Tomatekh's New Civilizations

[hokath]

I think adding the We Love the King bonus back to Rus' is a nice touch. It's not a super OP building, and adding a bit of depth, like looking for a specific resources to buy with your heaps of cash, is always good.
Giving them the River extension UA is also going to be a quality of life improvement with respect to setting up those city states trade routes.

So nice changes

One question, and this may have been asked before: how difficult would it be to make the Iroquois 'forests are roads' UA work for tiles which have rivers as a feature instead?

If this were possible it would buff the Druzhina something crazy, and would make Rus' play more militaristically. This would further differentiate their play style from Harappa.

• You would trade with city states, because you don't want to trade with potential victims!
• Instead of trading for the luxuries to start WLTKD, you would acquire them the viking way

That might be moving away from what you/history originally envisaged. But it's fun to talk about it

 

[Leugi]

One question, and this may have been asked before: how difficult would it be to make the Iroquois 'forests are roads' UA work for tiles which have rivers as a feature instead?

As far as I remembember, one of the civs in Scramble for Africa has that, so it should be very easy as the table exists.

 

[Reedstilt]

As far as I remembember, one of the civs in Scramble for Africa has that, so it should be very easy as the table exists.

It's Belgium, in case anyone needs to know which one specifically.

 

[janboruta]

It would be a great addition, IMO. Remember that Kievan Rus was heavily river-based (Dnieper and stuff, this river is huge). This is already a very, very different kind of Russia, and fleshing out the idea a bit more wouldn't hurt. But just that little bit.

 

[Tomatekh]

The "ignoring terrain on river tiles" tag? The only reason I've never used that in one of my civs is because its used in the Kongo mod (which I put together with Pouakai from Cyon's original mod).

If you mean river tiles actually granting road movement and city connections, I don't think there's a pre-built tag for that. The road movement on river tiles is probably, if not doable, somewhat imitable with lua. City connections is a much bigger problem. I remember even whoward had trouble properly mapping river tiles to check for the connection, and to set the connection itself it would probably need a DLL edit.

 

[turingmachine]

While we're talking about Kievan Rus', I was never really a fan of the name you gave the UA after the BNW update. I don't know, "From Varangians to the Greeks" sounds awkward to me.

 

[janboruta]

On the contrary, I really like this UA name, it's relevant to the history of the region. For me, it's rather flavorful.

 

[Tomatekh]

While we're talking about Kievan Rus', I was never really a fan of the name you gave the UA after the BNW update. I don't know, "From Varangians to the Greeks" sounds awkward to me.

The name is a direct reference to trade along the Dnieper River to go along with the new trade-route focus of the UA, but I also liked it because it somewhat doubles as a reference to the geographical length of the Rus' city-states as well as their culture (which was very much the result of the influx of Varangian and Byzantine influence onto the native Slavic peoples).

I don't think the Scandinavia-Byzantium-Dnieper Trade Route has a standard name in English. From what I understand, "Trade Route 'From Varangians to the Greeks'" is a direct translation from how its referred to in Old Slavic and Russian, which is probably why it sounds awkward in English.

On the contrary, I really like this UA name, it's relevant to the history of the region. For me, it's rather flavorful.

I'm always happy when I get Janboruta's seal of approval regarding my Kievan Rus' mod.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I "did" the Kievan Rus back in Civ 3 for the first iteration of Anno Domini. In case it helps, I thought I'd post my city list, which was researched and checked out way back then.

Spoiler :

Ladoga
Gorodische
Kiev
Novgorod
Starskii Fort
Pskov
Suzdal
Smolensk
Vitebsk
Yaroslavl
Isborsk
Polotsk
Rostov
Beloozero
Sarkel
Pereyaslavl
Tmutorokan
Murum
Ryazan
Chernigov
Turov
Pereyslavets
Dorostul
Itil
Vladimir
Mikulin

 

[janboruta]

It's a solid list, but Kiev should be the capital

If I may reshape it a little (fix typos and add some cities):

Spoiler :

Kiev
Novgorod
Gorodische
Pskov
Suzdal
Smolensk
Vitebsk
Yaroslavl
Izborsk
Polotsk
Rostov
Beloozero
Ladoga
Pereyaslavl
Murom
Ryazan
Chernigov
Galich
Vladimir
Turov
Tmutarakan
Byelgorod
Novgorod Seversky
Kursk
Lyubech
Oleshye
Peremyshl
Nizhny Novgorod
Starskii Fort
Itil
Bila Vezha (renamed Sarkel after it was captured by the Russians - it is on Moriboe's Khazar city list, as is the capital Itil as well)
Mikulin

I didn't find many info on Starskii Fort except for an Osprey book, which isn't always a believable source, so I had to move it down below and make space for more important Rus cities.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Fair enough; I'll hold my hands up and say I'm no expert on the Kievan Rus. The reason Lagoda was chosen at the time, though, was because Rurik conquered it in 862, made it his capital and founded the Kievan Rus. I would presume from janboruta's list that over time, the importance of different cities changed and that Kiev became the principal city.

 

[janboruta]

Fair enough; I'll hold my hands up and say I'm no expert on the Kievan Rus. The reason Lagoda was chosen at the time, though, was because Rurik conquered it in 862, made it his capital and founded the Kievan Rus. I would presume from janboruta's list that over time, the importance of different cities changed and that Kiev became the principal city.

The problem is, Ladoga's importance diminished quickly and Rurik's successors moved on. Kiev and Novgorod (at the time called Holmgardr) soon were two co-capitals and they were more successful at that task, with Kiev soon outshining many other Russian towns. At least until the country broke up and Novgorod became a powerful merchant republic. Also I felt that the inland seats of Russian dukes like Rostov, Smolensk, Polotsk, Ryazan etc. deserved a higher spot on the list, not because their order of importance within Kievan Rus, but because of overall importance in the region.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Totally understand. Thinking back, the mod was set in a specific timeframe, for which Lagoda made sense to be the capital, whereas Tomatekh's Kievan Rus is a mod of the civilization as a whole, over a number of centuries.

 

[Tomatekh]

Fantastic! I'll update the city-list based off your suggestions.

 

[Gurra09]

I'm playing the Goths now - great civ for a Domination game - and I must say that their color scheme is confusingly similar to the gray city state colors. Screenshot in the spoiler with my lands and neighboring gray city state Zurich. It's quite hard to know which units are whose by just looking at them, hehe.

Spoiler :

 

[janboruta]

The colours might be similar to city states, but I really like this scheme. Plus, the icon with this colours come from the Fall of Rome scenario, so it's easier to use.

By the way, there were some updates today, any details?

 

[Tomatekh]

I'm playing the Goths now - great civ for a Domination game - and I must say that their color scheme is confusingly similar to the gray city state colors. Screenshot in the spoiler with my lands and neighboring gray city state Zurich. It's quite hard to know which units are whose by just looking at them, hehe.

Spoiler :

Yeah, I know :/

There's also a similar situation with Harappa and one of the city-states. Honestly, though, with 43 official civs colors, 58 city-state colors, and the colors from all the mods I use, I've kind of just settled in letting minor color differences like that be good enough.

 

[Tomatekh]

The colours might be similar to city states, but I really like this scheme. Plus, the icon with this colours come from the Fall of Rome scenario, so it's easier to use.

By the way, there were some updates today, any details?

Mainly behind the scenes stuff.

Rus' was an edit to the city list. It's now mostly based off the list you compiled from Rob's suggestions. (Differs in that I kept Rostov as the third city mainly because Yaroslav's titles were as Prince of Novgorod, Rostov, and Kiev; the order is a bit different in terms of the cities shared with Russia as I don't like putting too many of those cities one after another, and its missing the cities shared with the Khazar mod to avoid overlap).

Goth's was a minor edit to the lua that doesn't impact game play.

There will probably be a similar minor lua edit to Mali today or tomorrow.

Sometime by Thursday I hope to have edits for Sumer and Hittites which will include actual game play changes.

 

[Skaz881]

Kind of surprised that Ife isn't a part of the Benin city list.

 

[Tomatekh]

Kind of surprised that Ife isn't a part of the Benin city list.

It was, I took it out in BNW because Ife became a religious city-state in the expansion.