[Mod] The Sumeria Project- Play as the Sumerians as Firaxis Intended!

monkspider · November 19, 2005, 14:32

Welcome to the Sumeria Project. The aim of this mod is not just to provide a new civ to play as, but to try to re-create Firaxis' original vision for the game as close as possible. As I will discuss later, Sumeria was cut from the game for unknown reasons, most likely lack of time. All of the artwork featured in this mod was created by Firaxis, nothing is user-created. Before we get started, a little bit of history...

Flashback to the early 2005: all the previews coming out for Civ IV were saying that the game boasted 19 civs. We all speculated on who these lucky 19 would be, but after E3, the number was changed to 18! A civ had been dropped! No one knew for sure who it was at the time, but the front-runner was Babylon based on these screenshots that were released before E3 which showed the ancient Mesopotamian city of Agade (sometimes called Akkad) and a flag that seemed to depict an Aurochs, the primary beast of burden in the fertile crescent. Everyone lamented the loss of Babylon, but we soldiered on, older and wiser.

Now, when Civ IV was released, Soren Johnson held a chat at Apolyton.net. Still curious about the loss of the Babylonians,, the question I got to ask Soren was inquiring about what point in development were the Babylonians cut. Soren replied that the Babylonians were never in the game. Confused, I mentioned to Soren some of the early screenshots that seemed to show Babylonian cities, and specifically, the flag that seemed to depict an ancient Aurochs. Soren told me that the flag I saw was never for Babylon, but was for a different civ that we might see again in the future! The plot thickens!

A couple weeks after release, I discovered an abundance of unused artwork in the Civilization IV files. To my pleasent surprise, I found the same flag that was seen in those early screenshots. However, the greatest surprise of all was discovering concept leaderhead artwork for Gilgamesh, and an additional little button for Sargon! So it wasn't the Babylonians after all, it was the Sumerians! I created a thread about this unused artwork and was kindly frontpaged by the CFC folks. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139720

One other little curiosity I found was an unused button for a unit referred to only as "Vulture". I suspected this could have been for Sumeria, but I was completely confused as to what it could possibly be intended to depict. I got a strong clue when the very first google search result for "Sumerian Warfare" brings up what was called an ancient relief called the stele of vultures which was said to be "the first important pictorial of war in the Sumerian period".
http://joseph_berrigan.tripod.com/id46.html

So lets get to the mod, shall we?

This mod will allow you to play as the Sumerians, with your leader as Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is Creative/Organized which is one of only two trait combos not used by any leader. The other, Industrious/Philosophical was determined to be too powerful by testers. I felt that Firaxis would certainly have wanted to use up all of the traits, and Gilgamesh is likely to have received these traits under such a scenario. Gilgamesh's leaderhead is the concept art created by Firaxis. You can see this style of placeholder artwork used as leaderheads in some previews, especially some of the video previews released by Gamespot.

The Sumerians do have their own flag, as mentioned earlier. I was not quite able to pull off the yellow on grey that the early screenshots depict, but I felt yellow on brown was a reasonable facsimile. If any of our art savy folks can help create a flag that is a perfect match of the flag seen in the screenshots, it would be helpful in maintaining Firaxis' original vision.

The Vulture, the Sumerians UU, replaces the spearman and has one extra point of strength, and is guaranteed two strikes. These stats may be subject to change for balancing, and if information can be found regarding the vulture's original intended stats, it will certainly be changed. The in-game artwork for the unit features unused artwork for Firaxis for a unit called the Hypaspist. As a result, the unit looks more Greek than Sumerian in game. But the Hypaspist is never actually seen in the main game, and it makes an interesting replacement for a spearman based unit, which the vulture seems to be.

I hope that everyone enjoys this mod, and anyone is welcome to use any or all of it in their own mod. If Firaxis sees this mod, I hope they find it to be an adequate interpretation of their vision. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to post them.

Install Instructions
1. Extract Zip to C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods
2. Start up game, click on advanced, go to load mod.
3. Have fun!

monkspider · November 19, 2005, 14:44

I have two requests that I would like to make of our community. One is to help me make a button for Sumeria, similar to the ones other civs have like

The other is to create a unit artwork and animations based on the button for the vulture, which you will see in the collage below. I realize this is quite a bit of work, so I do not expect anything to be forthcoming in the immediate future.

Junuxx · November 19, 2005, 15:18

Yay! Sumeria! That rocks!

Sessil3 · November 19, 2005, 22:11

Hmm.. there has to be a way to work Snow Crash into this. A ma fa zu la..

Fireb · November 20, 2005, 05:14

Great work monkspider

I'd be happy to help you out with coding, but graphics isn't my cup of tea... ;o

GeoModder · November 20, 2005, 13:47

Found an error in the citynaming file. With the third city (Lagash) coming around, the txt key comes up instead of the proper name. Checking the file I found a tab after the Lagash name. Removed the tab and I will see if that does the trick.

monkspider · November 20, 2005, 14:03

Thanks Geo, I had some problems with those city names, but I thought I had them all hammered out. I will get that corrected in the next update.

GeoModder · November 20, 2005, 14:22

No prob. Hopes this mod gets concluded someday. 't Is nice playing as the oldest civ in the world.
Btw, where did you get the citynames from? Names like Sumer, Ur and so are pretty familiar, but most of them I haven't read about before.

monkspider · November 20, 2005, 21:21

I actually just borrowed the city name list from C3C.

GeoModder · November 21, 2005, 09:27

Wasn't a CivIII player, so...

Btw, the city Banti something also has an error, it's related to as Banit something in its text key.

And there's a second file where the Lagash text key is wrong. Its written as LAGASh (last letter underscore) and continues to give the text key error in it. Fixing this and restarting C4 solved this problem for me.