The Sword of Islam 0.5.0 Discussion

[embryodead]

The Sword of Islam 0.5.0

Please discuss the new version here. The main focus of this release is India, the crusader states, mercenary system overhaul, full localisation support, internal code overhaul and overall polish.

Malwa has been enabled as a playable civ and many new units have been added, notably a whole new set for India by Bakuel as well as many unit updates to Jerusalem, Antioch, Armenia and Georgia. Mercenaries are now recruited in particular cities, and many new mercenary types have been added. CvRhyes has been removed from the project and nearly all of its content is now in Consts.py & Maps.py.

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0.5.0 Release notes:

General changes
- Added playable Malwa / Paramara Empire
- Added Kshatriya Archer as the Unique Unit for Malwa
- Added Sanskrit College as the Unique Building for Malwa
- Added Maratha Warrior and Maratha Cavalry mercenary / invader units
- Added numerous generic mercenary unit types to various areas
- Added new mercenary types, mainly for the crusaders: Man-at-Arms, Crossbowman, Sailor
- Removed the old Italian Infantry and Italian Crossbowman
- Changed mercenary placement mechanics: units now appear within their recruitment area, rather than in the capital
- Added some Gurjar, Rajput and Maratha invaders to Hindustan
- Changed the Indian cavalry line from Horse archery to Heavy cavalry
- Changed the Chauhan Rajput Horse Archer to replace Horseman; reduced Withdrawal Chance to 20%
- Changed the objectives of Antioch's UHV1 to Northern Syria + 3 adjacent provinces (instead of specifically Cilicia & Syria)
- Replaced the Unique Units of Kingdom of Jerusalem (Knight of Jerusalem) & Principality of Antioch (Norman Knight)
- Added new Templar and Hospitaller units: Hospitaller Sergeant, Hospitaller Canon, Templar Mounted Sergeant
- Added 1 Archer and 1 Ghazi to Sultanate of Rum's starting units
- Moved Ocean trade to Compass
- Added the 'Paulician Sect' random event
- Added many new Tech quotes (thanks Replacement)
- Reduced the severity of Mansa Musa event to 50%; adjusted Mamluk permanent modifiers to keep game balance
- Reduced the reward from completing the Greed quest from 7 to 3-5 units, depending on the number of civs alive
- Changed the Armenian UHV3 condition so that it can be completed before 1330 AD, but it now requires 25,000 Culture
- Changed the Knights Templar to survive past their historical year of dissolution if Jerusalem is under Catholic control
- Added limited bombard capability to Great Galley and Lanternas units

Map changes
- Removed a forest from a plot near Kallipolis
- Moved Chittor one tile North
- Added two rivers to Rajputana
- Removed the Rice south of Chittor; made it re-appear in 14th c.
- Added independent Jodhpur in 15th c., together with some resources
- Extended the size of Transjordan to more correct dimensions
- Added Lebanon province (crusaders no longer flip Tripoli or Tyre)
- Renamed Trebizond province to Chaldia
- Added more randomization of AI found values (city sites)

Bugfixes
- Fixed the issue with Sea not allowing trade - it is now enabled by Stern Rudder
- Fixed a bug causing Relics incorrectly add to Stability every time they were settled
- Fixed Safavid UHV2 incorrectly counting settled relics towards the Wonder goal
- Fixed Ak Koyunlu UHV2 not counting Shirvan as needed province
- Fixed Orthodox URV2 sometimes not counting all Friendly players
- Added a possible bugfix for Masters sometimes ending up at war with their Vassals
- Renamed Seljuk Horse Archer to Tribal Cavalry (to avoid "Seljuk Seljuk Horse Archer" in combat log)
- Changed the color of "Some of your units are joining the enemy" message from green to red

Graphics & sound
- Added different art styles for Independent (Rebel) units, depending on their city art style, province and/or religion
- Added new unit sets for Rajputs, Sindh, Mughals, Ghorids/Delhi (Bakuel)
- Added new unit sets for Armenia and Georgia (Bakuel/edead)
- Added new unit sets for Jerusalem and Antioch (Bakuel/Castor Troy/coffee junkie/edead)
- Added new unit art for Mediterranean Worker, Peasant and Byzantine Grenadier (Bakuel/edead)
- Added new building art for Observatory, Tomb of Khalid, Bridge of 33 Arches, Shah Mosque & Mevlana's Tomb (stolenrays)
- Added new building art for Ulugh Beg Observatory (hrochland)
- Added the Armenian Duduk to the soundtrack

Localisation
- Moved UHV/URV help strings from Victory.py to CIV4GameText_MEM_VictoryHelp.xml
- Moved Barbarian names from Barbs.py and CvRandomEventInterface.py to CIV4GameText_MEM_Barbarians.xml (thanks Qiu)
- Moved Mercenary names from Consts.py to CIV4GameText_MEM_Barbarians.xml
- Added proper localisation support to Mercenaries component; entries added to CIV4GameText_Mercenaries.xml

Code overhaul
- CvRhyes has been removed from the project; nearly all data is now accessible through DataLoader.py
- NUM_MAJOR_PLAYERS contant moved to CvDefines
- Moved all maps out of the CvRhyes to Maps.py; removed EARTH_X/Y constants; this has several consequences:
1. provinces, city art styles and settler maps can be changed without altering the DLL
2. they can be changed even without restarting the game, allowing mods to change map data with events, respawns etc.
3. actual maps can be resized without altering the DLL (the mod will load even if the map's size doesn't match the arrays in Maps.py)
4. the mod can use multiple maps of different sizes with the same DLL
5. settler found values can be easily randomized in Python (see DataLoader.py)
- Added a new CvUnit method: setArtDefineTag - allows changing of unit art on the fly
- Added UnitArtStyler Python module for handling of unit art styles of minor civs
- Removed MercenaryNameUtils and moved all mod-specific mercenary data to Consts.py
- Furusiyya & Mercenary promotions are now properly implemented through XML as iBarbarianPercent and bCannotUpgrade

 

[youtien]

Yes, I am the first! It's good to wake up early.

 

[blizzrd]

Excellent news. I look forward to trying this out tonight.

Question about the change to PoA UHV condition, do the areas all have to be adjacent to Northern Syria, or just to each other?

 

[Tigranes]

Added the Armenian Duduk to the soundtrack

I admire your modesty, edead. Most modders would call such a polished version v. 3.0++ not 0.5

 

[Agent327]

Download me!

Cool! I did.

 

[youtien]

Finished a Malwa game in 1240, finally a civ that can use the power of caste system, the UB is just fit.

Better settle capital 1NE from starting plot, so you can catch the cow near Bundi (Ajmer settled Bundi in my game). Conquer Chittor ASAP, then kill Ajmer, then Gwalior, Delhi, Lahore, Multan, then you have 8 decent cities.

I began GP production after Sanskirt colleges, and made Gwalior as my GP farm. The key of Malwa UP is converting unfinished national wonders to $ - build national epic/ heroic epic/ royal mint..... in a city first, cancel it, have another city complete it, this is equal to build wealth at 200%.

For UHV#2, I suggest get great merchant first, then scientist, prophet(via education - religious law), artist, and a great general(via war). then have 4 or 5 great artists culture bomb the capital. I researched music theory on purpose(didn't get the first though). Finally this tech got an use. Good job!

Gujarat vassalized to me and became a great tech trading partner. Sindh capital was captured by barb, so I sent my reserve army to raze it and resettle... before that, I only built another settler and settle Manbai for fish and crab. In the end, I have 12 cities including Mansura(1W), Thatta, Uch(1NW), Dharamsala.Claimed the title too. Also, the mongol horde can be countered by war elephants. An easy game if you expanded early.

 

[embryodead]

Excellent news. I look forward to trying this out tonight.

Question about the change to PoA UHV condition, do the areas all have to be adjacent to Northern Syria, or just to each other?

All of them, but there's 5, so you have several options, including doing it the old way i.e. Syria + Cilicia (since you already start with Edessa).

 

[AbsintheRed]

Huge congrats on the new release, edead!

EDIT: What do you use the setArtDefineTag for?
What units need artchanging on the fly?

 

[embryodead]

Huge congrats on the new release, edead!

EDIT: What do you use the setArtDefineTag for?
What units need artchanging on the fly?

Thanks and the function is used for this:

Added different art styles for Independent (Rebel) units, depending on their city art style, province and/or religion
Added UnitArtStyler Python module for handling of unit art styles of minor civs

So in India independent civs build units in Rajput style. Later, cities where Islam has spread will build units in Muslim Indian style. At the same time, the same independent civs in Caucasus build Armenian-looking units etc. Same happens to city art through city art style map.

 

[Jusos2108]

Awesome! I will be downloading this tomorrow!

 

[artyom]

sultan/epic version 0.5 playing as yemen I cant get past year 1290 because the turn never finishes. so sad i was going for domination

 

[embryodead]

sultan/epic version 0.5 playing as yemen I cant get past year 1290 because the turn never finishes. so sad i was going for domination

I tried it and have good news for both of us, it's fine Give it time, at least 5 minutes, and the turn finally passes. It takes so long because Byzantium respawns and flips a lot of cities and units. Flipping involves a lot of convoluted scripting and it's probably excarberated by the increased amount of data on Epic.

 

[artyom]

yeah your right. when it loads long or something is wrong I usually bring the cntr alt del menu and if it says "program not responding" I assume it crashed, but in this case i just had to wait 2 minutes and everything went fine.
great mod by the way, its pretty hard. much harder than all the other rhyes mods in terms of survivability: the barbs are a bi***

 

[rrosen]

Wonderful!

 

[Leoreth]

This release has prompted me to start translating everything to German, because it's a shame that SoI is so unknown in the German community. It's a huge amount of work, of course, so I don't know how long it'll take, but at least you can expect something

 

[Tigranes]

For some reason I always assume that everybody in Europe knows English as a second language (except francophile French, of course ). What are the options for foreign language in German schools anyway?

 

[Leoreth]

English is mandatory, and you have a mandatory second foreign language if you go to the highest school form (Germany has a three level system) at fifth grade. Usually French is offered, or Latin or Spanish depending on your particular school (oldschool humanist schools still offer Latin, but Spanish is becoming quite popular currently).

I think most players are able to play an English game, but there are still a lot who prefer not to. It's also easier to get people interested into a full German game where you don't have to apologize for it being in English, that's sometimes enough to turn people off. And finally there's a lot of background text in SoI that's actually worth being read.

 

[youtien]

This release has prompted me to start translating everything to German, because it's a shame that SoI is so unknown in the German community. It's a huge amount of work, of course, so I don't know how long it'll take, but at least you can expect something

Just ask some German to do it! You should spend more time on polishing.

 

[Leoreth]

But it's fun! Plus, if you want something done, do it yourself.

 

[embryodead]

More translations are always welcome, although yeah, only if you're really having fun doing it (personally I'd rather mod some more ). In case anyone missed it, the first completed translation of SoI is Chinese one by Qiu, which was what prompted me to fix localisation issues.