It seems like there is a lot of interest here for these kind of mods so I thought I would share the one I have been working on. The working title right now is "Rhye's and Fall of the Classical World" and the setting is the old world from the death of Alexander to the death of Charlemagne. The starting civs will be the Romans, Carthaginians, Mauryan Indians and Han Chinese and the last to spawn will be the Tang Chinese, the Arabs and the Franks.
Why these dates? Starting at the death of Alexander solves two problems: having to include the long chain of mesopotamian ruling peoples leading up to the persians, while not much was happeneing elsewhere (other than maybe the harappans, who present their own quandry) and not having to script the conquest and collapse of persia and the subsequent spread of hellenistic civilization across southwest asia. Ending with Arabs and Franks in the west is partly convenient, being just before an avalanche of new nations in the succeeding centuries, and partly historical. The historical reason is in accordance with the "Pirenne Thesis" of Henri Pirenne, postulating that the medieval world did not begin and that "Europe" as an idea or entity did not exist until the Arab conquest of the eastern mediterranean finally terminated the economic and cultural exchange patterns of the classical world.
Aside from the setting, there are two thematic elements I want to emphasize: luxury trade and a slightly different take on religions. Briefly, some luxuries such as silk and gold will be worth more than one happy face and there will be no happiness from units except in the otherwise backward and disadvantgeous civic "tyranny". Markets will also pay more with more lururies and there will be a few unplayable but non-minor (ie contactable) one-city civs sitting on piles of resources, such as Sheba/Yemen with incense. As for religions, there are 11 of them and the UN will be replaced by "the great synthesis" which will work the same as normal but represent the fusion of the world's multiple searches for metaphysical truth into a single theory that is so compelling that, as long as enough other people agree, you win the game by founding the "one true faith". This project will take an impossibly long time to build but work will be sped up by each religion in the city (or maybe the empire), so that it becomes practical at about 7 or 8 religions. State religion will be less of a factor and the DLL will be changed so that the presence of other religions does not impede the spread of new ones nearly as much.
A note about historical accuracy: in this period there is not a lot of solid information on some groups. With that in mind, I will be speculative and try to make a fun game. As an example I couldn't find any source for a Bactrian Greek UU, so I made one up. I'm sure I will have to do the same for the Kushans. Also with certain trading civs like Srivajaya and the Ghana empire in Mali, I will take the earliest acceptable start date and allow them to contacted before they historically were to include them.
So what have I done? I have a mod/scenario set in roughly 300bc with a new tech tree, slightly different unit scheme, unique units and some unique buildings, new civics that are partly satifactory, 9 religions on the map with 3 to be founded, some extra resources, and some basic horse archer spawns on the steppes. I'm using unit art from Varietas Delectat and stock leaderheads so far. The only DLL change so far is to make roads immune to pillage. It would simply be too hard and no fun to try to maintain the silk road otherwise.
So what am I doing next?
Map: balance resources and city sites
Art: leaderheads and flags
XML: markets as mentioned, civics are in place but need work
Python: more barbs, stability, riseandfall, UHVs
DLL: more civs, dynamic starts, religion changes
and of course settler maps, war maps and city name maps
I'm open to comments, advice, help and participation from anyone. This is my first more or less from scratch project and I don't have any background in programming. I've worked with all aspects of modding (I think) in making changes to other mods and although I've gotten stuck many times in the end I never failed to make the game do what I wanted. I intend to work on this solidly til its done. I'm going on vacation for two weeks in july but other than I will be working on it most nights and weekends.
I'm attaching what I have so far, minus the art from Varietas Delectat to get under the size limit, so you need to grab those files (just the paked art, not the xml) or the units will be red blobs.
Working on this is the most fun I've had in a while, so I'd to thank some people for that:
Rhye: I was always frustrated by the random map, everyone-starts at once, the whole world is owned by the early middle ages aspects of vanilla civ, as far as I'm concerned you are the 2nd founder of civ.
embryodead: SoI is my guide for completeness, focus, detail and all around design perfection.
The_J, Asaf, Leoreth, Baldyr, civ-addicted, Black_Whole, Corrosol, Luko and others I'm forgetting: helpful, creative people
Also, the flash of inspiration for this actually came from the 200bc scenario for GEM and my map is an altered cut-down of theirs, so many thanks to them for making it.
And here is some additional information about my plans:
edit:sorry there was a dumb cut and paste error in the xml, its gone.
2nd edit:removed some unnecessary python from another mod
Why these dates? Starting at the death of Alexander solves two problems: having to include the long chain of mesopotamian ruling peoples leading up to the persians, while not much was happeneing elsewhere (other than maybe the harappans, who present their own quandry) and not having to script the conquest and collapse of persia and the subsequent spread of hellenistic civilization across southwest asia. Ending with Arabs and Franks in the west is partly convenient, being just before an avalanche of new nations in the succeeding centuries, and partly historical. The historical reason is in accordance with the "Pirenne Thesis" of Henri Pirenne, postulating that the medieval world did not begin and that "Europe" as an idea or entity did not exist until the Arab conquest of the eastern mediterranean finally terminated the economic and cultural exchange patterns of the classical world.
Aside from the setting, there are two thematic elements I want to emphasize: luxury trade and a slightly different take on religions. Briefly, some luxuries such as silk and gold will be worth more than one happy face and there will be no happiness from units except in the otherwise backward and disadvantgeous civic "tyranny". Markets will also pay more with more lururies and there will be a few unplayable but non-minor (ie contactable) one-city civs sitting on piles of resources, such as Sheba/Yemen with incense. As for religions, there are 11 of them and the UN will be replaced by "the great synthesis" which will work the same as normal but represent the fusion of the world's multiple searches for metaphysical truth into a single theory that is so compelling that, as long as enough other people agree, you win the game by founding the "one true faith". This project will take an impossibly long time to build but work will be sped up by each religion in the city (or maybe the empire), so that it becomes practical at about 7 or 8 religions. State religion will be less of a factor and the DLL will be changed so that the presence of other religions does not impede the spread of new ones nearly as much.
A note about historical accuracy: in this period there is not a lot of solid information on some groups. With that in mind, I will be speculative and try to make a fun game. As an example I couldn't find any source for a Bactrian Greek UU, so I made one up. I'm sure I will have to do the same for the Kushans. Also with certain trading civs like Srivajaya and the Ghana empire in Mali, I will take the earliest acceptable start date and allow them to contacted before they historically were to include them.
So what have I done? I have a mod/scenario set in roughly 300bc with a new tech tree, slightly different unit scheme, unique units and some unique buildings, new civics that are partly satifactory, 9 religions on the map with 3 to be founded, some extra resources, and some basic horse archer spawns on the steppes. I'm using unit art from Varietas Delectat and stock leaderheads so far. The only DLL change so far is to make roads immune to pillage. It would simply be too hard and no fun to try to maintain the silk road otherwise.
So what am I doing next?
Map: balance resources and city sites
Art: leaderheads and flags
XML: markets as mentioned, civics are in place but need work
Python: more barbs, stability, riseandfall, UHVs
DLL: more civs, dynamic starts, religion changes
and of course settler maps, war maps and city name maps
I'm open to comments, advice, help and participation from anyone. This is my first more or less from scratch project and I don't have any background in programming. I've worked with all aspects of modding (I think) in making changes to other mods and although I've gotten stuck many times in the end I never failed to make the game do what I wanted. I intend to work on this solidly til its done. I'm going on vacation for two weeks in july but other than I will be working on it most nights and weekends.
I'm attaching what I have so far, minus the art from Varietas Delectat to get under the size limit, so you need to grab those files (just the paked art, not the xml) or the units will be red blobs.
Working on this is the most fun I've had in a while, so I'd to thank some people for that:
Rhye: I was always frustrated by the random map, everyone-starts at once, the whole world is owned by the early middle ages aspects of vanilla civ, as far as I'm concerned you are the 2nd founder of civ.
embryodead: SoI is my guide for completeness, focus, detail and all around design perfection.
The_J, Asaf, Leoreth, Baldyr, civ-addicted, Black_Whole, Corrosol, Luko and others I'm forgetting: helpful, creative people
Also, the flash of inspiration for this actually came from the 200bc scenario for GEM and my map is an altered cut-down of theirs, so many thanks to them for making it.
And here is some additional information about my plans:
Spoiler :
edit:sorry there was a dumb cut and paste error in the xml, its gone.
2nd edit:removed some unnecessary python from another mod
). and why not to give opportunity to play as seleucids sinse they start as very powerful ones?
