The 19th Century Europe Mod

[Leif]

So what parts of the mod are still being worked on?

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

So what parts of the mod are still being worked on?

Here's what is done:
- Interface for political system
- Map (using Arne's standard Europe with some changes). I went smaller for speed (bigger European maps were just too slow on my computer).
- Civ flags
- City Placement
- Planning

Here's what still has to be done:
- Tech tree
- Units
- Buildings, Wonders, Colonies
- Economy system (resources & factories)
- Leaderheads (will go static)
- Initial unit placement, diplomacy, etc
- Events
- Unification
- Voting

Comments or suggestions on any of these items are welcome.

There's still a lot left, but it's doable. At the current rate, a near complete version should be out in 3-4 weeks. I'm thinking of releasing a pre-beta soon (today or tomorrow), so that people can comment on map and city placement before it gets too late to easily change stuff (city coordinates must be entered in python for events).

EDIT: The mod needs a name as well

 

[scottland]

I'm no expert on Python, but surely you can define constants like BerlinX = 412 BerlinY = 222, and then use those constants in your code.

I'm interested in what you're going to do to the economy system - how much do you want to change?

 

[Leif]

I am very much up for playtesting. I'll do some research if you give me the dates for when the game starts and when it ends.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

@scottland
I've done the city coordinates in python before. It's easy, but very, very tedious (especially if things have to be changed).

As for the economy, nothing will change too much. Resources will be "converted" into manufactured goods (i.e. other bonus resources) with factories (with things like steel mills giving bonus hammers). It's not that innovative, but should add some extra strategy (i.e. do I go for consumer goods or military goods first, etc). Colony wonders will be very important for natural resources. Any suggestions for the economy system are welcome.

@Leif
I'm always glad to have help. The dates are from 1835-1920 if you want to come up with some events, techs, etc. I'll put up a very pre-beta tomorrow morning, mainly for comments regarding the map and city placement.

 

[Gladi]

Bright day
Who is going to start out reactionary? Spain and Portugal?

Please not A-H, or at least not Austria. Conservative yes, reactionary not.

And in defence of socialism, in Germany at the eve of Great War the ruling party was social democrats. Thus I believe that removal of constitutional monarhy from socialism is unfounded.

 

[scottland]

OK, so you're not using the economic system from Victoria - that will make your life easier.

I'm interested to know why you need to refer to city coordinates explicitly in your event code - CyCity has a getName() function, can't you use that to find a city with a particular name. Or have I missed the point?

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

@Gladi
I'm not sure who should start out reactionary. If you say Spain and Portugal, I'll take your word for it. Most will start out conservative.

Germany can still be a constitutional monarchy and have socialists win elections. It's just that socialists cannot switch to constitutional monarchy. E.g. if socialists win in a democratic country, then they can't switch to constitutional monarchy. When your ideology changes, you can always choose to keep the status quo for your civics.

@scottland
Yeah, trying to keep stuff as simple as possible... thus, no crazy new Victoria style economy (although that would be awesome).

getName() will just return the name of the city, rather than point at a city. Check out the Greek World scenario's GreekWorld.py for an example regarding city coordinates. Almost every function requires them, e.g. placing new units, flipping cities, etc.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Here's a very pre-beta for you guys to look at...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/19thCenturyMod.zip

Since nothing is really changed here, I'm really just looking for comments regarding the map and city placement before I go further in adding stuff to the map.

You can also get a feel for how the civics system will work, using worldbuilder to add ideologies, switching to them and seeing what happens on the civics screen. Beware, a lot of the graphics are missing... so you'll have to use the tooltips.

EDIT: WorkInProgress.WBS goes into public maps and the "Age of Ideologies" (for lack of a better name right now) folder goes into the Mods folder.

 

[Cannae]

How large is the map going to be???I personly want it to be a map size of 155by155.Note this mod looks good.

 

[scottland]

OK, from GreekWorld.py

...
# initialise city coordinates
tYerushalayim = (46, 32)
tRome = (23, 45)
tArezzo = (22, 48)
tAdria = (23, 51)
tMilano = (19, 50)
tCarthage = (21, 34)
tPalemmo = (21, 39)
...

this is what I was referring to in my earlier post - how hard is that to change?

Anyway, I'm sure you could write something like:
for pCity in map.getAllCities()
if pCity.getName() equals "Athens"
tAthens = ( pCity.getX() , pCity.getY() )

Map looks good - not sure if it needs uranium or aluminium bonus tiles; love the civic options, good work

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

@Slavic Sioux
I wish it could be 155 x 155, too. However, I think my computer would explode with that kind of map. I've gone with a standard sized map (you can see what it looks like a few posts above) so that things won't slow down too much. I wish it could be bigger, but the incredible drain on system resources that Civ 4 is leaves me no other choice. Thanks for your interest.

scottland
I know the coordinates aren't hard to change... I'm just lazy and want to do it right the first time.

Yeah, the resources on the map have to be redone. Uranium and aluminium will be replaced with something else more suited for the time. Thanks for looking it over

 

[scottland]

Sorry about pestering you about the city co-ordinates, then; thought I might be able to save you some time.

What's your plan for the unit system - will you just have Inf, Cav, Inf-Art, Inf-HQ, etc., will techs giving bonuses to these units, or separate units available with new techs?

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

@scottland
Don't worry about it, I'm just glad a few people are interested in my mod .

As for the units, there's a couple of ways to go. One way, which I am partial to, involves having a few subtypes of infantry (as in Vic), a couple of cavalry subtypes (as in Vic), and an artillery unit. On tech advancement, they'd receive promotion upgrades... e.g. with a Breech-loading tech, all infantry and all cavalry (both in the field and new production) would receive a breech-loading promotion that would increase their strength by a certain amount.

 

[O.O. Howard]

I think the nationalities idea is a good approach. It will be impossible not to offend people. It occurs to me that you could have just plain "slavs" which would cover the balkans AND Russia

I also like the government /civics restrictions. More realism is better than total freedom.

What i would also like is 'random events' which would require a vote and possible action by all the Great Powers. These would 'force' certain decisions but it could steer the game toward realistic conflicts like Crimea, etc. over realistic problems like the Balkans, Shleswig, Rome, Poland, etc.

A U.N. *without a nation which chaired the votes* called the Concert of Europe would be a good way to generate these random questions. Some random events requesting reaction to unrest/rebellion in specific city would be really appropriate. And certain goverment types would perhaps limit or be effected by response.

Another related concept would be that a nation's vote on these events would be what determines their government/civic/policy/economy. For example, you certainly can have that shiney moneymaking civic, all you need to do is support that nationalist revolt in your ally's city.

If any of this is possible for you to include, I would say quite a bit more later if you like.

One last thought. 'Reactionary' sounds so awful in societies that have democracy or leftist understanding of history. But taken purely as a response to an event, we cant argue or get too upset, can we?

AJP Taylor wrote a great book on this era, which you are probably familiar with. The title might suit your scenario...

"The Struggle For Mastery In Europe"

 

[Aquilius]

@Ranbir
I don't remember that... but then, I didn't play mods on Civ 2.

@Hardner
Germany and Italian unitifation will be easily done. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to drop two civs in order to do it (I'm thinking Bavaria and Serbia - Bavaria will just go to German Minor States and Serbia will just go to Ottoman Empire), until >18 civs is possible. Basically, the civs Germany and Italy will be "waiting in the wings" until the conditions for unification are fulfilled by the proper civ(s), i.e. Prussia in the case of Germany and Sardinia or Two Sicilies in the case of Italy. Once these conditions are fulfilled, the civs waiting in the wings will take over all the corresponding units and cities and, if the human was playing them, the human player will be switched to this civ. It's pretty easy with python, really, and the only drawback is that I have to cut two civs (but I think it's worth it).

There is a changeciv funtion that jdog5000 made, but it doesn't change the flags. The method outlined above will change the flags.

So, then the question becomes, what are the conditions for unification?
Here's some ideas, but I'll need some input for the final product. There may also be multiple routes to unification. These are all easily scriptable events.

German Unification:
Method #1 Prussia controls X number of the German Cities from the German Minor States --> forced unification.
Method #2 Franco-Prussian War. Prussia is winning a war with France. A Franco-Prussian war event will fire in 1870, and if Prussia fulfilles the "winning the war" requirements by a certain deadline... the German Minor States move for Empire. Def'n of "winning a war" for this case 1) France controlls no traditional German cities AND 2) Prussia controlls at least 1-2 traditional French cities. (Specifics need polishing, feedback please).
Method #3 For the AI, have a unifying event fire in 1871.

Italy
Method #1 Sardinia or the Two Sicilies have to liberate the other Italian cities from Austria and take X number of each other's towns in war.
Method #2 For the AI, have a unifying event fire in 1861.

German and italian Method #1: Excellent!
German Method #2: Like it, but not at all.
German Method #3 and italian Method #2: No please not!

I don't really like events in Civ. Civ for me is changing history and also sometimes preventing certain things. IMO a Franco-Prussian should be started throughout the game developement or just not. You can manage diplomacy settings and AI behaviour that would cause the AI to declare war sooner or later or with good diplomacy you can eveb prevent wars. Also the AI should face the same goals for unification as the player does and should not be triggered by event at a certain date. The game would just become too static for me. I'm also thinking of a peaceful and diplomatic way for a unification. My idea is a german and italian unique building that provides a vote, like the UN, but where only german or italian civs are allowed to vote. The only one votable thing will be the unification. For Italy both civs have to agree. For Germany it will be mor complicated. If all three agree, there will be the big unification. If only e.g. Bavaria and Prussia agree, only these two will unify. The Minor States can join them later by vote or just getting conquered by partly-unified Germany. For me this would put a lot of realism in it.

 

[dh_epic]

As a frame of reference, the Counter-Reformation is pretty reactionary... not merely Conservative. While much earlier than the starting point of your mod, it's enough to suggest that maybe Spain should be Reactionary.

 

[Leif]

I just realized I don't know where to look for information, I had more to post, but it was deleted, so the trunicated version of what I had to say is rename old techs and put more specific techs for each philosophy and minor change in tech.

 

[Duddha]

Arbitrary Guy,

this mod looks to possibly be one of the best. thanks a lot

I do have a question conserning the religion civic options. What exactly do you mean by Romanticism? You probably know more about 19th century political theory and history than I do, but I was inititially suprised to see that a socialist government could not pick romanticism. It has been my understanding that the german nationalist movement and socialist revolution of 1948 was in many respects a romantic movement, drawing upon the popular german romanticism of the period. It was only later in the century that german romanticism and nationalism were co-oped by conservative and reactionary forces.

thanks,
duddha

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Thanks everyone for your feedback and ideas!

@O.O. Howard
Those are some pretty complex ideas... I'm not sure if I want to put in too many events like that - it may be too complex to implement (I've got to try and keep it simple). Nice idea for a scenario title...

@Hardner
The AI needs and event to unite Italy and Germany... without it, it wouldn't know what to do (without some serious AI reprogramming).

@Leif
Tech research based on ideology requirements is an interesting idea, I'll mull it over and see if it's even easily implementable.

@Duddha
By Romanticism, I specifically meant the romanticism pushed by monarchists, reactionaries, etc... that yearning for the glory days of yore that inculcated many cultures, rather than a romantic nationalism (incidentally, here, one could choose Nationalism and Romanticism... making the same).

I am well aware of the romaticism of the early socialist movements and nationalist movements, as you point out. Also note the interesting alliance between the aristocracy and the proletariat in the early 19th centruy. However, and I know this my own intellectual leaning, I trace the socialist ideology's roots to the Enlightenment. I see Romanticism as part of the anti-Enlightenment or conter-Enlightenment movements of the 19th century. I know it's an specific application of the term, and I know many socialist thinkers had many romantic ideas (it's hard to lump thinkers all together, we're dealign with generalities here), and I know many disagree with such an assessment...

Perhaps, as with other controvertial terms I've used, it should be renamed to something else, perhaps "Aristocratic Culture" or "Anti-Enlightenment" or something like that?


Thanks for the input all