The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[onedreamer]

Thamis

if you want historical religions then I suggest that 2-3 civs may be able to found it. Which means Judaism should be scrapped for something else
Christianity could be invented by anyone.

About the changelist, it's super, especially if marching gets included. It's a very original and cool idea.
About Civics, I would like more gov. civics available earlier, possibly. And they should be a very important factor into diplomacy. For this reason at least 3 should be available in the first age (otherwise everyone will be friendly).

Cathedrals: the boni seem a bit too weak to me.

All the rest: yay !

 

[Ick of the East]

- WONDER: The Oracle -> rename to "The Oracle of Delphi"
- WONDER: The Great Library -> rename to "The Library of Alexandria"
- WONDER: The Pyramids -> rename to "The Pyramids of Gizeh"
- WONDER: Egyptian Shrine -> rename to "Temple of Karnak"​

- I WONDER about these. Why put the city or place names with the wonder when they will probably be built in cities with different names?

"The Library of Alexandria has been built in Rome". That's gonna look silly.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

@Thamis changelist

a couple of suggestions

Rename Druidic temple to Druid
Rename Druidic cathedral to Sacred grove
Rename Druidic shrine to Holy island

Druidism founded with Priesthood
Olympian Gods founded with Epics

Keep Stonehenge where it is but unconnected to Druidism

I agree with onedreamer, divide all civs into culturegroups and give each group the possibility to found one of the earlier religions. Like this:

Britons, Gaul, Iberia - Druidism
Rome, Illyria, Mycenae, Lydia - Olympian Gods
Germanics, Getae, Scythia - Aesir? (wich means no Judaism)
Hittites, Kolchis, Babylon, Persia - Mesopotamian Gods
Egypt, Phoenicia, Nubia, Chartage - Heliopolitan Gods

Hope you like these ideas.

 

[Shqype]

Wow...that's a big list of changes. I can't wait to try out v 1.9. When is it expected to be finished?

I'll try and crank out these changes so that by the end of the weekend they're done. Today I should get a significant portion completed. The only thing we might need to wait on is for Jorgen's SDK changes. I'll be making a few, slight changes but the bulk of the new SDK material is from his work

I agree with onedreamer, divide all civs into culturegroups and give each group the possibility to found one of the earlier religions. Like this:

Britons, Gaul, Iberia - Druidism
Rome, Illyria, Mycenae, Lydia - Olympian Gods
Germanics, Getae, Scythia - Aesir? (wich means no Judaism)
Hittites, Kolchis, Babylon, Persia - Mesopotamian Gods
Egypt, Phoenicia, Nubia, Chartage - Heliopolitan Gods

Hope you like these ideas.

I really like this idea! What I could probable do is barr other civilizations from finding a religion not in its culture group, such that even if Gaul gets the tech which allows Mesopotamian Gods, it will not discover the religion. Or, I can give each civ the technology needed to found its religion, and at the beginning of the game the Holy Site should be automatically given to one of those civilizations (which adds a randomness factor that can influence how well a civ will do). Or, I could probably give 50% of the tech points for the tech to civs which belong in religious culture group.

I still don't like Olympian Gods though. Rome didn't worship Olympian gods, did they? Still reminds me too much of Mt. Olympus.

 

[thamis]

If it is possible to give certain religions to certain culture groups, then I think we should do it. Are we giving them from the beginning, though, or once the religion is founded? Also, how do we decide which of those civs gets the holy city? Randomly would probably be best.

 

[Shqype]

If it is possible to give certain religions to certain culture groups, then I think we should do it. Are we giving them from the beginning, though, or once the religion is founded? Also, how do we decide which of those civs gets the holy city? Randomly would probably be best.

I'll have to look through the code, but whenever you found a religion a city of yours is randomly selected as the Holy City. Theoretically, if 4/5 civilizations all get the religion-founding technology on the same turn, either:

a) One of the cities will be randomly chosen to be the Holy City, which will give 1 lucky civ the advantage of founding the religion, or

b) The game will crash or no one will found the religion.

Either way, it can be coded in so that at the beginning of the game one of the eligible civs is randomly selected to be the founder.

 

[Maniac]

yeah but I kind of have the suspect that naval battles are handled differently from land ones, since I've never won a naval battle with inferior strength. 10% does not make a lot of difference, if it would be so then the Aggressive trait, which gives the same bonus, would be overpowered or decisive too. But I doubt it is.

Never rely on suspicions.
On land, unlike on sea, there are many other bonuses and penalties playing, so you can't easily notice there what's the (huge) effect of 10% more or less.

no clue... I have no say in these decisions.

Oh I just thought since you are mentioned in the credits.

I think the defense bonus for ships is there just for a matter of gameplay and not for realism. Firaxis wanted to give players strong defensive means because otherwise you might end up having super-experienced units. On the land this is not a great problem because of the diversity of units having bonus vs other units, plus natural defensive boni, plus 5-25% defense bonus for units fortified. On the sea there is nothing like this, so my guess is that they just decided to add this 10%.

That would be a good reason, but if it were the case they should also have added 10% def bonus to ocean.
So nah, I suspect it's just another bad Firaxian design decision.

Anyway, glad to see the suggestion in the changelist for v1.9.

If any of you have tried the demo of Rise and Fall : Civilizations at war (which I advise btw ) probably has enjoyed the nice naval warfare implemented there. We can take some ideas from there to make the naval side of TAM more interesting.

Do post them!

 

[goodyhut]

The download link at the top takes you to file planet and you can't download it unless you log in, and then it says this file is only available to subsctibers. I am not a subscriber, nor do I want to be. Trying JamieCiv4Files link now...

EDIT: I was able to get it for free without too much trouble through JamieCiv4Files link which is the 40th post in this thread.

 

[saint1979]

This mod is wicked!
I prefare this mod before the original CIV4!

 

[saint1979]

I'll have to look through the code, but whenever you found a religion a city of yours is randomly selected as the Holy City. Theoretically, if 4/5 civilizations all get the religion-founding technology on the same turn, either:

a) One of the cities will be randomly chosen to be the Holy City, which will give 1 lucky civ the advantage of founding the religion, or

b) The game will crash or no one will found the religion.

Either way, it can be coded in so that at the beginning of the game one of the eligible civs is randomly selected to be the founder.

The strongest Civ should get it.
Or... maybe do a script like UN: to vote for what civ shall build it?

 

[Maniac]

Random thought: have you considered adding Dale's combat mod to TAM somewhere in a far future? Since the TAM combat system has as a goal to represent auxiliary troops such as javelineers etc well, his combat mod could be great, having flanking etc.

 

[thamis]

The download link at the top takes you to file planet and you can't download it unless you log in, and then it says this file is only available to subsctibers. I am not a subscriber, nor do I want to be. Trying JamieCiv4Files link now...

EDIT: I was able to get it for free without too much trouble through JamieCiv4Files link which is the 40th post in this thread.

The download link takes you to the MOD website, where you can choose from different download mirrors:
- The MOD website (Germany)
- PlusNet (UK)
- FilePlanet (US)

And (as I work for GameSpy) I do have to defend FilePlanet: You can download without being a subscriber. Simply scroll down and choose the non-subscriber download links.

EDIT: Oh, and if you download the MOD from any other link than the "official" links at the MOD website, you might be downloading an out-of-date version.

 

[thamis]

Random thought: have you considered adding Dale's combat mod to TAM somewhere in a far future? Since the TAM combat system has as a goal to represent auxiliary troops such as javelineers etc well, his combat mod could be great, having flanking etc.

I've thought about it, but I need to look into his MOD again. I only saw it at a very early stage.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Thamis, your civ 3 TAM was truely awesome and my favoritte game to play. I expect this one to keep me away from all the other civ 4s too.

 

[Aeon221]

Decided to wander back through, and explain what I meant a bit better

You have a nice rock paper scissors counter setup going, with some extra upgrades (weapons and armor) to add to the strength of a particular unit. Most of the other mods use the standard civ thought process, which is that counters are rare, and of dubious worth.

The whole unit set and promotion tree seems based around the idea that there is no uuber unit (cavalry in c3 anyone?) that owns all. Which is nice, and a very good way of doing things.

Plus, the merchant ship won me heart.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

In the CivilizationInfo xml-files there is a tag that says "disable techs" wich could be useful if it is what I think it is. If we add the religions as techs and put them were they fit historically in the techtree, the culturegroups could be defined by disabling all but one of these for each civ, For example: Gaul - Druidism(enabled)Meso Gods(disabled)Helio Gods(disabled)etc

Helio Gods after Polytheism
Meso Gods after Astrology
Olymp Gods after Heroism
Druidism (or Celtic Gods) after Priesthood
IndoEuropean Gods after Heroism (IndoEuropean Gods is a name blurry enough to fit the Scythian, the Getae and the Germanics)

What do you think? Is it a or a :thumbdown

 

[Greenlocke]

I'm not sold on the names yet - (I prefer Sun God over Helio God) - but I think that this idea could work. This way each religion will be founded by one of the civs which could have founded it in history. It still provides some randomness, without sacrificing historical integrity.

Now, about the missionaries. Couldn't we have a building (besides the temple in the holy city) which could increase the rate/value of religion spread? Because that way, the player could still spread religion, albeit in a slightly more general way than Christianity's missionaries. Perhaps this building could be tied to a religion civic...

 

[davbenbak]

As 1.9 hasn't been released yet and I didn't see any new techs planned, is anything going to be done about the tech rate? I'm usually done by about 100AD on noble setting.

 

[Shqype]

In the CivilizationInfo xml-files there is a tag that says "disable techs" wich could be useful if it is what I think it is. If we add the religions as techs and put them were they fit historically in the techtree, the culturegroups could be defined by disabling all but one of these for each civ, For example: Gaul - Druidism(enabled)Meso Gods(disabled)Helio Gods(disabled)etc

Helio Gods after Polytheism
Meso Gods after Astrology
Olymp Gods after Heroism
Druidism (or Celtic Gods) after Priesthood
IndoEuropean Gods after Heroism (IndoEuropean Gods is a name blurry enough to fit the Scythian, the Getae and the Germanics)

What do you think? Is it a or a :thumbdown

That's not a bad idea, and I'de support it ... the problem is the beginning of the tech tree is already 'crammed' as it is.

Decided to wander back through, and explain what I meant a bit better

You have a nice rock paper scissors counter setup going, with some extra upgrades (weapons and armor) to add to the strength of a particular unit. Most of the other mods use the standard civ thought process, which is that counters are rare, and of dubious worth.

The whole unit set and promotion tree seems based around the idea that there is no uuber unit (cavalry in c3 anyone?) that owns all. Which is nice, and a very good way of doing things.

Plus, the merchant ship won me heart.

Glad you like it. I like this battle approach as well. If every unit has a weakness, then it forces a more diversified army instead of 80% of one type of unit.

Glad you like the merchant ship. It was my idea to give it to all civs

As 1.9 hasn't been released yet and I didn't see any new techs planned, is anything going to be done about the tech rate? I'm usually done by about 100AD on noble setting.

Did you try TAMv1.8 and did you delete your previous TAM folder before installing the new one? The late game tech costs have been increased by 10% and 20%, respectively, so they should last a little longer ...

 

[onedreamer]

In the CivilizationInfo xml-files there is a tag that says "disable techs" wich could be useful if it is what I think it is. If we add the religions as techs and put them were they fit historically in the techtree, the culturegroups could be defined by disabling all but one of these for each civ, For example: Gaul - Druidism(enabled)Meso Gods(disabled)Helio Gods(disabled)etc

Helio Gods after Polytheism
Meso Gods after Astrology
Olymp Gods after Heroism
Druidism (or Celtic Gods) after Priesthood
IndoEuropean Gods after Heroism (IndoEuropean Gods is a name blurry enough to fit the Scythian, the Getae and the Germanics)

What do you think? Is it a or a :thumbdown

if we use this approach then it wouldn't make much sense to give those names and we can come back to Egyptian Pantheon etc.
Honestly I prefer more replayability of history and more dynamism. It's still a game after all. I prefer general names for religions and that they are open to anyone.