LeeS
Imperator
Wildlife (Reborn)
by LeeS and Azurial/Xarsus
(Inspired by the original Wildlife mod created by Androrc the Orc )
Steam Workshop Wildlife (Reborn) CivFanatics Download
Expansion and Game-Version Compatibility:
- The mod should run for any of the three expansion levels of Civ5: Vanilla, Gods & Kings, and BNW.
- I have only specifically tested under BNW, however.
- The mod will not run properly for any game version earlier than 1.0.3.276
Mod Compatibility:
- The mod is compatible to Prehistoric Era Reborn and Ultimate Eras Mod.
- The mod was designed with the intent that it would be compatible with CP/CBP. Azurial specifically wanted this as part of the original code from which this mod grew. If anyone finds it is not compatible, please let us know, and supply as much info as you can.
- The mod should be compatible with just about any mod so long as the other mod does not make major changes to the tech tree, or is not an outdated DLL mod.
- Mods that contain custom DLL files and which have not been updated since approx October of 2014 will almost certainly cause this mod to malfunction.
- If Xarsus ever gets around to releasing the giant CBP-dependant-mod he has been working on lo these many years, this mod will be blocked when his mod is enabled. He has his own version of this system running for his giant CBP-dependant mod.
- EUI ought not to cause any conflicts with this mod, but I have not specifically tested for that.
- I am not sure at all how the Barbarians Evolved mod or my own Barbarian Spawn Increase mod will work in tandem with this mod. I cannot see any reason why there should be code-failure issues, but there might be some additional balance irregularities in addition to the ones you already get when running one of the other crazy barb mods1.
Spoiler 1 :Yes, I consider this another in the history of crazy barb mods made for Civ5. - Mez's Wonder - Jurassic World and Wildlife (Reborn) will no longer conflict with each other as of V8 of Wildlife (Reborn).
ScreenShots:
- There are numerous screen-caps of the units over on the Steam Workshop page for the mod.
- As I get time I'll throw some of those up on Imgur so I can direct-link to imgur from here.
Mod Highlights:
- Dinosaur and Mammal units are spawned on the map's landscape as Barbarian Animals. They do not spawn in Camps.
- In the 'standard' set-up of the mod, Dinosaurs spawn from the start of the game, but stop spawning when the Barb AI player learns the Trapping Technology
- Dinosaurs that have already spawned onto the map remain and must be killed off in order to be removed from the game with the exception that there is a conversion trigger that will eventually occur and which will convert all animal units to standard Barbarian units.
- When the Barb AI player learns the Trapping Technology, Mammals begin to spawn on the map, and Dinosaurs cease spawning.
- Mammals spawn until the Barb AI player learns the Currency Technology.
- When the Barb AI player learns the Currency Technology, all existing Animal units (except Whales) are converted into Barbarian Brute units (for land units) and Barbarian Galleys (for sea units).
- Barb Animals function just like any other Barb unit, except they do not spawn in Barbarian Encampments, and when you kill a Dinosaur or Mammal unit, you get +1 or +2 food in your nearest city, or +1 culture or science is added to your empire. This is a one-time bump. The amount of food, culture, or science is dependent on the animal type. Since these units all belong to the Barbarian player, you also get the culture yield from killing barbs if you have honor.
- Depending on balance wrt to acquiring social policies, it may be necessary to impliment a 'reverse culture change' when a player kills a Barb Animal, and they also have the honor opener.
- Barbarian Animals:
Spoiler :Animal Genus Domain Starts Spawning Stops Spawning
Basilosaurus 1 Dinosaur Coastal Sea 2 Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 4
Pteranodon Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 5
Tyrannosaurus Rex Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 8
Velociraptor Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 8
Stegosaurus Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 8
Utahraptor Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 8
Triceratops Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 5
Styracosauros Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 5
Protoceratops Dinosaur Land Start of Game Barbs Learn Trapping 5
Whale 1 Whale 4 Coastal Sea 3 Barbs Learn Optics Barbs Learn Industrialization 10
Eagle Mammal Land Barbs Learn Trapping Barbs Learn Currency 6
Bear Mammal Land Barbs Learn Trapping Barbs Learn Currency 10
Snow Tiger Mammal Land Barbs Learn Trapping Barbs Learn Currency 6
Wolf Mammal Land Barbs Learn Trapping Barbs Learn Currency 6
Lion Mammal Land Barbs Learn Trapping Barbs Learn Currency 8
2This unit spawns in coastal tiles and cannot move into deep ocean tiles
3This unit spawns in coastal tiles but can move into deep ocean tiles
4This "Whale" genus of animals is never converted into standard Barbarian Units - Barb Animals spawn on the Barbarian Player's turn, but they have restrictions:
- Only one animal can spawn per-turn on the same continent
- Only one animal can spawn per-turn in coastal waters anywhere on the map
- Each animal (Dinosaur or Mammal) is linked either to certain types of Features or to certain types of Terrain that are also bare of any Features.
- Each animal can be linked to both a Feature or a bare Terrain type. The same unit can also be linked to multiple terrains or features.
- Features and Terrains requirements1:
Spoiler :Animal Feature Or Terrain #Required Tiles per Animal on the Continent
Basilosaurus 2 Coast 35
Utahraptor Flood Plains 5
Utahraptor Grass 12
Pteranodon Jungle 8
Tyrannosaurus Rex Grasslands 18
Velociraptor Marsh 15
Velociraptor Plains 9
Triceratops Jungle 8
Styracosauros Forest 8
Protoceratops Desert 12
Stegosaurus Desert 12
Eagle Forest 5
Bear Forest 5
Snow Tiger Tundra 5
Wolf Forest 5
Wolf Grasslands 12
Lion Jungle 5
Lion Plains 10
Whale 2 Coast 20
2Basilosaurus' and Whale's restriction is for all coastal tiles throughout the map rather than linked to a continent so long as these tiles are not also considered 'lakes'. - What the '5', '15', etc. mean is that a continent must have this number of tiles of that type for each animal of that type. So if a smallish continent has 5 Forest tiles, it can only support 1 (one) Bear. But it can support one each of Bear and Wolf, since each of these unit-types only require 5 tiles of Forest for each of their respective units.
- The Terrain and Feature requirements are the types of tiles an Animal is allowed to spawn on. They will move out of these native terrains and features and attack you.
- Barbarian Animals do not spawn on tiles that can be observed by any non-Barbarian player, and they will not spawn on plots that are already occupied by any other unit.
- As a compensation to the amount of extra Barb units this mod creates, the usual starting Barbarian Brute does not appear until the Barbarian Player starts to spawn Mammals. Previous to this, a weaker form of the Brute will spawn from Babrabrian Encampments. There is no good way to turn off the game's 'Auto-Spawning' of Encampments and Barb-Units from those Encampments without also completely turning off Barbarians altogether, which would conflict with the code of the mod.
- Barbarian Archers, Spearmen, Swordsmen, etc., are not affected by this mod. It is quite possible the Barbs will start to spawn Archers or Spearman even before the standard Brute replaces the weaker version introduced by this mod. This comes from the standard behavior of the game in giving techs to the Barbs, and in the tech-research choices made by the AI Major Civilizations.
- The mod is configurable. See the post on 'Configuring Mod Behavior' for full details.
Capturing Wild Animals:
- Depending on what other mods you are running, which BNW reformation belief you choose, or which civ you are playing as, you might capture one or more of these wild animals instead of killing them.
- In this case the animals retain their inherent promotions for the terrains or features they normally spawn in, and they will be eligible for promotions such as Drill 1.
- Wild Animal units never upgrade to new unit-types, however.
Barb Animal Combat in Their Native Terrain/Features:
- Wild Animals are given combat promotions based on the Animal Unit's "Native Terrain" and "Native Features". These promotions give the animal a 15% Attack and 30% Defense bonus within their 'native' terrain or feature.
- Wild Animals can have more than one promotion for a "Native Terrain" and/or "Native Features". It all depends on what Terrains and Features the unit is allowed to spawn in.
- The code never allows a unit to be spawned on Ocean Tiles as a design decision (ie, there are potentially way too many Ocean Tiles), but Aquatic units can move from the Coast where they spawn into the deep Ocean, as does the Whale unit.
Animal Unit City Capturing:
- Wild Animals are never allowed to capture cities
- All that Wild Animals can do against cities is attack them.
How the Barbs learn the Trapping, Currency, Optics, and Industrialization Techs with this mod active:
- Barbs are given a tech when X % of Major Civilizations have learned the same technology. Barbs do not actually research anything, they just recieve gifts of technology from the game. This is normal game behavior, and is not something this mod adds to the game. Generally this % seems to be 70% when playing on King -- I am not sure if it is a different % when playing on different Difficulty-Levels.
- Given that AI Major Civilizations are uncooperative in their research choices, this mod monitors the research completed by Major Civilizations, and when greater than 70% of Major Civilizations have researched at least one technology from the same column in the tech tree as Trapping, the Barbarian AI player is given Trapping. The same method is used for giving the AI Barbarian player the Currency, Optics, and Industrialization technologies.
- When the mod was requiring that Major AI Civilizations research the exact tech desired (Trapping, for example) not enough of them ever did, so the Barbs never learned Trapping, and Mammals would never spawn on the map before they were made obsolete by the Major AI Players researching the Technology that made Wild Mammals stop spawning. The result was lots and lots of Dinosaurs, but no Mammals.
- Trapping was selected as the tech to enable the Mammal animals because it seemed to make more sense than other techs from the same column, and was pretty innocuous in its effect on 'regular' players when the Barbarians discover it. Currency was selected because it is toward the end of the Classical Era and is also innocuous in the hands of the Babarian AI. Optics and Industrialization were chosen for similar reasons, with more attention being paid to not give Barbs more-advanced units than they would normally otherwise have access to.
Wild Animal Behavior Once Spawned:
- Wild Animals remain in the tile where they were spawned so long as no other player can see the tile. Since Wild Animals only spawn in unobserved tiles, this means they will remain inert from the time they are spawned until another player unit comes into view.
- Once another player can see the tile where a Wild Animal is located, the Wild Animal is "unleashed", and will attack. So long as another player can still see the Wild Animal at the beginning of the Barb's turn, the Wild Animal will keep moving and making mayhem
- If a Wild Animal can no longer be seen by another player, the Wild Animal will halt in place and heal its wounds. It will heal up to 10 damage per turn.
- Any Unit that is not designated as a "MAMMAL" or a "DINOSAUR" for its "AnimalType" will be allowed to move from its original spawn point and to roam the map.
- Such units can heal 10HP per turn if they start their turn in a tile that is not observed by any other player. They can heal and move on that same turn.
- Whales are not defined as either "MAMMAL" or "DINOSAUR" for code-purposes, and so will move around the map at will. In the case of the Whale, this is meant to make them tend to at least fill up the Ocean Tiles a bit.
War Dogs:
- The mod also introduces a new unit called "War Dogs" that can be trained by regular players and by City-States.
- They are not available to the Barbarian Player.
- War Dogs have a combat strength of 8, can be purchased with Faith if the player has the Holy Warriors Belief, and cost an extra gold in maintenance.
- War Dogs are available at Archery and become Obsolete at Civil Service.
- They do not have an upgrade path.
- They are given two promotions that increase their "Flank Attack" strength, but penalize them when attacking cities.
- The code was pretty much borrowed from DarkScythe's Wolf Pups unit, except that the Unit Art Definition was re-sized to make the unit members smaller on the main map.
- There should not be any conflicts at the moment with DarkScythe's Holo Civ, but if you find any when using both mods, please let me know.
Configurable Mod Behavior (see Post #2):
- The mod's Behavior can be configured to taste in many ways, see post #2.
Current Mod Issues:
- When either a Lion or Eagle attack a city, the animation gives 'hellfire' from the sky. I'm not sure if this is something we have done wrong in implimenting the XML of the unit-art-define, or if it is a unit-model issue, or an issue in the fxsxml file(s).
- It is certainly cool to watch this "fire from the skies" being called down by a Wild Animal upon a player's city, but it is obviously not correct.
- War Dogs don't have any combat sounds, though I thought they did in the Holo mod -- it's not obvious to me what sound reference DarkScythe was using for his unit, since I can't find an mp3 file anywhere in the Holo mod that looks like it is related to his "Wolf Pups" unit.
- The unit's selection/birth sounds are the wolf howl sounder used by Calcul8or in his creeeeeeepy Halloween civ. I have a horrible spider-phobia so I can't bring myself to play his mod
- Some of the units, especially the Wild Wolf unit, make odd "smoke" displays when attacked or attacking. These are just barely visible, and often far up the player's display, and offset to one side of the CRT or the other.
- Unit refacing before combat for most of the units seems a little slow. Again I'm not sure if it's something we are doing wrong in the set-up of the unit.
Credits:
- Deliverator for the Dino unit models. Nomad or What (I think) for the animal units. I am still chasing down who did what unit animation.
- The configuration of the War Dogs unit-art-define is by DarkScythe, and the Icons for Wild Mammal SV icons, and certain promotion Icons are by DarkScythe.
- I'm not certain where-all DarkScythe got the unit-member animations, so I'm chasing those down to give proper credit.
- I'm not sure where-all else Azurial found the animal unit animations.
- I did the lua and the SQL within the mod, and tweaked some of the XML-code.
- Azurial did the XML for the Units, the unit animations, Icon Atlases, etc., and gathered together all the unit animation files and placed them in the mod. He also did the 'titlecard' at the top of this post as well as the one being used on Steam workshop.
- War Dogs unit selection/unit birth sounders are courtesy Calcul8or, but I am not sure if he made the actual mp3 sounder or if it was made by Deliverator/Kwadjh.