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[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Release/Feature Thread

Spoiler: Original OP/Plan (click to show/hide)

I was thinking of getting back into modding, and, as a measure of curiousity, would anyone be interested in a mod that would, essentially, remove all magic abilities and fantasy races from the game , to be replaced with human civilization being fragmented into 15 different ones, 14 being loose representations of various civilizations of our own history.  I say loosely, as I am by no interpretations of the word, an expert, and there will likely be numerous divulgences from the actual cultures themselves that are either by accident or design.  The fifteenth civ I mentioned would likely be raiders of some variety in order to replace the goblins, but it may be eventually depreciated out by something else (maybe take a page from Civilization's books and renamed it Barbarian).

Rough list I am considering for using as basis for the 14 civilizations
1) Maya
2) Zulu
3) Mediterranean
4) Indonesian
5) Inuit
6) Tibet
7) Mongols
Iroquois
9) Scandinavian
10) Incan
11) Korean
12) Egypt
13) Persian
14) Ethiopian

I'm not entirely certain which one I would wind up making as the playable civilization (might make them all able to fulfill the role.  If I can figure out how to code a menu to modify the playable tag, then I might do that.), though if I can figure out what reasonable values would be, I would make the attempt to add in numerous diseases to contend with.  I know for certain I will be implementing the tiered metals from the prior version of Draconic Civilization I made, though it will require a few changes to update it, based on what I have read.

Anyway, is there any interest in me making the attempt to implement this idea?

[Diamond]

There was a pretty neat mod for 40d with similar idea - various human races, fantasy ones were still in, though.
Yes, you can make them all playable, it's just a matter of adding a single tag and multiple races can be enabled at the same time (though there was an issue with that at some point, I don't know what exactly).
Might as well mess with ethics to see which ones will be hostile towards the others. From what I can recall you can make at least three-way hostilities this way, i.e. you enemies will fight some of your other enemies.
And, I guess, you will need a huge effort to actually make this interesting, 15 same races with different names won't cut it, different graphics and/or items / buildings are pretty much a requirement here.

[IndigoFenix]

The fun thing about this is that members of one civ will be able to integrate with another without standing out.

My advice would be to focus more on the gameplay than strictly recreating real life civilizations.  Remember that none of the names will actually show up in game, so nobody can fault you for playing fast and loose with historical accuracy.

[pikachu17]

Mayans had human sacrifice. they can stand in for goblins. dark spires are similar to mayan temples(kind of). just think of that clown as a sun god. you should  change the name of this thread to something more appropriate for this thread
also no romans?  think of romans as guys who have laws unlike goblins, but pretty much fought with everyone who didn't surrender on the spot. I would assume [ETHIC:KILL_ENEMY:REQUIRED] and [ETHIC:KILL_NEUTRAL:REQUIRED] with the other ethics being civilized would work for them.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Yes, you can make them all playable, it's just a matter of adding a single tag and multiple races can be enabled at the same time (though there was an issue with that at some point, I don't know what exactly).

And, I guess, you will need a huge effort to actually make this interesting, 15 same races with different names won't cut it, different graphics and/or items / buildings are pretty much a requirement here.

I know that.  Main point of contemplation of whether or not to do it is primarily focused upon being able to tell the difference of which civilization a person has selected.

As for the differences between the civilizations, it's going to be a slow process.  Initial release will likely just have the cloned humans with cloned civs to allow for wars and the removal of fantasy stuff.  From there I am slowly going to differentiate each of the civs one at a time, first with governments and ethics and working on from there.  It is a shame you can't really modify some workshops that are coded in like the crafts[dwarf] workshop and those automatically are added if a civilization has the related job (unless that has changed...).

My advice would be to focus more on the gameplay than strictly recreating real life civilizations.  Remember that none of the names will actually show up in game, so nobody can fault you for playing fast and loose with historical accuracy.

The real-life civilizations will just be used as a general basis for governmental structure, ethics, and general appearance.  Can't get one hundred percent accurate, especially with only having regional force and pantheon as the selectable religion types (Persia was Monotheistic Zoroastrianism, for one example) (Note: unaware if this has changed).

Mayans had human sacrifice. they can stand in for goblins. dark spires are similar to mayan temples(kind of). just think of that clown as a sun god. you should  change the name of this thread to something more appropriate for this thread
also no romans?  think of romans as guys who have laws unlike goblins, but pretty much fought with everyone who didn't surrender on the spot. I would assume [ETHIC:KILL_ENEMY:REQUIRED] and [ETHIC:KILL_NEUTRAL:REQUIRED] with the other ethics being civilized would work for them.

Outside of the raiders, I'm wanting for there not to be an enemy civ like that of the goblins.  I want wars to be more on the organic, caused by disparate ideals and other such events.

As for Rome, it, Greece, and civilizations in the same area as them will all be exerting their influence upon the Mediterranean civilization.

[pikachu17]

I know that.  Main point of contemplation of whether or not to do it is primarily focused upon being able to tell the difference of which civilization a person has selected.

well maybe the player could remove [SITE_CONTROLLABLE] and [ALL_MAIN_POPS_CONTROLLABLE] from all but the entity he wants to play as. I think you can still do that after world generation in the save itself, so you could try all playable entities in one save, without confusing them in embark screen.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I know that.  Main point of contemplation of whether or not to do it is primarily focused upon being able to tell the difference of which civilization a person has selected.

well maybe the player could remove [SITE_CONTROLLABLE] and [ALL_MAIN_POPS_CONTROLLABLE] from all but the entity he wants to play as. I think you can still do that after world generation in the save itself, so you could try all playable entities in one save, without confusing them in embark screen.

I believe I will primarily utilize something akin to this and have the various races have their civilizations have names based upon their government type (ex. Shahdom for the Persian-based civ, Republic for the Mediterranean-based civs (going to use Roman Republic style for them), Kingdom for Scandinavian-based civs, etc.).

Gotten through everything but Creature_Standard within the raws.  I was originally going to keep the animal men and giant animals within the Creature_Fanciful, stripped down of most of the tags and having [Does_not_exist] and [Fanciful] added due to recalling it said somewhere that in worlds without history fully revealed at the start, creatures with those tags will show up as legends.  Once I realized just how many there were and they would crowd out the rest of the creatures if it were true, I just started wholesale cutting them out.  The creature raws now seem to be 1/3 gone.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Did a bit of testing recently.  Wind up getting a decent sized error log due to the method I used to obliterate forgotten beasts.  Will see if I can find a way to reduce it, but how much it can be reduced by is unknown.  On another note, generation will cause the world will jump to the Age of Civilization with its relatively morbid description of 'The Age of Civilization was a time when fantastic creatures were but mere stories told by travelers.'

Also, I have gotten permission from Grimlocke to utilize their historic arms and armor mod for this mod, so that is something that is going to be included in the release in some way or another.

[pikachu17]

are you gong to remove all fantasy creatures, including megabeasts? what will you do about evil/good regions?

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Have one of the civs mostly done.  Will release initial version when I have 3 done.

are you gong to remove all fantasy creatures, including megabeasts? what will you do about evil/good regions?

Megabeasts, animal men, giant creatures, and other fantasy creatures have been removed from the raws.  Using advanced world generation, good and evil regions are able to be removed.

[pikachu17]

are you going to have no megabeasts at all, or are you going to add megabeasts that are part of the mythos of the civs?

[AceSV]

I have a bunch of ethnic weapons in the Furry Fortress mod, if you want to save yourself some time.  The FuFo languages are based on real life ones too, if you want to borrow them.  There's a language generator somewhere in the modding forum you can use. 

No Japan or Han China? 

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

are you going to have no megabeasts at all, or are you going to add megabeasts that are part of the mythos of the civs?

While beastmen and giant animals were removed whole cloth as well as a fair amount of underground creatures,  most of the rest of the fantasy creatures have been reduced in appearance to the Chimera, Centaur, and Griffin creatures.  They are apparently able to show up in engravings, though I cannot account for how frequent this occurs.

I have a bunch of ethnic weapons in the Furry Fortress mod, if you want to save yourself some time.  The FuFo languages are based on real life ones too, if you want to borrow them.  There's a language generator somewhere in the modding forum you can use. 

No Japan or Han China? 

In order to give things more of a unique flavor, I was acutally planning on using the generator's human language syntax files rather than using basis off of the real world languages.

As for the lack of China and Japan, it came down to biome and the amount of civs I wanted in the mod.  Korea, with its culture influenced by both neighboring cultures proved to be a better fit to represent the area with the limited list I had made. However, I'm largely begining to shift away from the list I provided and am more indicating based upon government type.  This change is mainly due to simply finding it easier to get a defining descriptor out of a government type rather than figuring out something generic based upon the civ.

As for the weapons, it may be me misremembering, but I recall Grimlocke mentioning he did something with the weapons in his mod to rebalance them.  Haven't looked into exactly what it was, but I'll need to figure out what that is, if something exists, before I can incorporate other weapons in.


Two minor questions I have:

Out of curiousity, once the mod is largely complete, how do people feel about starting up a succession game using it?

Secondly, I recall there being a utility that could be run using DFHack that changed the last names of every sentient to have a last name that was a combination of their parent's.  Can anyone remember the name of it?  I want to have it optionally incorporated into the mod to allow for clarity of lineages (likely will wind up binding it to acutally only use the father's last name, due to customs and it being a lot clearer who is related to who than using the combining last names approach)

[Starmantis]

Posting to watch.

Also any chance of a polish civ? or ottoman?

[MoonyTheHuman]

ptw, also, im willing to write a bit of patch code to fully disable beasts (= (reverse engineering is fun!)