Tomatekh's New Civilizations

[Homusubi]

What makes it impossible that the Garamantes will be in the expansion? I actually knew who they were before your mod...

 

[ubergeneral]

-Sumer, I wouldn't have minded seeing an official version of them, but the screenshot of the Siege Tower basically confirms Assyria for me which kills Sumer's chances. If they do get it, their ability is being recycled into Harappa.

I'm curious now. How do you feel about Project civ? They also made a Sumer civ and it rivals your version.

How do you feel about that?

 

[Tomatekh]

What makes it impossible that the Garamantes will be in the expansion? I actually knew who they were before your mod...

Ultimately too insignificant compared to other choices and, while a lot of civfanatics may have heard about them, too obscure to the main stream.

I'm curious now. How do you feel about Project civ? They also made a Sumer civ and it rivals your version.

How do you feel about that?

I'm not sure what you mean? Other civ mods have absolutely no impact on my own mods. With an official version, however, there's no need to download a Sumer mod period if one's included in the base game which is why I would need to convert it to something else. As for the Project Civ Sumer specifically, I have nothing against it and it's a fine mod. It also goes in a completely different direction with its ability than mine, so there's no real need to compare it. I personally always envisioned Sumer with a growth/food based bonus which is why my mod goes in that direction.

 

[Irkalla]

Ultimately too insignificant compared to other choices and, while a lot of civfanatics may have heard about them, too obscure to the main stream.



I'm not sure what you mean? Other civ mods have absolutely no impact on my own mods. With an official version, however, there's no need to download a Sumer mod period if one's included in the base game which is why I would need to convert it to something else. As for the Project Civ Sumer specifically, I have nothing against it and it's a fine mod. It also goes in a completely different direction with its ability than mine, so there's no real need to compare it. I personally always envisioned Sumer with a growth/food based bonus which is why my mod goes in that direction.

Yeah, I'm open to "rivals" as well. Not sure where your respondee was going with this. Project Civ is our world, and Tomatekh's world is Tomatekh's. Perhaps Sumer is just a little different between our two worlds.

 

[Tomatekh]

Okay, some bad news.

Another complication came up with the new Timurid ability and this one is basically gamebreaking. And unfortunately, I don't think it's something that can be coded around unless I compile a new dll (which I'd rather not do for a stand alone civ mod).

So, I might have to scrap the completely awesome new ability that I spent a ton of time on and come up with something new, which also means the Timurid update is delayed again.

Oh, and it's all because the Firaxis coding is incompetent.

 

[turingmachine]

Okay, some bad news.

Another complication came up with the new Timurid ability and this one is basically gamebreaking. And unfortunately, I don't think it's something that can be coded around unless I compile a new dll (which I'd rather not do for a stand alone civ mod).

So, I might have to scrap the completely awesome new ability that I spent a ton of time on and come up with something new, which also means the Timurid update is delayed again.

Oh, and it's all because the Firaxis coding is incompetent.

Why not just make a custom dll, though?

 

[Pouakai]

Incompatibility with any other mod that has a custom DLL

 

[Tomatekh]

Why not just make a custom dll, though?

Incompatibility with any other mod that has a custom DLL

As Pouakai said, mostly compatibility, but also, I'm not ever 100% sure I know how to program for the DLL and a custom DLL requires a lot more maintenance as you'd have to compile a new one every time a patch slightly edits it.

I do have a mega mod pack planned for the distant future. Maybe I'll do a dll then and the original ability can see the light.

 

[Tomatekh]

Okay, I've worked out something for the Timurids, ironically using code I wrote to get the original ability working. It'll probably be a temporary UA until the next version and I work something else out.

For those curious, the ability I was trying to make was essentially:

"Captured Cities have a chance to retain Unique Buildings present in the City and captured Unique Buildings are constructed in your Capital."

And actually, we got that working (thanks in no small part to the help of Framed Architect and Moriboe). It was a really cool unique ability which was also very historically appropriate.

However, then the game wanted to be completely random about how it treated building classes.

First, say you captured a Mughal Fort, this didn't immediately prevent you from building the default Castle in the city. However, this was easily fixed in lua.

Then wonders giving free buildings basically overwrote stuff, and this couldn't be fixed as there's no setfreebuilding in lua.

The real problem though, came with building pre-reqs. Despite it being called <Building_ClassesNeededInCity>, it doesn't actually check the building class in the city. So say I wanted to build a University, you need to have a Library in the city; it wouldn't work with a Paper Maker (unless I was China). The really odd thing, though, is that GetBuildingClassCount does actually check the building class. So, basically, the code is inconsistent throughout. Anyway, I actually fixed this problem with lua as well. However, when it came to the same issue with National Wonders is where I hit a brick wall and it just couldn't be fixed (we'll I did devise making a dummy version of each National Wonder just for the Timurids, but at this point, yeah).

So there will be a Timurid update shortly with a different ability. Maybe if I ever do a big modpack I'll do a dll and re-implement the original trait.

 

[turingmachine]

Oh well, the old ability sounded cool, but whatever you came up with to replace it will probably be great too.

 

[Tomatekh]

And this morning I just had a brainstorm of a new idea. I'll see how it works out and maybe implement it with the next update.

 

[GMO]

Where can I find mod The Goths v14?

I'm playing a game using The Goths v14. There was an update for it on Steam but I didn't update it.

When I used Steam to go back into the game, in the 'Mods' area, suddenly most of my mods disappeared and then Steam started to transfer the mods back again.
(This has happened before with Steam and I don't know why it happens. It's annoying).

Unfortunately Steam transferred back the updated v15 Goths, not v14.
So I would like to be able to get The Goths v14 mod someplace so I won't lose my saved game.

Thank you.

 

[Tomatekh]

Where can I find mod The Goths v14?

I'm playing a game using The Goths v14. There was an update for it on Steam but I didn't update it.

When I used Steam to go back into the game, in the 'Mods' area, suddenly most of my mods disappeared and then Steam started to transfer the mods back again.
(This has happened before with Steam and I don't know why it happens. It's annoying).

Unfortunately Steam transferred back the updated v15 Goths, not v14.
So I would like to be able to get The Goths v14 mod someplace so I won't lose my saved game.

Thank you.

v. 15 only had minor edits to ensure compatibility with my other mods and didn't change anything in-game, so I set it to also work with v. 14 games. You should be able to continue your old game with the newer version of the mod.

If it doesn't work, you'll need to wait till Tuesday. I'm not at my home computer with all my modding files at the moment and won't be back till Monday night. When I get back, I'll check if I have the older version still on my hard drive and, if so, post it here.

 

[Leugi]

Hello Tomatekh, I found out something interesting... A ways for using Leader Music without replacing any leader, its pretty easy really: Here

 

[Tomatekh]

Hello Tomatekh, I found out something interesting... A ways for using Leader Music without replacing any leader, its pretty easy really: Here

Interesting! And definitely a good find for any civ maker and hopefully a step towards being able to make more "complete" custom civs. I'll see if I can find some time to play around with it. Thanks a lot!

 

[Tomatekh]

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted anything new in a while.

The truth is, I'm just really really busy with school at the moment, and as I'm also going into the time-frame where I have to start working on my big end of the year projects so I'm probably going to stay relatively busy for the immediate future. All my stuff kind of ends around the time BNW comes out, which means when I do finally have real free time again my first priority will be converting my mods to work in BNW, which depending on how much I have to change (or rethink to fit the new mechanics) might take a while itself.

I've been trying to do little stuff here and there. All my old mods have been updated. I had planned an overhaul of the Mali UA, but I actually think they can work really well with some of the new BNW mechanics so now I'm thinking to leave them as is for G&K and save their ability update for BNW. The Hittites will be receiving their update soon, I finally figured out how to re-work them (I was never really satisfied with their implementation). The Timurids and Benin will also get minor updates next week now that I've received some feedback concerning their new UAs.

I had been working on an Almohad civ for Zambezi, and actually spent my little free time last week making art for them. However, now it seems like Morocco will be in BNW kinda sapping my motivation to work on them any more for the time being. Zimbabwe has much less work done. I spent a lot of time trying to get their ability to work only to have to accept its not possible, that, on top of the fact that it was waiting on some art and my busy schedule, has sort of left it in a perpetual planning stage. (I'm also still upset I couldn't get my planned new Timurid UA to work). I do intend to finish Great Zimbabwe at some point, though.

There is one other civ I've been secretly working on in my free time. I won't really say anything about it because I don't know when I'll actually be able to finish it. I'm also kind of stuck with their abilities as I thought of some really cool stuff that would work with BNW mechanics and I don't know if I just want to wait and release it as my first BNW civ or also try to release a G&K version.

Which is also another point. It's now so close to the next expansion, I'm kinda less motivated to work on something specifically for G&K. It's a combination of wanting to use the new mechanics (because after a while you feel like you've hit a brick wall re-working what's available and want new toys to play with) and not wanting to create more work for myself by having to create multiple versions of the civ once the expansion comes out. Plus, there's still the minor risk of working on something that will potentially be announced later (see Almohads and Morocco).

At some point before BNW, I will probably release all my mods packaged together (civs + religions + prophet names + civlopedia entries) in a single mod as sort of a final G&K release.

 

[Tomatekh]

Hey everyone, been busy with school.

Anyway, I recently updated both the Hittites and Mali. Both had their UA's reworked as well as a minor art update.

Sometime beginning of next week I will be posting a combined mod that includes all my mods (8 Civs, Religions, Prophet Names, Expanded Civlopedia Entries), which will pretty much be my last G&K mod release (not counting patches and updates).

Once BNW comes out, I'll update my old mods and then start releasing new civs and whatnot.

Until mid-late July I am going to be absolutely swamped with school and work, so I might be a bit slower responding to pms and updates.

 

[Tomatekh]

Okay, so it seems a lot of my civs were added as city-states in BNW. I would like to replace them with city-states from the same geographical region.

Ur (Maritime): Muscat?, Dubai?
Samarqand (Mercantile)
Kiev (?)

I think most of the other Silk Road cities are in, same as most of the Eastern European capitals.

 

[Homusubi]

I think you're safe with Kiev.

With Ur, there is no shortage of Mesopotamian city names. I have one on the tip of my tongue but can't remember what it is.

 

[turingmachine]

I think you're safe with Kiev.

With Ur, there is no shortage of Mesopotamian city names. I have one on the tip of my tongue but can't remember what it is.

Kiev has already been confirmed to be a city-state (as has Samarkand). The problem with replacing Ur is that it would have to be replaced with a city not on Tomatekh's Sumer list or the Babylon list or the Assyrian list. I would suggest separating Akkad out, but Akkad wouldn't really fit the Maritime that they've made Ur.