[submod] RFC Dawn of Civilization: Aeons - Version 1.3! (34 new Civs! New wonders, buildings, units, and an overhaul of various mechanics!)

The Aspabarata doesn't let me give it promotions.
That’s weird, I’ll have to give that a look.

EDIT: I managed to find the fix for this bug. It'll be coming in 1.4, so you'll have to wait, but it'll be fixed eventually.
 
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Hi, tried this modmod for the first time now and I have to say great work, thanks for it. Especially the migration is a great idea. Already got some population points this way.
You could use github for the faster bug fixing (and it will mean easier download and upgrade for us), but it is your call.
Anyway, I play Jerusalem civ (Monarch, 1100 AD start), big fun so far but I think these UHVs are literally impossible or there is something I am missing... All the goals are kinda contradictory - you have to build an army to conquer Egypt, get 4 GAs for 15000 culture and also get all Medieval technologies in 88 turns (epic speed) somehow. Even with Egypt I dont know if I am able to get all this in time.
You have big gold surplus from shrines but it seems useless as trading for techs is pretty hard.
The initial prophet in Jerusalem does not help, there are too many prophet points so getting any GA is a lottery even when I switched to Republic immediately to get free artist (also there is no initial free turn for changing civics).
And the third UHV, no Islam civs on Mediterranean coast... thats a very tall goal.
Well, thats my 2 cents for this 1 civ, will try more!
 
Hi, tried this modmod for the first time now and I have to say great work, thanks for it. Especially the migration is a great idea. Already got some population points this way.
You could use github for the faster bug fixing (and it will mean easier download and upgrade for us), but it is your call.
Anyway, I play Jerusalem civ (Monarch, 1100 AD start), big fun so far but I think these UHVs are literally impossible or there is something I am missing... All the goals are kinda contradictory - you have to build an army to conquer Egypt, get 4 GAs for 15000 culture and also get all Medieval technologies in 88 turns (epic speed) somehow. Even with Egypt I dont know if I am able to get all this in time.
You have big gold surplus from shrines but it seems useless as trading for techs is pretty hard.
The initial prophet in Jerusalem does not help, there are too many prophet points so getting any GA is a lottery even when I switched to Republic immediately to get free artist (also there is no initial free turn for changing civics).
And the third UHV, no Islam civs on Mediterranean coast... thats a very tall goal.
Well, thats my 2 cents for this 1 civ, will try more!
The trick is to use your strong economy to citizenship rush units, and your initial crusaders are incredibly powerful, and you could immediately try to push into Egypt. I may give the UHV another check though, since both times I attempted it, Egypt was already being bothered by Crusaders which made conquering them easy.
 
Congratulations on 1.3! Exciting update, and it feels like 1.2 just came out a week ago! :lol: I've only had a chance to play through Ghana for roughly half their game so far. I have a few questions and comments.

For my first roll as Ghana, I got very lucky on turn three, meeting three separate civilizations. :lol:
Spoiler Hello! :
Civ4ScreenShot0014.JPG

- A rework of the immigration system. Now, immigration occurs in all eras, starting from 1000BC and all cities have an immigration and emmigration value determined by culture level, food gain, excess health and happiness, population (raises both immigration and emmigration) and civics (Many civics change immigration and emmigration value from -3 to +3). Check the food tab if you want to see your city's immigration/emmigration values. Note that open borders are required for (non-internal) migration, and external migration in totalitarian or isolationist states may lead to... Consequences.
- Rework of the (previously) Japan exclusive modernisation system. Modernisation now occurs for all civs with a dynamic bonus depending on both your era and the era of the civ you're modernising from. Expect extreme tech discounts between ancient and digital civs! (Note that the recently added "Tech Divergence" mechanic has been removed to account for dynamic modernisation, and Japan's UP has been changed to an additional 25% tech discount while modernising).
For the immigration, do they bring their religion with them? I saw Buddhism in a North African city, and I had never seen that before. Rome/Byzantium was also Zoroastrian this game. I don't have any problem with alt-history, but maybe immigrants bringing their religion helped influence that?
Spoiler Buddhist North Africa :
Civ4ScreenShot0015.JPG

Playing as Ghana, at one point fairly early on, maybe 500 AD or so, people emigrated out of my civilization to Athens. That feels weird for immigrants to travel from sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean so early when that is on the peripheral of my known world. I think the radius that immigrants can move to should expand through the eras. Like maybe 8 land tiles or 15 water tiles in the Ancient, 10 land tiles or 20 water tiles in the Classical, and so forth.

And for the Modernization, how exactly does that work? I think I saw I wasn't modernizing before I had open borders with the Arabs, but after I was.

I was hearing Mesoamerican music in the beginning of my Ghana game. But later on, when I heard your expanded soundtracks, I really enjoyed those.
- A new "Integrate Vassal" mechanic has been added, however, it requires your vassal to be both significantly weaker than you and have a sufficiently high opinion of you. As a coloniser, you could use this to unite all of Africa under your crown!
I think Civ 4 really needs more diplomatic interactions, so I really like this mechanic, though I haven't gotten a chance to implement it yet. This new ability is begging for you to include it in a UHV somewhere: "Peacefully vassalize and annex another civilization."

For Ghana's UP, I was noticing some discrepancy between the yields shown on the city screen, and in the main game. Sorry I forgot to toggle yields, but you can see the Camel yields. Also the flooding didn't seem to occur every 200 years... For Ghana, it should switch in 500, 700, 900 AD, but the timing seemed off. And in the last picture, you can see the city screen only showed the Dye and one river tile as receiving the bonus. Sorry, I didn't think to grab a save... I'm usually better about that.
Spoiler River Yields :
Civ4ScreenShot0016.JPG
Civ4ScreenShot0017.JPG
Civ4ScreenShot0018.JPG


I noticed I inexplicitly had two free priest slots in my cities. No, it's not Deification + Theocracy. I got a save attached there.

One last thing, in 920 AD I just settled a city with the intention of building the new Ouadane Ksar wonder in it... But I can't build it! China had already researched Finance in 920 AD, thus obsoleting it for me! Maybe you can change it's obsolesce technology, or change the rules for obsoleting wonders to allow this wonder to still be built.
 

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Congratulations on 1.3! Exciting update, and it feels like 1.2 just came out a week ago! :lol: I've only had a chance to play through Ghana for roughly half their game so far. I have a few questions and comments.

For my first roll as Ghana, I got very lucky on turn three, meeting three separate civilizations. :lol:
Spoiler Hello! :


For the immigration, do they bring their religion with them? I saw Buddhism in a North African city, and I had never seen that before. Rome/Byzantium was also Zoroastrian this game. I don't have any problem with alt-history, but maybe immigrants bringing their religion helped influence that?
Spoiler Buddhist North Africa :

Playing as Ghana, at one point fairly early on, maybe 500 AD or so, people emigrated out of my civilization to Athens. That feels weird for immigrants to travel from sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean so early when that is on the peripheral of my known world. I think the radius that immigrants can move to should expand through the eras. Like maybe 8 land tiles or 15 water tiles in the Ancient, 10 land tiles or 20 water tiles in the Classical, and so forth.

And for the Modernization, how exactly does that work? I think I saw I wasn't modernizing before I had open borders with the Arabs, but after I was.

I was hearing Mesoamerican music in the beginning of my Ghana game. But later on, when I heard your expanded soundtracks, I really enjoyed those.

I think Civ 4 really needs more diplomatic interactions, so I really like this mechanic, though I haven't gotten a chance to implement it yet. This new ability is begging for you to include it in a UHV somewhere: "Peacefully vassalize and annex another civilization."

For Ghana's UP, I was noticing some discrepancy between the yields shown on the city screen, and in the main game. Sorry I forgot to toggle yields, but you can see the Camel yields. Also the flooding didn't seem to occur every 200 years... For Ghana, it should switch in 500, 700, 900 AD, but the timing seemed off. And in the last picture, you can see the city screen only showed the Dye and one river tile as receiving the bonus. Sorry, I didn't think to grab a save... I'm usually better about that.


I noticed I inexplicitly had two free priest slots in my cities. No, it's not Deification + Theocracy. I got a save attached there.

One last thing, in 920 AD I just settled a city with the intention of building the new Ouadane Ksar wonder in it... But I can't build it! China had already researched Finance in 920 AD, thus obsoleting it for me! Maybe you can change it's obsolesce technology, or change the rules for obsoleting wonders to allow this wonder to still be built.
I agree that pre-industrial immigration should probably be tweaked to have a distance limit. Currently, it requires open borders and that’s all, so theoretically it’s possible to migrate from Ireland to China as long as you keep contact, which is a bit silly.

The chance of religion spread has been reduced considerably from when it existed in base RFC DOC, but it’s still there. I hadn’t seen anything as drastic as Buddhism in Morocco from my experience, (though I did see Confucianism in Central Asia, and Buddhism in Iran), so I may have to tweak that, to historical areas only until late-game, but fixing the distance limit should mend this somewhat.

I have no clue what’s causing the free priests unfortunately. I’m guessing it’s a quirk related to Leoreth’s recent free specialist changes, but I’ll have a Quick Look.

I’ll agree that the obsoletion dates are too early for the new wonders. Coming from the perspective that they need to be build by civs that are always a little behind on the tech tree, I’ll see if I can move their obsolete dates back an era or so.

I suspect the yields not updating at the right times is what’s causing the Ghana issue, but I fixed a similar issue for Germania, so I suspect it’ll be possible, though a bit more complex, to fix here.
 
Also, regarding the alt-just situations, like the one described above, (with Rome and Byzantium being Zoroastrian) my general stance has been that’s it’s okay if this kind of thing happens, as long as it’s not the majority of the time. In fact, it can actually be kind of fascinating. Having run a few 3000BC starts at this point, I’ve seen one where France formed and maintained a Frankish empire well into the Renaissance, one where Celts were stable enough to hold onto France, and Brian Boru led an empire from Ireland to France, and that one incredibly weird Ghana game where Rome survived until 1200 and as a result, forming an Italian-Hispanic empire, and as a result, the HRE never spawned and the Norse and French filled in the gaps. That said, that one was a little too extreme so I found myself buffing Vandals and Gothic conquerors after that.

Regardless, I think these scenarios are kind of fascinating, and I think as long as they don’t occur the majority of the time, they should be fine. My aim in terms of balancing, slightly different to DOC, is to ensure that weird scenarios like the ones I described can happen, but usually won’t. I think if they occur the majority of time, they lose their charm a lot. You’ll see that in EU4 a lot, where Qing, Prussia, Mughals or Netherlands hardly ever end up forming or even in DOC for a while, where Moors used to be regularly holding onto Spain, for example. It stops being fun when the historical thing usually doesn’t happen, but when it’s typically historical, but some outcomes occasionally change, it becomes new and exciting.

I think on top of that, not locking things in historically means that the whole world can change at the hands of a player, which is also pretty fascinating. If I destroy the Romans as the Celts, for example, Byzantium will no longer spawn, and Christianity might not influence the Mediterranean to the extent that it did historically. If I continue to live as the Romans, the HRE will never spawn, as Rome is still occupied by the Roman Empire. If I defend from the Arabs as the Vandals, or the crusaders as the Mamluks, you won’t see Tunis or Jerusalem show up. That’s way more fun because it feels like your actions are influencing the world.

So what are my aims for making the world a bit more dynamic? Well, one thing I have in mind, is to overhaul the way in which the Roman (and possibly Greek??) conquerors work. Instead of forcing Rome to get all the conquerors, I could instead give them to the strongest Mediterranean power in the region (excluding the human player, unless the human is Rome). Ideally, this would typically mean Rome, but if I curb Rome’s power early as the Greeks, Carthaginians, or Celts, it could lead to a completely scenario, with Carthaginians, Greeks, or even Egyptians controlling the Mediterranean. The aim would be for this to very rarely happen unless the player directly influenced it, but it could lead to some fascinating scenarios. This is probably too ambitious, but I wonder if I could give the current Byzantine civ dynamism based on whoever the current Mediterranean hegemon is, taking a set of different names, (eg. Eastern Carthaginian Empire, or something) or even a different core area (perhaps in Italy) if the capital of the civ it fractured from had its capital to the east. On top of that, adding some new dynamic names, like Tunis taking Carthage’s name if Carthage is never conquered by the Romans, could be really cool.

That said, I’m sure some of you would disagree with some of this, and prefer the game to be limited to the parameters of what actually happened historically, which makes me a lot less certain about what I want to implement. Not to mention, a lot of this stuff is pretty unheard of for base DOC, and it might be hard to code in something like this.

Anyways, that’s all of my long alt-hist ramble for now.
 
Played a game with Minoa, noticed the Myceneans with an impossibly strong army north of me, just dozens of swordsmen milling around. I'll roll my game back and see if I can figure out what's going on.
Spoiler crazy army :


202504-2.jpg


Edit: So it just seems like they're getting free units somehow, roughly one per turn, Light Swordsmen and Trojan Horses. This is marathon speed, if that matters, Regent difficulty.
 
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Played a game with Minoa, noticed the Myceneans with an impossibly strong army north of me, just dozens of swordsmen milling around. I'll roll my game back and see if I can figure out what's going on.
Spoiler crazy army :


Edit: So it just seems like they're getting free units somehow, roughly one per turn, Light Swordsmen and Trojan Horses. This is marathon speed, if that matters, Regent difficulty.
I think I might actually know what’s going on there. I had Mycenae included as an “Expansion civ”, which I think gives them free units if you’re a human and control area which is historical for them. This was meant to be done to make Mycenae a threat to the Minoa player, but, clearly it’s designed for large civs in a later eras so it’s totally overtuned.

Rest assured, that mega-stack will be gone next update.
 
Cool. I very much enjoyed puzzling out the Minoans. After a few very close but failed attempts at part one of the second UHV, decided sniping Sphynx and Pyramids is actually a trap, and just went for early Oracle and Knossos Palace. Settled Halicarnassus and Paphos, and just barely made it. So I think its well balanced and fun so far. Of course, the Mycenaeans dowed me with their doomstack right after that, but I'll give it another try next patch.

Going to try someone else next, having a blast so far. Thanks for your hard work <3
 
Playing the Hausa for the first time, and their UA definitely does not feel like a cool ability, maybe "Unique Disability" is more apt. I'm not sure what the chance to capture units is, but it doesn't feel reliable at all, and it feels like there are too many unit spawns to handle. An interesting side effect is that they all seem to want to defend Ngazargamu, so the Kanem Empire is also negatively impacted. It also seems like the units can spawn adjacent to my borders, which caused a few of them to spawn in Benin as well. (To clarify, this happened before I conquered them also)

It also seems like none of the new African civs (have yet to check Ashanti and Songhai) can build Settlers. Is this intentional, or do I need to research a tech first?

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Playing the Hausa for the first time, and their UA definitely does not feel like a cool ability, maybe "Unique Disability" is more apt. I'm not sure what the chance to capture units is, but it doesn't feel reliable at all, and it feels like there are too many unit spawns to handle. An interesting side effect is that they all seem to want to defend Ngazargamu, so the Kanem Empire is also negatively impacted. It also seems like the units can spawn adjacent to my borders, which caused a few of them to spawn in Benin as well.

It also seems like none of the new African civs (have yet to check Ashanti and Songhai) can build Settlers. Is this intentional, or do I need to research a tech first?

View attachment 728504View attachment 728505
African civs can build settlers, but it requires the feudalism tech. BTW, for a it more info about the Hausa UP, it’s a 50% chance of capturing units, and more units will spawn the more cities you have. I tried experimenting with 100% capture rate, but the AI snowballed with it and had a huge army, which I didn’t want. The UP affecting neighbouring civs is definitely an intended affect, and it’s pretty integral to playing the region. As Benin, for example, you’ll want to launch raids against the Hausa lands in order to get slaves and boost your production, whereas Kanem Bornu has to build up a larger army to fend themselves.

As advice, try using a mixed army to take care of the natives. They get stronger at 1200, 1500 and 1800. Once your units are promoted, you can take them down and start earning more units than you lose, and once that starts happening, you can use your army to take on Benin. The 2nd Hausan UU isn’t apt for dealing with natives, but rather is best for launching invasions, so if you want to invade Songhai, try beelining doctrine.
 
That's fair, but my point is that it doesn't feel much like a Unique Ability, it just feels like extra barbs. It sort of has the same flavor as the China start, but even China has a UA that offsets the horsemen snagging your workers from the darkness. This is just an example, but if you just jacked up the rate of native spawn in the area, and had the Hausa UU be something like "when you defeat a native unit, they either join your side or provide gold, and provide science if the unit requires a tech you don't have yet", that sort of achieves the same concept but now the Hausa feel like they have an actual UA. The region itself is a lot more lively now which is great to see, and I'll try their neighbors as is to see how debilitating it is for them as well.
 
Hey, love this mod ive been having a blast playing with all the new civs. The thing I noticed is since theres a lot of new migratory civs (vandals, visigoths, etc) Catholicism might not get spawned cause these civs convert to Orthodoxy usually. Maybe a new conditianal spawn for Catholicism could work, something like if over half of Orthodox cities are outside the control of the civ with the holy city.
Also maybe a new civ in the balkans would be fun to put pressure on the Byzantines and the Holy romans, something like Bulgaria (from cross overhaul mod) or Hungary, since that zone feels a bit empty.
 
Minoans are such a cool little civ. You can solve the Myceneans issue by building a few light swordsmen and taking their capital. Even though the AI has 30-40 units, they're not smart enough to leave a few back home, and only have a single archer. So that takes care of that. Then you cripple the Phonecians by just never giving them open borders, and they're stuck on one city forever. Western Med is basically all yours until the romans spawn, so you can settle Carthage, Sicily and Spain.
 
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Dang. I felt like I had nearly the perfect run going. Got super lucky with hut gold, even got Arithmetic for free from making the rounds on eating up all the goodie huts. I wiped out the Myceneans when they tried to take the independent city. Then three 'dorian hoplites' spawned on my island and instantly ganked my capital. Aren't I the dorians? Or is doric and dorian not the same thing. Oh well. Super tempted to violate my 'no reloads' rule but I won't. sigh.


Spoiler sadness :

20A769-1.jpg



Note to future self: two archers and militia is not enough of a garrison in capital, even if you're on a two tile island.
 
Just playing a chill Roman game, and... No idea if this is caused by Aeons or not, but... Celts have workboats on land :lol:

Spoiler boats on land :


20250412173212_1.jpg

 
I’ll have a look into that one…
One more bug for your queue. If you reload the autosave made in a civ's initial position after waiting out the autoplay turns, the capital city will have no tiles under its control. It fixes itself with one turn played but that causes a turn of starvation, so its pretty impactful.

Edit: And another. Macedon declared war and spawned a stack on me literally the second turn I existed as Armenia.
 
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I’m starting to think that once 1.4 is released, I might make a 1.5 a smaller-scale update focusing a bit more on balancing and changing up the UHVs, and possibly UPs for current civs which I don’t think are fully balanced or dynamic enough (Judah, Jerusalem, Nubia immediately come to mind, and some others could use some work like Mamluks, too.) I could also add some more buildings and possibly techs for the classical-medieval era. I’m also thinking some new UUs could add some more fun, even if outside the UHV timescales, and some modern era leaders for civs like Korea, Cambodia, etc could probably add a bit more.

Beyond that, there’s plenty more I want to add. My scope for adding civs is pretty relentless, so I can see space for just about any region to get some new civs (except Middle East, and Africa, following 1.4, though even in the Middle East I feel like there’s a good case for adding a Turkoman civ, as well as modern Iraq, and maybe even the Ilkhanate???) Anyways, I’ll probably put up another poll and see what you guys favour.
 
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