The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[davbenbak]

I almost didn't try 1.8 because the lack of missionaires but to be honest I didn't miss them much. Seems to me like most ancient religions were fairly localized even though they may have been variations on the same theme. Maybe you could "seed" certain religions like paganism with the Gauls, Pantheon with the Greeks, Sun God with the Egyptians etc and then increase whatever variable controls their spread. In Civ 3 there was the always useful hidden tech.

I really liked the fact that only Christianity had the bonus of missionaries to represent it's rather rapid spread throughout the Mediterranean. Had the mod dates lasted longer I guess Islam should be added as well but I guess that would be more for a Medieval mod.

 

[davbenbak]

Maybe the last thing the Romans need is another UU but...maybe you could concider making a Republican Legion medium infantry that upgrades to a heavy Imperial Legion. The Republican Legion being more a formation of slingers, archers and spearmen based on age and social standing could have those kind of bonuses automatically while the Imperial Legion would stay with the automatic bonus it already has. I think it is important to have a unit like the onagar to represent Rome's combat engineering skill but perhaps those bonus could just be given to the Legions and it eliminated. To temper them a bit, no unit would upgrade to a Republican Legion and the Imperial Legion would not upgrade to armored infantry. Just a thought.

 

[bovinespy]

Hello all (especially Thamis). I just tried this mod out this weekend while waiting for Rhye's mod to come into shape, and I must say: TAM is a helluva lot of fun! I haven't read the whole thread (90+ pages ), just the last 10 pages or so since 1.8 came out, but just to throw in my 2 cents:

1. I like the idea of still being able to build your UU even after you discover a tech that makes it "obsolete". Especially as I tend to tend to play builder-style strategies with civs that have good early archer UUs (Carthage, Iberia, Babylon), this would be very helpful.

2. As far as missionaries, I think for historical accuracy, they should be in the game. After all, Rome was famous for having temples to every conceivable deity in the then-known world, which would be an impossibility under the current "one-city-one-religion" setup. More generally speaking, while early in the period of time the game represents, say 6th to 1st millennium BC, religions often were identified only with specific geographic regions, by the time of the Persian Empire, relative tolerance and cosmopolitanism began to be the norm. Then, with the rise of the Christian Roman Empire after Constantine, religion moved back towards being a divisive factor in geopolitics.
I would suggest a 3-part approach to religion:
1. up until about 1000 BC, no missionaries (make them enabled by a tech usually discovered around this time) - religion would have default levels of influence on diplomacy
2. around 1000 BC, enable missionaries - also, greatly diminish (or perhaps even eliminate entirely) religion's effects on diplomacy
3. around 300 AD, disable missionaries for all but Christianity and introduce heavy boni/mali for Christianity in diplomacy
The third part may not even be necessary, as this is close to the end of the game's time period and may be overly complicated. In any case, I really think the first 2 parts would greatly increase the historical feeling and also give Spiritual civs something to do! (Ironically enough, the criticism of vanilla Civ4's "more-is-better" approach to religion is actually least relevant to the heart of the time period in this mod - though otherwise I agree with the criticism. One of the things I really liked about ArbitraryGuy's Europa mod was the way that having extra non-state religions in your cities actually increased unhappiness.)

3. Regarding AI aggresiveness, my experiences may be atypical, (and I might be a pretty crappy player), but I'm finding that the AI regularly fight each other - and are particularly fond of ambushing me at inopprtune times! However, I will agree that what I am definitely not seeing is a "killer instinct" with the AI that will have one or two dominant nations swallow all their competitors. As a result, the mid- to late-game is slightly disappointing, as there's just not anybody really scary left to challenge the human. Actually, by this point, I usually find my greatest enemy is the clock, not the AI.

Thanks for reading this and especially thanks to Thamis and all the others who have helped make this fantastic mod. I eagerly look forward to 1.9!

 

[Shqype]

I'm playing as Illyria at the moment, and I must say I find them way overpowered. Creating an empire in no-time is fun to a certain degree, but it's not a challenge, it's like stealing candy from a kid.

I rushed my first settler south to the area between Skodra and Mycaene and founded Dyrrahu and immediatly started working on Oracle of Dodona. I then rushed a second settler straight east to the area where the river meets the sea. Voila! - The Greeks are locked from expansion! There are a lot of good resources near all the new cities and having built the first wonder, I also completed The Oracle, The Colossus and The Sphinx and founded Sun worship while I kept producing settlers and invaded and conquered the Getae.

In the vicinity of Skodra are two timber-resources, one fish and one copper, all of wich are revealed early in the game. Add the expansive trait and you have all you need to produce a great number of settlers fast and build all the early wonders, found a religion etc. I suggest that at least one of the timber resources should be removed and, when Warlord-expansion is released, change Teutas traits to Protective/Agressive instead of Expansive/Agressive.

I would very much like to play as the Illyrians then and take on the challenge of being situated between the Greeks and the Romans.

Interesting that your 2nd city built the Oracle of Dodona, since in real life there was a city in that area of the map (Dodona) where that Oracle was built

No matter which civilization you play as, you will always have an advantage over the computer. I bet you if you play as Mycenae you will do even better than the Illyrians! The Greeks have been given clay which doubles the production speed of granary and can build settlers right away (whereas Illyrians have to research Tools first).

As for the AI, as Thamis stated before, the rise of the Illyrians / Mycenaeans depends on their control of Epirus. I've seen games where Skodra was the southernmost Illyrian city and they expanded north past Dalmatia almost to the Italian Alps; the Mycenaeans expanded into southern Albania, all of Macedonia, and Bulgaria up to Dacian land. So it's different every game.

Jorgen_CAB has been doing some SDK work to improve the game, and has been experimenting with making the AI smarter in where it builds cities. Here is a screenshot he took:

Look at the minimap: see how big Mycenae is compared to Illyria? They're roughly the same (although Illyria seems to have more cities).

Thanks for your comments Ingvina Freyr. We will look to balancing that out a bit more. Also, with improved personalities, we can make it so that the Greeks are quicker to declare war on the Illyrians if the Illyrians attempt to block them from expansion

 

[Shqype]

Davbenbak and bovinespy, thanks for posting!

We'll see what can be done about religion. If we must implement missionaries, we can set restrictions on them. For example, all except Christianity might be able to have a maximum of 2 missionaries at any given time, but these missionaries also have a higher cost than Christian missionaries (which might be unlimited) and cost less.

I also like the idea of restricting missionaries past a certain point as well. If a mid-game technology allows for missionaries, then perhaps the technology Empire makes them obsolete (since once the Empire accepted Christianity the other religions declined).

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

Interesting that your 2nd city built the Oracle of Dodona, since in real life there was a city in that area of the map (Dodona) where that Oracle was built

Yes, I believe you said something about that earlier, and that's why I wanted it built there instead of Skodra.

No matter which civilization you play as, you will always have an advantage over the computer. I bet you if you play as Mycenae you will do even better than the Illyrians! The Greeks have been given clay which doubles the production speed of granary and can build settlers right away (whereas Illyrians have to research Tools first).

I haven't played as the Myceneans in the 1.8 version yet, but I will try that soon and see how it turns out. I'll let you know.

 

[Psycadelic_Magi]

Ok no-one really took my idea too seriously...

And also (if someone has the time) I think a state-religion-affects-city-appearance system would be pretty cool- like they have in FFH; say if you have the greek pantheon your city buildings feature marble columns etc and so on... I know its not completley accurate to suggest religion defines culture type but i think it would make the game alot more visually interesting.

Ive actually thought of an idea even more ludicrous (I think, but i am not a modder). How impossible would it be to have a completley separate additional religion system running alongside the usual one (so you could have one from each as the state religion)? Rename these 'cultures' and have them either start all at once (when a certain civ founds its first city) or use the usual founding method but only allow each one for specific civs.
I think they should either spread in the usual style (but slowly), or a different system based on culture levels within cities containing the culture style to be spread.
For instance- when the greeks found their first city they start 'the hellenistic style' or 'hellenistic culture' and they have greek style buildings. This will give no real bonuses whatsover but i think mabe a small dipomatic gain with other civs with 'hellenistic culture' due to a bit of mutual respect that might make them less likely to go to war with each other.
You could have others; ie 'germano-celtic tradition' or something. I just feel that my idea would give the mod alot of historical/geographical flavour that makes it seem like 'the mediterranean' rather than a map that looks like it.
Obviously it's alot of work, but i feel it would make TAM stand out in the crowd even more.

Am i insane/foolish? Please give me your thoughts!

 

[onedreamer]

I'm sure that every civ has some metal in their immediate neighbourhood. But do they also all have copper in their vicinity? (If they do, ignore what follows ) If they don't, the reassurance that you only need one metal won't help you much if you haven't researched bronze working yet, only copper working, and another civ starts an early war against you.

a 10% difference in strength of some units won't change much the odds of a war... especially on early units that have lower strength values. Also, if a civ doesn't have copper in the vicinity of the starting place, probably it's not supposed to be strong compared to other civs in the early game...

However without missionaries you can currently only have one religion per city. So researching a tech that founds a religion while you already have one makes no sense anymore. I don't understand how you can consider that an improvement. Without missionaries the whole Civ4 religion system and the strategies that derive from it fall apart.

because as I said and will repeat here, when I proposed to remove missionaries, I also said it would have been necessary to make religions spread into cities which already have one or more. Obviously simply removing missionaries is not something that can work, but the solution to this is not to return to the first system which is inappropriate for TAM map and historical scenario, but rather to implement what we said above.

Actually personally I think the religion system Civ4 introduced where the more religions you have in a city, the happier your people are is rather ridiculous

I'd like you to elaborate this thought, since mine is exactly the opposite. Why do you think that if you give followers of religion X a temple where to pray, it's ridiculous to think that they will be happier ?

 

[onedreamer]

I totally agree. What makes sense for defenders on land makes no sense at sea. There are no ships in foxholes.

Although I don't know much of naval warfare, it seems pretty intuitive to me that a defending ship has huge strategic advantages on an attacking one, unless this one comes out of the fog within a few meters from the target. An unlikely scenario.

 

[thamis]

Ok no-one really took my idea too seriously...

Ive actually thought of an idea even more ludicrous (I think, but i am not a modder). How impossible would it be to have a completley separate additional religion system running alongside the usual one (so you could have one from each as the state religion)? Rename these 'cultures' and have them either start all at once (when a certain civ founds its first city) or use the usual founding method but only allow each one for specific civs.
I think they should either spread in the usual style (but slowly), or a different system based on culture levels within cities containing the culture style to be spread.
For instance- when the greeks found their first city they start 'the hellenistic style' or 'hellenistic culture' and they have greek style buildings. This will give no real bonuses whatsover but i think mabe a small dipomatic gain with other civs with 'hellenistic culture' due to a bit of mutual respect that might make them less likely to go to war with each other.
You could have others; ie 'germano-celtic tradition' or something. I just feel that my idea would give the mod alot of historical/geographical flavour that makes it seem like 'the mediterranean' rather than a map that looks like it.
Obviously it's alot of work, but i feel it would make TAM stand out in the crowd even more.

Am i insane/foolish? Please give me your thoughts!

Hmm... I don't like this idea so much. I think the one with religion defining city appearance is better, but again not really that warranted for TAM. What do you do when a city has more than 1 religion?

 

[onedreamer]

Ok no-one really took my idea too seriously...

your idea is nice but it's not something you can implement in a finger snap. I think the main priority now is to balance the mod. What you propose is a bit different from FFH, where in fact buildings just get a change of color (except for the Overlords religion), which is much faster to implement than creating new sets of buildings.

 

[onedreamer]

2. As far as missionaries, I think for historical accuracy, they should be in the game. After all, Rome was famous for having temples to every conceivable deity in the then-known world, which would be an impossibility under the current "one-city-one-religion" setup. More generally speaking, while early in the period of time the game represents, say 6th to 1st millennium BC, religions often were identified only with specific geographic regions, by the time of the Persian Empire, relative tolerance and cosmopolitanism began to be the norm.

Actually, for historical accuracy I don't know of missions or monasteries of Amon Ra or Zeus. What I know is that like you wrote, the ancient peoples were much more religion tolerant, in a way that I'd compare to our current days, and religions spread because of emigration and trade, not because of missionaries.

(Ironically enough, the criticism of vanilla Civ4's "more-is-better" approach to religion is actually least relevant to the heart of the time period in this mod - though otherwise I agree with the criticism. One of the things I really liked about ArbitraryGuy's Europa mod was the way that having extra non-state religions in your cities actually increased unhappiness.)

Have to disagree here too. First you state that the ancient ages were much more religion tolerant, then you compare TAM to a mod which is clearly based on the medieval history of Europe, were we all agree that religion had different roles. If there is religion tolerance, there can't be unhappiness for non-state religions. It's one of two things, can't be both
If you visit or visited the ruins of Pompei you'll probably agree with me. There are rests of temples to non-roman deitis (egyptian for example), and they were built to make everyone happy, not the other way around

 

[oriel94]

The heading means 'thanks very much' in Cantonese.

This is for giving us the Ancient Mediterranean Mod. I have just finished my first game, and it raises the enjoyment of Civ4 to a whole new level. I like everything about it. So much work has gone into this that I can hardly believe it, la! Thanks again to all involved, including His Celestial Majesty, Thamis.

 

[Maniac]

a 10% difference in strength of some units won't change much the odds of a war... especially on early units that have lower strength values.

10% makes a lot of difference. To use a naval example, after I removed the 10% defense bonus two biremes each with a combat I promotion had a 50% chance of winning the battle. Before I removed thar bonus, the attacking ship had only 1/3 chance of winning!

Also, if a civ doesn't have copper in the vicinity of the starting place, probably it's not supposed to be strong compared to other civs in the early game...

But if they don't have the bonus in the early game, they might not survive to the middle game where they are supposed to be strong. Besides, if it's the goal to follow history closely, a lot of civs shouldn't be in the game in 5500 BC.

because as I said and will repeat here, when I proposed to remove missionaries, I also said it would have been necessary to make religions spread into cities which already have one or more. Obviously simply removing missionaries is not something that can work, but the solution to this is not to return to the first system which is inappropriate for TAM map and historical scenario, but rather to implement what we said above.

I agree with that of course.
Will your proposed solution be implemented in the next version?

I'd like you to elaborate this thought, since mine is exactly the opposite. Why do you think that if you give followers of religion X a temple where to pray, it's ridiculous to think that they will be happier ?

You said that in the ancient period people were rather tolerant of other religions. However being tolerant doesn't mean that the rulers actively encouraged as many religions as possible to exist in their cities, as you need to do in Civ4 for maximal happiness. If faced with the choice, I assume the rulers would still prefer one religion over a whole bunch, even if they don't actively act against them.

It's a pity religion doesn't work like culture in Civ4: with percentages. Then temples could instead of giving a fixed +1 happiness for instance make 20% of the followers of that religion happy. Then there wouldn't be the need to get as much religions as possible.

Although I don't know much of naval warfare, it seems pretty intuitive to me that a defending ship has huge strategic advantages on an attacking one, unless this one comes out of the fog within a few meters from the target. An unlikely scenario.

Offense and defense are rather relative concepts in Civ4. In reality I assume a defensive fleet should be able to stop an invasion fleet. However in Civ4 there aren't zones of control or such and an invasion fleet can just sail past ships patrolling the coast. So in order for the defensive fleet to stop the invasion fleet they're forced to 'attack' the invasion fleet in Civ4 terms. Hence the 10% bonus doesn't make much sense IMO.

***

Btw I don't know much about military history, so I have a general question. I'm wondering about units such as Spearman -> Armoured Spearman, Javelineer -> Armored Javelineer, the Bowman unit, the most advanced infantry units with techs such as Tactics, Military Training etc. Do these represent true advances in weapon or armour technology, or are they rather there to make sure that units get gradually better by research?

 

[thamis]

The units (especially their names) are simply there to make them advance throughout the tech tree.

We divided the units into historically accurate categories (Skirmisher, Medium, Heavy, Mounted, Mounted Skirmisher, Siege), but the units themselves aren't based on truly accurate historical developments. In general, they represent the use of copper, bronze, iron, and steel -- each of which was a significant advantage over the enemy.

 

[Maniac]

In that case: isn't there a duplicate advancement for most units as smiths already give the copper/bronze/iron/steel promotion?

Btw, a little modding question. I can't find a seperate file where you define the unit categories such as Skirmisher, Medium etc. Does the game automatically recognize those by simply naming them in UnitsInfo.xml?

 

[thamis]

Yes, there is a duplicate advancement. Again for gameplay reasons: To give those who have the resource a slight advantage while not dooming those who haven't got the resource.

Regarding the XML, I don't know off the bat and am too busy to look it up (until tomorrow). Maybe Shqype of Laurino can help out on that.

 

[bovinespy]

Actually, for historical accuracy I don't know of missions or monasteries of Amon Ra or Zeus. What I know is that like you wrote, the ancient peoples were much more religion tolerant, in a way that I'd compare to our current days, and religions spread because of emigration and trade, not because of missionaries.



Have to disagree here too. First you state that the ancient ages were much more religion tolerant, then you compare TAM to a mod which is clearly based on the medieval history of Europe, were we all agree that religion had different roles. If there is religion tolerance, there can't be unhappiness for non-state religions. It's one of two things, can't be both
If you visit or visited the ruins of Pompei you'll probably agree with me. There are rests of temples to non-roman deitis (egyptian for example), and they were built to make everyone happy, not the other way around

Hi onedreamer! Thanks for the reply - though I'm afraid you misunderstand my proposal. Missionaries, though not 100% historically accurate, do somewhat reflect the manner in which I believe these ancient cults actually spread - by devotees of particular deities moving to new locations. Maybe not actual "missionaries". Fine. Keep that for Christianity only. But then you definitely have to allow multiple religions to spread to a city (and probably increase the spread rate, as well). I would argue that, in a strategy game where you are supposed to represent a leader making decisions for his people, and since it is conceivable that leaders could have encouraged the spread of religions (and indirectly did, by funding local temples in many instances), it is more accurate (and more fun) to allow the construction of missionaries. However, I wouldn't be against their prohibition combined with a greatly increased spread rate (and multi-religion cities).

In the second case, I actually wasn't comparing TAM to Europa - I was comparing vanilla Civ4 to Europa. I commented that I think a Europa-type religion system would actually be more appropriate for the vanilla game, but that the vanilla system was actually, ironically, more appropriate for most of the TAM period. Again, let me emphasize my 2-part concept: in the early part of the game, religion would spread slowly (perhaps not even crossing national borders at all) and would have default effects (i.e. +4/-4) on diplomacy. There would also be no missionaries during this time period. Then, for most of the later part of the game, religion would spread greatly (either with or without missionaries), but its effects on diplomacy would either greatly be diminished (perhaps +1/-1) or maybe eliminated altogether. I think this system would accurately reflect the provinicial nature of early religions, as well as the cosmpolitan nature of advanced ancient empires.

Christianity could be handled by perhaps being the only religion allowed to spread (either by missionaries or diffusion) after a certain point, and also by restoring the deafult boni/mali (+4/-4) for co-religionists/"heathens".

And though I haven't actually been to Pompeii, I understand that the Romans had temples to Mithras, Osiris, Bacchus, and a host of ther foreign deities (actually, practically their entire pantheon was ripped off from the Greeks ).

 

[Shqype]

because as I said and will repeat here, when I proposed to remove missionaries, I also said it would have been necessary to make religions spread into cities which already have one or more. Obviously simply removing missionaries is not something that can work, but the solution to this is not to return to the first system which is inappropriate for TAM map and historical scenario, but rather to implement what we said above.

Bovinespy, and Onedreamer, Kael showed his code that allows multiple religions to spread to a city. It's a really simple edit in the python file. We can set a limit (like he has done) so that no more than x religions can naturally spread in a city. He uses 3 as the limit of religions that can spread naturally in a city, but we can change it to 2 or 4, whatever is best. I would stick with 2 or 3, though.

And though I haven't actually been to Pompeii, I understand that the Romans had temples to Mithras, Osiris, Bacchus, and a host of ther foreign deities (actually, practically their entire pantheon was ripped off from the Greeks )

The Greeks ripped off a significant portion of "their" pantheon from another ancient people as well

 

[Kael]

Bovinespy, and Onedreamer, Kael showed his code that allows multiple religions to spread to a city. It's a really simple edit in the python file. We can set a limit (like he has done) so that no more than x religions can naturally spread in a city. He uses 3 as the limit of religions that can spread naturally in a city, but we can change it to 2 or 4, whatever is best. I would stick with 2 or 3, though.


The Greeks ripped off a significant portion of "their" pantheon from another ancient people as well

That wasn't a python file. Thats C++, an SDK file.

But I can build you a CvGameCoreDLL.dll that only has that change in it if you would like.