The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[thamis]

I just downloaded the mod a few days ago and it is great. I love ancient warfare in fact I am a grad. student in ancient history and this mod is more historically accurate then I ever dreamed of seeing. Thanks for making such a great mod and keep up the great work!

Good to see a historian here! We're all just hobby history buffs...

If you see any inaccuracies, please let us know. Also, if you feel like writing some civilopedia stuff, let us know too.

Oh, and if you're a grad student in ancient history... can you read / write in ancient languages? It would be really cool to have city names in their ancient tongues.

Ever heard of the Spartans or Alexander the Great... The Greeks invented western warfare as we know it today, with relatively small, but well trained and armored forces. The Greeks where always out numbered when fighting foreign armies, but they almost always won as well. Alexander marched through the Persian Empire with only around 40,000 men. In my opinion the Greek Hoplite should be very strong, but very expensive. This would reflect how they where in reality.

I agree with that.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

Regarding traits: If the Agressive trait stays it should be solely for imperial civs. As Thamis has stated before the ancient Mediterranean was crowded with warlike people, but that doesn't mean they had elite troops and barracks in every village. Free combat promotion and double production speed of barracks sounds very Roman to me and hardly Gaulish or Germanic.
With the warlord expansion we'll get two more options for traits, and the "Protective" trait (double production speed of walls and castles, free archer and artillery promotion) would fit some barbarian civs better IMO. The other trait is, AFAIK, "Charismatic" with ,among other things, increased happiness in the cities. Wich leader is the most charming do you think?

 

[thamis]

Rather make them seafaring. If harbours give commerce +1 for sea tiles, that will be the same as greece is very sea-oriented. I would rather make them creative to reflect their cultural power.

Concerning this discussion I would propose to add the possibility for 3 traits:

Really great winners or "could-very-likely-have-been-winners" of the ancient age should get 3 traits. That is Rome, Greece, Carthage. Any other? Barbarian civs (like Germania, Gaul, Scythia, Iberia etc.) get 1 trait, the rest 2.

Thus Greece could be seafaring, financial and creative. Carthage like Greece but instead of creative organized and Rome financial in addition to expansive and organized (which are great traits for Rome).

What do you think?

I'd love it if with Seafaring harbours gave +1 commerce on sea tiles. I just don't know if that's possible. The XML doesn't allow for that option, so we'd have to do it with Python. Shqype?

I agree with the 3 traits, but some of the potential winners are already strong enough (Carthage and Egypt, for example). Rome and Greece could use a 3rd trait.

 

[thamis]

Hi,

the Mod works perfectly on my laptop, but at my desktop it's just a mess.
When the screen opens, where to choose the difficulty there is just no text, when going on (by now I know what should have been there), the city line is messed up and when choosing production for a city there is no text either just the icons.
I already deinstalled the whole game, deleting all old mods, installed new with patch 1.61 again and installed the newest graphic driver.

The original game worked just fine.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

Thanks,
Waterloo

You need to have patch 1.61 installed and have the latest version of the MOD. If you see no text then that's because either you haven't got 1.61, or you have an old version of the mod that was made for 1.52.

 

[thamis]

Regarding Illyria and Greece: The same thing happens in all my games; Teuta blocks greek expansion to the north, and by the time open borders can be signed all lands are "taken" wich leaves Agamemnon ruler of a tiny little kingdom at the bottom of the scorelist. Since Illyria and Greece always share religion no wars has ever been waged between them, despite their close borders. In southern Italy two or three colonies are always established before the Romans get there wich IMO would be perfect if they were Greek or Carthaginian settlements and not Illyrian.
My suggestion is to remove, at least, one of the two timber-resources next to Skodra; timber 38,24, and perhaps also fish 38,25 or cow 38,26.
Instead of pumping the Greeks full of testosteron and steroids (many resources) i would like to see what happens if they get to start with two settlers. Maybe that would make the AI act out history, wich IMO is a good thing.

I agree, I think we should remove one timber near Skodra and move it into Greece.

Giving two settlers IMHO is putting them on steroids. In essence, two settlers at starts means a DOUBLING of their power, because they will get double production, and double commerce from turn 1 on, meaning they can pump out twice as many settlers and research twice as many technologies. No, some steroids in the form of resources are definitely more balanced.

 

[thamis]

Regarding traits: If the Agressive trait stays it should be solely for imperial civs. As Thamis has stated before the ancient Mediterranean was crowded with warlike people, but that doesn't mean they had elite troops and barracks in every village. Free combat promotion and double production speed of barracks sounds very Roman to me and hardly Gaulish or Germanic.
With the warlord expansion we'll get two more options for traits, and the "Protective" trait (double production speed of walls and castles, free archer and artillery promotion) would fit some barbarian civs better IMO. The other trait is, AFAIK, "Charismatic" with ,among other things, increased happiness in the cities. Wich leader is the most charming do you think?

Here's what we'll do. We all know that Rome needs some steroids, so let's make them the only civ with the Aggressive trait, and change all the others around (plus giving the Seafaring trait).

 

[thamis]

Ok, I've got an amazing idea that I want to try out. Why do we have to limit ourselves to 6, 7, or 8 traits? We can make as many traits as we want to! Tailoured to as many civilizations as we want to.

Ok... how about we make yet another historical change and give each civ an advantage in the unit type it was known for. Nubians, Minoans (well, they're not in TAM4), and Babylonians were known for their good archers. Ther Germanics were known for good melee fighting. The Scythians were great riders.

Combat Expertise: Melee
- Free Combat I promotion for all melee units
Civs: Germanic Tribes, Gaul, (Greece?), Illyria, Kolchis, Hittites, Dacia, Persia

Combat Expertise: Mounted
- Free Flanking I promotion for all mounted units
Civs: Scythia, Lydia, Medes

Combat Expertise: Ranged
- Free Drill I promotion for all skirmisher units
Civs: Iberians, Nubians, Babylonians

Combat Experise: Naval (this is a weaker one, so it needs significant advantages)
- Free Flanking I promotion for all naval units
- Free Combat I promotion for all naval units
- Double production speed for harbor, lighthouse
Civs: Carthage, Phoenicia, (Greece?)

Standing Military (a strong one, for Rome only)
- Free Combat I promotion for all melee & mounted units
- Free Drill I promotion for all skirmisher units
Civs: Rome

These would come in addition to the 1, 2, or 3 traits that the civs get. It obviously makes the Aggressive trait redundant.

 

[thamis]

Wich leader is the most charming do you think?

Cleo and Dido of course!

 

[Ick of the East]

Wich leader is the most charming do you think?

I must say that the animated leader head of Hatshepsut could easily pass for my Siamese wife. It's almost scary. I end up giving her anything she asks for!

 

[Jet]

If you want to, you can make more changes to the map. If you don't, I can make them, using your suggestions here.

Go for it, if you don't mind. I don't have any pending changes right now. I think the main things that would motivate me to change it are feedback from other people and changes to the mod itself.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

I must say that the animated leader head of Hatshepsut could easily pass for my Siamese wife. It's almost scary. I end up giving her anything she asks for!

Hatshepsut? (because she looks like your beautiful wife) or your wife? (because she looks like mighty Hatshepsut)

 

[Waterloo]

Well,

actually I just installed everything again, and it is definitely now patch 1.61.

The Mod I downloaded again from the german as well as from the uk-site says v 1.9.

Extracted it to the Main folder, but it is all the same, lots of text missing. On the starting screen there is no version number, so it could be that it is indeed an earlier version, but where doese it come from? In the Mod folder there ist just the extract from TAM_v1.9.

By the way before I did everything new, I tested v1.8 again, that works without any trouble.

Thanks for your help,

Waterloo

 

[thamis]

How did you launch the mod? Double-clicking the map file?

 

[Waterloo]

Yep, I tried double-clicking and the long road over original civ 4.
Than I get this blues screen to choose and there is already something missing.

I just got the idea, is it possible that the patch 1.61 isn't properly installed? But I did over the update-feature.

Waterloo

 

[thamis]

Make sure you deleted all old TAM versions.

Also make sure you installed TAM to the MAIN civ4 directory. This applies to v1.8 and v1.9.

You normally get this screen if the game fails to load the text files. So I assume that something with your TAM 1.9 install must have gone wrong.

Another trick would be to try to set the CIV4 language to English. You can do that in your CIV4 Config file by setting the language line to 0.

; English(0),French(1),German(2),Italian(3),Spanish(4) - Defaults to user-installed language
Language = 0

 

[thamis]

found the bug

 

[Maniac]

I'd love it if with Seafaring harbours gave +1 commerce on sea tiles. I just don't know if that's possible. The XML doesn't allow for that option, so we'd have to do it with Python. Shqype?

IIRC you can give civs a free building in every city. Just make a building especially for the seafaring civs, and set it at 100% destruction chance for when civs capture the seafaring civs' cities.

I don't know though if a civ would automatically get its free building when they capture a city. :hmmm: If not, other way to achieve the same. Give the "seafaring" civs a special capital, just like every civ in FfH has. Let that capital provide that building to every city.

 

[Waterloo]

Thanks a lot, with the english language version there is no problem. Everything works fine.
Still I would be glad, if this could be fixed, so that the german version is available again, my seven-year old could play for hours (if only he were allowed), but reading english is hard for the little one, when german reading ist still tedious...

Thanks again,

Waterloo

 

[clabauterman]

Thank you for a great mod. I love the ancient era, and this TAM seems even better than the mod for Civ3.

 

[Cannae]

It says that Numidia is not on the map does that mean you can't play as them???