Tomatekh's New Civilizations

[MadmanOfALeader]

Is that... Bambara voice acting? Out of all the civs that could have had voice acting, I never expected Mali to actually get their proper voiceset.

That's really, really awesome news, if it can be pulled off I mean.

Yes, it is. I actually sought out Bambara phrasebooks and basic dictionaries, but managed to construct written versions of most of the lines already. Only the declaration of war, the attacked line, the request, and the peaceful line are missing, but that's because Tomatekh hasn't written those lines for his diplomacy text yet, and often leaders' speech lines are based on that.

I checked the phonology, and you can easily recreate it if you use sounds from French or Portuguese. The grammar is pretty good though I didn't mull over it too much, since nobody is going to nitpick it anyway.

Wow, that's awesome. Though I think you should speak a tone or two deeper, to match the rather imposing leader model. Looking forward for more, and hopefully it can be integrated into the game somehow.

Yeah, I worried about that. I'm gonna see if it works, but I wrote down the lines in case it doesn't.

 

[Tomatekh]

Pardon if I give a little help?

I got some audio files for Mali to test, but I am having trouble testing them. I wonder if you could see if they work with Mansa Musa's LH.

Thanks.

Yes, it is. I actually sought out Bambara phrasebooks and basic dictionaries, but managed to construct written versions of most of the lines already. Only the declaration of war, the attacked line, the request, and the peaceful line are missing, but that's because Tomatekh hasn't written those lines for his diplomacy text yet, and often leaders' speech lines are based on that.

Sorry, yes, I haven't forgotten about your work or writing the remaining lines. Beginning of January I was just a little busy with leftover holiday stuff and am just now getting back into updating my mods. I've already reached out to a some forumers who have more experience than I in adding voice lines to leaders, so hopefully I'll hear back from them soon.

 

[noncasus]

Thanks for the feedback!

The thing is, the Sioux are set to expand like crazy (flavor of 10, I believe). Expansion is the main play style which really suits the AI (and all the AI happiness, etc. bonuses allow them to do it much more proficiently than a human player). If you look at the mini-map of the first image, the Sioux have at least 10 more cities than any other civ. However, the Sioux also don't get any innate happiness or settler production bonuses to boost this. While their abilities are designed around quickly beefing up a newly founded city, how well the AI actually uses this design is questionable, so I feel it's more a combination of a high expansion flavor and the bonuses the AI naturally get than something specifically stemming from the civ. Of course, less American civs highlights the issue as the Sioux have more land to freely settle into. (Including the Shoshone might help as they start near the Sioux while also expanding a lot and naturally claiming bonus tiles. I believe Col Leg's Cree and Blackfoot civs also have YnAEMP starts near the Sioux, which would give them less places to settle uninhibited).

IDK, I doubt if a human player could play the civ the same way so easily. In my own tests (using just a random map and standard settings), the end results usually end up more balanced (or at least the Sioux were no more runaway than the other super expansion hungry civs). I might run a test game similar to your setup but give the Sioux YnAEMP coordinates to start in the middle of Europe, and see how much that affects the outcome.

It's something I continue to watch, but haven't decided if I'm going to change at the moment.

Agreed, however, and this is the funny thing... the other NA civs like Cree, Blackfoot, etc get their butts kicked eventually by the ever expanding Sioux.

The Shoshone should stifle the Sioux expansion a bit but I haven't tried it yet because I was trying to figure out why in the heck they were spawning to close to the Sioux.

Turns out that YnAEMP has them in the wrong tile coordinate. They should appear just north or northeast of the Great Salt Lake, which in turn is further south/southwest of the Sioux. Now that I've modified my copy of YnAEMP (and your Sioux mod since you are also adding those coordinates) I'll have another go at it.

I'll play to around 200 turns again on standard and post pics if they don't decide to wipe me out lol.

This will be fun.

P.S.
I asked JFD (in his ynaemp thread) to fix the Shoshone spawn point, so we'll see if he fixes that.

 

[TPangolin]

Yeah, it's just that on YNAEMP, America is scaled up way more than the US. This leaves the Canadian First Nations in the dust somewhat.

We've updated the Cree to move them further East, and in a past update we've moved the Blackfoot further up, closer to the Dene and gave them a Mountain and River start.

We might have to update the Blackfoot expansion so as to keep them on par with the mighty Sioux.

 

[ldvhl]

Yeah, it's just that on YNAEMP, America is scaled up way more than the US. This leaves the Canadian First Nations in the dust somewhat.

We've updated the Cree to move them further East, and in a past update we've moved the Blackfoot further up, closer to the Dene and gave them a Mountain and River start.

We might have to update the Blackfoot expansion so as to keep them on par with the mighty Sioux.

There's also LS' Haida, but I don't know if he has YNAEMP support.

 

[TPangolin]

JFD has included Haida support for the two big TSL maps in a compatibility patch found in the LS and YNAEMP OP's.

 

[noncasus]

Yeah, it's just that on YNAEMP, America is scaled up way more than the US. This leaves the Canadian First Nations in the dust somewhat.

We've updated the Cree to move them further East, and in a past update we've moved the Blackfoot further up, closer to the Dene and gave them a Mountain and River start.

We might have to update the Blackfoot expansion so as to keep them on par with the mighty Sioux.

Ah thanks!
This is one of the many resources I used to get some info on these great tribes (warning, huge pic!!):
Tribe Culture areas and Linguistics

There's also LS' Haida, but I don't know if he has YNAEMP support.

I did not know there was another native american tribe mod out there

 

[Tomatekh]

The Sioux are actually overdue for a minor update (there's a small bit of code that's actually not working correctly). I'll see if I can get it done sometime this week. I might try lowering their expansion flavor by 1 or 2 while I'm at it.

I should point out that I believe flavor values are actually something like plus or minus 2 (I don't know if its specifically 2, but its +- some value). So setting it to 10 means the Sioux can have a value anywhere from 8 to 12 depending on how, I guess, unlucky you are that game. It's possible that the game in question also just got the max roll of the dice.

 

[noncasus]

The Sioux are actually overdue for a minor update (there's a small bit of code that's actually not working correctly). I'll see if I can get it done sometime this week. I might try lowering their expansion flavor by 1 or 2 while I'm at it.

I should point out that I believe flavor values are actually something like plus or minus 2 (I don't know if its specifically 2, but its +- some value). So setting it to 10 means the Sioux can have a value anywhere from 8 to 12 depending on how, I guess, unlucky you are that game. It's possible that the game in question also just got the max roll of the dice.

Nah, it happens ALL the time

And yeah I think it's a range of +-2.

 

[noncasus]

For some reason all the sudden updating unrelated mods has made all these civs not work with IV Traits (or at the very least made the icons no longer appear after the names). Might have something to do with tags? Support is entirely external, I've found.

Did you find a fix for this? I found out it happens with CulDiv and IV Traits enabled.

I checked the database and Tomatekh's civ mods ARE registering appropriate civ IV traits but I don't know if they are actually working

 

[noncasus]

Ok so I ran a test with the same parameters with a couple exceptions:

1. I included the Dene, Shoshone, Blackfoot and Cree into the mix
2. I mistakenly left a No Wonders mod enabled so this data may be a bit skewed

Anyway, I'm pleasantly surprised that the Sioux did seem to have a harder time expanding having the Shoshone south of them and all the other tribes so close by. (not to mention Mexico going north lol)

I did not notice that I had the No Wonders mod on until later in the game (I thought everyone else was beating me to the wonders lol)

Here are the Info Addict pics:
http://imgur.com/a/KqzG6

I think I'll run one final game with wonders for sure this time.

 

[Skaz881]

Is Caral what's most likely going to come next? I remember you mentioning a rework of Harappa.

 

[hokath]

Sioux consistently run away in my games (10 player communitas or 6 player pangaea), in a fashion reminiscent of LS's Khmer.

Personally, last week, I changed the +food at horseback riding to +gold, and removed +gold from wild bison. This has reined them in slightly, though they are still score leaders in my current game.

Obviously you always want Tipi, but the way they strictly dominated the farm (w.r.t. other players) seemed to make it such that the Sioux always hit their UU very early, and as a consequence their first war was always an absolute victory.

That's my assessment anyway.

 

[turingmachine]

The Sioux are a runaway civ but that’s kind of the point.

They don’t really get extra yields. They get early yields.

Regular bison give the same food, hammers, gold as wild bison once everyone else researches economics (or whatever the tech that gives gold to camps).

Farms give the same food as tipi once everyone else researches civil service and fertilizer.

So they don’t really get bonus yields they just get the yields earlier and by mid game their uniques are less special.

This with the Sioux liking to settle lots of cities means that you’re supposed to take care of the Sioux earlier than later.

The Sioux as rivals are actually very similar to having the Zulu or Aztec as rivals. You’re not supposed to let them get out of hand. Except, the Sioux don’t get their unit early like the Zulu or Aztec do, so it’s easier to take them out early game.

 

[Tomatekh]

One thing I actually probably haven't fully considered is how the Sioux changed after I updated them for the last patch.

Admittedly, when I respond to balance feedback I think in terms of how the Sioux originally played (as that's how I designed the civ and with which I played the most games). I actually thought the original design for the civ was very well balanced, though most of the feedback I got at the time said they were slightly underpowered.

The change for the patch was a buff. It basically only amounted to the Sioux getting the full yields of bison without improving/researching economics. I didn't think this was too much of a change and with people previously saying the civ was on the weak side, I didn't do much to compensate. Maybe it impacted the civ more than I thought.

Though, my reaction wouldn't be to remove yields from the wild bison. As Turingmachine pointed out, Bison and Wild Bison have the same end yields (excepting 1 Culture). Removing any food, production, gold from it would actually result in the Sioux having weaker standard bison than everyone else. I might (though I have to think about this more and it would be in a later update, not the minor one I'm working on at the moment), I might move the gold from the base wild bison and instead have it added on when I add the culture (after researching Chivalry which is also relatively close to Economics which boosts the standard camp/bison).

 

[Tomatekh]

Is Caral what's most likely going to come next? I remember you mentioning a rework of Harappa.

Uhmm... yes.

Here's the thing, Caral, Harappa, everything is fully coded, but none of them are ready for release.

When they're released is dependent on when everything is done for them.

In the case of Harappa, the only thing holding back a release is the unit graphic. The ability changes require some changes to the unit graphic (not a new model, but switching some stuff between existing models and stuff like that). I have no talent for this myself, and the people who do are busy (which is especially true this time of year with holidays and school semesters ending/starting up again). I'd also rather the various artists take stuff up when they're interested/able than pressuring them to meet a deadline as everyone also has their own projects.

Caral, Harappa, they both will come and are making progress towards release, but I can't really give a solid release date.

 

[Natan35]

Well, we shall wait them...
(Not that we mind about things such as unit graphic, I suppose)
Btw, do your civs include support for CulDiv and E&D?

 

[hokath]

Regular bison give the same food, hammers, gold as wild bison once everyone else researches economics (or whatever the tech that gives gold to camps).

Don't Wild Bison wander onto improved tiles?

You’re not supposed to let them get out of hand. Except, the Sioux don’t get their unit early like the Zulu or Aztec do, so it’s easier to take them out early game.

If you spawn near them/can bribe someone. Else by the time the AI realises what they're dealing with, Sitting Bull is in a position to squish them.

Obviously all this boils down to the fact that the AI plays best with high expansion flavour, as Tom mentioned at the start of this discussion. Not much to be done while avoiding making them underpowered for the player. Still, worth having a chat about it. They are one of my favourites

----
can we have a sneak peak at Caral/Harappa changes?

 

[Teproc]

I just played a game in which the Sioux were the runaway and I had to do a lot of work to get influential over them but it didn't seem any different to me than any other vanilla runaway AI, so I'm not sure there's a problem here.

 

[Gyra Solune]

By the way what is Mali's icon supposed to be? Because I cannot see it as anything other than a sad moose.