlers and also encompass the Macedonians. It's something I'll have to think about. Higher on my list of priorities for new civs would be some kind of Balkan civ from 680 onwards, as the region is too easily monopolized by the Byzantines during the period 330 to 1400.

However, I am trying to concentrate on tweaking balance so that UHVs for China and other Mediterranean / Near Eastern civs are still achievable and are fun, following my numerous tweaks to spawn dates, unit amounts, civ modifiers etc.

 

[Publicola]

but I have half a mind to wait and see what becomes of the custom exe snowern is working on before considering jumping back into modding.

Sorry, context?