Suggestions and Requests

[Lord Roanino]

Some suggestions I would like to see in the future.

More dynamic name changes expanded
I feel like some civs are still lacking a bit of variety in terms of name changing during specific eras in history. Some examples are the Mali, Morroco, Khmer, Babylonia, Greece and Ethiopia

For Mali during the medieval/renaissance era once the capital goes to Gao the name will be changed to the Songhai Empire even if the empire was short-lived it's just a nice little touch
During the renaissance and beyond West Africa was pretty much fractured and disunited but some empires still flourished during this period like the Kaabu Empire. For modern names it can be called the Mali of course but also Ghana, Niger, Mauritania, Senegal etc.

Morroco itself has already decent name changes as a civ but it can be expanded upon
Medieval era: The Almoravid as an empire and the Almohads when the civ runs theocracy.
Renaissance era: Kingdom of Morocco is fine but once they are an empire it changes to the Saadi empire or the Alaouite empire (even if the last one isn't even historical at all) When it runs as a city state it can be called as the Barbary States or Barbary Coast which during the 16th and 19th century where huge pirate activities around the Maghreb and the Mediterranean Sea.

For Khmer the only major one missing is the modern kingdom of Cambodia if it ever respawns in the modern era.

For Babylonia I rather see it start as the Sumerians and once it's capital change to Babylon it's the Babylonian Empire. For modern respawn the Republic of Iraq.

I rather have Greece in the ancient/bronze age refer to as the Mycenaeans/Mycenaean city states or kingdom

There are probably more to mention but right now this stands out to me.

More ancient civs respawn/reborn into modern nation states
This pretty much coincide with the first suggestion about having more dynamic names for each civ. This time when they respawn into the modern era. This also means that more ancient civs can respawn when nationalism is discovered.

I already made an example about Mali, Babylon and Khmer.

Other civs are:

The Phoenician/Carthaginians
When the capital is Tunis they respawn as Tunisia, when capital Algiers as Algeria, when capital Beirut as Lebanon and maybe as an extra when the capital is Jerusalem with Judaism as a state religion as Israel

Harappa
This one is tricky but I was thinking for the Harappa's to reborn as the modern Bangladesh or Burma/Myanmar. They can also appear during the renaissance era as the Sikh Empire however that empire was very short-lived and it will also mean that Sikhism has to be implemented in the game as a religion. Unless you like to play ahistorical and make Sikhism the dominant faith on earth that is.

Ethiopia
If the capital is in Mogadishu and it has Islam as a religion it will be modern Somalia

Polynesians
This might be controversial and tricksty like the Harappa one but I can see them reborn as modern Australia or New Zealand since the Aboriginals and the Maori's where of Polynesians descent afterall. Right now Australia feels most of the time empty and there core can move to Australia or New Zealand. Maybe if it runs as fascist it can be called als the Neo Tonga empire or Oceania Empire

More modern leaderheads
This also goes in line with the second suggestion. Modern states means also modern leaders however this means some leaders need to be made animated and researched about them.
Few examples:

For the Dutch as modern leaderhead:
Queen Beatrix or Queen Wilhelmina

For the Russians:
Michail Gorbatsjov or Vladimir Putin

For the Spanish:
We already have Franco but if Spain decides to be a democracy then Adolfo Suarez maybe?

For the Germans:
Angela Merkel

For the Austrians:
Difficult to say.. so for now unknown

For Arabia:
King Faisal or King Salman

For Babylonia/Iraq:
Saddam Hussein

For Columbia:
Luis Carlos Galan?

For the Portuguese:
Also unknown right now


I can go on and on of course and these are just a few examples for modern leaderheads. I think for the British, America and French are fine in my opinion.

This isn't by the way to nitpick or some criticism but just a few sugesstions/opinions that I would like to see in the future. I wish I was a expert in modding otherwise I would have try to implement few of these myself and share it with you guys. For now I try to support this game by having these kinda suggestions or conversations by making this mod even better

On this topic. This isn’t really that big of an issue but it sort of bugged me so I thought I’d mention it. If you play as the Phonecians and found Carthage as your first city instead of Sur, your name becomes the Phonecian City States/Kingdom instead of the Carthaginian City States/Kingdom. Like I said, not really too big of an issue but something that could be fixed in a later update.

 

[ShinobiHus92]

For leaderheads, we are limited by which leaders have art available. I will also not use politicians that are still in office, or have until recently been in office.

Ahh yes I completely understand it's not like a huge major issue at the moment anyway, but someting to think about in the future. I do believe there's still a Queen Wilhelmina leaderhead available for the Dutch https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bts-modular-queen-wilhelmina-of-the-netherlands.236689/

But I don't know if it's still working at the moment.

On this topic. This isn’t really that big of an issue but it sort of bugged me so I thought I’d mention it. If you play as the Phonecians and found Carthage as your first city instead of Sur, your name becomes the Phonecian City States/Kingdom instead of the Carthaginian City States/Kingdom. Like I said, not really too big of an issue but something that could be fixed in a later update.

Seems to me some sort of bug but normally they settle always in Sur. You can report it on the Bugs Reports and Technical Issues topic about this

 

[1SDANi]

For leaderheads, we are limited by which leaders have art available. I will also not use politicians that are still in office, or have until recently been in office.

Yet another reason to get that community asset fund donation thingy setup going!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

For the Austrians:
Difficult to say.. so for now unknown

Either Karl Renner or Bruno Kreisky. If we want a fascist (and boy, do Austrians want fascists), there's the two short-lived dictators Engelbert Dollfuß and Kurt Schuschnigg from the 30s whose political careers can be summed up as trying to get Mussolini-Senpai to notice them while Hitler's breathing down their necks.

Yet another reason to get that community asset fund donation thingy setup going!

And to finally vote Angela Merkel out of office.

 

[Leoreth]

That would be alternativlos.

 

[trevor]

A minor graphics suggestion: color the stability hill/valley indicator in the scoreboard fully red for 'collapsing' instead of having the same color for 'unstable'.

 

[1SDANi]

"For the Germans:
Angela Merkel"

she should be a laderhead for a russian vassal- germany.

Leoreth already said no recent politicians

 

[Leoreth]

how to downvote a post

 

[1SDANi]

she should be a laderhead

*runs lader through Google Translate*

She should be a head charger?

 

[DelilahFlowers]

*runs lader through Google Translate*

She should be a head charger?

Laderhead? More like.... Lagerhead!

Get it? Cuz germans and beer?

..... i'll see myself out.

 

[ShinobiHus92]

Might be controversial to say but wouldn't it be cool during the modern era having barbarian units representing terrorists or rebels?

 

[MechatronicJazz]

Branching here from the discussion on a diplomacy-based Canadian UU, if we were to add a diplomat unit, could there be the possibility of bribing other civs' vassals to switch sides? Alternatively, could that option be added to spies or to the normal diplo screen? I think there would need to be restrictions to make it reasonable, like adjacency or something, but it would be cool to see, say, Rome and Persia fighting with vassals that switch sides occasionally, as happened historically. Though the usefulness of this also depends on how often civs are made vassals instead of conquered or collapsed.

 

[Malchar]

Might be controversial to say but wouldn't it be cool during the modern era having barbarian units representing terrorists or rebels?

I like this. I've also always wanted the ability to produce "state-sponsored terrorists", which would be like marines except they can attack without declaring war like privateers. It just seems like it would add a lot more excitement to the later eras.

However, I'm not sure how the AI would handle it or if such a unit is even possible. I imagine there could be a complication if the unit actually captures a city, which is something a privateer could never do.

 

[ozqar]

I mean, there could a spy ability "sponsor local rebels" with a certain chance to trigger barbarians and/or independent units to appear in the area (with the independents spawning at war with the civ in question).

Another idea "sponsor secessionist movements" could have a chance to trigger city independence in favor of the first non-State culture in a city.

 

[Malchar]

I mean, there could a spy ability "sponsor local rebels" with a certain chance to trigger barbarians and/or independent units to appear in the area (with the independents spawning at war with the civ in question).

Another idea "sponsor secessionist movements" could have a chance to trigger city independence in favor of the first non-State culture in a city.

Those also sound good. I'm always a fan of more espionage options. However, I still like the idea of directly controlling units that can freely attack without declaring war. It's hard to cite specific examples in contemporary history, but it feels like it would be realistic and fun.

I actually tried modding my game to implement this, and it seems to work pretty well. I simply copied the relevant xml from the privateer and pasted it into the xml for the marine.

You can attack units without war as expected, but you cannot attack into city tiles without war. If you are at war, you can capture cities. I'm not sure how the AI will use the units, but I will see as I continue my current playthrough.

 

[Dominus the Mentat]

Since changes related to more specific pagan religions have show up, I would like to give some suggestions that can help.

Most of european nations should have the norse pagan religion. The germanic paganism share close ties with the norse ancient faith. Many gods names, costumes and traditions are very close. In the game, only the germans/austrians, prussians and scandinavians have this representation. However, France, England, Spain, Italy and Portugal have germanic origin that come from the barbarian kingdoms during and after the fall of the roman empire and this have influenciated the development of their culture and national identity for some time. Therefore, if their ancestors are of germanic etnicity, the Asatru should be their correct pagan religion instead of druidism. Druidism is more related to the welsh, irish and scottish peoples who share cultural ties more closely with the ancient celtics, who practise it.

In West and Central Africa, Yoruba is a wrong representation of both Mali and Kongo civilizations. Mandinka peoples are described to have practiced animism before Islam and the peoples of the Kingdom of Kongo have their own religion, before Catholicism has introduced, that was called Bukongo. The Yoruba religion is only common in the yorubaland, territory where the nations Benin, Nigeria and Togo exist today. My suggestion of pagan religion for Kongo and Mali are those:

• Mali - Change Yoruba to Animism. The temple should be the Animist Shrine (I believe some small animal statues or a great old tree can match well with it). I have not found a unique symbol for their specific belief, besides some fetish itens, but I believe it could be something related to nature too (a tree, a leaf, water). URV goal - Since their belief of this faith is based on cure, I believe that something related to cure like heal X units, heal X units for Y times or have no city with unhealthy higher than X % of health are some examples.
• Kongo - Change Yoruba to Bukongo. Their temple I have not found a specific name, but in their language, Kinlongo means temple, so it could be Bukongo Kinlongo or Bukongo Temple. Their symbol should be the Kongo Cosmogram (the symbol in Kongo's banner). I believe the art of the building can continue the same. URV goal - The same kind of goal suggested to animism, since Bukongo is based on cure too, but a different option.

I don't know if it's possible to count healed units or if it's possible to separate between units that have already counted and those that are not. Let me know and I'll think in another possibilities.

Moors pagan religion should be the same of Phoenicia. Since the Phoenicians have spread a lot of influence in the region and the traditional beliefs of the berbers variate between region and which power dominate or have spread strongly his culture to the natives.

 

[Leoreth]

Animism is a religious descriptor just like paganism. It is not a specific name for a belief system.

I am limited by art assets, so please include suitable materials for icons etc. in your suggestions.

 

[Krieger-FS]

Considering that Mali represents broadly all the Mandé peoples (which were the main empire-builders in the region), how about we use their pagan religion to represent the older Ghana Empire paganism?

I've been reading about these medieval kingdoms recently (the more “academic” Cambridge History of Africa volumes and the more general Empires of Medieval West Africa, both that can be easily found online) and found very sparse information about their pre-Islamic beliefs (usually described as "Traditional African Religion"), but some aspects can be interesting to include.

According to the Muslim geographers/explorers, the Ghana capital, which was divided in the Muslim and pagan (where the king, the Ghana, lived) towns, the latter possibly named al-Ghaba (literally “forest” in Arabic) had several sacred groves where the priests-sorcerers lived in. Thus, the pagan temple could be named “Sacred Grove”. I have to say that I don’t know if there is a good easily available art for it but could be a small enclosure with some trees (perhaps baobabs?).

One interesting aspect that I also found is that many of the priests were also blacksmiths because their expertise with fire and turning iron into tools or weapons was regarded as something magical. Perhaps something related to this aspect could be interesting as one of the URV requirements, requiring building some X number of forges and having X mineral resources.

I’m unsure about good symbols or proper names for the religion, since these traditional religions were usually beliefs systems closely related to their own ethnic and cultural groups. Thus, one idea is to simply use Mandé as pagan religion. Another option could be Juju, which is a term applied broadly to the traditional West African religions (arbeit more specifically to areas in modern Nigeria and Cameroon) that had magical properties. Other technically incorrect but the geographically closest possible options that I've found in the wiki are Bori (the animism of the Hausa, in northern Nigeria) or a fat Roog (the magical paganism of the Serer, in Senegal and Gambia).

 

[Steb]

There's been some controversy here in Montreal surrounding John A. Macdonald, whose statue was taken down by protesters this week. And I realized from skimming the news that Macdonald was openly not a democrat. He was very wary of the "tyranny of the masses," and the one minority he thought deserved protection — unlike the First Nations, Asian Canadians, and French Canadians — was... well, in his words:

“We must protect the rights of minorities, and the rich are always fewer in number than the poor.”

Currently, Macdonald has Democracy as his favorite civic. This is a bad fit. Let's change it to Free Enterprise or, better yet, Individualism.

 

[MechatronicJazz]

If you're looking for some info on pre-Islamic west African religion, the Epic of Sundiata has some interesting syncretisms, depending on the version. In addition to the blacksmith priests that Krieger-FS mentions, there is also the hunters, who seem to have had a spiritual role as well. The version of the Sundiata that I've read depicts him as both a Muslim king and a Hunter-king, which seemed to represent the presence of both pre-Islamic and Islamic belief in early Mali. I don't know much more than that, but it could be worth looking into more.

Edit: Quick clarification - I used past tense, but 'Traditional African Religion' probably still exists in west Africa, even if it likely isn't nearly as widespread now, so there may be modern sources to look at well. Historical sources may give a better picture of how things were in the past though.