The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[evanb]

@Pvblivs
Throw in Dacian davas and it'd be even better.

 

[thamis]

I agree 100% with Pvblius here!

 

[thamis]

The thing about the Dacians is that the current city list is actually very accurate, but it uses different names for what I believe are the same towns. So we need to make sure not to have any doubles. Would you volunteer for checking that out?

 

[evanb]

If I have time, I'll do it, but that's a big "if". In what file is the list located?

But why not simply take the dava names I provided in an earlier post and use them as is? There are about 26 dava names only for Dacia.

 

[Shqype]

I propose renaming Getae to Dacia. Getae was not their name, it was the Greeks call them, and Dacia is their Roman name; the people would much rather choose to be called Dacians.

I'm not too fond of that shrine idea. Historical religions are already swayed by the chance to recieve tech points for your religion. And, we have a problem right now with religion spread with shrines.

 

[Pvblivs]

@Pvblivs
Throw in Dacian davas and it'd be even better.

I don't know every detail. Who does this at all? Those details aren't the important thing anyway.

Concerning naming in TAM, there are only two important things (ignoring the details):

1. Achieve an ancient atmosphere (fun)

2. Remain consistent (avoid confusion)

Atmosphere can be achieved by the many variants we already discussed. Consistency is only achieved if you take a simple approach like Latin or Latin+Greek, rather Latin. This is a way that should be acceptable for all as that is the result of ancient history: Romans and people who tried to be like them (Holy Roman Empire, The conquerors of Rome etc.). Ok, and Christianity

There will be no other way to make it perfect for every TAM-player.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

Ah sorry, I forgot to mention that in my version Shrines will NOT give any gold or commerce boni. All they do is spread the religion. That way, you, as founder, will still get the religion (starting in the first city that founded it), and then it will spread from there, as well as from the Shrine (which does nothing but spread the religion from a 2nd center).

So, the founder will be the "controller" of a religion. Pretty much like the Vatican for christianity even though the shrine is in Betlehem?

Historically - Not bad.
Gameplay - Hmm...

 

[schlappi]

Hi there, this is my first overall post on this forum, so be nice

I played this mod a great deal in 1.5 version and am back to play some tam 1.9... by far the best mods i've seen on this forum, but enough of flattering.
So far i played two games on monarch level on marathon speed, first one as agamemnon and then hasheput.
My greek campaign had a really tough start, the illyrian and gaetian limited my expansive steps rather early, until my first conflict i controlled the modern greece and southern romanian areas, having no spiritual starting tech i concentrated my research on technical and military knowledge, which made me face alot of trouble keeping my citizens happy.
Then suddenly Kroisos declared war on me, but he only shipped over one transport galley's load which could be easily defeated. Using a single transport galley myself i quickly conquered western anatolia using many hoplites and a few javeliners along with a siege tower.
In the meantime i gathered some gold with trade ships and was able to research rather quickly, being able to build a few heavy units when suddenly rome (which was friendly and pleased a long time and my main goal with trade missions) declared war on me.
What to do? The situation was critical - my main cities were not defended very well, in research i was quite behind the romans, who crossed the mountain range and invaded me with legionaries and war elephants, along with some horse archers...
I quickly switched religion and managed to pull my new "friend" Decebal in the war on the romans. (The Illyrians remained neutral the whole time, having huge amounts of units in their cities and open border with everyone involved)
Even with Decebal on my side, we were outnumbered and -classed against the strong roman empire!
What happened now? Decebal seemed to lose a lot of units (but not any cities), his score fell rapidly until he was on the same level as poor Kroisos. Using my last gold resources and well-kept secret technology, i managed to aquire iron working tech from friendly Aeetes - the romans being busy with Decebal (I never saw any more units cross the borders) i was soon able to launch a counter-attack on southern Italy, besieging Naples (defended by strong units) and conquering poorly defended sicily.
Now i expected Caesar to gather his troops and assault me in Italy, but what happened? He gathered lots of skirmisher, legionary and war elephant units in Naples.... and sat there, doing nothing. I could not conquer the city, so i decided to pull back to the conquered city of Tarentum, but he didnt follow. He refused to make peace but still did not attack, even though his counterstrike would have screwed me. Disappointing!
When i conquered the lands of Kroisos before, i encountered strange behaviour as well - in the city closest to my borders, he had gathered a huge, a really huge fleet of biremes and transport ships, along with sappers, javeliners, chariots and some heavy units - all you need to conquer an empire! But he just did not use the units, they sat there until i conquered his cities, destroying all fleets and siege equipment within!
Summary:
I realize i did some mistakes emptying my cities and use the units to conquer, the roman spies noticed it and managed to catch me off-guard, Caesar did everything right. Also Kroisos - he would have given me a hard time defending my land, but the AI does not seem how to use its units properly. A few javelin attacks now and then on my conquering stacks, nothing grave.

I am no modding expert and do not know how deeply you can tune the AI behaviour, but it should be more focused on producing city raider units (only those the AI seems to use for conquering) and less on those you can promote with city defense (javeliners are great offensive units, but the AI only stacks those into its cities)
If this could be implemented or someone told me how to alter AI behaviour, i would be glad!
with best regards,
Schlappi

 

[evanb]

@Shqype
I agree

@Pvblivs
I was just giving an idea for an improvement to your otherwise perfectly reasonable idea. But I disgree that these are only details. You yourself said that the names need to create and Ancient atmosphere. Well, the names I've seen until now (excepting Sarmizegetusa) are not ancient Dacian names; they are modern Romanian words, referring to the villages/towns/places in Romania where Dacian ruins have been discovered.

 

[Seven05]

I have a hard enough time remembering names and you guys want to change them again? Ahhhhhhhhhhh.....

On a more serious note I stayed up way too late last night playing a "quick" game as Arminus. I was really supprised at how well this particular civ breaks my typical strategy. The start was tough, little access to good commerce tiles and a lot of "useless" dense woods. It took quite some time to get my first settler out but the second and third were built in no time once I had woodworking, so many treest to chop down I must have died and gone to heaven. So many, in fact, that they grow back regularly until you actualy build an improvement on the tile.

Aside from the start, the early game as Arminus was very similar to the early game with anyone else for me. Spearmen and javelins conquered the whole of France by about 1300BC. What is interesting is that I had to stop, the Gallic civ was able to stall my advance at two cities. I was still able to take the cities but I had to hold up and wait for reinforcements, a first for me in TAM. He seemed to have an affection for spearmen as city defenders and it worked well. The nice thing about the map in this region is that I had everal natural barriersto simplify my defense. I ended up with three border cities, one in the east north of the alpine peaks and two on the border between "France" and "Spain."

Using my 1000BC and 1AD milestones what I found most interesting in this game was that I was unable to completely eliminate any other empires this early. Everything west of the Roman empire was a tangled mess of different civs' cities. Not having port cities had a huge impact on my empire, the drain forced me to stop at about 500BC and let my infrastructue catch up. Once it did I had the huntsmen and beserkers though and poor Rome didn't stand a chance

So, I noticed that spearmen are wicked defenders, mostly due to their plains/grassland bonus I suspect. Three core cities building new units every 2-3 turns each wasn't enough to sustain indefinite conquests against cities defended with numerous spearmen. The trade & commerce benefits of coastal cities are immense, it may not feel like it when you have them but when you don't it really hurts until or unless you have a lot of resources to trade with the AI for gold per turn. The impact on research didn't feel as significant as the impact on gold. By 1AD even though I had accomplished less in terms of conquest I had a significant score lead.

Aside from the issues we've alredy discussed I don't think there is a whole lot I can continue to add in constructive feedback until after the next update. I can give you stories of my conquests but not much else. I can't give you guys enough kudos though, this mod is outstanding and has given me many hours of entertainment.

 

[Pvblivs]

@Shqype
I agree

@Pvblivs
I was just giving an idea for an improvement to your otherwise perfectly reasonable idea. But I disgree that these are only details. You yourself said that the names need to create and Ancient atmosphere. Well, the names I've seen until now (excepting Sarmizegetusa) are not ancient Dacian names; they are modern Romanian words, referring to the villages/towns/places in Romania where Dacian ruins have been discovered.

Yeah, the details make the atmosphere, but they don't define the concept So you're perfectly right, we need to replace such things...

 

[Ankenaton]

I'm one of those guys that defend Cleopatra & C.
I find the points of the egyptian ultranationalists to be quite futile. This is a game after all and it should be opened to more than just a minority of fanatical historians. Truth is that most people know better Cleopatra and Alexandria as egyptians than Hatshepsut and Khmun, let alone the pronounciation problems.
Btw, I would like you to define "real egyptian", because I have problems in understanding what you mean with this. I doubt that even the egyptian Gods know the truth about egyptian origins. You surely know very well that this historical period is caracterized by huge cultural changes and migrations. And anyways the history of Egypt is so long that you simply can't make such generalizations. In the end though, what I really have difficulty to accept is that people uses different "meters" of judgement on matters like this because of their personal love for a dinasty rather than another. If it's true that Cleopatra, the last of a dinasty that ruled Egypt for 400 years, is to be considered greek and in no way egyptian, I would like you, in the same way, to prove your point by convincing millions of americans that they cannot consider themselves "real americans", because 400 years of colonization are not enough to be considered as part of a culture. And good luck with that, because americans are quite nationalists
I consider myself a very objective person (objectively ):
- Yes it's true: Alexandria kept a status of "city state" during the Ptolemaic dinasty.
- Yes it's true: it's not been built by egyptians. It doesn't have an egyptian name. Memphis is also not the egyptian name though. But we certainly can agree that it's better to keep greco-roman names. Names are part of the protocol of communication, and this is aimed to facilitate understanding and order. By giving all cities their original names in their original language we go in the opposite direction. Btw we don't even know all of those names. And does it really matter, as long as we know that Memphis is the city we know it is, how we call it in the game ?
- No, it's false: Alexandria is not solely greek just because it's been built by greeks.
- No, it's false: Cleopatra is not solely greek just because her roots were. I mean, 400 years. Come on people. Do you understand what that means ? Nowadays that with global communication and fast transports many people move, they are mostly assimilated in 10 years max. Not completely, sure, but from the next generations on... yeah.

I would really like to know what your point is. That I have a love affair with Egypt, Nubia, Carthage, Israel etc., is my lookout not yours. As I said before we all have our favorite civs and all of us are very protective of them. I would love for you to sing the tune regarding Rome. When the barbarian invaders set up successor states in what was left of the western Roman empire, no one then or hereafter referred to them as Roman. That I named Ptolemy and his descendents as an artificial attempt at grafting themselves into the mainstream of Egyptian society is what it is. It is funny that whenever I post something extolling Egypt's virtues, everyone else offers up constructive criticism. You do not argue in an effective manner; you fall back on the age old cover of bringing up tangential references and issues (e.g. the whole mishmash about America that you wrote) that are quite beside the point. As a matter of fact I am an American whose mother was a full-blooded member of the Cheyenne Nation (Native Americans), so I could argue both sides of that one. But so what. We were talking about the minor care concern of a couple of posters and past contributers to have two city names changed to our liking. And there were some constructive postings that illustrated how we could bring this about. And it was not as if I wrote "this is horrible I want you guys to change all of the names yourselves and do all of the work". I proposed to provide a detailed list of Egyptian names that could be substituted for the two that were found wanting. Ick of the East wrote one in his reply. Now this is not an attack on anyone but Shyqpe and Viriato can wax poetic over their individual civ's of interest from units, city names, wonder names, etc. and there is no big outcry. Even though historically both of those Civs spent extended periods of time under Greco-Roman domination including the naming of various cities. Yet they are never referred to as ultra nationalists or fanatical historians. Perhaps there is more behind your comments than you realize. Yes it is just a game...and it also more than just a game as evidenced by everyone's committment on this forum to the free exchange of information without rancor. I apologize if I offended your sensibilities. Thanks for your suggestion darkedone02.

 

[Ankenaton]

Here's my latest though on SHRINES:

Shrines can no longer be built. They still exist, though. Whenever a religion is founded, its shrine will be founded in the capital of the civilization who historically founded it. So for Heliopolitan Gods, the Shrine will automatically appear in Thebes, even if another civ founds that religion. For Animism, there is a random % chance that it will appear in the capital of one of the animist civs.

Shrines then only spread their religion, and quite significantly. That way, we can create a bit more realistic religion spread and also and a nice factor of uncertainty into the religious game.

What do you guys think?

I think it is an excellent concept; it helps by adding real historical twists to events.

 

[Ankenaton]

On the discussion of how to call cities:

Common examples on problems in city naming:
- Rome: We do not speak of ROMA today but of Rome, even with TAM. I think that calling Rome by its ancient name "Roma" would be much better. I often tend replace modern Roman names by the ancient ones from my latin lessons for my fun. As this is a game it should be fun ;-)
- Carthage: I don't know what is used in TAM here. Most common is the latin form that is Carthago, I think. Would we understand and enjoy Qart Hadast more? I think so.
- Take Carthago Nova: That is the latin form. The original would be Qart Hadast which stands for the name of the capital as well. Would this be better then? I doubt it.

I'm a fan of accuracy as well. Were it is possible, atmosphere could be much more intense if you took "original" names. You're right if you ask: What is original? For Eqypt this decision is rather easy to be made. Just take the name that would have existed the longest time. Even in the Alexanders world there wasn't just the Greek tongue. It was a common tongue but it was in the late years of TAM not in the early.

But it could lead to much confusion. Take the greatest modern turkish town: Istanbul. Is its name Byzantion (origin) like for 450 years. or Byzantium (Roman) like for 550 years? Ok that's pretty much the same. But it could be called Constantinople as well covering 150 turns in TAM. Or would you rather like Constantinopolis which is rather Latin?

The issue is clear. We cover some 1000 years here. Cities have been founded and grown large in this period, destroyed several times, rebuilt. And those that survived the centuries could be renamed several times or just got different names from different dominating cultures. So what do we take? I say yes, historical accuracy as far as it is still fun for most of us players and as it stays consistent.
I know a very old PC game called Hannibal that covered the second war between Carthage and Rome. In this game you could only play Hannibal and it was my favorite game for a long time. There every city, consistently was called by its latin name. As Rome from our perspective is the last world power of the ancient era I would very much appreciate if many Englishly names (the common tongue of today) would be replaced by the same in Latin (the common tongue of the late ancient era).
A mixture of Latin and some Greek would be ok as well. But "Rome" or "Carthage" for examples are a crime "Saxones" and "Galli" is hot while "Saxons" and "Gauls" is not. And much more accurate not only in terms of naming. "Saxones" meant this ancient Germanic tribe as the Romans knew them while "Saxons" basically means a modern people as we know it. For Egypt city names this is not the problem. The name "Niwt" basically defined the same as "Thebae" or "Thaebai". So for accuracy this is not very important, the Latin or Greek name fits, I think.

This would add a lot of more atmosphere and fun to the game. All other, like the original city names of Phoenicia, Carthago and Egypt (which are Latin name or derived from them as well) are rather regional and thus not so important for the common player. If nothing changes, I will anyway continue to rename cities myself

I agree with you completely. It would definitely lend to the atmosphere of the game; and I also will continue to play even if these changes do not come about. I have been with "this thing of ours (Thamis')" since CIV III and I am not going to give it up for minor issues.

 

[Shqype]

La Cosa Nostra?

 

[Shqype]

Hi there, this is my first overall post on this forum, so be nice

I played this mod a great deal in 1.5 version and am back to play some tam 1.9... by far the best mods i've seen on this forum, but enough of flattering.
So far i played two games on monarch level on marathon speed, first one as agamemnon and then hasheput.
My greek campaign had a really tough start, the illyrian and gaetian limited my expansive steps rather early, until my first conflict i controlled the modern greece and southern romanian areas, having no spiritual starting tech i concentrated my research on technical and military knowledge, which made me face alot of trouble keeping my citizens happy.
Then suddenly Kroisos declared war on me, but he only shipped over one transport galley's load which could be easily defeated. Using a single transport galley myself i quickly conquered western anatolia using many hoplites and a few javeliners along with a siege tower.
In the meantime i gathered some gold with trade ships and was able to research rather quickly, being able to build a few heavy units when suddenly rome (which was friendly and pleased a long time and my main goal with trade missions) declared war on me.
What to do? The situation was critical - my main cities were not defended very well, in research i was quite behind the romans, who crossed the mountain range and invaded me with legionaries and war elephants, along with some horse archers...
I quickly switched religion and managed to pull my new "friend" Decebal in the war on the romans. (The Illyrians remained neutral the whole time, having huge amounts of units in their cities and open border with everyone involved)
Even with Decebal on my side, we were outnumbered and -classed against the strong roman empire!
What happened now? Decebal seemed to lose a lot of units (but not any cities), his score fell rapidly until he was on the same level as poor Kroisos. Using my last gold resources and well-kept secret technology, i managed to aquire iron working tech from friendly Aeetes - the romans being busy with Decebal (I never saw any more units cross the borders) i was soon able to launch a counter-attack on southern Italy, besieging Naples (defended by strong units) and conquering poorly defended sicily.
Now i expected Caesar to gather his troops and assault me in Italy, but what happened? He gathered lots of skirmisher, legionary and war elephant units in Naples.... and sat there, doing nothing. I could not conquer the city, so i decided to pull back to the conquered city of Tarentum, but he didnt follow. He refused to make peace but still did not attack, even though his counterstrike would have screwed me. Disappointing!
When i conquered the lands of Kroisos before, i encountered strange behaviour as well - in the city closest to my borders, he had gathered a huge, a really huge fleet of biremes and transport ships, along with sappers, javeliners, chariots and some heavy units - all you need to conquer an empire! But he just did not use the units, they sat there until i conquered his cities, destroying all fleets and siege equipment within!
Summary:
I realize i did some mistakes emptying my cities and use the units to conquer, the roman spies noticed it and managed to catch me off-guard, Caesar did everything right. Also Kroisos - he would have given me a hard time defending my land, but the AI does not seem how to use its units properly. A few javelin attacks now and then on my conquering stacks, nothing grave.

I am no modding expert and do not know how deeply you can tune the AI behaviour, but it should be more focused on producing city raider units (only those the AI seems to use for conquering) and less on those you can promote with city defense (javeliners are great offensive units, but the AI only stacks those into its cities)
If this could be implemented or someone told me how to alter AI behaviour, i would be glad!
with best regards,
Schlappi

Schlappi, thanks a lot for your detailed report and it pleases me that your first post on this forum is in this thread

Your post, along with Sevon05's posts, and some others, are very helpful in letting me know exactly how I should tweak the AI. There are some simple things that can be done which should make a significant difference in how the AI plays.

Very soon I'll probably get up another version of TAM, v1.91 with some gameplay tweaks for everyone to experiment with. We still have a lot of things to discuss for 2.0 (I want heroes in), but I feel we should hammer out the small bugs and AI mistakes before we release new content.

 

[Ick of the East]

If it's true that Cleopatra, the last of a dinasty that ruled Egypt for 400 years, is to be considered greek and in no way egyptian, I would like you, in the same way, to prove your point by convincing millions of americans that they cannot consider themselves "real americans", because 400 years of colonization are not enough to be considered as part of a culture.

How do you feel then about setting up an Ancient America Mod with the Native Ameircan nations. Your leaders of one of the nations can be Abraham Lincoln or Arnold Schwartzenegger and your cities can include Washington and Houston?

Cleopatra and Alexandria make just as much sense in the Egypt of 4000BC. You can play as the Greeks, conquer Egypt, and change the names all you want. But let's make it an option.

Does this make me an ultranationalist Egyptian? I'm a citizen of the US and Hong Kong, living in Thailand. What do I care about nationalism? All I want is the worst anachronisms taken out of the best Civ Mod so that it becomes even better.

 

[Pvblivs]

How do you feel then about setting up an Ancient America Mod with the Native Ameircan nations. Your leaders of one of the nations can be Abraham Lincoln or Arnold Schwartzenegger and your cities can include Washington and Houston?

Cleopatra and Alexandria make just as much sense in the Egypt of 4000BC. You can play as the Greeks, conquer Egypt, and change the names all you want. But let's make it an option.

Does this make me an ultranationalist Egyptian? I'm a citizen of the US and Hong Kong, living in Thailand. What do I care about nationalism? All I want is the worst anachronisms taken out of the best Civ Mod so that it becomes even better.

This is not quite the same. Alexandria is not typical for every phase of Egypt in TAM, true, but for a long period. To speak in turns of TAM, it is not just the latter, but also a major part of the game (up from 300 BC until 500 AD) where Alexandria is significant for Egypt. Even the Ptolemy period of Egypt was an important part of Egyptian history, not only influencing Egypt with Greek culture but influencing the whole world with the culture of Egypt heavily. For example, after Egypt came to Rome many religous aspects of Egypts became cult in the empire (e.g. nature cults through Hapi, god of the Nile) until the suppression of paganism through Christianity. And THESE are aspects how Egypt has been defining itself for the world. How the world got to know Egypt. How we today speak of it. So its only natural that we play Egypt mainly as we, those common players without a study of history (unfortunately ), know Egypt today.

As we only have one leader for a whole of 6000 years (how inaccurate!!!) we will have to decide for one important (we define what is important here) name. Ramses II, Hatshepsut, Cleopatra. They and more of those dozens rulers of Egypt were important enough each in their way for the fate of Egypt which are many aspects.
I for myself would never decide for Cleopatra, though I think it is important to also stress that she is not the least interesting for us. There are always two sides. One side is the dream of a strong ancient independent Egypt rules by the Pharaos. The other is a modern ancient Egypt eye in eye with the real great empires that are Persia, Greece and Rome where you can obtain a great look at the influence such a great culture achieves on great (superior?) empires.

We can only grab one little aspect and define this to be representative for Egypt. Trust me: The leader of ancient Egypt in TAM won't be Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ali Bey or Vespasian.

 

[Shqype]

Guys, I've tweaked some values and created better AI use of units. Now archers are more useful, javelineers will be used for skirmishing (not city defense), heavy units will be used more for city defense since they do a good job at it, and the AI will be more war-like and less religion-influenced.

With approval from the leader I shall be posting this v1.91 within a day

 

[schlappi]

I noticed that the trade barges (the units available with seafaring) are not flagged national unit meaning you can build as many as you wish.
Is this deliberate?
Also, the profit from trade barges is huge, 2000 gold are not impossible, this should be tuned down in my opinion...